Where in the World is Picasso?

"Give me a museum and I’ll fill it,” Picasso once said. That’s exactly what several museums around the country are doing this spring—filling their galleries with some of the Spanish artists’s masterpieces. From New York City to Seattle, Picasso is appearing all over the arts scene. Here are a few exhibitions to explore, in addition to our own at the PMA.
By Picasso blogger Silvana Pop

“Picasso: Themes and Variations”
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Now through August 30, 2010
Exploring Picasso’s creative process through the medium of printmaking, this exhibition highlights over 100 of the popular artist’s prints, tracing his development from the early years of the 20th century to his discovery of Cubism.

“Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art”
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
April 27- August 1, 2010
This landmark exhibition features around 300 of the close to 500 works by Picasso in the museum’s collection. Highlights include The Actor (1905), which recently underwent repair after a museum visitor accidentally fell into the canvas, causing a six-inch tear along a lower corner.


“Matisse, Picasso and Modern Art in Paris”
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond VA
May 1, 2010- July 25, 2010
The newly transformed museum showcases highlights of the collection of Virginia native T. Catesby Jones (1880-1946), an admirer of modern French art of the 1920s and 1930s, who owned masterpieces by Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Masson and Lipchitz. This is the first time these collections have been reunited.


"Picasso Looks at Degas"
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA
June 13- September 12, 2010
Focusing on two of the great artists of the modern period, this exhibition explores Picasso’s lifelong fascination with the life and work of Edgar Degas, and the ways his response varied over time from emulation to confrontation and parody to homage.


“Picasso: Masterpieces from Musée National Picasso, Paris”
Seattle Museum of Art, Seattle, WA
October 8, 2010- January 9, 2011
Drawn from the collection of the Musée National Picasso in Paris—the world’s largest and most important repository of the artist’s work—the exhibition boosts over 150 pieces covering every phase in Picasso’s career, from the dawn of the 20th century through works dating from the early 1970s, including his 1970 self-portrait The Matador.


Image credit: © 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York