Connecting Museums - Rembrandt / Velázquez / Manet

Connecting Museums, an exhibition highlighting masterpieces from the collections of The State Hermitage Museum, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, opens at the Guggenheim Museum on June 18, 2002. This exhibition is one of the first manifestations of the alliance established in 2001 between the Guggenheim, Hermitage and Kunsthistorisches museums, which provides unprecedented opportunities for intra-museum collaboration. In Connecting Museums, three signature artworks—one from each institution's collection—are presented at the Guggenheim, while exhibitions of the same format are on view simultaneously at the Hermitage and Kunsthistorisches museums. These exhibitions illustrate the most important goal of the Guggenheim-Hermitage-Kunsthistorisches collaboration: the collection-sharing initiative that will make each institution's respective holdings—which, combined, are among the greatest in the world—available to broader audiences. Connecting Museums will be on view through October 20, 2002. 
The New York presentation of Connecting Museums, with paintings by Rembrandt, Velázquez, and Manet, brings together canvases created in the Netherlands, Spain, and France, respectively. These works address changing notions of representation reaching across three countries, extending over three centuries, and symbolizing three diverse cultures and social orders. The female sitters of widely divergent periods come from very different backgrounds: the Dutch burgher wife Baertje Martens, the Spanish royal Infanta Margarita Teresa, and the unnamed Parisian courtesan each displaying characteristics specific to her position in society. Ultimately, these pictures also intimate the larger historical contexts in which they were painted and provide perspectives on representation and patronage that foster a more expansive framework with which to consider portraiture. 
Like the Guggenheim presentation of Connecting Museums, the exhibitions on view concurrently at the Hermitage and Kunsthistorisches museums will each present three masterpieces, one from each partner institution's collection. On view at the Hermitage Museum will be Oskar Kokoschka's Knight Errant (1915), from the Guggenheim, Anthony Van Dyck's The Vision of the Blessed Hermann Joseph (1630), from the Kunsthistorisches, and Anthony Van Dyck with Paul de Vos, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Madonna of the Partridges) (early 1630s) from its own collection. The Kunsthistorisches presentation will consist of Max Ernst's Attirement of the Bride (La Toilette de la Mariée) (1940), from the Guggenheim, Jacopo Tintoretto's The Birth of Saint John the Baptist (1554–55), from the Hermitage, and Paolo Veronese and workshop, Esther and Ahasver (1585/88), from its own collection. 
Connecting Museums will be an ongoing series of focused exhibitions in which masterpieces from each collection are on view at the three partner institutions in New York, St. Petersburg, and Vienna. These exhibitions will present artworks that reflect each institution's unique cultural identity: the Guggenheim holdings embody the vision of some of the 20th century's most forward-thinking collectors of Modern and contemporary art; the Hermitage encompasses treasures amassed by the Russian royal family, including Catherine the Great; and the Kunsthistorisches comprises works collected by the Hapsburgs, the rulers of the long-lived Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Connecting Museums
Rembrandt van Rijn, Diego Velázquez, Édouard Manet