THE EARLY MODERN MUSEUM: FROM THE WUNDERKAMMER TO THE PICTURE GALLERY
The early modern era (mid-14th century-1600) played a fundamental role in the history of museums. The collecting practices of this period were driven by new discoveries in all disciplines of knowledge. As collectors attempted to obtain a variety of objects – both natural and man-made – they created “cabinets of art and marvels” (also known as wunderkammer or kunstkammer). During the seventeenth-century, these heterogenous collections slowly evolved into galleries dedicated to specific objects – including sculptures and paintings. This two-part program explores this fascinating chapter of museum history.
AMSTERDAM: THE RIJKSMUSEUM
The idea for Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum goes back to the end of the 18th century when the Dutch government, inspired by the Louvre in Paris, decided to establish a national gallery of art. The institution opened its doors to the public in 1800 with about 200 artifacts on display. Today, the museum’s collection comprises nearly 8,000 works of art and objects spanning almost 800 years of Dutch history. This four-part series is intended to provide an overview of the collection, with focus on the 17th c. - or the Dutch Golden Age.
1. A Historical Overview - Netherlandish Painters and Frans Hals
2. A Museum within a Museum: Rembrandt and His Peers
3. “Small Masters”: Vermeer and the Painters of Daily Life
4. A Wealth of Genres: Landscapes and Still Lifes
BALTIMORE: THE WALTERS ART MUSEUM
Though less known than some of the other American museums established by wealthy art lovers at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, the Walters is one of the most encyclopedic art institutions in the country. The collection was begun by the businessman William Walters (1820-1894), and vastly expanded by his son Henry (1848-1931), who bequeathed it to the city of Baltimore in 1931, "for the benefit of the public." In this series of four lectures, we look at some of the treasures that exemplify the visions of these two men, ranging from medieval reliquaries to seventeenth-century landscapes and portraits.
Icons, Reliquaries, and Objects of Devotion
Between the Earthly and the Spiritual
Renaissance and Baroque Portraits
The Play of Genres
BERLIN: THE GEMALDEGALERIE
The Gemäldegalerie boasts one of the world’s most important collections of European painting ranging from the 13th to 18th century. Masterpieces from all epochs in the history of art are on permanent display here, including paintings by Jan van Eyck, Pieter Bruegel, Albrecht Dürer, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, and Jan Vermeer van Delft. The gallery is especially proud of its strong collection of German and Italian painting from the 13th to 16th century and painting from the Low Countries dating from the 15th to 17th century.
BERLIN: THE BERGGRUEN MUSEUM
The Museum Berggruen owes its genesis to the art dealer and collector Heinz Berggruen (1914–2007). Born in Berlin-Wilmersdorf in 1914, Berggruen left Nazi Germany in 1936 and emigrated to the USA, where he initially worked as a freelance arts journalist, before taking up a post in 1939 at the San Francisco Museum of Art. After the war, Berggruen founded a gallery in Paris that represented many of the artists with whom he was personally acquainted and whose works he also began to collect privately. In 1980 Berggruen retired from his gallery business and concentrated on expanding his own collection. The most important part of the collection consists of works by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). Another key area is dedicated to Paul Klee (1879–1940). In addition, the museum boasts works by Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, and a selection of African sculptures.
BOSTON: THE GARDNER MUSEUM
Like other American collectors at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, Isabella Stewart Gardner was passionate about European art, especially anything connected to Italy. Yet she was also curious about other cultures and eras, as evidenced by the range of objects she acquired over time, from Roman antiquities and Flemish tapestries, to Islamic tiles. Thanks to her wealth and the advice of connoisseurs such as Bernard Berenson, she built a remarkable art collection with the goal of offering "education and enjoyment of the public forever." In this special program, we explore the legacy of her vision and mission by a closer look at masterpieces from the museum she created in her custom-built "Venetian palazzo" in Boston.
DRESDEN PICTURE GALLERY
The Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister gallery in Dresden houses one of the finest collections of Old Master paintings in the world. Some of its most famous holdings include paintings by Italian Renaissance artists like Giorgione, Titian, Mantegna, and Raphael. No less significant are the works by Dutch and Flemish masters of the 17th century, including Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruysdael, and Vermeer.
The building that houses this exceptional collection was designed by Gottfried Semper and completed in 1855 on the grounds of the Baroque 'Zwinger' Palace. Though the works were safely stored during WWII, at the end of the war they were taken to Russia and returned only around 1960, to be installed in the same building following its reconstruction. In this special program, we look at the history of this museum and explore more fully some of its greatest art treasures.
FLORENCE: THE UFFIZI
Situated on the banks of the Arno river in Florence, the Uffizi houses one of the best collections of Renaissance art anywhere in the world. The name of the building comes from its original purpose in the 16th century, to serve as offices for the magistrates of Cosimo I de Medici. Later on, it was transformed into a set of galleries for safekeeping and display of the Medici collections of antiquities, as well as “modern” masters such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. While the riches of the Uffizi Gallery demand several visits, in this special, 2-session program, we will look more closely at some of the finest works within this collection, highlighting their historic and aesthetic importance.
Italian and Northern European art of the early renaissance
Masterpieces of the 16th and the 17th centuries
FLORENCE: PALAZZO PITTI
Palazzo Pitti - a former residence of generations of Medicis at the foot of the Boboli hills - is the home of four interconnected museums. The most famous among them is the Galleria Palatina, a collection of paintings whose quality rivals that of the much more crowded Uffizi on the other side of the Arno river. In this special two-part program, we will take a closer look at many of these works of art, as well as at numerous other less known treasures within this museum complex.
Paintings in Galleria Palatina
Objects of Marvel from the Medici collection
In this special program, we explore several sites in Florence that are off the beaten path for most tourists – including the churches of San Miniato al Monte, San Apollonia, the Ognissanti, and San Salvi.
THE HAGUE: THE MAURITSHUIS
Located in a 17th-century palace in The Hague, The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis is often said to contain the largest number of masterpieces per square meter in the Netherlands: about 800 paintings in total, 50 miniatures, 20 sculptures, and numerous works on paper. As a museum dedicated to art from the Dutch Golden Age, it is the permanent home of some of the best-known works by Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Frans Hals, as well as many other of their contemporaries. Join us as we explore highlights of this collection through four thematically organized lectures and discussions.
Portraits of an Age
Landscapes and City Views
Scenes of Daily Life
Still Life Paintings
LONDON: THE NATIONAL GALLERY
The National Gallery, located in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, Central London, was founded in 1824. It is arguably one of the finest collections of paintings in the world, housing more than 2,300 works of art dating from the mid-13th century to 1900.
Italian Renaissance Art: the 15th century - from Lippi and Mantegna, to Botticelli and Bellini.
Northern Renaissance Art: Van Eyck, Memling, Dürer, Cranach, Holbein
Italian Renaissance Art: the 16th century - from Michelangelo and Leonardo, to Titian and Veronese
Masterpieces of the Baroque Period - from Italy to Holland
Nineteenth-Century Paintings at the National Gallery - Romanticism to Impressionism
LONDON: THE WALLACE COLLECTION
The Wallace Collection is one of the finest collections of paintings, sculpture, furniture, and decorative arts in England. Built over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, it was given to the British Nation in 1897; one of the greatest gifts of art works ever to be transferred into public ownership. This special program focuses on some of the greatest works of art in this exceptional museum.
MADRID: THE PRADO
Though far less known among tourists than the Louvre or the Uffizi Gallery, Museo del Prado houses countless masterpieces, from those by Netherlandish artists such as Rogier van der Weyden, Bosch, and Rubens, to those by the likes of Raphael, Titian, Velázquez, and Goya. This exceptional range and quality are, in many respects, the result of the origin of this institution in the Habsburg royal collection. Over time, the Prado has grown further through numerous gifts and endowments, which have only strengthened its status as one of the greatest art treasures in the world.
Van der Weyden to Bosch
Fra Angelico to Tintoretto
El Greco to Velázquez
Rubens to Goya
MADRID: THYSSEN-BORNEMISZA COLLECTION
With over 1,600 paintings, Thyssen-Bornemisza collection was once the second largest private collection in the world after the British Royal Collection. It was started in the 1920s as a private collection by Heinrich, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon. In a reversal of the movement of European paintings to the US during this period, one of the elder Baron's sources was the collections of American millionaires coping with the Great Depression and inheritance taxes. In this way he acquired old master paintings such as Ghirlandaio's portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni (once in the Morgan Library) and Carpaccio's Knight (from the collection of Otto Kahn). The collection was later expanded by Heinrich's son Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (1921–2002), who assembled most of the works from his relatives' collections and proceeded to acquire large numbers of new works (from Gothic art to Lucien Freud).
MILANO: PINACOTECA DI BRERA
Opened in 1809 by Napoleon Bonaparte, the Pinacoteca di Brera includes some of the finest works by Italian and other European artists from the 13th to the 20th century. They are displayed on the first floor of a building that is also the home of the Academy of Fine Arts. Unlike many other museums in Italy, this institution came into being by brining together masterpieces from various churches and monasteries that were suppressed during the time when Milan was the capital city of the Kingdom of Italy. Rather than returning them to the original sites, the government of Italy has decided to keep them together in a museum that preserves them together – in a rich dialogue with one another.
MUNICH: THE ALTE PINAKOTHEK
The Alte Pinakothek is one of the most significant art museums in Europe. It is home to the outstanding works of one of the world's largest collections of European paintings from the 14th to the 18th century. Among the more than 700 paintings on display are numerous major works by Dürer and Rubens as well as prominent key works by Rogier van der Weyden and Memling, Raphael and Titian, Altdorfer and Cranach, Jan Brueghel the Elder and van Dyck, Rembrandt and Frans Hals, Poussin and Murillo.
The wealth of the gallery, which opened in 1836, is the result of the art collections of the Bavarian dukes and electors founded in the 16th century and substantially expanded in the following centuries. After the extinction of various branches of the Wittelsbach family, the collections of the residences in Düsseldorf, Mannheim and Zweibrücken were transferred to Munich around 1800. This resulted in a comprehensive collection that grew in size and importance during the early 19th century through important acquisitions of Ludwig I of Bavaria.
In this three-part program, we look more closely at some of the greatest masterpieces from this collection.
Italian art of the 15th and the 16th centuries
Northern European Art of the 15th and the 16th centuries
The Age of Baroque - Italy, Northern Europe, and Spain
MUNICH: GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM AT THE LENBACHHAUS
The Lenbachhaus in Munich is certainly off the beaten path for most tourists travelling through Munich. Situated in two adjacent buildings, this museum houses a choice collection of works of art from the 19th and the 20th century, as well as those created in our time. Its greatest holdings, however, are associated with German Expressionism– especially artists from the “Blue Rider” movement like Kandinsky, Marc, and Klee. In this virtual tour of Lenbachhaus, we shall revisit both famous and less known works by these and other painters associated with this modernist art movement.
NAPLES: THE CAPODIMONTE
This special program explores the artistic treasures of one of the finest yet least known museum of Italy, the Capodimonte in Napes. Nestled above the city overlooking the Bay of Naples in a magnificent palace of 150,000 square feet, the collection boasts over 47,000 works of art, spanning the Middle Ages to the 21st Century. Some of the most important artists represented in this museum include Masaccio, Raphael, Titian, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Parmigianino, the Carracci, Caravaggio, Ribera, Luca Giordano, and Artemisia Gentileschi.
NEW YORK: THE FRICK COLLECTION
The Frick Collection, situated in New York City's Upper East Side, is a renowned museum housed in the former mansion of industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Established in 1935, it showcases an exceptional array of European art from the Renaissance to the 19th century, featuring masterpieces by artists such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Bellini . Following a $220 million renovation completed in April 2025, the museum has expanded its gallery space and opened previously private areas to the public. In this three-part seminar, we revisit this renowned collection and look more closely at some of the greatest masterpieces housed within it.
PARIS: MUSEE D'ORSAY
One of the largest and most special of museums in Paris (if not in all of Europe) Musée d’Orsay. Its name comes from the Beaux-Arts building it occupies, the former Orsay railway station in Parisconstructed for the Universal Exhibition of 1900. As a "work of art" in itself, this building displays a wonderful array of paintings and sculptures by some of the most significant artists created between 1848 and 1914.
In our two-part program, we look more closely at highlights from this collection, ranging from those of “realists” like Gustave Courbet, to those by Impressionists like Monet and Pissarro, as well as the pioneers of Modernism that followed in their wake, such as Gauguin and Van Gogh.
1. Realism to Impressionism
2. Artistic Crosscurrents at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century
PARIS: RODIN MUSEUM
Towards the end of his long and productive career, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) moved to a beautiful 18th century mansion, Hôtel Biron, whose gardens provided a sense of privacy and seclusion from the bustling life of the French metropolis. Following his death, the museum opened to the public in 1919 - quickly becoming one of the favorite spots of Parisian art lovers. Its intimate spaces allow visitors to experience Rodin's sculptures and drawings up close, while the large gardens showcase his most famous bronze sculptures, like "The Gates of Hell" and "The Thinker." In this special program, we explore the history of this unique place and some of the greatest works of art awaiting us within its room.
SAINT PETERSBURG: OLD MASTER PAINTINGS AT THE HERMITAGE
Located in St. Petersburg, the Hermitage is the second-largest museum in the world, with over three million objects. It was founded by the Empress Catherine the Great, one of the most enlightened rulers of her era, in 1764, when she acquired an impressive collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. This initial acquisition was later enriched by numerous other purchases throughout Europe. Today, the Hermitage occupies six historic buildings, including the former residence of Russian emperors. This lecture focuses on the collection of old master paintings.
ROME: GALLERIA BARBERINI
The Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica (National Gallery of Ancient Art) is one of Italy’s most important art collections. It is also housed in one of the finest palazzi of the Baroque era, the former home of the Barberini family, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini around 1625. In addition to a range of great works of art by Italian, as well as Northern European artists, this palazzo is famous for two magnificent frescoes, as well as the staircases designed by Bernini and Borromini, respectively. In this special session, we explore some of the greatest jewel of this veritable treasure chest of artistic and architectural surprises.
ROME: BORGHESE GALLERY
One of the finest art collections in Rome is housed in the Galleria Borghese, whose origins go back to Scipione Borghese (1577-1633), a powerful Cardinal and nephew to Pope Paul V. This art lover and taste maker loved both antiquity and "modern art". Some of his greatest commissions were sculptures by Gianlorenzo Bernini, including, most notably, Apollo and Daphne. He also acquired masterpieces by some of the most renowned Renaissance and Baroque painters, from Titian and Raphael, to Correggio and Caravaggio. Moreover, unlike many other collections from that time period, this one remained remarkably intact over the centuries, allowing us a unique access to his vision.
ROME: DORIA PAMPHILJ GALLERY
In this special program, we travel to the Doria Pamphlij Gallery, one of the most spectacular private museums in Rome, housed in a 17th century palace. The art collection was meticulously assembled by a powerful Italian family and boasts over 650 works spanning the 15th to the 18th century, including pieces by Bernini, Caravaggio, Velazquez, Titian, Carracci, and Bruegel. Most importantly, though located on the busy Corso street in central Rome, this museum is surprisingly unknown by most tourists. Walking though its lavish rooms, with walls and ceilings decorated with beautiful frescos, tapestries, and chandeliers, one can have the rare experience of seeing art in its original historical setting – as it was displayed few hundred years ago.
VENICE: THE ACCADEMIA
The Accademia Gallery, located in the Dorsoduro neighborhood of Venice, was founded in 1766 when the Senate ordered the construction of an Academy of sculpture, painting and civil architecture, similar to those of the main cities of Italy and Europe. Since that time, this museum has gained a reputation as the single most important collection of Venetian paintings ranging from the Byzantine and the Gothic periods until the 18th century. In this two-part seminar, we look more closely at the masterpieces of this collection from the 15th and the 16th centuries, by artists ranging from Giorgione and Bellini, to Veronese and Tintoretto.
From the Gothic and the Byzantine traditions to the Early Renaissance
The High Renaissance in Venice
In this special program, we visit several Venetian sites that are off the beaten path for most tourists – including the churches of San Zaccharia (Bellini), San Sebastiano (Veronese), Madonna del Orto (Tintoretto), and Scuola da San Giorgio (Carpaccio). Though much smaller than other museums, they house some of the most remarkable works of art from the Venetian Renaissance.
VIENNA: THE KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM
Though Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum opened its doors to the public in 1891—later than some of the other major museums of Europe—its origins go back to the late Renaissance and the collections of rare and exotic natural and man-made objects assembled by various members of the House of Habsburg. Descendants of these early collectors expanded their interests, acquiring paintings by some of Europe’s most admired Old Masters, ranging from Raphael and Titian to Bruegel, Vermeer, and Velazquez. Together, these collections comprise one of Europe’s greatest artistic treasures.
1. The Cabinets of Wonder: a “museum within museum” filled with decorative objects in a variety of media, from superbly carved ivory statuettes to bejeweled reliquaries.
2. Time Captured in Stone: highlights of the sculpture collection, which spans more than three millennia and includes Greek and Roman statuary, antique cameos, sarcophagi and mosaics, as well as medieval and Renaissance sculptures.
3. The Picture Gallery: Italy and Spain - Masterpieces of Italian and Spanish art in the collection, whose foundations are rooted in the 17th century.
4. The Picture Gallery: Durer to Vermeer - Masterpieces of northern European art, from Durer’s Venetian Beauty and Bruegel’s Tower of Babel to Vermeer’s Art of Painting.