Rings: Five Passions in World Art,"A Preview of the Olympic Exhibition

August 2012 - J. Carter Brown, director emeritus, National Gallery of Art To commemorate the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympic Games, J. Carter Brown (1934-2002), former director of the National Gallery of Art, curated Rings: Five Passions in World Art, on view from July 4 to September 29, 1996, at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. The works in this exhibition celebrated the Olympic spirit by highlighting the universal human emotions of love, anguish, awe, triumph, and joy. In this lecture recorded on June 9, 1996, Brown described bringing together 129 objects—including Rodinˈs The Kiss (1889) and Munchˈs The Scream (1893)—spanning seven centuries, loaned from prestigious museums and private collections around the world. Brown experimented with the exhibition installation, grouping artworks by the primary emotion that each evoked rather than by artist, chronology, movement, or locale.