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French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850–1950
French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850–1950 exhibits approximately sixty-five works of art from the Brooklyn Museum’s renowned European collection and privileges France as the artistic center of international modernism from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Ranging widely in scale, subject matter, and style, these paintings, drawings, and sculptures were intended for public display and for private collections, and were produced by the era’s leading artists, those born in France as well as those who studied and showed there, including Pierre Bonnard, Gustave Caillebotte, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Edgar Degas, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Henri Matisse, Jean-François Millet, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Odilon Redon, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, Édouard Vuillard, and more.
The works in the exhibition exemplify the avant-garde movements that defined modern art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, tracing a shift from capturing the visual to evoking the idea, from an emphasis on naturalism to the rise of abstraction. French Moderns has been organized into four sections that use these diverse images and styles to explore the themes of the nude, portraiture, landscape, and still life, providing an opportunity for a multidimensional and flexible installation.
Content: Approximately 60 objects
Size: Approximately 6,000 sq. ft. (550 sq. m.), subject to layout
Publication: Yes
Curators: Rich Aste, former Curator of European Art, Brooklyn Museum, and Lisa Small, Senior Curator, European Art, Brooklyn Museum
Tour schedule
Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama
January 30–May 24, 2026
Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Florida
August 5, 2025–January 4, 2026
Vero Beach Museum of Art, Florida
February 1–June 22, 2025
Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina
October 5, 2024–January 5, 2025
Portland Art Museum, Oregon
June 8–September 15, 2024
Palazzo Zabarella, Padua, Italy
December 16, 2023–May 12, 2024
Aram Art Museum, Goyang, South Korea
February 21–August 30, 2020
Jeju Museum of Art, Jeju, South Korea
October 18, 2019–February 7, 2020
Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida
June 14–September 6, 2019
Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia, Canada
February 16–May 20, 2019
Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa
October 5, 2018–January 6, 2019
Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba, Canada
June 15–September 9, 2018
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas
February 23–May 20, 2018
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas
March 1–June 4, 2017