LONDON.- The Royal Collection today announced a programme of exhibitions at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, and a touring exhibition to five UK venues to mark Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee next year. Jonathan Marsden, Director of the Royal Collection, said, ‘Our exhibitions celebrate The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee through many of the finest works of art in the Royal Collection, and we are particularly delighted to be sharing, on behalf of The Queen, some of these great treasures with museums and galleries across the UK. This is a fitting tribute to Her Majesty’s commitment over the past 60 years to the care and conservation of the Collection and to increasing public access.’
The Queen: Sixty Photographs for Sixty Years
The Drawings Gallery, Windsor Castle
4 February 2012 – January 2013
Sixty photographs of The Queen, including the work of leading press photographers of the past six decades, will go on display at Windsor Castle to celebrate Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee. The exhibition presents a portrait of The Queen’s reign as captured in fleeting moments on both official occasions and at relaxed family gatherings. With the advent of photography, the boundaries between the officially approved and the spontaneously captured image of the monarch were irreversibly blurred. Today, through the reach of modern media, the image of Her Majesty is familiar to millions around the world. Most of the exhibition The Queen: Sixty Photographs for Sixty Years has been selected from photographs submitted by the Royal Rota photographic organisations.
Royal Treasures: A Diamond Jubilee Celebration
The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse
16 March – 16 September 2012
An exhibition of some of the finest treasures from the Royal Collection will go on display at The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse in 2012. Royal Treasures: A Diamond Jubilee Celebration reflects the tastes of monarchs and other members of the royal family who have shaped one of the world’s great art collections. The selection of 100 outstanding works has been made across the entire breadth of the Royal Collection, from eight royal residences and over five centuries of collecting, and includes paintings, drawings, miniatures, watercolours, manuscripts, furniture, sculpture, ceramics and jewellery. Highlights include paintings by Rembrandt, Canaletto and Monet, drawings by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Holbein, and Imperial Easter Eggs by Fabergé. Most of the works will be shown in Scotland for the first time.
Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomy
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace
4 May – 7 October 2012
The largest ever exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci’s studies of the human body will be shown at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace in 2012. Leonardo has long been recognized as one of the great artists of the Renaissance, but he was also a pioneer in the understanding of human anatomy. He intended to publish his ground-breaking work in a treatise on anatomy, and had he done so his discoveries would have transformed European knowledge of the subject. But on Leonardo’s death in 1519 the drawings remained a mass of undigested material among his private papers and their significance was effectively lost to the world for almost 400 years. Today they are among the Royal Collection’s greatest treasures.
Diamonds: A Jubilee Celebration
The Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace
August and September 2012 (Additional dates will be added)
Diamond, the hardest natural material known, carries associations of endurance and longevity. These qualities, allied to the purity, magnificence and value of the stones, have for centuries led rulers to deploy diamonds in regalia, jewellery and precious objects. Individual diamonds have achieved great renown, passing down the generations and between enemies or allies as potent symbols of sovereignty and as precious gifts.
A spectacular exhibition at Buckingham Palace will show the many ways in which diamonds have been used by British monarchs over the last 200 years. The exhibition includes an unprecedented display of a number of The Queen’s personal jewels – those inherited by Her Majesty or acquired during her reign. The exhibition will reveal how many of these extraordinary stones have undergone a number of transformations, having been re-cut or incorporated into new settings during their fascinating history.