| | Google Offers Virtual Tours of 17 of the Top Museums Using Street View Technology
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Tate Britain gallery director Nicholas Serota speaks during the launch of the Google's Art Project website. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth.
By: Mike Collett-White
LONDON (REUTERS).- Google aims to bring the world's great art galleries into the home with a new website that offers virtual tours using Street View technology, the ability to build private collections and ultra-high resolution images. While most big galleries have been busy making their works accessible online for years, experts told a launch at London's Tate Britain gallery on Tuesday that Google's site was looking to take the online art experience to a new level. "It could be the game changer," said Julian Raby of the Freer Gallery of Art, part of the Smithsonian in Washington DC, which is one of 17 galleries taking part in the project. Nelson Mattos, VP Engineering at Google, said the Art Project site would allow children from Latin America, India and Africa, who were unlikely to see the originals, to come close to the experience on the internet. "This really represents a major step forward in the way people are ... More |
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Smithsonian Institution's Governing Board Seeks Changes After Video Flap at Portrait Gallery
Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution gestures during a news conference. AP Photo/Evan Vucci.
By: Brett Zongker, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP).- The Smithsonian Institution's governing board on Monday called for changes in how potentially objectionable exhibits are handled while also standing behind the head of the museum complex amid accusations of censorship. Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough came under fire after deciding a couple months ago to remove a gay artist's video that depicted ants crawling on a crucifix in an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. The scene angered some in Congress and a Catholic group that called it sacrilegious. The board said it must be prepared to handle museum disputes and guard freedom of curators in the face of political pressure from Congress or other groups. "We're in the business of often doing exhibits that are about flash points in American history, flash points in ... More | | Overview of Jasper Johns' Career Opens at the Valencian Institute of Modern Art
A woman looks at an artwork, entitled Untitled, 2006, by US artist Jasper Johns. EPA/JUAN CARLOS CARDENAS.
VALENCIA.- Exhibitions devoted to Jasper Johns are rare in general and even less frequent in Europe. The show that the IVAM is now presenting, featuring about a hundred works, consists of pieces that range over fifty years of one of the most enthralling and hallowed careers in the world of contemporary art. It includes paintings from American and European museums (National Gallery of Art, Washington; MFAH, Houston; Whitney Museum, New York; The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica; Milwaukee Art Museum; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate, London, among others), and from private collections which show the evolution of an exceptional oeuvre. The presence of these works is completed by a substantial loan from the artist which includes, among other pieces, the largest sculpture that he has made, created in 2007 and never previously exhibited. There are also inks on plastic and drawings hung on the IVAM’s picture rails. The exhibi ... More | | Egypt's Museums and Ancient Monuments Declared Safe by Authorities
Dr. Zahi Hawass, Director for the Supreme Council of Antiquities, talks on the phone. AP Photo/Tara Todras-Whitehill.
By: Christopher Torchia, Associated Press
CAIRO (AP).- Egypt's museums and ancient monuments, including the Pyramids of Giza, are secure despite upheaval in the streets, and officials recovered nearly 300 archaeological items that were plundered by armed Bedouins in the Sinai Peninsula, the government said Tuesday. The week-old uprising, marked by huge street protests, deadly clashes with police, economic paralysis and a mass exodus of foreigners, raised fears of major theft or destruction of Egypt's treasures. Some museums and antiquities were threatened in a series of close calls. Now, however, the Egyptian military is protecting the pyramids, the temple city of Luxor, the Nile cruise destination of Aswan and other major sites, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told The Associated Press. Military vehicles blocked access to the pyramids near ... More |
 | Art from China's Forbidden City on View at the Metropolitan Museum in New York
Panel (hanging). From Yanghe Jingshe Cloisonné and zitan, 57 ¼ x 29 ¾ inches (145.5 x 75.5 cm).
By: Basil Katz
NEW YORK (REUTERS).- Objects and artwork from the Forbidden City's hidden inner sanctum, a sealed off compound built in high luxury for the Chinese emperor's retirement, will be unveiled in New York on Tuesday. "The Emperor's Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City" opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 1 and runs until May 1. The show features 90 objects from the 27-building garden sanctuary, built at Emperor Qianlong's request in the northeast corner of Beijing's Forbidden City. Known as the Qianlong garden, the compound was supposed to be for the emperor's retirement, but he never relinquished the throne and the space remained unchanged and unoccupied since its 1776 completion. It is made up of separate buildings meant for different activities, such as the "supreme chamber of cultivating harmony," or the "building of luminous clouds." This secret garden, which curators said showcased the ... More | | Donald Ellis Achieves Record Sales for Native American Art at New York's Winter Antiques Show
Complex Mask (Donati Studio Mask) Yup’ik; Kuskokwim Region, Alaska , circa. 1890-1905, wood, pigment, sinew, vegetal fiber, cotton thread, replaced feathers, height: 34 inches.
NEW YORK, NY.- As New York’s Winter Antiques Show came to the end of its ten-day run, 21 to 30 January 2011, Canadian dealer Donald Ellis Gallery reported record sales. Not only did Ellis establish a new record for any Native American item twice, when he sold two extraordinary Eskimo masks from the estate of the Surrealist artist Enrico Donati (1909-2008), his sales at the Show of US$8.4 million exceeded the record total for any auction in this field. Each year Donald Ellis publishes a scholarly catalogue in conjunction with the fair and, in addition to the 36 works sold at the Show, he sold 9 other objects immediately prior to it for around US$1.3 million. The Donati Fifth Avenue mask was the first of the two record masks to sell, breaking the record at a price in excess of US$2.1 million, and then this record was also broken when the Donati Studio mask sold for in excess of US$2.5 million. Yup’ik Esk ... More | | Monet's Water Lilies Offers Rare Opportunity to Experience Great Impressionist's Work as Intended
With Claude Monet's water lilies painting behind him, Dean Yoder, conservator of paintings for the Cleveland Museum of Art, looks over x-rays of the painting. AP Photo/Amy Sancetta.
KANSAS CITY, MO.- For the first time in more than 30 years, all three panels of a remarkable water lily triptych by the preeminent Impressionist Claude Monet will be on view together, from April 9 to Aug. 7, at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The exhibition reunites the right-hand panel, from the Nelson-Atkins collection, with panels owned by the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art. The three were last exhibited together in 1979. With the exception of a triptych in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, this is the only Monet triptych in the United States. “What this show does is it puts our Monet in context,” said Ian Kennedy, Louis L. and Adelaide C. Ward Curator, European Painting and Sculpture at the Nelson-Atkins. “This will be a much more intimate experience of his work than what you normally get in museums. It’s a very focused experience of Monet, without distractions, and yo ... More |
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Representations of Dance in the Art of Modernism at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover
A statue, entitled Silver Torso,by US-Ukranian artist Alexander Archipenko. EPA/PETER STEFFEN.
HANNOVER.- “No dance without ecstasy!” proclaimed the famous dancer, choreographer and dancing instructor Mary Wigman (1886-1973). Born in Hanover, this icon of German Ausdruckstanz (expressive dance) counts among the pioneers of the life reform movement in Germany in the first third of the 20th century. During her career as a dancer she broke the rigid corset of obsolete convention, encouraged her students to express themselves freely as individuals and propagated the human body’s natural diversity of movement as the basis of free expression in modern dance. The Sprengel Museum Hannover is now devoting an exhibition to representations of dance in the art of modernism. Comprising more than a hundred works from the period between the turn of the century and the 1930s, the exhibition will at the same time afford visitors an insight into the revolutionary developments that took place in the dialogue betwee ... More | | High Museum of Art Announces "Picasso to Warhol: Twelve Modern Masters"
Pablo Picasso, Girl before a Mirror, Boisgeloup, 1932. Oil on canvas, 64 x 51 1/4 in. Gift of Mrs. Simon Guggenheim. © 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society, NY.
ATLANTA, GA.- The High Museum of Art will continue its collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), with the exclusive presentation of the major exhibition “Picasso to Warhol: Twelve Modern Masters” beginning October 2011. This exhibition will present approximately 100 works of art created by 12 of the most iconic artists from the 20th century: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp, Giorgio De Chirico, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol. “Picasso to Warhol” will be one of the largest concentrations of modern art masterpieces to ever be exhibited in the southeastern United States. Co-organized by the High Museum of Art and MoMA, the exhibition will be on view only in Atlanta from October 15, 2011, through April 29 ... More | | New Video Installation by Diana Thater Fills Interior of Hauser & Wirth's Piccadilly Gallery
Chernobyl, 2010. Installation: 6 projectors, 6 media players, Lee Filters. Installation view, ' Chernobyl ', Hauser & Wirth London, Piccadilly, 2011 © Diana Thater. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Peter Mallet.
LONDON.- A new video installation by Diana Thater fills the interior of Hauser & Wirth’s Piccadilly gallery with images of the post-nuclear landscape of Chernobyl. For this work, Thater spent time in the ‘Zone of Alienation’ which surrounds the site of the nuclear disaster, filming the eroded architecture and wildlife of the one-hundred mile wide radioactive territory. The animals thrive in the absence of humans, demonstrating a wilderness of man’s making. The installation focuses on the rare and endangered Przewalski’s Horse. Once facing certain extinction in its native habitat in central Asia, this sub-species of the wild horse now roams freely in the ‘Zone of Alienation’. The desolate remains of an abandoned movie theatre in Prypiat, a city founded to house the Chernobyl nuclear plant workers, forms ... More |
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The Mauritshuis Acquires Unique Painting by Jan Steen from a Private Collection
Jan Steen (1626-1679), Moses and Pharaoh’s Crown, c.1670, Canvas, 78 x79 cm. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague.
THE HAGUE.- The Mauritshuis has acquired the exceptional history painting, Moses and Pharaoh’s Crown by Jan Steen (1626-1679), from a private collection. The museum already owns a superb collection of fourteen paintings by Steen, including undisputed highlights such as Girl Eating Oysters and ‘As the Old Sing, So Twitter The Young’. Until now, however, a history painting by Steen was lacking, so Moses and Pharaoh’s Crown represents a very welcome addition to the Mauritshuis’s collection. The skilfully painted canvas depicts a little-known episode from the childhood of Moses and demonstrates Jan Steen’s exceptional talent as a storyteller. The new acquisition has been made possible thanks to the support of the BankGiro Lottery and will be on display as part of the exhibition Spice of Life: Jan Steen in the Mauritshuis (3 March – 13 June 2011). Jan Steen’s paintings are at ... More | | Pioneers of Modern British Sculpture Offered in Bonhams' 20th Century British Art Sale
A bronze horse conceived in 1972 by Dame Elisabeth Frink R.A. is estimated to sell for £200,000 - £300,000. Photo: Bonhams.
LONDON.- A monumental work by Sir Anthony Caro, described by the Director of Tate Britain Stephen Deuchar, as “Britain’s most celebrated living sculptor”, will be offered in the 20th Century British Art sale on the 9th March at Bonhams, New Bond Street. Caro’s work is currently taking centre stage at the Royal Academy of Arts Modern British Sculpture Exhibition in London. Conceived in 1976, the five metre, rusted and varnished steel sculpture entitled Lagoon is estimated to sell for £100,000 – 150,000. Caro is regarded as an artist who constantly pushes the boundaries of sculpture and throughout his career has endeavoured to create work that is truly abstract, without reference to anything else but itself. Through this exploration, Caro brought sculpture down to ground level by removing the traditional plinth. His sculptures are highly conceptual ... More | | Moroccan: Magic Orientalist Pictures & Islamic Art Announced at Sotheby's in Paris
Jacques Majorelle, Borjs Verts. Estimate €90,000-120,000. Photo: Sotheby's.
PARIS.- Sotheby’s next sale of Orientalist art in Paris, on March 30, will include a selection of works by artists who lived in Morocco. Several landscapes and scenes from Moroccan daily life by Jacques Majorelle reflect his close links to the country where he settled in 1917. He drew inspiration from the city of Marrakesh and its environs, expressing all the chromatic variety of Moroccan culture in his Borjs Verts (estimate €90,000-120,000) and Souk à Marrakech (est. €40,000-60,000). Giuseppe Signorini’s Portrait of a Musician and Giulio Rosati’s Two Riders at the Gallop, both watercolours, are highly representative of the Orientalist taste of Italian artists in the 19th century (est. €20,000-30,000). Two vividly colourful works by José Cruz Herrera evoke sensual Moroccan beauty: Portrait of a Young Berber Woman (est. €40,000-60,000) and Three Moroccan Beauties (est. €40,000-60,000). T ... More |
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Work by John Marin On View this Summer at the Portland Museum of Art
PORTLAND, ME.- Although John Marin (1870-1953) was regarded as one of America’s most important painters at the time of his death, scholarship and museum exhibitions to date have focused on his early work coloring popular understanding of his life’s work. Featuring approximately 60 paintings, drawings, and watercolors, John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury, on view June 23 through October 10, 2011 at the Portland Museum of Art, will concentrate on the late period of John Marin’s career between 1933 and 1953. This exhibition, the first in-depth examination of the artist since 1990, will explore his late career, will add nuance to our understanding of his work, and will reclaim Marin’s reputation as an artist committed to developing a modern visual language of landscape and place in an era preoccupied with complete abstraction. Major loans from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Modern Art, New Yo ... More
Digital Collection Highlights Photos Taken In Corpus Christi During Great Depression
AUSTIN, TX.- The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, has made available online the digital collection "The Itinerant Photographer: Photographs of Corpus Christi Businesses in the 1930s." The collection, which can be viewed on the Ransom Center's website, highlights photographs taken of businesses in Corpus Christi during the Great Depression. The project to make these materials accessible online was funded by a TexTreasures grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act. Until now, access to the collection was limited, due to the fragility of the collection material and its uncataloged status. The Center has now constructed a Web site as a portal to the itinerant photographer collection. It is an introduction to the collection and ... More
DeCordova's Sixth Exhibition in the Platform Series Features Work by Barbara Gallucci
LINCOLN, MA.- DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum presents the installation of Barbara Gallucci’s Utopiary Terrace, the sixth exhibition of the PLATFORM series, on display through April 24, 2011. In her functional installation, the New York and Boston-based sculptor redesigned the Museum’s 3rd floor lobby with her “topia” beanbag chairs and cork-covered terrace. Referencing manicured lawns and the designed landscape, the installation reflects Gallucci’s long-standing interest in iconic mid-century modern furniture design and the role of nature in contemporary culture. Installed in a glass-enclosed area of the museum, Gallucci’s Utopiary Terrace addresses deCordova’s site as an indoor and outdoor venue for contemporary art. Utopiary Terrace is a site-specific installation using over-scaled beanbag chairs covered in “grassy” shag chenille that is installed in the 3rd Floor Lobby on ... More
Pair of Remarkable Ferraris Offered for First Time in More Than Three Decades at RM's Amelia Island Sale
BLENHEIM, ONTARIO.- A rare and highly original 1953 Ferrari 212 Inter Coupé by Vignale (s/n 0267 EU), which surfaced from a Mid-Western garage last week over 25 years after it was first parked, is set to cross the auction podium in Northern Florida, March 12, as part of RM Auctions’ annual Amelia Island sale. Considered one of the most original examples in existence, the early production Ferrari 212 Inter Coupé by Vignale, chassis number 0267 EU, is joined by one of the three 1952 Ferrari 340 Mexico Berlinettas, chassis number 0224 AT as the latest feature attractions for RM’s March 12 sale. Offered from the same owner, the upcoming auction represents the first time each has come to market in over three decades. “We are honored to have been selected to present these important Ferraris at our upcoming Amelia Island sale by their current long-term owner. Offered for the first time in decades, each boasts a fa ... More
Yearlong Study Results: Creative Time and SMU Release Recommendations on Fostering the Arts in Dallas
DALLAS, TX.- A series of recommendations for fostering the arts in Dallas will be released today by SMU's Meadows School of the Arts and Creative Time, a New York-based public arts organization. In October 2009 Creative Time received one of the inaugural two Meadows Prize artist residency awards from the Meadows School. Creative Time's residency has taken the form of a yearlong study of the Dallas art community to identify strengths and potential areas for growth. During the course of three weeklong visits to Dallas over the past year, Creative Time's team met with a wide range of members of the art community, including artists, curators, collectors, gallery owners, visual and performing arts organization leaders, school administrators, philanthropists, writers, community organizers and city officials. "Our goal was to begin an inclusive dialogue about where Dallas could focus energies to nurture its artistic life, a conversation that we hope will continue long after our residen ... More
Save America's Treasures Grant Program Announces $14.3 Million in Awards
WASHINGTON, DC.- Today, the National Park Service (NPS) and the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH) jointly announced the awarding of $14.3 million in federal competitive Save America's Treasures (SAT) grants. The grants are made in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and Save America's Treasures's private partner, the National Trust for Historic Preservation. With the grants, 61 organizations and agencies will conserve nationally significant cultural and historic sites, buildings, objects, documents, and collections. "These Save America's Treasures grants will preserve the physical fabric of our history and the rich diversity of America's story, as told by its artists, scholars, and other notable figures. These awards also honor the hundreds of volunteers, organizations, and communities whose energy and investment are ensuring t ... More
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