| | Bethlehem, the Traditional Birthplace of Jesus, Celebrates Merriest Christmas in Years
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A Russian tourist touches a column inside the Church of the Nativity, where many Christians believe Jesus Christ was born, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. So far this year, 1.4 million tourists have visited the traditional birthplace of Jesus and 90,000 are expected during the Christmas season, a significant increase over last year, according to Israeli government figures. The numbers of visitors have been rising steadily in recent years. AP Photo/Tara Todras-Whitehill.
By: Dalia Nammari, Associated Press
Tia Goldenberg, Associated Press
BETHLEHEM (AP).- The traditional birthplace of Jesus is celebrating its merriest Christmas in years, as tens of thousands of tourists thronged Bethlehem on Friday for the annual holiday festivities in this biblical West Bank town. Officials said the turnout was shaping up to be the largest since 2000. Unseasonably mild weather, a virtual halt in Israeli-Palestinian violence and a burgeoning economic revival in the West Bank all added to the holiday cheer. By nightfall, a packed Manger Square was awash in red, blue, green and yellow Christmas lights. Merrymakers blasted horns, bands sang traditional Christmas carols in Arabic, boy scout marching bands performed and Palestinian policemen deployed around the town to keep the peace. A group of 30 tourists from Papua New Guinea, all wearing red Santa hats, walked around the nearby Church of the Nativity, built on the site where tradition holds Jesus was born. Both church officials and the Palestinian president voiced hopes for peace ... More |
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Police Searching for the Thief Who Tunneled into a NYC Home and Stole Art
This image provided by the New York Police Dept. shows an Andy Warhol print titled "Superman." AP Photo/New York Police Dept.
Verena Dobnik, Associated Press
NEW YORK, NY (AP).- Authorities are ramping up their effort to solve a Manhattan mystery: Who drilled a hole into the home of a beef fortune heir and stole a collection of iconic artworks by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol? The culprits also made off with surveillance video footage that might have caught them in the act. The New York Police Department released images of the art on Thursday, hoping someone might help solve last month's crime in the trendy Meatpacking District by recognizing works like a well-known Lichtenstein print called "Thinking Nude." Authorities estimate the five-story apartment was burglarized sometime during Thanksgiving week, when owner and art collector Robert Romanoff was away. Calls to Romanoff's home went unanswered Friday. Also taken from ... More | | Jasper Johns Awarded the Julio González Prize by the Government of Valencia in Spain
American artist Jasper Johns is shown at work. AP Photo.
VALENCIA.- The Government of Valencia has awarded the U.S. artist Jasper Johns with the Julio González Prize, an artist considered along with Robert Rauschenberg as the forerunners of American Pop Art. The Julio González Prize awarded by the Generalitat Valenciana, is granted to a distinguished artist who in his own right-has has helped to highlight artistic creation internationally. This year´s edition, has seen fit to propose the granting of the award to artist Jasper Johns, in recognition of his work in the field of visual arts and his contribution to modern art, as was published yesterday in the Official Gazette of the Comunitat Valenciana (DOCV). The granting of the award coincides with the exhibition at the IVAM devoted to this artist which will be held from February 1 to April 24, 2011. The exhibition will comprise some 40 works including paintings, sculptures and drawings, and will have the character of a retrospective focusing in a particular part of his work, in which ... More | | Porcelain Masterpiece to Be Returned to Heirs of Former German Prime Minister
Nereid Sweetmeat Stand. Photo: Courtesy Toledo Museum of Art.
NEW YORK, NY.- Following a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) investigation, the United States has entered into a settlement agreement with the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio that provides for the return to a royal family in Germany of the "Nereid Sweetmeat Stand," a famed Swan Service collection's centerpiece. During the World War II, while on loan to the Dresden Museum from the family of the former prime minister of Saxony, the "Nereid Sweetmeat Stand" was stolen from a castle where it was hidden. The porcelain piece, valued at more than $1 million, was recently located at the Toledo Museum of Art, which has agreed to return it to the heirs of the former prime minister. "ICE is committed to working closely with foreign governments, art dealers, museums, and other organizations to recover stolen works of fine art and antiquities," said James T. Hayes ... More |
 | De Hallen Haarlem Presents the Dutch Premiere of The Krazy House by Rineke Dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra. The Krazy House, 2009. 4-channel HD video installation. Courtesy: Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.
HAARLEM.- De Hallen Haarlem presents the Dutch première of The Krazy House by Rineke Dijkstra. This work consists of a series of photos and a 4-channel video projection of dancing adolescents, and has previously been shown in Berlin and New York. Dijkstra is chiefly known for her series of portraits of bullfighters and adolescents on the beach. The Krazy House is on view from 18 December, 2010, through 13 March, 2011, in De Hallen Haarlem. For The Krazy House (2009) Rineke Dijkstra (Sittard, 1959) returned to Liverpool, where she made her widely praised video work The Buzz Club (1995-97). This latter work subtly captured the disarming vulnerability of young adolescents during a House party. In The Krazy House dancing young people are once again central, against a neutral, white background. On the basis of these two works it is ... More | | National Gallery of Denmark to Present Country's Largest Art Collection in Three Stages for 2011
Wasilly Kandinsky, Planche VIII from the portfolio Kleine Welten, 1922.
DENMARK.- Over the course of 2011 and 2012, the Statens Museum for Kunst, National Gallery of Denmark’s extensive collections of art will be restaged and presented in three separate stages. On 28 May 2011 we will open the new section on “Danish and Nordic Art 1750-1900". On 26 November 2011 this will be followed by “European Art 1300-1800". Finally, “Danish and International Art after 1900” will open in the spring of 2012. The new displays present new art historical readings of the collections and constitute an upgrade of the Gallery’s audience services that includes new analogue and digital offerings. The exhibition spaces, which comprise approximately 6,700 m², will be renovated, and in total the three separate displays will present around 1,500 works of art to the public. The three new displays will constitute independent sections with largely separate profiles – they will appear as three muse ... More | | Thematic and Chronological Survey of Nan Goldin's Work in Berlin at the State Museum of Modern Art
Nan Goldin - Berlin Work. Photo: Jansch / Berlinische Galerie.
BERLIN.- Nan Goldin’s photographs are pictures of her life. Their unending wealth and shimmering colours show Goldin’s “family” – her friends, acquaintances, lovers. After leaving her parents’ house at the age of 14, she became part of a subcultural scene of drag queens, transvestites and homosexuals, first in Boston and then in New York’s Lower East Side from 1978 onwards. In 1991 she came to Berlin for one year on a grant from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and remained here, with only brief interruptions, until 1994. Since then, she has been returning to the city repeatedly. The exhibition NAN GOLDIN – BERLIN WORK by the State Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture presents 80 selected photographic works produced in Berlin between 1984 and 2009, as well as previously unpublished archive material from the artist’s own collection. Two tableaux of wo ... More |
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Exhibition Dedicated Exclusively to Contemporary Cutouts at Hamburger Kunsthalle
Katharina Hinsberg (*1967), X x A4, 2010. Canson Mi-Teintes, Rot-Orange (#453), 400 x 650 x 650 cm © Coutesy K. Hinsberg; Galerie Klein, Köln © VG Bild Kunst, Bonn. Photo: Kay Riechers.
HAMBURG.- Scherenschnitte, or “paper cuts,” have reemerged as a highly relevant trend in contemporary art in recent years. What is interesting are the different ways in which artists deal with form and content within the “cutout” medium: Many experiment with unusual techniques and materials, using them to conquer three-dimensional space. They emancipate cutouts from the pure, flat surface, rendering them a spatial or sculptural object. Cut. Scherenschnitte 1970-2010 is the Kunsthalle’s first exhibition dedicated exclusively to contemporary cutouts. The cutouts of Romantic German painter Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810) have been an important influence for many young artists. Inspired by his ideas of giving the viewer space for his or her imagination ... More | | Provocative Portrait of Photographer Francesca Woodman, Her Artist Family, and Tragic Demise
Francesca was a precocious RISD graduate, as a despondent 22-year-old, she committed suicide.
NEW YORK, NY.- Film Forum will present the U.S. theatrical premiere of THE WOODMANS, opening Wednesday, January 19. Francesca Woodman’s haunting B&W images, many of them nude self-portraits, now reside in the pantheon of great photography from the late 20th century. The daughter of artists Betty and Charles Woodman (she a ceramicist and he a painter/ photographer), Francesca was a precocious RISD graduate, who came to New York with the intention of setting the art world on fire. But in 1981, as a despondent 22-year-old, she committed suicide. THE WOODMANS beautifully interweaves the young artist’s work (including experimental videos and diary passages) with interviews with the parents who have nurtured her professional reputation these past 30 years, while continuing to make art of their own in the face of tragedy. ... More | | Detroit Institute of Arts Unveils New Hand, Shadow, and String Puppet Gallery
Howdy Doody, Velma Dawson, 1948.
DETROIT, MI.- Some very important puppets (VIPS) went on view, when the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) unveiled a new permanent gallery featuring hand, shadow, and string puppets from the museum’s Paul McPharlin Puppetry Collection. The collection comprises more than 800 puppets, and the array of puppets on view will change every six months. Rare 18th-century American and Italian hand puppets and iconic string marionettes, including the original Howdy Doody—used in the 1940s during the early years of broadcast television—are included in this opening exhibition in the new puppet gallery. “Our puppets have long been a favorite with the public and we are pleased to have a selection of them on view in time for the holidays,” said Graham W. J. Beal, DIA director. The first exhibition features three different sets of puppets: rare, early 18th-century Venetian puppets such as Capitano, a military captain, and Pa ... More |
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New Abstract Works by New York Painter John Zinsser at Graham Gallery
John Zinsser, The Outer World, 2010. Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches.
NEW YORK, NY.- An exhibition of new abstract works by New York painter John Zinsser is on view at Graham Gallery through January 4th, 2011. Zinsser’s current exhibition follows his installation of drawings in the main gallery last season, Art Dealer Archipelagoes, which charted the history of New York’s post-war gallery development through a series of “maps.” These new works on canvas again source that history, but through strictly formalist and quotational terms. As Zinsser describes, “Early attempts, with my own hand- formulated hyper-physical paint, made the individual brushstrokes start to look more like ‘Ryman-on-steroids.’ Not only is impasto passage exaggerated, and made specific – color is much more chromatic, as well.” The two-color works play with conventions from Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Monochrome painting traditions. In ... More | | Classic Images, Desirable Portraits, Contemporary Art Among Top Lots at Swann Galleries' Auction
Man Ray, Serge Lifar in “Romeo and Juliet,” silver print, 1926, $16,800.
NEW YORK, NY.- On December 9, Swann Galleries conducted an auction devoted to Important Photographs & Photobooks, and top prices were achieved for classic photos by well-known artists, early examples of the emerging art form, and cutting-edge contemporary works. The sale’s top lot was the Brett Weston portfolio Twenty Photographs 1970-1977, silver prints, 1970-77, printed 1978, one of an edition of 35, which sold for $33,600*. Also by Weston was the transcendent Mendenhall Glacier, silver print, 1973, $10,200, and a lot of three project prints by Edward and Brett Weston, which were featured in a 1960s television show called “The Art of Seeing,” $7,800. Other celebrated portfolios were Berenice Abbott’s New York II, with 12 silver prints that document the Big Apple from 1930 through 1950, from an edition of 65, printed 1979, $21,600; and The ... More | | Karola Kraus' Inaugural Press Conference and Introduction of the MUMOK's 2011-2013 Program
Karola Kraus. Photo: Lukas Beck © MUMOK.
VIENNA.- In her inaugural press conference, Karola Kraus, the new director of the MUMOK, reinforces the potential of the museum’s collection as well as the possibilities arising from the building’s architecture designed by Ortner & Ortner. In her next years as the museum’s director, Kraus plans to further develop the interaction of elements represented by the museum’s collection, exhibitions, and architecture: “My main interest is the exhibition and its sensual presence. A new program is in the works that is intended to introduce specific artistic directions. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the medium can no longer be considered the decisive factor. I therefore intend to introduce a variety of styles to the artistic debate. The museum’s outstanding collection and the architecture of Ortner & Ortner have provided the MUMOK with a great deal of prestige whose presence is felt far beyond V ... More |
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Metropolitan Museum Celebrates the Holidays by Opening on "Holiday Monday" December 27
NEW YORK, NY.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be open to the public on Monday, December 27 (Christmas/New Year's Week), as part of the Museum's popular "Holiday Mondays" program. Emily K. Rafferty, President of the Metropolitan Museum, commented, Coming to the Met on this particular Monday has itself become a holiday tradition for many of our visitors. We are delighted to continue to provide this very special day for tourists who are in New York for the holidays, families that wish to spend the long weekend together, and everyone whose busy schedule usually leaves little time to enjoy the restorative power of art." By opening its main building on the Monday after Christmas, the Museum will offer visitors an additional opportunity to view the landmark international loan exhibition The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty before it closes to the public January 2. To date, the exhibition—which op ... More
Getty Villa Announces Exhibition that Presents Early Photographs of the Holy Land
LAS ANGELES, CA.- In Search of Biblical Lands: From Jerusalem to Jordan in 19th-Century Photography on view at the Getty Villa from March 2 through September 12, 2011, features some of the first photographic images of the eastern margins of the Mediterranean. This region is one of the most photographed places on earth, with subjects ranging from architectural sites to evocative geography, scenes of pastoral life, and its people. The photographs on view in this exhibition reveal what the travelers of the 1800s discovered on their journey: a landscape of belief, at once familiar yet still mysterious. In Search of Biblical Lands: From Jerusalem to Jordan in 19th-Century Photography features rare, early daguerreotypes, salted-paper prints, and albumen silver prints, created between the 1840s and 1900s by the leading photographers of the time, including Felice Beato, Maxime Du Camp, Auguste Salzmann, James Graham, Louis Vignes, Fran ... More
Newark Museum Recieves $500,000 Challenge Grant from National Endowment For The Humanities
NEWARK, NJ.- The Newark Museum this week received a half-million-dollar National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant in support of its African art initiatives – the largest of eight awarded in New Jersey and representing almost 60 percent of the total monies awarded. The NEH matching grant was awarded to African Art at the Newark Museum: Building for the Second Century, a project directed by Dr. Christa Clarke, Curator of African Art and Senior Curator, Arts of Africa and the Americas . Museum Director Mary Sue Sweeney Price said the grant requires the Museum to raise $1.5 million in matching operating and endowment dollars to fund renovation and expansion of the Museum's highly-respected African galleries and to support programs, publications and a new assistant curator for the Arts of Africa collection. According to the NEH grant announcement, challenge grants strengthen the humanities by encouraging non-federal ... More
Christie's Appoints New Asian Business Development Director Reaffirming Christie's Long-term Commitment to Asia
HONG KONG/NEW YORK.- Christie's, the world's leading art business, announced the appointment of Xin Li (李昕) as Asian Business Development Director. In this capacity, she will be responsible for developing new business in Asia and managing relations with Christie’s most important private collectors from Mainland China and Asia. Reporting to François Curiel, President of Asia, and Marc Porter, Chairman of the Americas, Ms. Li will work closely with Ken Yeh, Chairman of Asia, and the International Heads of Christie's Impressionist & Modern, Post War & Contemporary, Jewelry, Old Masters and Asian art departments. Ms. Li will be based in New York and will travel regularly and extensively throughout Asia. She will also participate in all of Christie’s major sales in London, New York, Geneva, Paris and Hong Kong, in order to facilitate the auction needs of Christie's clients. François Curiel, President of A ... More
National Gallery of Canada Appoints Neo-Classical European Art Expert as Its Chief Curator
OTTAWA, ON.- The National Gallery of Canada (NGC) announced today the appointment of Paul Lang, an expert in neo-classical European Art, as its new Deputy Director and Chief Curator. An accomplished scholar who holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Geneva, Mr. Lang has been Chief Curator at the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève in Switzerland since 2000. He will assume his new role at the NGC on April 1, 2011. During his tenure at the Musée d’art et d’histoire, Mr. Lang oversaw the acquisition of several important works, most recently Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's masterpiece La Jeune femme à la fontaine (c. 1860), purchased in June 2010. He organized numerous exhibitions, including the widely praised Richard Wagner, Visions d’artistes. D’Auguste Renoir à Anselm Kiefer, presented at the Musée Rath in Geneva in 2005-06 and at le Musée de la Musique in Paris in 2007-08, as well as Corot en Sui ... More
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