Bruce Nauman : "Elusive Signs" at Museum of Contemporary Art

Friday, 01 September 2006 09:40

North Miami, FL – Recognized as one of America’s most provocative and innovative artists working today, Bruce Nauman addresses the essential elements of human existence, challenging the parameters of contemporary art through nontraditional materials.

A major retrospective exhibition of Nauman’s work in neon and fluorescent light will be on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) from October 13, 2006 through January 7, 2007.  Titled Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works with Light,

Read more: [[Bruce Nauman : "Elusive Signs" at Museum of Contemporary Art]]

All the Best ~ The Deutsche Bank Collection and Zaha Hadid

Friday, 01 September 2006 10:48

Singapore - After its great success at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin and the Hara Museum in Tokyo, the anniversary show of the Deutsche Bank Collection is now making a guest appearance at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) from September 1 until November 20, 2006.  With this exhibition series, the world’s largest corporate collection celebrates its commitment to contemporary art, which is now entering its twenty-seventh year.

Read more: [[All the Best ~ The Deutsche Bank Collection and Zaha Hadid]]

Rubens and His Printmakers at The Getty Center

Friday, 01 September 2006 11:18

Los Angeles, CA - Peter Paul Rubens employed a small army of artists to make prints after his most successful paintings, drawings, and tapestry designs, thus increasing his fame throughout Europe.  This exhibition explores the close working relationship between Rubens and his printmakers, elucidating a fascinating aspect of artistic collaboration. Not satisfied with making mere reproductions of his pictures, Rubens encouraged his artists to modify his compositions, which he also often reworked.  In attempting to meet Rubens' strict demands, his printmakers contributed significantly to the development of Western printmaking techniques.

Read more: [[Rubens and His Printmakers at The Getty Center]]

Erró - Prints at the Reykjavík Art Museum

Written by Larry Calhoun Wednesday, 06 July 2011 20:25

Reykjavík, Iceland - Erró is a master narrator with images.  His works when viewed in series as he has created is somewhat like glancing through chapters of a colorful and complex story.  He combines cut-outs from cartoon strips, art history books, magazines, and postcards and makes new visual episodes that seize viewers one way or the other regardless of their interests, prior knowledge and cultural background.

Read more: [[Erró - Prints at the Reykjavík Art Museum]]

National Gallery of Ireland : Landscapes from the Collection

Friday, 01 September 2006 12:46

Dublin, Ireland - This exhibition of over 50 watercolors and drawings, examines artist’s depictions of scenic locations in Europe.  Ideal landscapes inspired by Claude Lorrain’s classical views of the Italian Campagna are featured alongside topographical views of Venice and Rome produced for the tourist market.  The selected works, drawn from the National Gallery of Ireland’s collection, reflect changes in taste and developments in travel, and highlight the historical importance of watercolors in forming public perceptions of ‘foreign’ places.

Read more: [[National Gallery of Ireland : Landscapes from the Collection]]

NYS Museum Hosts Studio Museum in Harlem Exhibit

Friday, 01 September 2006 15:03

ALBANY, NY – REPRESENT: Selections from The Studio Museum in Harlem opens at the New York State Museum on September 9^th, marking the Studio Museum’s first exhibition as part of the Bank of America Great Art Series.  This exhibition, open through Feb. 25, 2007 in the Museum’s West Gallery, is the 16^th installment of the Great Art Exhibition and Education Program, which brings art from New York State’s leading art museums to the NY State Museum.

“The State Museum is delighted to welcome the Studio Museum in Harlem to the Bank of America Great Art Series,” said State Museum Director Dr. Clifford Siegfried.  “We are excited about the opportunity to showcase these outstanding selections from the premiere institution for the presentation of artworks created by artists of African descent.”

Read more: [[NYS Museum Hosts Studio Museum in Harlem Exhibit]]

John Maeda ~Nature~at Lentos Museum of Modern Art

Saturday, 02 September 2006 09:46

Linz, Austria - For the third time the basement of the Lentos Museum of Modern Art in Linz is one of the venues for the renowned Ars Electronica Festival.

Read more: [[John Maeda ~Nature~at Lentos Museum of Modern Art]]

FIVE CENTURIES OF INDIAN MASTERPIECES AT MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

Saturday, 02 September 2006 10:37

BOSTON, MA - Domains of Wonder: Masterworks of Indian Painting, which opens at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) on September 20, features more than 100 of the finest examples of Indian painting, as well as two bound manuscripts, spanning five centuries––the 14^th century through the colonial period.  Drawn from the renowned Edward Binney 3^rd Collection at the San Diego Museum of Art––the largest and most important holding of South Asian painting outside of India––this is the first time these master paintings have circulated as a nationally touring exhibition, and is the first major exhibition of Indian art to be held in Boston in more than two decades. Domains of Wonder will be on view in the MFA’s Torf Gallery through November 26, 2006.

Read more: [[FIVE CENTURIES OF INDIAN MASTERPIECES AT MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON]]

High Museum of Art Hosts Masterworks from the Louvre’s Collections

Written by Katrina Amaro Friday, 06 January 2012 22:40

ATLANTA, GA – In October 2006, the High Museum of Art will launch an unprecedented, three-year partnership with the Musée du Louvre that will bring hundreds of works of art from Paris to Atlanta.  Through the “Louvre Atlanta” partnership, the High will present a series of long-term, thematic exhibitions featuring masterworks from the Louvre’s collections, many of which have never been seen before in the United States.  By Artists Such As Raphael, Poussin, Rembrandt and Velasquez.  Lead patronage for the project has been provided by longtime High Museum Board Member Anne Cox Chambers, who is joined by Accenture as Presenting Partner, and UPS, Turner Broadcasting Corporation, The Coca-Cola Company, Delta Airlines and AXA Art Insurance as Lead Corporate Partners.

The central exhibition of the first year, “Kings as Collectors,” will feature 32 works assembled during the reigns of Kings Louis XIV and Louis XVI, including two very special masterpieces from the Louvre’s collection—Raphael’s “Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione” and Nicolas Poussin’s “Et in Arcadia Ego.”  The exhibition will be on view from October 14, 2006 through September 2, 2007 in the High’s new Anne Cox Chambers Wing, which will be devoted exclusively to “Louvre Atlanta” for the entire three-year partnership.

Two shorter focus exhibitions featuring drawings and decorative items from the royal collections will complement “Kings as Collectors” with consecutive presentations throughout the year.  On view concurrently with “Kings as Collectors” through January 28, 2007, “The King’s Drawings” will bring together approximately 60 works from the Louvre’s extensive holdings to become one of the most significant exhibitions of old master drawings ever mounted in the Southeastern United States.  More than two thirds of these works have never been exhibited in the United States. From March 3, 2007 through September 2, 2007, “Decorative Arts of the Kings” will showcase luxury items manufactured for the Royal Families and their court—none of which, according to the Louvre’s records, have traveled to the United States since they entered the Louvre’s collection. 

“This is an unprecedented opportunity to share many remarkable masterpieces from the Louvre with audiences from throughout the Southeast,” said Michael E. Shapiro, Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr. Director of the High Museum of Art.  “The ‘Louvre Atlanta’ collaboration continues the High’s longstanding strategy of partnering with international institutions to bring the world’s great art to Atlanta.  The project will allow both the Louvre and the High to grow educational initiatives both inside and beyond museum walls, to deepen the visitor experience, and to advance scholarship and professional development.” 

“This is a great opportunity for the Louvre to develop international collaborations with art institutions in new cities like Atlanta,” said Henri Loyrette, President/Director of the Musée du Louvre.  “The High Museum brings a level of national stature and experience to this partnership that will benefit the Louvre.  We have much to learn from one another and look forward to a mutually beneficial exchange of art and ideas.”

“Louvre Atlanta” Year One Exhibitions

Over the course of the three-year partnership, “Louvre Atlanta” will trace the history and development of the Louvre from the 17^th century through the present. The three exhibitions in year one will focus on the genesis of the royal collection of the pre-Revolutionary Régime—the works collected by the Kings before the Louvre was converted from a palace to a museum during the late 18^th century and that make up the heart of the Louvre’s collections.  The central exhibition, “Kings as Collectors,” will be composed primarily of paintings, sculptures and antiquities from the collections of Kings Louis XIV and Louis XVI—the two most important collectors of the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  “Kings as Collectors” will feature paintings by Raphael, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Murillo and Poussin, among others, as well as a group of sculptures that allow for a better understanding of Louis XIV’s dual role as collector and patron.

At the center of the exhibition will be a special presentation of Raphael’s “Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione,” one of the top treasures from the Louvre’s permanent collection.  On view October 14, 2006 through January 28, 2007, the portrait has never left Paris to travel to the United States according to the Louvre’s records.  Admired over the years by art historians and artists alike—including Rembrandt and Rubens who produced their own studies of the painting—Raphael’s portrait of the famous humanist embodies the same ideals of casual grace, or sprezzatura, that Castiglione himself advocated in his famous work, Raphael’s portrait will be replaced by another Louvre treasure, Nicolas Poussin’s “Et in Arcadia Ego.”  Recalling the works of Raphael and the Renaissance masters in subject matter and style, Poussin’s masterpiece is considered to be the defining example of French classicism.

On view through January 28, 2007, the exhibition will showcase masterworks from major early private collections, such as Eberhard Jabach and Pierre-Jean Mariette, which entered the royal collections in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, as well as works by major French artists who served the crown, such as Le Brun, Boel, Mignard and Coypel.  Other featured artists will include Grünwald, Dürer, Rembrandt, Rubens and Watteau.  A highlight of the exhibition is Raphael’s “Head of an Angel,” which was a study for the famous Vatican fresco “The Expulsion of Heliodorus.”

The second focus exhibition of the first year is “Decorative Arts of the Kings,” on view March 3, 2007 through September 2, 2007.  The exhibition will feature decorative arts commissioned for the courts of Kings Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI, and will explore works that convey the royal and princely tastes for the decorative arts during the last 100 years of the Ancien Régime.  These works also show the dexterity and excellence of the French artisans in the royal factories, which were largely subsidized by Louis XIV and his two successors.  The presentation includes fine examples of furniture, tapestry, ceramics and silver by manufacturers such as Les Gobelins and Sèvres, and artists such as Germain and Auguste, whose influence can still be seen today.

“Louvre Atlanta” Year Two and Three Exhibitions

Year two of “Louvre Atlanta” will consider the Louvre’s collection growth and development during the Napoleonic reign and the Enlightenment, when there was an increased interest in ancient art and archaeology.  The central exhibition will feature masterpieces from the founding cultures of Western civilization and will include works from the Louvre’s Egyptian, Near Eastern and Greco-Roman antiquities departments.

Year two will also include a focus exhibition presenting the work of Jean-Antoine Houdon, whose portraiture included some of the prominent intellectual and political figures of the time, such as Diderot and Voltaire, as well as our founding fathers, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.  A second focus exhibition will reassemble for the first time an important and influential collection of Greco-Roman and Egyptian antiquities that were installed by the Empress Josephine at Malmaison, her residence located on the outskirts of Paris. 

Year three of “Louvre Atlanta” will consider the Louvre of today and tomorrow.  Exhibitions under development for this year will explore the impact of the Louvre’s collections on the art world today. 

Partnership Support

The total budget for “Louvre Atlanta” is estimated at $18 million.  This includes a $6.4 million payment by the High which will go towards the restoration of the Louvre’s 18^th-century French decorative arts galleries.  The balance of the budget offsets the development of the “Louvre Atlanta” partnership.

To date, the High Museum of Art has raised more than $13 million in support of this project.  Lead patronage for the project has been provided by longtime High Museum Board Member Anne Cox Chambers. For more information about the Musée du Louvre, please visit www.louvre.fr. 

High Museum of Art

The High Museum of Art, founded in 1905 as the Atlanta Art Association, is the leading art museum in the Southeastern United States. With over 11,000 works of art in its permanent collection, the High Museum of Art has an extensive anthology of 19^th- and 20^th-century American art; significant holdings of European paintings and decorative art; a growing collection of African American art; and burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, photography and African art.  The High is also dedicated to supporting and collecting works by Southern artists and is distinguished as the only major museum in North America to have a curatorial department specifically devoted to the field of folk and self-taught art.  For more information about the High, please visit www.High.org

1st Exhibition in the USA to Focus on Swiss Landscapes of the 19th Century

Monday, 04 September 2006 09:32

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - Rugged and stunning landscapes of the Swiss Alps, never before the subject of an exhibition in the United States, will be on view at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute this fall.  Alpine Views: Alexandre Calame and the Swiss Landscape, opening October 8, 2006, reflects a recent growing interest in the work of Alexandre Calame (1810-1864) and Swiss landscape painting among collectors and European and American museums.  This exhibition brings together 26 sensuous paintings and sketches by Calame, and places them in the context of the 19th-century landscape tradition.  His works are shown alongside 27 of those of his contemporaries, including Caspar Wolf, François Diday, and Johann Gottfried Steffan, offering a rare opportunity to explore the development of the often-overlooked yet significant Swiss school of landscape painting.  Alpine Views is on view through December 31, 2006.

Read more: [[1st Exhibition in the USA to Focus on Swiss Landscapes of the 19th Century]]

Three Japanese Exhibitions at the Van Gogh Museum

Monday, 04 September 2006 10:00

Amsterdam - The theme this summer at the Van Gogh Museum is Japan.  Until to 22 October the exhibition wing will house no less than three shows featuring various aspects of 19^th-century Japanese art.

Wonders of Imperial Japan: Meiji art from the Khalili collection will present a selection of over 200 major items from the famous Khalili collection, the world’s largest and most comprehensive private collection of Japanese Meiji art, complemented by paintings by Van Gogh.  The works date from the period of the ‘enlightened rule’ of the Japanese emperor Meiji (1868-1912) and this is the first such extensive exhibition of Japanese Meiji art from this collection to appear in Europe.

Japanese art experienced a remarkable period of development during the Meiji period.  The social changes which had affected Japan since it opened its doors to the West in 1854 had led to the decline of the traditional market; at the same time, an export market had emerged for Japan. 

Read more: [[Three Japanese Exhibitions at the Van Gogh Museum]]

Hans Bellmer Exhibition at Whitechapel Art Gallery

Monday, 04 September 2006 10:55

LONDON - One of the most accomplished draughtsmen of the 20th century, Hans Bellmer was born in 1902 and worked in Berlin until 1938.  He defied the Fascist state in which he lived by withdrawing from any socially useful activity developing a life-long project that became a powerful tool for social critique and a violent attack on stereotypes and the promotion of an idealized Aryan race. 

In 1933, coinciding with the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, Bellmer created his first doll – a life-size wooden and metal skeleton clad with plaster, which he repeatedly photographed in fragmented poses and haunting scenarios.  He moved to Paris in 1938, where he immediately befriended the Surrealists including Paul Eluard, Yves Tanguy, Hans Arp and Max Ernst, sharing their fascination with childhood, play, psychoanalysis, Eros and death.  These offered an opposition to a complacent, bourgeois, judgmental approach to the world.

Read more: [[Hans Bellmer Exhibition at Whitechapel Art Gallery]]

The Beatles on the Balcony at National Portrait Gallery

Monday, 04 September 2006 12:29

LONDON - Many of the most memorable photographs ever taken of the Beatles form the basis of this historic new exhibition which coincides with the first major retrospective devoted to Angus McBean (1904-1990), the acclaimed British portrait photographer who took the defining images of the group at the start and end of their careers as The Beatles.  On exhibit until 22 October, 2006.

McBean first photographed the group in 1963 for the cover of their Please Please Me album and six years later, posed on the same Balcony at EMI house in Manchester Square, for the proposed Get Back album.  These two images, which finally appeared on the Red and Blue albums, are shown in the context of classic, rare and unseen images by famous photographers who helped form the group’s public image.

Sir Paul McCartney has generously contributed his recollections of this period to the Angus McBean catalogue and has helped select and lend ten of Linda McCartney’s most defining images of the group, ranging from shots taken in the recording studio to others at the launch of the Sgt Pepper album and several rarely exhibited studies in color. 

Read more: [[The Beatles on the Balcony at National Portrait Gallery]]

WAM to Re-Install Permanent Collection : Image of America

Written by Ralph Watanabe Thursday, 09 December 2010 22:28

WICHITA, KS - For two years, visitors to the Wichita Art Museum have seen A Collective Image of America: Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Wichita Art Museum, including works such as Edward Hopper’s Sunlight on Brownstones and Winslow Homer’s In the Mowing.  The current installation will come down with the new arrangement opening Sunday, August 6.

Read more: [[WAM to Re-Install Permanent Collection : Image of America]]

Photographs of P. H. Polk at The Spady Cultural Heritage Museum

Monday, 04 September 2006 15:52

Delray Beach, FL — The Photographs of P. H. Polk, an eloquent testimony to southern African-American life, will be on display at the Spady Cultural Heritage Museum through December 18, 2006.

These reprints of 1930s and 1940s photographs by renown artist P. H. Polk (1898-1985) represent three fascinating themes: African-American rural farm workers; studio portraits of upper-middle class black families; and portraits of Tuskegee Institute school associates, such as George Washington Carver, where Polk was the official school photographer.  No matter the subject, Polk composed his photographs with meticulous attention to light, background, environment, and composition, resulting in photographs which are important for both their technical example and their historical value.

The Photographs of P. H. Polk exhibit is made possible through the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts with a special thanks to Paul Jones and the P. H. Polk family for making the exhibit possible.

Read more: [[Photographs of P. H. Polk at The Spady Cultural Heritage Museum]]

Neo Rauch Showcased at Musée d’art Contemporain

Wednesday, 06 September 2006 06:50

Montreal, Canada - After showcasing the work of Anselm Kiefer, an icon of German art of the 1980s, the Musée is following up with an exhibition devoted to an emblematic figure in the new German painting.  From September 14, 2006 to January 7, 2007, the Musée d’art Contemporain presents Neo Rauch, the artist’s first Canadian show, featuring a group of eight paintings produced between 2002 and 2005. 

Sought after by collectors and museums the world over, Neo Rauch is the most prominent and influential graduate of Leipzig’s Academy of Visual Arts, which is famous for being a mecca for Socialist Realism prior to German reunification.  Traces of this style of painting are still apparent in Rauch’s figurative work, in which unusual or dreamlike images vie with undercurrents of reflection, introspection and reverie.  The strangeness of his art arises from the unexpected combination of iconographic and visual elements from different worlds: comic strips, advertising and film; architecture and design; and German culture, art history and history in general. 

Read more: [[Neo Rauch Showcased at Musée d’art Contemporain]]