It’s pretty well established by now that the museum special exhibition, often derisively labeled the “blockbuster,” has been one of the great triumphs of modern cultural life, the primary vehicle through which the lay public has received its art education. Despite this, there’s a case to be made that, for all its merits, the standard museum retrospective is a somewhat artificial, often imperfect means of taking the measure of an artist. The work is shown in isolation, sequestered in dedicated galleries, creating the effect of a lab specimen or a butterfly pinned in a display case and depriving us of a sense of the subject’s larger cultural milieu. In addition, the overall picture thus presented is often incomplete, since inevitably not every loan request can be approved.

But what if an exhibition could be mounted that overcame these limitations by placing the artist in the widest possible context? Such a show might be organized in the city where the artist had been born and where he did some of his most important work. In said city’s museums and other cultural venues would be abundant examples of the creations of artists of his school who had preceded, even shaped him, as well as those who had followed and, in some cases, been influenced by him. Finally, the loan issue would be moot, since those objects that could not be included