Was it serendipity or a coordinated bid to attract art lovers to New York that caused the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art to open exhibitions of sure-fire hits on almost the same day? Whatever the reason for the overlap, local and visiting enthusiasts can indulge their appetites for celebrated works more or less simultaneously by visiting the temporarily concurrent “Vermeer’s Masterpiece: The Milkmaid” at the Met and “Monet’s Water Lilies” at MOMA.[1]
Conceptually, the two exhibits are very similar, despite more than two and half centuries separating the works on view. Both are “mini-blockbusters”: rigorous studies that set a few iconic paintings among a small number of related works largely drawn from the organizing institution’s own collection. It’s not a new idea. The Met and MOMA have mounted sharply concentrated exhibitions quite regularly in the past, as have the Frick Collection and the National Gallery, Washington, D.C. But these refreshing alternatives to larger enterprises are becoming increasingly common, and not only because of the troubled economy. In addition to reducing such daunting exhibition expenses as the steadily rising costs of moving and insuring borrowed works of art, smaller “in-house” shows both simplify the high diplomacy and horse trading required for negotiating loans and assert the importance of the initiating museum’s own holdings. And for curators, art historians, and the museum public alike, the aesthetic and scholarly benefits of the focused attention permitted by these miniature exhibits are immeasurable.
The Metropolitan’s exhibition
