Claude Monet was undoubtedly the most important of all the Impressionist painters and his water lily paintings represent the culminating moment in his career. Monet’s famous garden at Giverny provided the inspiration for the paintings. The exhibition will bring to life the importance and beauty of this garden through a range of archival photographs, as well as an early, rarely seen film from 1915, showing Monet painting outdoors in his garden.

Monet’s Water Lilies will reunite the three panels of an exceptionally impressive water lily triptych, created by Monet between 1915 and 1926. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and the Cleveland Museum of Art each own one panel of the triptych and the exhibition will offer a rare opportunity to bring the works together. This will be the first time that this reunion has occurred for more than 30 years. With the single exception of a triptych in the Museum of Modern Art, this is the only triptych by Monet in the United States.

The exhibition will be on view in Kansas City April 9-August 7, 2011, before traveling to St. Louis. The exhibition will travel to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2015.