Within Genres
25 Aug 2017 - 19 Aug 2018
WITHIN GENRES
25 August 2017 – 19 August 2018
The Pérez Art Museum Miami collection focuses on modern and contemporary art. While it includes examples from as early as the beginning of the 20th century, the majority of the artwork housed in the collection is by living artists and has been produced during the last several decades. While this emphasis on contemporary artistic practices informs the museum’s collecting and programming, the museum continually looks to emphasize connections between our current moment and a longer history of art.
Informed by these interests in art history, the current presentation of the permanent collection is organized around the historical criteria of genres within Western painting and the traditional hierarchy of genres that developed out of the Renaissance period and was promoted within European art academies up through the 19th century. The five genres explored in these galleries, Still Life, Landscape, Scenes of Everyday Life, Portraiture, and History Painting developed as categories when painting was still in its infancy as a respected medium. Each category was meant to highlight the intellectual rigor of the medium. The hierarchy that formed between genres placed still life at the lowest end of the intellectual spectrum, as it involved the representation of inanimate objects, and history painting at the highest level of artistic achievement, as it depicted human subjects involved in allegorical themes related to religion, mythology, or historical events.
25 August 2017 – 19 August 2018
The Pérez Art Museum Miami collection focuses on modern and contemporary art. While it includes examples from as early as the beginning of the 20th century, the majority of the artwork housed in the collection is by living artists and has been produced during the last several decades. While this emphasis on contemporary artistic practices informs the museum’s collecting and programming, the museum continually looks to emphasize connections between our current moment and a longer history of art.
Informed by these interests in art history, the current presentation of the permanent collection is organized around the historical criteria of genres within Western painting and the traditional hierarchy of genres that developed out of the Renaissance period and was promoted within European art academies up through the 19th century. The five genres explored in these galleries, Still Life, Landscape, Scenes of Everyday Life, Portraiture, and History Painting developed as categories when painting was still in its infancy as a respected medium. Each category was meant to highlight the intellectual rigor of the medium. The hierarchy that formed between genres placed still life at the lowest end of the intellectual spectrum, as it involved the representation of inanimate objects, and history painting at the highest level of artistic achievement, as it depicted human subjects involved in allegorical themes related to religion, mythology, or historical events.