As you jump from museum to museum this season, don’t be alarmed if you feel as though you have actually stepped back in time.
Nostalgia is the recurring theme at NYC’s biggest museums. From fashion and photography to great painters and explorers, this season’s exhibits pay homage to an artistic and scientific past that has brought us to the present moment.
THE METROPOLITIAN MUSEUM OF ART + BROOKLYN MUSEUM
Fashion takes a look back with two new stylish exhibits at the Met and the Brooklyn Museum, which are putting on their first concurrent shows after creating their collection-sharing partnership last year.
“American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity,” at the Met May 5 through Aug. 15, explores the evolution of the American woman’s identity through fashion from 1890 to 1940. Exhibit curator Andrew W. Bolton says his show is more than simply a celebration of the masterpieces in the Brooklyn collection.
“I came upon the idea of using collective identities or archetypes to do something new and show how these archetypes really shaped the modern American woman.”
Inspirational looks from each decade are displayed in galleries decorated to represent their era, such as the opulent 1890 heiress room, full of ball gowns by the grandfather of couture, Charles Frederick Worth. Then jump from decade to decade to see the ’20s-style flapper dressed in Lanvin beaded evening designs set to a backdrop mural of New York City or the screen sirens of the ’30s in body-hugging evening gowns by Travis Banton.
“American High Style,” at the Brooklyn Museum May 7 through Aug. 1, takes a closer look at the museum’s expansive costume collection, which spans much of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Focusing on American female designers who influenced the fashion world, the exhibit also showcases highlights from the museum’s renowned collection, including gowns from Christian Dior and jewelry from surrealist Elsa Schiaparelli.
If you like to your costumes accompanied by some cubism, check out “Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” running April 27 through Aug. 1. With this undertaking, the Met assembles every piece in their extensive Picasso collection, which numbers 34 paintings and more than 50 drawings and sculptures. Highlights include the artist’s 1906 portrait of Gertrude Stein — the first Picasso ever acquired by the Met — and the unique collection of drawings, including “Standing Female Nude” from Picasso’s first US showing in 1911.
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Beloved French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson captured a puddle jumper mid-leap on the streets of Paris, shot Gandhi moments before his death and documented the aftermath of World War II. In a career that spanned 60 years, there was little that Cartier-Bresson didn’t see through his lens. For “Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century,” running April 11 through June 28, the Museum of Modern Art divides his work into 12 periods, such as his surrealist years, his documentation of China’s “Great Leap Forward” and his portraits. Displaying more than 300 prints, this retrospective is the first major showing of Cartier-Bresson’s photos since his death in 2004.
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
As spring temperatures start to rise, prepare for an adventure to the coldest place on earth: the South Pole. In “Race to the End of the Earth,” from May 29 through Jan. 2, visitors can virtually relive the historic 1911 contest to reach the South Pole — learning how explorers Roald Amundsen of Norway and Capt. Robert Falcon Scott of England overcame the obstacles of the historic race south to become the first humans to reach the center of Antarctica.
The exhibit features an interactive map to show what lies beneath the ice, as well as a personality test to determine how fit you are for the harsh environment and whether you could have survived the legendary journey. Other features include artifacts from the expedition such as clothing, tools and photographs, as well as full-scale models of their camps.
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
Not just ghostly figures looming in the shadows or abandoned attic scenes, “Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance,” running through Sept. 6, explores a different vision of the haunted.
Using multiple themes, such as “appropriation” and “the uncanny,” the latest exhibit at the Guggenheim displays how contemporary art incorporates artistic works of the past. Think Warhol’s silk-screen portrait of the Marilyn Monroe photograph or Robert Rauschenberg’s use of archival photographs in his paintings. Both cases are here as an example of the exhibit’s juxtapositions along with 100 works by young artists and the antecedents in which they are forever entwined.