By Susan Shinn
sshinn@salisburypost.com
CHARLOTTE ó Walking through the exhibition “Masterworks from the New Orleans Museum of Art” at the Mint Museum means seeing some of the biggest names in four centuries of art.
Renoir. Monet. Degas. Picasso. Rodin.
“There are some incredible, incredible stars in this show,” says Charles Mo, the Mint’s director of fine arts. “These are true masterpieces. These are the works that people go to New Orleans to see.”The show opens Saturday in Charlotte and continues through June 21.
This impressive exhibit is taking place as a result of Hurricane Katrina.
Four years ago, Katrina devastated New Orleans. It caused millions of dollars worth of damage to the New Orleans Museum of Art. Fortunately, its 40,000-piece collection was unharmed.
But the museum’s membership decreased, and its base of support decreased, Mo says.
So the museum decided to send its treasures on the road to raise money for its treasury.
“We’re really proud to be one of the venues,” says Mo, who worked at NOMA for 10 years. He celebrates 25 years with the Mint this year. His relationship with NOMA has continued.
“Ever since I’ve been here, I’d bring a masterpiece to town,” Mo says. “I know a great many of these pieces.”
One of the exhibit’s signature pieces is “Dancer in Green” by Edgar Degas.
When he worked in New Orleans, Mo drove in a rented station wagon to Miami Beach to pick up the piece from a collector.
Those days, he says, are long gone.
The second signature piece is “Whisperings of Love” by William Adolphe Bouguereau. The show is arranged loosely in chronological order.
One of the first pieces to greet visitors to the show is Claude Louain’s “Ideal View of Tivoli.” The French artist created this piece in 1644.
“There is a great collection of French paintings because of the New Orleans connection with France,” Mo notes.
Two pieces of great scale include “The Baptism of Christ” by Luca Giordano (c. 1684) and “The Toilet of Psyche” (1735-36) by Charles Joseph Natoine.
Besides spanning four centuries, the show includes a wide range of subjects, from religious themes and mythologies to portraits and genres.
“It’s like a walk through history,” Mo says.
The impressionists are well represented by Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Paul Gaugin and Alfred Sisley.
Monet’s “Snow at Giverny” and “Houses on the Old Bridge at Vernon” hang side by side.
The abstract artists are represented by Jackson Pollock and Pablo Picasso, who has five pieces in the show, including an unusual bronze, “Mask of a Faun.”
“Romeo and Juliet” by Benjamin West has visited the Mint before, when its new building opened in 1984. So has a portrait of Col. George Watson, painted in 1768 by John Singleton Copley.
It took six people to hang an enormous portrait of Marie Antoinette by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. It hangs in the Great Hall of the museum in New Orleans. The artist was a favorite of Antoinette, painting many members of her family and her court.
The Degas section of the exhibit has two of his sculptures, along with three paintings, including the “Dancer in Green,” a portrait study and a portrait of Estelle Musson De Gas. Degas was French, but his mother and grandmother were born in New Orleans.
A lifesized bronze nude by Auguste Rodin, “The Age of Bronze,” created quite a stir when it was released as it seemed to have been cast from life ó a practice which was not done at the time.
The “ladies’ corner” includes portraits of women by John Singer Sargent, Robert Henri, Kees Van Dongen and Mary Cassatt.
These are just a few steps away from Picasso’s “Woman in Armchair,” representing the artist’s cubist period and done in shades of black, white, gray and brown.
Rounding out Picasso’s pieces are “Still Life With Candle” and “Table with Bottle and Violin,” a fascinating 1913 piece that uses part of a French newspaper cut in the shape of a bottle.
Rounding out the exhibit are modern pieces by Joan Miro, Jean Metzinger (the “Prince of Cubism”), Rene Magritte, Georgia O’Keeffe, Georges Roualt, Jean Dubuffet and Hans Hoffmann.
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For more information about the Masterworks exhibit, call 704-337-2000 or visit www.mintmusems.org.