Four new exhibitions at SMU's Meadows Museum will bring global loans by renowned artists to Dallas in the coming year.
According to a release, the 2022-23 season will feature the works of Dalí, Vermeer, and Velázquez; a rare chance to see the depiction of holy women; and famed Spanish abstract works.
“We look forward to this extraordinary program of international loan exhibitions and the opportunity to view masterpieces by Velázquez, Dalí, Vermeer, as well as Tàpies, Saura, and more within the context of the Meadows Museum’s exceptional collection of Spanish art," says the museum’s director ad interim and curator, Amanda W. Dotseth, in the release.
The season will begin with a "Masterpiece in Residence: Velázquez’s King Philip IV of Spain from The Frick Collection" (September 18, 2022-January 15, 2023). It will be an exhibition focused on The Frick Collection’s portrait King Philip IV of Spain (1644), by Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez. The "exceptional loan," the museum says, will be on display with the three paintings by Velázquez from the Meadows Museum’s collection — a bust-length Portrait of King Philip IV, Portrait of Queen Mariana, and Female Figure (Sibyl with Tabula Rasa) — making for an "exciting, focused exhibition of portraiture" that will highlight the evolution of Velázquez’s technique.
Also opening in September is "Picturing Holy Women in the Spanish Empire, 1620-1800" (September 18, 2022-January 15, 2023). Described as "an exploration of the role of holy women in Spain and its empire, told through etchings, prints, rare books, and more," the museum says, "the exhibition showcases the women as they worked within — and against — the limitations imposed by the Catholic Church and society between 1620 to 1800." Drawings, prints, and rare books — largely drawn from the collection of SMU’s Bridwell Library — will include an engraving representing Saint Teresa preaching (1679), a frontispiece featuring the Mexican nun Sor Sebastiana Josefa de la Santísima Trinidad (1765), and a rare 18th-century pictorial manuscript commissioned for the Convent of Santa Clara in Palma de Mallorca (c. 1780-1800).
The Meadows will present a side-by-side display of work by Salvador Dalí and Johannes Vermeer in "Dalí/Vermeer: A Dialogue" (October 16, 2022-January 15, 2023), which will trace the latter’s influence on the former. On display will be Vermeer’s famed Woman Reading a Letter (c. 1663), which will travel to Dallas from the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands. It will be presented, for the first time, alongside Dalí’s The Image Disappears (1938), his own interpretation of the Dutch painting. The first exhibit of its kind, it promises to "shed new light on Dalí’s long obsession with Vermeer’s work," the museum says.
Finally, in spring 2023, comes "In the Shadow of Dictatorship: Creating the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art" (February 26-June 18, 2023). "An extraordinary selection of over 40 paintings and sculptures from the celebrated Museo de Arte Abstracto Español in Cuenca, Spain, will journey to Dallas for its only stop in the United States, giving American visitors a unique opportunity to view these major works of Spanish abstraction from the 1960s to 1980, many of which are leaving Spain for the first time," the museum says. It promises to be a comprehensive selection of Spanish abstract painting and sculpture by globally recognized artists including Antonio Saura, Eduardo Chillida, and Antoni Tàpies, alongside 29 of their Spanish contemporaries active in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Sarah Grilo, Luis Feito, and José Guerrero.
"During the 2022–2023 exhibition season, visitors are invited to enjoy art of the highest caliber from a range of chronological periods in a new light,” Dotseth says. “Each exhibition brings something never seen before to North Texas and to the visitors of the Meadows Museum.”
For more information and tickets, visit the Meadows Museum website.
Johannes Vermeer, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, c. 1663.
