Exhibitions
Honey from Many Flowers: Carl Wilhelm Kolbe and Salomon Gessner’s Idylls
Salomon Gessner (1730–88) was a Swiss artist and writer whose idyllic poetry and prose made him a household name in his lifetime. After his death his family invited a German printmaker, Carl Wilhelm Kolbe (1759–1835), to produce prints after a set of Gessner’s landscape drawings, which capture the Romantic period’s preoccupation with the pastoral idyll and delight in the natural world.
14/03/2017 to 10/09/2017
Sea to Shore: paintings by Alfred Wallis & Christopher Wood Kettle’s Yard at the Fitzwilliam Museum
This third display from the Kettle’s Yard collection brings together paintings by Alfred Wallis and Christopher Wood that are inspired by the sea and shore. Following the artists’ first meeting in St Ives in 1928, Wallis and Wood continued to innovatively capture their experiences of the sea and life in port towns in their paintings.
01/04/2017 to 27/08/2017
Elephants, Deities and Ashoka’s Pillar: coins of India from antiquity to the present
As part of the commemoration in 2017 of the 70th anniversary of Indian independence - marked by the UK-India Year of Culture - this exhibition, drawn from the Fitzwilliam’s world-class numismatic collection, will explore the history of India through coins produced from the 4th century BC until recent times.
16/05/2017 to 01/10/2017
From Kabul to Kolkata: highlights of Indian painting in the Fitzwilliam Museum
The Fitzwilliam’s second exhibition to mark the 70th anniversary of Indian independence, showcases a selection of Indian miniature paintings and drawings, ranging in date from the 16th to 19th century. The exhibition will include works produced under the patronage of the Mughal dynasty and other princely rulers, as well as several acquired by early British patrons and collectors in India.
29/05/2017 to 03/09/2017
Displays
Henry Moore’s Hill Arches (1973)
2017 is your last chance to see a monumental bronze sculpture by Henry Moore, titled Hill Arches, on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum from the Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire. Moore is best known for sculptures of the human figure sited in architectural or natural settings, but here he has created a landscape in its own right – perhaps, as the title suggests, an echo of the rolling hills of his native Yorkshire. This enormous, four-piece sculpture is sited in front of the Museum, visible to all visitors and those walking down Trumpington Street.
04/05/2016 to 30/11/2017
The Frua-Valsecchi collection
Over the past fifty years, Francesca and Massimo Valsecchi have built up a remarkable collection of paintings, furniture, sculpture, glass and ceramics. This includes the renowned nude portrait of Patricia Preece by Stanley Spencer (Gallery 1), William Burges’s painted ‘Flax and Wool’ cabinet (Gallery 2), a Spanish 17th century polychrome wood sculpture of the Christ Child (Gallery 6), Art Nouveau Tiffany glass (Gallery 1), metalwork designed by Christopher Dresser (Gallery 2) and an extremely rare Meissen porcelain vulture (Gallery 27)...
01/08/2016 to 30/12/2018
Future Exhibitions & Displays
Exhibitions
Degas, Caricature and Modernity: Daumier, Gavarni, Keene
Edgas Degas (1834-1917) possessed what his friend Walter Sickert (1860-1942) described as ‘a rollicking and somewhat bear-like sense of fun’. This exhibition looks at three caricaturists and satirists whose work Degas admired and collected in large numbers: Honoré Daumier (1808-79), Paul Gavarni (1804-66) and Charles Keene (1823-91)...
12/09/2017 to 04/01/2018
Degas’s Drinker: portraits by Marcellin Desboutin
Edgar Degas’s famous painting In a Café (L’Absinthe, 1875-6), features a dissolute bearded man whom Degas modeled on his characterful friend and fellow artist Marcellin Desboutin (1832-1902). Both men shared a passion for printmaking and this exhibition explores the Museum’s rare collection of Desboutin’s sensitively executed prints in drypoint...
19/09/2017 to 25/02/2018
Codebreakers and Groundbreakers
A pioneering and interdisciplinary exhibition, Codebreakers and Groundbreakers will bring together, for the first time, the remarkable intellectual achievements and parallel narratives of two groups of ‘codebreakers’ working at the same time, but independently: those involved in breaking the Second World War codes and those who deciphered the ancient script of Linear B – Europe’s earliest comprehensible writing system...
24/10/2017 to 04/02/2018
Displays
Terra Firma
Artist Pallavi Paul’s installation considers the mechanics and practices of truth production. The central motif of the ‘secret’ invites visitors to engage with ideas of espionage, secrecy and the world of information by viewing, reading and walking on this artwork. This textual landscape, composed visually to look like code, responds to the Codebreakers and Groundbreakers exhibition.
24/10/2017 to 04/02/2018
Hugo Dalton: the revival lightdrawings
The artist Hugo Dalton will be projecting his dramatic lightdrawings onto sculptures in the Greece and Rome Gallery. His works will interact with the architecture of the surrounding gallery to create a series of immersive installations. Dalton’s work has previously been shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Today Art Museum (Beijing) and he has created a stage set at Sadler’s Wells Theatre.
14/11/2017 to 14/01/2018
