Beginning September 23, 2017, the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT, will present the major exhibition In the Limelight: Toulouse-Lautrec Portraits from the Herakleidon Museum, which showcases the artist’s portraits of the dancers, singers and other performers who became the icons of the Parisian nightlife in the late 19th century. Featuring 100 drawings, prints, and posters (approximately half of the Herakleidon Museum’s extensive collection of Toulouse-Lautrec works on paper), the exhibition explores the relationship between portraiture, caricature, and rise of the cult of celebrity in Belle Époque Paris.
A fascination with the spectacle, nightlife, and the tawdry side of celebrity culture is hardly a recent phenomenon. The artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 – 1901) is famed for his images, created more than a century ago, of entertainers in the cabarets, dance halls, theaters and brothels of Paris.
The exhibition is organized by the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut. The works are on loan from the collection of Herakleidon Museum, Athens, Greece. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, featuring a scholarly essay by the curator Mia Laufer, PhD candidate (Washington University in Saint Louis) and former Zvi Grunberg Resident Fellow at the Bruce Museum (2015-2016), acknowledgments by Peter C. Sutton, The Susan E. Lynch Executive Director of the Bruce Museum, and a foreword by Paul Firos, founder of the Herakleidon Museum.
In the Limelight: Toulouse-Lautrec Portraits from the Herakleidon Museum is sponsored by The Charles M. and Deborah G. Royce Exhibition Fund, the Florence Gould Foundation, a Committee of Honor, and Connecticut Office of the Arts.
