TOLEDO, OH.- The lasting appeal and impact of ballet and a great Impressionist artist are celebrated in Degas and the Dance, a new Toledo Museum of Art exhibition opening in October.

In 1928 the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) made its first acquisition with endowed funds from its founder, Edward Drummond Libbey. It was a vibrant pastel of ballerinas by French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas (1834-1917). Thirteen years later, the Museum hosted the Toledo Ballet’s presentation of the first excerpts of the “Nutcracker” by an American dance company in the United States.

This year the Toledo Ballet marks the 75th anniversary of having the oldest continuously running annual “Nutcracker” in the country. These historical events inspired the Museum to organize Degas and the Dance, an exhibition featuring iconic works by the artist from TMA’s renowned collection alongside major loans from the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts, Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Gallery of Art and The Phillips Collection, both in Washington, D.C.

The exhibition is being shown exclusively at TMA, where it is on view from Oct. 15 through Jan. 10, 2016. Admission is free.

“This very special exhibition provides the Museum with the wonderful opportunity to showcase some of the most beloved dance imagery ever created and in the process to underscore the important heritage of Degas at the Museum and the rich legacy of 75 years of the ‘Nutcracker’ in Toledo,” said Lawrence W. Nichols, William Hutton Senior Curator of European and American Painting and Sculpture before 1900.

Degas was a frequent visitor and visible presence at the Paris Opéra – its rehearsal rooms, backstage spaces and auditorium – and his distinctive cropping and unflinching, unglamorous representations of ballerinas at work helped to cement his reputation as an artist.

Degas and the Dance contains six superb sculptures by the artist, including the Clark’s widely admired Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. Originally modeled in wax in 1880-81, the 38-inch tall figure was cast in bronze in 1919-21 after Degas’s death and depicts Marie van Goethem, a student in the ballet school of the Paris Opéra.

Four additional bronzes of individual dancers in ballet positions from the Clark and TMA’s own Study for Little Dancer Aged Fourteen are also on view.

Rounding out the exhibition are several paintings of dancers in backstage classrooms, including La Répétition au foyer de la danse (1870-ca. 1872) from The Phillips Collection, La classe de danse (begun 1873; completed 1875-76) from the Musée d’Orsay, a selection of prints and TMA’s two pastels, The Dancers (ca. 1899) and The Rehearsal Room (ca. 1905).

“It is only natural that the Toledo Museum of Art would organize an exhibition dedicated to Degas and the dance given our history with the artist and the Toledo Ballet,” said Toledo Museum of Art Director Brian Kennedy. “Our sincere thanks to the distinguished lenders to the exhibition for their generosity in sharing their treasures with our community.”

In an adjacent gallery, the Museum is installing an actual dance studio, with ballet barre, dance floor and mirrors. Students from the Toledo Ballet will periodically rehearse there for upcoming performances, including one on Jan. 3, 2016 that brings to life one of Degas’s paintings on TMA’s historic Peristyle stage. The dance studio allows visitors both to consider Degas’s ballet subjects in close proximity to live dancers in training and to practice ballet themselves in the context of the Museum. Dancers in the studio will also serve as models for drawing classes.

Another section of the exhibition is devoted to archival material and costumes from the Toledo Ballet’s decades of “Nutcracker” productions. Among these historical gems is a photograph of Toledo native and women’s rights advocate Gloria Steinem as a teenager. Founded in 1939, the Toledo Ballet has been a leader in training generations of dancers. This past spring, Toledo Ballet founder and artistic director emerita Marie Bollinger Vogt was awarded the prestigious Governor’s Award for the Arts in Ohio.