FORT WORTH, Texas (December 16, 2019) The Wall Street Journal named two Kimbell Art Museum projects in its top ten U.S. art exhibitions of 2019. Critic Karen Wilkin, in “The Best Art of 2019: Where Knowledge and Beauty Meet,” listed Renoir: The Body, The Senses and Monet: The Late Years as two of the most striking and compelling exhibitions of the year. Kimbell deputy director George Shackelford organized the Monet exhibition and joined Esther Bell, the Robert and Martha Bermann Lipp Senior Curator at the Clark Art Institute, as co-curator of the centennial celebration of Renoir. Monet: The Late Years premiered at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in February, while Renoir: The Body, The Senses was seen at the Clark in Williamstown, Massachusetts, from June through September.
“To have not one but two Kimbell exhibitions chosen in the Wall Street Journal’s top ten is such an honor. We are pleased with the responses we have received to these Impressionist projects—both in the press and from our visitors,” commented Eric M. Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “With our partners in San Francisco and Williamstown, we aim to provide the best experiences in art appreciation and are grateful to be recognized for our special exhibitions this year.”
Upon closing, Monet: The Late Years became the highest-attended exhibition at the Kimbell in more than two decades.
Renoir: The Body, The Senses is on view through January 26, 2020, in the Kimbell Art Museum’s Renzo Piano Pavilion. In Wilkin’s words, the exhibition offers the opportunity to “savor [Renoir’s] varied paint applications, and his marriage of inventive color and mass.” The exhibition was previously described as “a glorious celebration of the nude” by the Wall Street Journal.
RENOIR: THE BODY, THE SENSES
Over the course of his long career, Pierre-Auguste Renoir continually turned to the human figure for artistic inspiration. The body—particularly the nude—was the defining subject of Renoir’s artistic practice from his early days as a student copying the old masters in the Louvre to the early 20th century, when his revolutionary style of painting inspired the masters of modernism. In recognition of the centenary of Renoir’s death, the Kimbell Art Museum presents Renoir: The Body, The Senses. This daring exhibition, featuring more than 60 works by Renoir, his sources, contemporaries and followers, is the first major exploration of Renoir’s unceasing interest in the human form. It reconsiders Renoir as a constantly evolving artist whose style moved from Realism into luminous Impressionism, culminating in the modern classicism of his last decades.
This exhibition is organized by the Kimbell Art Museum and the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Additional support is provided by grants from the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Fort Worth Tourism Public Improvement District. Promotional support is provided by American Airlines, NBC 5 and PaperCity.
