Enfilade

Cornelis Ploos van Amstel after Samuel van Hoogstraten, Boy with a Hat in a Front Door, detail, 1763, etching, roulette in brown and red (Berlin: Kupferstichkabinett, Christoph Müller Stiftung / Kilian Beutel).

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From the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:

Encounters: ‘I Am All That!’ | Christoph Müller’s Gift, Part 2

Begegnungen: Das alles bin ich! | Die Schenkung Christoph Müller II

Kupferstichkabinett at the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, 26 August — 30 November 2025

The exhibition I Am All That! presents the generous gift of some 200 works that art collector Christoph Müller has made to the Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings). The works on paper—drawings, prints, and watercolours—not only show a broad panorama of visual themes spanning five centuries, but also reflect the influences on the collector and his interests. One aspect of the collection at a time will be featured in four successive presentations. Opening on the 26 August 2025, the presentation focusses on people, interpersonal relationships, and encounters.

Anton Graff, Portrait of Provost Johann Joachim Spalding, ca. 1800, pastel (Berlin: Kupferstichkabinett, Christoph Müller Stiftung).

Portraits and plant studies, harbours and history paintings, landscapes and genre scenes: this exhibition shows the entire spectrum of an extraordinary collection. A fascinating cross-section of European art history unfolds within works from early modern history to the present. The exhibited works on paper originate from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and France—telling of people and nature, history and everyday life, beliefs, feelings, and the power to create. Representations of figures and nudes are on view, as well as seascapes, nature studies, animals, forests, and quite a lot more.

A selection of Müller’s generous gift will be presented to the public from 20 May 2025 to 14 June 2026 in four changing displays in the ‘Kabinett in der Galerie’ space at the Gemäldegalerie (Old Masters Paintings). The first presentation, A World of Words and Images (on view from 20 May to 24 August 2025), referenced Müller’s endeavours as a publisher and critic, as well as his passion for art and collecting.

The second presentation, Encounters, focuses on depictions of people and interpersonal relationships. Some of the featured artworks show moments of togetherness, such as social events, mutual exchange, or shared glances. The images depict romantic liaisons, domestic scenes, and social interactions, and reflect the personality of a tireless collector who nurtured numerous friendships and loved parties. These are juxtaposed with portraits, figurative representations, and detailed studies that centre the individual. Whether pictured in silent contemplation or facing the viewer, these subjects are a testament to the reality that human existence is constantly oscillating between proximity and seclusion, between moments of shared experience and periods of solitude..

Future Presentations

On Travelling and Being at Home
2 December 2025 — 8 March 2026

Leaf by Leaf: A Life with Art
10 March — 14 June 2026

Christoph Müller (1938–2024) was a German publisher, theatre and art critic, art collector, and patron, who made many generous gifts to public museums during his lifetime. As the editor-in-chief and co-publisher of the Schwäbisches Tagblatt, he shaped the German media landscape from 1969 to 2004. Müller’s passion for art is reflected in an impressive collection of works from various epochs and regions. He collected across the board, led by individual and personal preferences, as well as sound connoisseurship. His penchant was for 16th- and 17th-century Dutch art. In 2007, he gave the Kupferstichkabinett a significant collection of 370 Dutch and Flemish drawings and prints from the 16th to 18th centuries. With the current gift all collection areas of the Kupferstichkabinett’s holdings are being appreciably enhanced and enriched. Christoph Müller died in Berlin in 2024, at the age of 86. The exhibition should be understood as recognition of his impact in supporting the arts, as a sign of gratitude and an invitation to share his joy in art—a thought that continually motivated him.

Opening soon at the Musée des Beaux-Arts Orléans:

The Marcille Chardin Family: A Passion from Orléans

Les Chardin des Marcille: Une passion orléanaise

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Orléans, 9 September 2025 — 11 January 2026

Rarely has a painting aroused so much passion as Le Panier de fraises des bois (1761) by Jean Siméon Chardin, the quintessential work of French painting, put up for sale in 2022 and acquired for a record price by the Musée du Louvre after having remained in the prestigious collection of the Orléans-born Eudoxe Marcille (1814–1890) since the mid-19th century.

His name alone evokes that of Chardin. His father, François Marcille (1790–1856), from a family of seed brokers in the Beauce region, had taken a visionary interest, as early as 1822, in all those artists from the time of Louis XV that nobody looked at anymore, to the point of assembling the largest collection of his time, with 4,500 works including dozens of Bouchers, Fragonards, Greuze, Prud’hon and Géricault… and, above all others, thirty Chardin. This consuming passion was passed on with his collection to his two sons, Eudoxe and Camille. Camille, who became curator of the Chartres museum, and Eudoxe, director of the Musée d’Orléans from 1870 to 1890, continued to promote Chardin’s work, even buying back after their father’s death, beyond the works he had designated for each, what could continue to be assembled from this ideal nucleus. Quite naturally, the Goncourt brothers, great biographers of 18th-century artists, drew on this reference collection, in which Chardin’s entire career is represented, to write the first biography of the painter of silent still lifes and pantries in 1863.

Chardin was at home in Orléans and, in a way, always had been. His friendship with Aignan Thomas Desfriches (1715–1800), the entrepreneur who had made Orléans an artistic capital in the 18th century, could be seen in the checkered scarf Chardin wears in his self-portrait, which came from Desfriches’ home. Desfriches himself owned numerous paintings by Chardin. He was followed by Casimir de Cypierre (1783–1844), son of the Intendant d’Orléans under Louis XVI, whose name a quay bears, who owned at least three. François Marcille and his son Eudoxe continued to nurture this Orléans passion. Around the exceptional loan of Panier de fraises des bois, five other Chardin paintings from the legendary Marcille collection are brought together for the first time since the 1979 retrospective. They are accompanied by the Self-portrait with bezicles (spectacles), an eventful acquisition which, in 1991, brought this artist, so dear to the heart of Orléans, into the pastel cabinet, but whose memory alone inhabited the collections. Chardin, more than ever, is at home in the Musée d’Orléans, which this family of discreet enthusiasts has helped to elevate, through François’ research and Eudoxe’s twenty years at the service of its collections, into a place of rediscovery and sharing.

With the exceptional participation of the Musée du Louvre. The exhibition benefits from exceptional loans from the Musée du Louvre, the Musée Jacquemart-André, the Musée de Picardie, private collectors, and the Marcille family descendants.

Now on view at Historic Northampton (as noted on Philippe Halbert’s Instagram account) . . .

Slavery and Freedom in Northampton, 1654–1783

Historic Northampton, Northampton, ​Massachusetts, 3 July 2025 — 11 December 2026

Silhouette of Hannah, her baby, and Mingo. In 1692, the court decided that the ownership of Hannah’s baby would be shared by her enslaver Timothy Baker and Mingo’s enslaver Samuel Parsons. A copy of the 1692 court document was transcribed on page 182 of the Judd Manuscript in the collection of Forbes Library, Northampton, MA.

For at least 129 years, slavery was part of the fabric of everyday life in Northampton. At least 50 enslaved individuals lived here from the town’s English settlement in 1654 until 1783 when slavery was abolished in Massachusetts. The exhibit Slavery and Freedom in Northampton, 1654–1783 features life-sized silhouettes of men, women, and children who were enslaved. On each silhouette are details about individual lives based upon information gleaned from historic documents. Their histories reveal aspects of enslavement and examples of freedom, and resistance to oppression.

The exhibit tells what we currently know about the lives of these enslaved individuals and how some gained freedom, started families, and purchased property. It also describes the ways in which Northampton enslavers exerted power and control over their lives. Included is a printmaking series, Glimmers of Past People, by artist Merisa Skinner reflecting on the local legacy of the transatlantic slave trade.

Composite image of the bill of sale of Venus to Jonathan Edwards from the collection of Yale University with a graphic silhouette of Venus by Design Division, Inc.

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Venus was born in West Africa and separated from her family. This bill of sale indicates that she was sold in Newport, Rhode Island by a ship captain and slave trader to Northampton’s minister Jonathan Edwards. Leah was also enslaved by Jonathan Edwards. Some historians think that Edwards renamed Venus to Leah when she was baptized. It is also possible that Venus died and Leah was a different person who replaced her.

Exhibit design by Michael Hanke of Design Division, Inc. with Historic Northampton and a team of scholars and archivists ​based upon research by the Northampton Slavery Research Project. Artwork for the background murals was created by artist Nancy Haver.

Installation view of Fault Lines: Art, Imperialism, and the Atlantic World at the Carnegie Museum of Art, 2025 (Photo by Zachary Riggleman). Paintings include from left to right: Nicolas de Largillière, Portrait of a Woman and an Enslaved Servant, 1696 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 03.37.2); Simon Vouet, The Toilet of Venus, ca. 1640 (Carnegie Museum of Art); and Peter Lely, Portrait of Louise Renee de Penencoet de Kerouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, ca. 1670–1680 (Carnegie Museum of Art).

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Now on view at the Carnegie Museum of Art:

Fault Lines: Art, Imperialism, and the Atlantic World

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 12 July 2025 — 25 January 2026

Organized by Marie-Stéphanie Delamaire

In the wake of Europe’s imperial expansion, which included the colonization of North and South America and the Caribbean in the 16th and 17th centuries, extensive military and economic activity transformed the regions that border the Atlantic Ocean. A new world—the Atlantic World—emerged, in which wars, competitive trade, and the enslavement of millions of Africans created new societies in Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

As ideas, knowledge, and beliefs moved together with people and materials across the ocean, shaping new mindsets and understandings of the world, European elite culture singled out certain objects as art, to be appreciated primarily for their beauty and emotional power. In that process, which also led to the creation of the first art museums, a rift opened between our understanding of these works of art and the political forces and transoceanic networks that made their creation possible. Acknowledging the fault lines of art history, this exhibition explores what can be imagined when works in the collection are brought in conversation with those made by artists who lived at the fluid boundaries of the Atlantic world’s entangled empires.

The exhibition is organized by Marie-Stéphanie Delamaire, curator of European and American art.

The 20-page gallery guide can be downloaded here»