COLUMBIA, SC.- Highlights from the Collection opens on Saturday, January 10 and runs through June 7. The exhibition includes approximately 80 works of art spanning 1000 years pulled from the Columbia Museum of Art’s galleries and storage. The exhibition encompasses the breadth of the collection from Ancient art to Contemporary and from paintings to silver. The Museum’s Asian art collection is highlighted in the exhibition Eye to the East: The Turner Collection of Chinese Art, opening on December 19 and running through May 10.

Dr. Todd Herman, the Museum’s chief curator says, “This is an opportunity for the public to see these old friends and new ones in a different light. Viewing these works in a different setting and arranged in a way to excite original dialogues between the works offers a chance for visitors to engage, or re-engage, with the collection and individual works in a new way. Everyone familiar with the Museum’s collection will find a surprise waiting for them among the works.”

Included in Highlights from the Collection are favorite paintings such as the Botticelli Nativity, which is the only Botticelli fresco outside of Italy, and Canaletto’s View of the Molo. A number of significant works are on view for the first time such as A Rainy Day painted by Hans Burkhardt, an influential artist at the genesis of the American Abstract Expressionist movement, and an important early drawing by Ilya Bolotowsky, a leading artist of Geometric Abstraction. Works on paper, which must remain in storage for long periods because of conservation issues, are also on view such as a lively drawing by the American realist artist William Glackens and major prints by his compatriots John Sloan and George Bellows. Prints from the 16th and 17th century are on view as well as Alfred Stieglitz’s seminal photograph The Steerage documenting immigration and social division in early 20th-century America.

From around the world and spanning multiple centuries, the decorative arts included in Highlights showcase the richness and diversity of the Museum’s collection. Among the European objects on display are an ancient Greek lekythos (oil jar); a Roman cassone (wedding chest) carved with biblical scenes; and a very rare German porcelain ink stand made by Fürstenberg Porzellan — one of only two examples known to exist. Works by American artists include an early Charleston linen press; a neoclassical sofa made for Millford Plantation by the New York firm of Duncan Phyfe and Son; and several exceptional Arts and Crafts objects by Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman Workshops, the Roycrofters, Newcomb Pottery, and the Grueby Pottery Company.

Museum executive director Karen Brosius says, “In March, the Museum opens its doors to a display of one of the finest collections of Impressionist and Post-impressionist paintings in Europe. Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales (March 6 – June 7, 2009). Because of the nature and flow of the space on the second floor, we are installing Turner to Cézanne in the upstairs galleries where the Museum’s collection is normally housed, allowing the finest pieces of the collection to be installed in this new and exciting way downstairs.”