Varieties of Romantic Experience: Drawings from the Collection of Charles Ryskamp 4 FEBRUARY — 25 APRIL, 2010 In 1824, the Scottish painter David Wilkie wrote to the director of the French Royal Museums, "It is time to show that the arts are cosmopolitan and that all national prejudice is foreign to them." In spite of Wilkie's fine sentiment, drawings by British artists from the Romantic period have rarely been considered alongside those produced across the Channel. In response, this ambitious exhibition will take up the challenge of treating Romanticism as a truly international phenomenon by bringing together nearly two hundred British, French, German, Danish, and Dutch drawings the outstanding collection of Charles Ryskamp, director emeritus of the Morgan Library & Museum and Frick Collection in New York. Opening February 4, Varieties of Romantic Experience: Drawings from the Collection of Charles Ryskamp is the first exhibition of this scope dedicated to northern European drawings and will consider the place of British art in a European milieu. It has been organized by the Yale Center for British Art, which will be the exhibition's only North American venue. Varieties of Romantic Experience will explore the direct relationship between British and Continental artists during the Romantic period (here defined approximately as the period between the French Revolution in 1789 and the revolutions of 1848). Despite the very different circumstances in which artists across Europe were working, and the diverse modes of representation they employed, they shared common concerns and frequently explored similar themes. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue will focus on Romanticism's novel exploration of two worlds in particular: nature and the imagination. More than half the drawings are by leading British artists. The rest are evenly distributed among the northern European schools. Alongside important British works by artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Cornelius Varley, William Blake, and Henry Fuseli, there will be drawings by key Continental artists, such as Caspar David Friedrich, Camille Corot, Eugène Delacroix, and Edgar Degas. Perhaps the most innovative feature of the exhibition will be the inclusion of Danish Golden Age drawings. Outstanding works by C. W. Eckersberg, Christen Købke and Johan Thomas Lundbye will make Varieties of Romantic Experience a comprehensive exhibition. Compass & Rule: Architecture as Mathematical Practice in England, 1500-1750 18 FEBRUARY — 30 MAY, 2010 The spread of Renaissance culture in England coincided with the birth of architecture as a profession. Identified as a branch of practical mathematics, architecture became the most artistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the arts. During this time, new concepts of design based on geometry changed how architects worked and what they built, as well as the intellectual status and social standing of their discipline. Compass & Rule will examine the role of mathematics in architectural design and building technology, highlighting the dramatic transformation of English architecture between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The exhibition will bring together some of the finest architectural and scientific material from the early modern period, including drawings of St. Paul's Cathedral, an astrolabe commissioned for Queen Elizabeth I, and architectural drawings by King George III. Also on view will be nearly one hundred drawings, paintings, printed books and manuscripts, maps, and other unique mathematical instruments that illustrate the changing role of both the architect and the profession 1500 to 1750. An illustrated catalogue edited by exhibition curators Anthony Gerbino, architectural historian and Senior Research Fellow of Worcester College, University of Oxford, and Stephen Johnston, Assistant Keeper at the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford, will accompany the exhibition. Compass & Rule has been co-organized by the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford and the Yale Center for British Art. The Center is the only North American venue. Art for All: British Posters for Transport 27 MAY — 15 AUGUST, 2010 In 1908 the London Underground (officially the Underground Electric Railways Company of London) began an aggressive promotional campaign that became one of the most successful, adventurous, and best sustained branding operations ever attempted. (In 1933 the official name, London Passenger Transport Board, or LPTB, was adopted.) This poster campaign not only encouraged ridership on the public transport system, it helped to foster a civic identity for the city of London, and the more than 5,000 images produced include some of the greatest achievements of poster art. According to the art historian Nikolas Pevsner, writing in 1942, "no exhibition of modern painting, no lecturing, no school of teaching can have had anything like so wide an effect on the educationable masses as the unceasing production and display of LPTB posters over the years 1930-40." From its inception the principal energizing force behind the Underground campaign was Frank Pick. Under his leadership a string of major designers contributed work, including Edward McKnight Kauffer, Frederick Herrick, Hans Schleger, and Anna Zinkeisen. These commissions continued after Pick's retirement in 1940. While none of the British rail lines matched the scope and ambition of the Underground campaign, some of the same designers, such as Kauffer and Walter Spradberry, also worked for the mainline railways. Other no less gifted designers, such as Tom Purvis and Frank Newbould, d extraordinary graphics for the railways. Art for All features more than one hundred outstanding works executed for both the Underground and the British railways. The exhibition will explore the evolution of transport posters in twentieth century Britain, highlighting specific features such as the career of Kauffer, the work of women artists, how the posters were initially displayed, and the larger implications of these advertising campaigns. Art for All has been organized by the Yale Center for British Art. The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue by Teri J. Edelstein, with contributions by leading scholars, published by the Center in association with Yale University Press.