View of gallery 602 in the European Paintings galleries
«Visitors to the European Paintings galleries will not see evidence of our preparation for the replacement of the skylights—an enormous infrastructure project—until April. That's when we will start moving pictures from the galleries containing Italian, French, and Spanish paintings, since those are the galleries that will be closed during the first two-year phase of work on the skylights. We will be selecting highlights from the collection to put on display in a newly configured arrangement in the galleries not affected by this first phase.» (More about this exciting opportunity for reinterpretation in a future blog post.)
As evidence of the enormity of this project, I offer two photos below. The first (left) shows the empty screens where we normally store our collection of more than 750 frames. It took us just short of three months to move them to a newly arranged storeroom in the basement of the Museum. Imagine, every single one of these frames has to be accounted for and their new location logged into our tracking system!
Left: An empty storeroom that had previously housed more than 750 frames. Right: Staff of the Department of European Paintings prepare to move artwork from their usual storage area to the newly arranged space. Photos by the author
This is a demanding and delicate task, and in my next blog post, you'll meet the remarkable people who are responsible for moving these treasured works (some are included in the photo above).
View the web feature Met Masterpieces in a New Light for more information about the Skylights Project and explore ways to engage with the Department of European Paintings' collection online.
