It’s an annual tradition in the art world: the Yale Center for British Art holds a summer tea in New York to announce its upcoming exhibition season.
Amid the crumpets and collectors gathered in the London Hotel’s second-floor tea room, Director Amy Meyers welcomed all to the “wonderful summer fete” and kicked off the lineup.
The big blockbuster appears to be some months away. Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power and Brilliance, which opens Feb. 24, centers on the enigmatic portrait master’s collection of works that chronicled the shifting of class boundaries and gender roles within 18th century London
On Sept. 16, the show opening the fall season is The Independent Eye: Contemporary British Art from the Collection of Samuel and Gabrielle Lurie. Artists featured include by postwar British artists Patrick Caulfield, Howard Hodgkin, John Walker, Ian Stephenson and most notably, John Hoyland.
In perhaps the most inventive and personal show, the Center will spotlight the career and works of lesser-known architect and former Yale professor with Notes from the Archive: James Frazer Stirling, Architect and Teacher. The exhibit, running Oct. 14, 2010- Jan. 2, 2011, encompasses more than 300 of Stirling’s drawings, sketches and models from the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.
Stirling “was one of the leading architects of his generation,” said Robert Stern, Dean and J.M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture at the Yale School of Architecture. “[But] he got left behind in terms of people’s consciousness.”
The exhibit will run in tandem with An Architect’s Legacy: James Stirling’s Students at Yale, 1959-1983, which explores Stirling’s legacy through the eyes of his students. It will be at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven.
Altogether, it was a very proper event, the only snafu being when one onlooker unexpectedly fell out of her chair and onto the patterned carpet during the slightly long slideshow.
Perhaps she was simply holding her breath in anticipation.