• 5 to 8pm: Art on the Spot
• 5:30 to 8:30pm: Music by Lyrica Baroque
• 6:30pm: Lecture: Janis Staggs, Director of Curatorial Affairs, The Neue Galerie, “Vacation Work: The Landscapes by Gustav Klimt”
• 7:30pm: Seeing Nature Gallery Talk w/ Vanessa Schmid

About Lyrica Baroque

Lyrica Baroque is a unique gathering of musical talent who perform as a special kind of chamber ensemble. By blending the most compelling aspects of chamber music and opera, Lyrica Baroque represents a new expression of classical music, one that appeals to chamber music lovers, opera lovers, and symphony lovers alike.

Whether playing baroque, classical or their own arrangements, Lyrica Baroque combines the soaring beauty of operatic singing with the exquisite sounds of woodwinds, strings, and piano. The result is an intimate, vocally inspired interpretation that infuses the repertoire with great variety and drama.

About Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection

Seeing Nature explores the development of landscape painting, from a small window on the world to interpretations of artists’ personal experiences with their surroundings on land and sea. It reveals the power of landscape to locate the viewer in time and place—to record, explore, and understand the natural and man-made world. This exhibition presents masterpieces spanning five centuries by artists such as Paul Cézanne, David Hockney, Edward Hopper, Gustav Klimt, Claude Monet, Thomas Moran, Georgia O’Keeffe, Gerhard Richter and J.M.W. Turner.

In the 19th century, the early impressionists focused on direct observation of nature. This exhibition is particularly strong in the works of Claude Monet. Five Monet landscapes spanning 30 years are featured, from views of the French countryside to one of his late representations of water lilies, Le Bassin aux Nymphéas of 1919. Cézanne and his fellow post‐impressionists used a more subjective approach to creating works such as La Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1888-90). Also on view is Austrian painter Gustav Klimt’s rare landscape masterpiece, Birch Forest of 1903, exhibited for the first time since 2006.

Several works in the exhibition offer varying interpretations of a single location. Venice’s romantic vista is seen through multiple lenses, from Canaletto’s detailed renderings, to J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Moran’s dreamy visions, to Manet’s photographic crispness and Monet’s nearly abstract composition. The Grand Canyon’s immensity is seen in Moran’s intimately scaled depiction, Arthur Wesley Dow’s mesmerizing pattern of ridged peaks and David Hockney’s multi-canvas composition. The last part of the exhibition explores the paintings of 20th century artists, such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, David Hockney, Gerhard Richter and Ed Ruscha, who brought fresh perspectives to traditional landscape subjects.