American art to be displayed at the Louvre

CHICAGO, Nov. 23 (UPI) -- Chicago's Terra Foundation announced Monday it is collaborating with the Louvre in Paris on a two-part exhibition of American art.

The exhibition is expected to run from June through September 2006 and involve some paintings that hung in the recently closed Terra Museum in downtown Chicago.

Most of the collection of the late industrialist Daniel Terra has been transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago, but a group of seminal works that explore the role of the Louvre and its collection in the development of American art have been reserved for display at the Louvre along with other works on loan from national and international collections.

They include paintings by Benjamin West, Thomas Cole, Thomas Eakins, James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, and Thomas Hart Benton.

A highlight of the show will be Samuel Morse's "Gallery of the Louvre," painted in 1831 when he was copying Old Master paintings there. The canvas will be displayed in the very room in which it was painted.

Films, lectures, and concerts complementary to the show will be presented at the Louvre with additional programs at the Terra Foundation's Museum of American Art in Giverny, near Paris.