The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts has enjoyed collaborating with the Harvard Art Museum and the Saint Louis Art Museum on different occasions in its brief history. This year, however, all three institutions have joined forces on a single endeavor, made possible in part by two building projects. In 2007, the Saint Louis Art Museum unveiled designs by David Chipperfield for a significant expansion to its historic building in Forest Park. At the same time, the Harvard Art Museum has been proceeding with an ambitious building and restructuring process with Renzo Piano, which will involve a remodeling of the original Fogg Museum building with new construction. Both projects necessitated the de-installation of artworks from their galleries. As a result of those transitions and a fortuitous curatorial collaboration, many important works of art from both institutions can now be viewed in a new light at the Pulitzer.

Described in its mission statement as both a sanctuary and a laboratory for the arts, the Pulitzer is housed in an acclaimed building designed by Tadao Ando. In reflecting on how Ando's unique space could be used experimentally, the curators of the participating institutions were intrigued by the idea of departing from the Foundation's affinity for displaying modern and contemporary art. They seized instead upon the opportunity to juxtapose more traditional Old Master works from the two museums' collections with the contemporary setting of the Foundation's building. Displacing Old Masters from conventional museum walls into Ando's galleries had the potential to provoke new ways of looking at and thinking about those works. Curators Judith Mann (Saint Louis Art Museum) and Stephan Wolohojian (Harvard Art Museum), together with Director Matthias Waschek (The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts), selected a wide range of European paintings from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries that would resonate with each other in the context of Ando's building. In tandem, Marjorie B. Cohn (Harvard Art Museum, curator emerita) selected a suite of drawings, which was later installed by Francesca Herndon-Consagra (The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, senior curator). Collectively, the curators considered issues of presentation, narration, and historical discourse, always turning to the building itself for direction.

In his design for the Pulitzer building, Tadao Ando sought to emphasize the effects of ever-changing daylight, which inspired the decision to display paintings in this exhibition without the assistance of electric light. In Ideal (Dis-) Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer, the art is presented without the traditional conventions prescribed by today's museums: works are not equally spaced; heights are neither uniform nor predetermined; spotlights do not highlight particular pictures; and there are no interpretive materials on the walls. Instead, the (dis-)placement of the works helps the viewer to re-imagine the galleries as reminders of historic spaces for which such works were either conceived or in which they were later presented, such as the Grande Galerie of a seventeenth-century palace or the interior of a Renaissance or Baroque church. The Pulitzer also turns on the electric light for the last forty-five minutes of the day. This allows the visitor to see the works of art quickly and efficiently, rather than being conscious of the changing natural light, which induces a slower mode of looking. This installation, thus, not only offers insight into viewing conditions of the past, but it also reflects on how contemporary museum displays shape the viewer's experience.

The Pulitzer's goal of experimentation extends to collaborative programming and outreach. As the Pulitzer is located in Grand Center, a St. Louis neighborhood undergoing revitalization, it strives to explore questions about the social relevance of art. For that reason, the Pulitzer created the position of a community engagement manager with the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis, which is held by Lisa Harper Chang. The directors of education from Harvard Art Museum and the Saint Louis Art Museum, Ray Williams and Bill Appleton, respectively, are jointly working with Harper Chang and the curatorial staff of the Pulitzer to prepare a schedule of innovative civic programs related to the exhibition that will involve both social workers and art historians. Their hope is to develop novel ways of practicing community engagement in art institutions nationwide.

Fortuitous circumstances brought these Old Master works from Harvard Art Museum and the Saint Louis Art Museum to the Pulitzer. We hope that the result of this shared endeavor will inspire future collaborations.