Over the next 9 months, 2 museums in the US will offer a rare opportunity to see Michelangelo drawings up close in the United States. Michelangelo: Mind of the Master will be at the Cleveland Museum of Art from now through January 5 and at the Getty in Los Angeles from Feb 25 - June 7.
Featuring drawings from the Teylers Museum in Haarlem that rarely leave Europe because of their fragility (the lights will be dimmed to protect the delicate paper), this exhibition will give visitors a chance to view more than two dozen original Michelangelo drawings in an intimate setting. For those of you who didn’t get the chance to travel to the Met in New York to see the epic Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer exhibition in 2018, this is your next chance to study the hand of one of the greatest draftsmen in history.
In a world flooded with digital images on our computers, TVs, and phones, there is still extraordinary power in viewing a real drawing, made in real chalk or ink, by a real hand. Whenever I stand in front of an actual drawing by one of my heroes — Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Durer — I feel closer to them; I get a sense of how that artist’s hand moved, how his brain worked, how his heart beat…
Before you go to this exhibit, you might consider reading a book about Michelangelo — Oil and Marble or something of the nonfiction persuasion — so you have some context for what you are about to see OR you might just consider heading to this exhibit and LOOKING, carefully, at Michelangelo’s drawings with your own eyes. Stand back to see them from afar, step closer to look at the details… consider each line, the flow, movement, bodies, rhythm and you will undoubtedly learn something about the hand, mind, and heart Il Divino Michelangelo.
Or at least you’ll be face to face with a masterpiece.
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Michelangelo: Mind of the Master
Cleveland Museum of Art Now through January 5, 2020
OR
Getty Center in Los Angeles from February 5 - June 7, 2020