In 1911, Edgar Degas’ ballerinas made their stunning first debut at Harvard, wowing crowds for nine days in April with their graceful tutus and practiced movements.

Now, almost 100 years later, they have returned for an encore.

From August 1 until November 27, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum will host “Degas at Harvard,” an exhibition of over 60 of the French artist’s pieces, in media ranging from sculpture to sonnet.

The exhibition—which consists exclusively of pieces owned by or promised to Harvard—will trace the University’s relationship with the artist, one that began early and was deepened by the interest of long-serving museum curators and the generosity of wealthy donors.

“Our interest really was to try to explore the intellectual position of the artist vis-à-vis the museum and Harvard more broadly,” said Stephan Wolohojian, a curator at the University Art Museum’s Department of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts, and one of the two full-time curators of the exhibit.

A lecture series featuring leading Degas experts, including Richard Thomsen of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Hollis Clayson of Northwestern, and an undergraduate seminar led by Wolohojian, will accompany the exhibit.

Scenes of ballerinas, nudes, and jockeys at the racetrack dominate Degas’ work, and the curators have hung the exhibit thematically to highlight the ways Degas reworked familiar images to generate “dialogue” between the pieces.

“That’s what thrilled us most: to be able to juxtapose all those works,” said Edward Saywell, the Cunningham curatorial associate in the department of drawings.

The largest space in the three-room exhibit, for example, contrasts sculptures cast in bronze, like “Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen,” against the rich colors of “Two Dancers Entering the Stage” and other works of ballerinas in rehearsal.

“QUESTIONABLE TASTE”

The Fogg exhibit in 1911 was the first and only solo show held at a museum during Degas’ lifetime. It was considered at the time a bold move by Denmon W. Ross, a Fogg curator looking to attract a younger audience with contemporary art.

“[Degas’] subjects were considered in questionable taste—jockeys and naked ladies in their bathtubs,” said Marjorie B. Cohn, the Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints emerita, who wrote an article for the exhibit’s catalog.

“Naked ladies were fine as long as you pretended they were Venus,” she added.

One of the newest acquisitions of Degas’ nudes came from Emily Pulitzer, of the Pulitzer Foundation, who worked at the museum from 1957 to 1964 and has promised four of the exhibit’s works.

One of these works, “Dancers, Nude Study,” will be donated to the museum in honor of the retirement of James Cuno, who was director of the museums until December 2002.