U.S.-hosted "Art of Louvre's Tuileries Garden" features Manet, Pissaro

PanARMENIAN.Net - Paris gardens that have been the stage for exceptional works of art and inspirational urban green space for more than four centuries have come to life at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, U.S., according to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

"The Art of the Louvre's Tuileries Garden" includes more than 100 sculptures, paintings, and photographs from collections in France that have never before traveled to the United States. The Toledo museum is one of only three U.S. museums -- and the only in the Midwest -- to host the major traveling exhibition, which runs through May 11 in the museum's Canaday Gallery. It's a collaboration between directors and curators from the Louvre, Toledo, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.

"A history of cultural expression through landscape is part of the legacy of France," said Toledo museum director Brian Kennedy. "It was created as a space for people. So if we want to learn lessons for our own city on creating space for people, we could look at the Tuileries Gardens."

The Tuileries hold a significant place in France's social and political history through its role as an outdoor museum and as the subject for artists from the 16th century to present day. The oldest pieces in the exhibit are from the 1560s and were remains of the original Tuileries Palace that were uncovered during excavations after the devastation left during the French Revolution. The most recent piece is a 1985 photograph.

The exhibit also includes paintings, photographs and drawings that depict the Tuileries, including works by painters Edouard Manet, Camille Pissarro and Childe Hassam, and photographers Eugène Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Andre Kertesz.