Curated by Janet Bishop, Cécile Debray, Rebecca Rabinow, and Gary Tinterow
This bulging blockbuster (with more than two hundred works by some forty artists, plus documentation of all types) is devoted to the collections and personalities of the Stein siblings—Michael, the eldest brother; his wife, Sarah; his younger brother, Leo, and still younger sister, Gertrude. Textbook masterpieces abound, such as the 1905 portrait of Mme Matisse, Woman with a Hat, and plenty of Picassos, from MoMA’s Rose Period Boy Leading a Horse, 1905–1906, to the Met’s implacable Iberian portrait of Gertrude. “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde” and its sizable catalogue admirably give each family member his or her due, offering a renewed appreciation for Leo, Michael, and Sarah (the latter remembered as the nucleus of the Académie Matisse), and so rescuing them from Gertrude’s overbearing shadow.
