Art Excursions, Inc.

TOUR VENUES AND FEATURED SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS

The Neue Galerie and “The Woman in Gold”

Ronald S. Lauder co-founded Neue Galerie with art dealer Serge Sabarsky to focus on German and Austrian art. Klimt's portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer made famous in the "Woman in Gold" film headlines a fantastic permanent collection. Enjoy a private guided tour of this New York jewel before it opens to the general public.

“Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion:” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s Annual Exhibition

We are thrilled to announce that this year’s NYC tour will coincide with the Costume Institute’s annual show.

The year’s exhibition takes its title from a group of more than a dozen stunning period garments that have been “sleeping” in collections storage. Some dating back to the 1600s and all too fragile to ever be worn again, these garments will be awakened from their dormancy by amazing (perhaps “princely?”) installations that combine illusionistic effects such as “Pepper’s Ghost” along with scents (yes, scents), video animation, light and sound, AI, CGI, and other forms of multi-sensory experience.

The exhibition will foster a dialogue between these “sleeping beauties” and dozens of additional fashions by twentieth-century iconic designers such as Schiaparelli, Ricci, Saint Laurent, Dior, and Givenchy, as well as contemporary designers such as McQueen, Phillip Lim, Stella McCartney and Connor Ives.

Given that the 1889 Charles Worth gown pictured above features prominent tulips in its design, visitors to this exhibition should expect its overarching theme to be the interrelationship of fashion and the natural world. Fans of the House of Alexander McQueen (and “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”) are eager to see firsthand Sarah Burton’s 2011 “Butterfly Dress.” (Photo by Nick Knight, courtesy of The Met)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Celebrating 150 Years

Over the span of 150 years, The Met has evolved into arguably the world’s most comprehensive art museum with top-shelf collections in nearly every art historical period and special exhibits that often travel nowhere else. An art lover could happily spend a lifetime inside this museum. Where else can you find an ancient Egyptian temple displayed inside a museum?

Enjoy extended time to explore The Met's legendary holdings and get special insights about museum highlights on a private tour led by art historian Jeff Mishur (named as a top art guide by The Wall Street Journal).

The Cloisters: Art, architecture and gardens above the Hudson

Located on a stunning site above the Hudson River, The Cloisters offers an experience of Medieval and Renaissance art, architecture, gardens and culture unlike any other place in the world. Endowed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., The Cloisters preserves medieval enclosed courtyards (pictured above), stained glass windows, and architectural elements rescued from ruin in countrysides across Europe. Rockefeller also bought and donated several hundred acres of the New Jersey Palisades to the State of New Jersey on the other side of the Hudson to preserve the view from the museum.

Its galleries feature outstanding sculptures, paintings, tapestries, manuscripts and decorative arts including Campin’s Annunciation Triptych, an ivory cross from Bury St. Edmonds (made famous in the book King of the Confessors), and The Unicorn Tapestries. Enjoy a private guided tour of the galleries. (Photo by Jose Olivares from Wikimedia.)

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA): Expanded - Reimagined - Transformed

MoMA presents one of the world's best collections of late nineteenth and twentieth century art and design. Its legendary collections include such pillars of Modernism as Van Gogh's Starry Night (above), Picasso's Ladies of Avignon, Dali's Persistence of Memory, Wyeth's Christina's World, Chagall's I and the Village, Matisse’s The Red Studio, and hundreds of other icons of our material culture.

A reimagined and expanded MoMA opened in late 2019. From artist commissions to new spaces for performance, art making, and conversation, every corner of the museum has been brought to life. Most exciting of all is walking into the galleries and seeing the collection as it has never been seen before, with more art by more artists from more places in the world than MoMA has ever been able to show.

Enjoy a private guided tour focusing on highlights of the MoMA's permanent collection.

The Brooklyn Museum: New York City’s “Other” Encyclopedic Art Venue

The Brooklyn Museum is one of the largest and most comprehensive art museums in the United States. Its permanent collection spans from ancient Egypt (one of its strongest holdings) to contemporary art.  The museum’s recent re-installation of American art shows off one of the major strengths of its collection.

The museum's collection in nearly every historical period of western and non-western art is world class. Enjoy a private guided tour of museum highlights.

The special exhibition: Hiroshige’s “100 Famous Views of Edo”

The Brooklyn Museum is fortunate to own a complete set of “100 Famous Views of Edo” (now Tokyo) by 19th century master artist Utagawa Hiroshige. However, like most works on paper, these woodblock prints spend most of their life in storage to protect them from ongoing exposure to light. A special exhibition like this one brings the prints into the light of a gallery space for a limited time so the public can enjoy them. It has been twenty-four years since the Brooklyn Museum has showed the complete series of one hundred prints. In our opinion, this warrants adding a second borough to our tour itinerary.

The special exhibition: The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism

For the past twenty years, Art Excursions has provided illustrated presentations about The Harlem Renaissance, one of the most important movements in American art history. For these reasons, we are delighted to time this year’s tour to coincide with a groundbreaking exhibit that explores the connections between African American artists and European modernists between the wars. This exhibit features paintings, sculptures, photographs, and drawings from The Met’s collection plus the collections of various Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, private collections, and European museums.

Works by artists such as Aaron Douglas, Meta Warrick Fuller, William H. Johnson, Archibald Motley, Jr., Augusta Savage, James Van Der Zee, and Laura Wheeler Waring will reveal the period’s plurality of style and subject matter: from scenes of modern life to portraiture, from abstract to representational.

Since some artists associated with The New Negro Arts Movement (as it was formerly known) spent time in Europe, their works will be juxtaposed with the works of European artists, such as Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Germaine Casse, Kees van Dongen, Jacob Epstein, and Ronald Moody. (Image: William H. Johnson’s “Cafe,” ca. 1939-1940, Smithsonian American Art Museum)

The special photography exhibition: Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm

Organized by London’s National Portrait Gallery in collaboration with Sir Paul McCartney, this exhibition showcases a large group of photographs that date to the 1960s but were discovered quite recently among uncatalogued materials in McCartney’s archives. Taken by McCartney himself when The Beatles made their first UK and world tours, these personal and candid photos document the frenzy of Beatlemania, but also capture the private moments between band members who were going through an extraordinary rite of passage together. (Image: “John Lennon, Paris” (1964) by Paul McCartney under exclusive license to MPM Archive LLP)

The Morgan Library and Museum

Founded to house the extraordinary collections of J.P. Morgan, the Morgan Library and Museum features world class illuminated manuscripts, furniture, decorative arts, drawings, prints, and rare books. The museum also exhibits paintings and works in other media by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Gauguin, Cezanne, Gainsborough, Turner, Degas, and Rembrandt. The campus includes a Beaux Arts building completed in 1907 as well as a 2006 addition designed by Renzo Piano.  We’ll enjoy a private tour of collection highlights.

The special exhibition: Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature

Created by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and drawing on its collections as well as those of the UK National Trust and The Morgan Library, this exhibit celebrates the artwork and interest in ecology of Beatrix Potter, author of “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” (1901) and more than twenty other children’s books. Letters, photographs, sketches, watercolors, and other materials reveal Potter’s creative process and her interest in natural science, farming, and land conservation. New York is the final stop for this exhibition shown previously in Atlanta, Nashville and London. (Image: “Mrs Rabbit pouring out the tea for Peter while her children look on,” by Beatrix Potter, 1902–1907. Linder Bequest. Museum no. BP.468. copyright Victoria and Albert Museum, London, courtesy of Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd.)

The special exhibition: Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art

What can unite textile artists from the 20th century with 15th century Inca weavers? The answer is the aesthetic appeal of geometric abstraction. This exhibition displays more than fifty textiles by modernists Anni Albers, Sheila Hicks, Lenore Tawney, and Olga de Amaral as well as by Andean artists working between the first millennium BC and the 16th century.

According the the curators: “the constructive nature of weavings, arising from the grid formed by the vertical and horizontal elements of the loom, prompted the formal investigation of geometric designs....”  Whereas we often think of geometric abstraction as originating in the work of Cezanne or the Cubists, the four modern artists featured in this show studied Andean methods as part of the process of making their own contributions to this ancient medium. 

A Welcome Reception with Live Music at The Morgan Library and Museum

We are proud to feature on this tour our signature private reception at an NYC museum venue. Take in stunning views while noshing on hearty canapés and sipping wine and non-alcoholic beverages. Jeff Mishur hosts this perfect beginning to our tour.

OTHER SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS

Collecting Inspiration: Edward C. Moore at Tiffany & Co.

Tiffany and Company designer Edward C. Moore (1827–1891) loved to make beautiful things and he loved to collect beautiful things. This exhibit unites approximately 70 decorative objects produced at Tiffany with nearly two hundred objects from Moore’s own personal collection of Greek and Roman glass, Japanese baskets, and Islamic metalwork. Moore, a silversmith, drew inspiration from his collection for his own work and shared his interests with the designers he supervised.

Kathe Kollwitz

While living in Berlin from the 1890s through World War II, artist Kathe Kollwitz produced some of the most powerful and moving examples of Expressionism in the history of art. The Museum of Modern Art presents the first major retrospective devoted to Kollwitz in New York and the largest U.S. exhibition of her work in more than 30 years. Known mostly for drawing and printmaking, Kollwitz explored the themes of motherhood, grief, war, and social injustice during her remarkable career.

Hidden Faces: Covered Portraits of the Renaissance

During the European Renaissance, certain patrons commissioned portraits that contained a secret: the secret being the identity of the sitter. This unprecedented exhibition features portraits with mechanisms such as hinged or sliding covers that hid the subjects’s face. In approaching such portraits, Renaissance art lovers had to meet the challenge of interpreting a symbolic language before lifting, sliding, or turning the image over to reveal the sitter’s identity. Visitors to this exhibit can look forward to seeing works by Hans Memling, Lucas Cranach, Lorenzo Lotto, Titian, and other Renaissance artists.

Tour study leader and host -- Art historian Jeff Mishur

Art historian Jeff Mishur, co-owner of Art Excursions, hosts this tour. In a recent article about “Top Private Art Guides,” The Wall Street Journal referred to Jeff as an expert armed with an advanced degree and “equipped to give the most veteran aesthete the thrill of a new perspective.“

Jeff is a sought-after guide for private tours of architecture, public sculpture and museum collections. He is also a very popular lecturer on art and architecture. On this New York tour, Jeff will be leading private tours at multiple venues.

Accommodations in Midtown

Art Excursions understands that our choice of accommodations contributes to the overall experience of the boutique tours we design and lead. Consequently, our clients have come to expect a high standard of hotel as well as a location that is ideal for walking to shops, galleries, museums, restaurants, theaters and concert venues.

In New York City we have selected a four-star property in Midtown within walking distance to Times Square, Fifth Avenue shopping, Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall among other locations.

TOUR INCLUDES

1. ‣Four star accommodations in midtown Manhattan for three nights
   

2. ‣Admissions and private tours as highlighted above and detailed in the four day itinerary
   

3. ‣Tour hosting, commentaries and handouts provided by Art Excursions
   

4. ‣Welcome reception at The Morgan with wine and canapes
   

5. ‣Daily breakfast
   

6. ‣Gift card for lunch daily
   

7. ‣Transportation to and from all itinerary elements not within walking distance
   

8. ‣Independent time to take in what you like at each event on the itinerary
   

9. ‣Driver gratuities
   

10. ‣The opportunity to add extra pre or post-tour nights at a special rate with the destination fee waived.
    

TOUR DOES NOT INCLUDE

Gratuities for tour guides and hotel staff; incidentals at hotel; costs for items not specified above; airfare and airport transfers. We can book airfare on your behalf if you prefer not to make your own arrangements.  We do charge a $45 per ticket booking fee for this service.

TOUR PRICING - The amounts below reflect advance pricing and are valid for registrations and deposits received by February 29, 2024. After this date, prices are subject to change.

$2,150 per person for two persons in a room with one king bed OR two double beds

$2,550 single occupancy in a room with one king bed

A NOTE ABOUT BOOKING FLIGHTS

We know some clients have a tendency to look into airfares before even signing up for our tours. We wish to offer a reminder that airfares fluctuate daily. The old theory that the earlier one books a flight, the lower fare they will pay does not apply in our era. Fare prices are driven by sale periods that are announced periodically by a given carrier and then matched by other carriers.

TRAVELING AS A SINGLE?

Our boutique tours are ideal for single travelers, singles traveling together, or couples. We typically have a mix of these types of travelers. If you wish to know why we charge a single supplement or have any other questions, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions page or email us.

TOUR RESERVATIONS

Group size is limited. Reservations accepted first-come, first-served. For more details please email artexcursions@yahoo.com or call 630/671-9745.

READY TO SIGN UP?

Great! Just email us at ae-news@artexcursions.com or artexcursions@yahoo.com and we’ll follow up with a tour application. Our phone number is 630.671.9745