4/2/02

AUBURN'S ART MUSEUM OFFERS VISIT TO 'MASTERPIECES' SHOW

AUBURN -- The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Art at Auburn University is offering an excursion on April 10, to the Birmingham Museum of Art to view the exhibition "European Masterpieces: Six Centuries of Paintings from the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia."

The museum offered to its membership a previous excursion to the exhibition that sold out in less than three days.

"We have been overwhelmed by the response to our excursions and events," said Michael De Marsche, director of The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Art.

"The response to this tour is unprecedented in my experience as a museum director. We wanted to offer to the Auburn community one of the last opportunities to see this extraordinary show which will close four days after we visit it."

The JCSM Excursion Package includes round-trip transportation to Birmingham by deluxe motor coach, a gourmet luncheon at the museum's Terrace Café and an entrance ticket/audio guide to the exhibition.

The cost of the tour package is $65. Motor coach seating is limited. To make reservations for the excursion, call the museum office at 334/844-1484.

European Masterpieces features 87 works of European art from the 14th to the 20th century, drawn from the world-renown collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia.

Spanning 600 years, the old master and modern paintings are by 74 giants in the history of art, including Tintoretto, Van Dyck, El Greco, Rembrandt, Boucher, Canaletto, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Constable, Millet, Pissarro, Manet, Monet, Modigliani, Picasso and Bonnard. On view are examples of virtually all the major schools and movements of European painting, from the Italian Renaissance to modern and contemporary.

The exhibition, which has never been viewed outside Australia, is the only chance U.S audiences will have to see firsthand one of the great painting collections in the world. The collections of the National Gallery of Victoria have long been known and admired by scholars and art lovers as the finest holdings of European art in the southern hemisphere.

Birmingham is the only venue in the Southeast for this historic exhibition and the last venue in the United States.

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CONTACT: DeMarsche or Haden Holmes Brown, 334/844-1582.