  |
|
|
|
Stan Parchin's BlogPosted by Stan Parchin New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation announced on August 26, 2008 that it will receive a $1 million Chairman's Special Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities for The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989, an upcoming special exhibition. This new implementation grant is given to large-scale exhibitions that show promise of reaching large audiences with important humanities-based ideas in an attractive way. The Third Mind... (January 30-April 19, 2009) surveys the effects of Asian art, literature and philosophy on American art from the late 19th Century (ca. 1860-1900), early modern era (ca. 1900-1945), postwar avant-garde period (1945-1970) and contemporary times (1979-1989). Some 108 artists will be represented by 270 books, films, installations, paintings, sculptures, videos, works on paper and ephemera. How the classical arts of China, India and Japan as well as Hindu, Taoist, Tantric Buddhist and Zen Buddhist beliefs influenced and transformed American art and culture is thoroughly examined in this nationally touring presentation. Artists whose works have been chosen for the exposition include: John La Farge, James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Isamu Noguchi, Robert Rauschenberg, Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Ad Reinhardt, Anne Truitt, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin and Bill Viola. Objects have been selected from more than 110 American museums and private collections.Posted by Stan Parchin New York public art organization Creative Time is organizing an exhibition about American democracy and presidential election-themed art at Manhattan's historic Park Avenue Armory. Convergence Center at the Park Avenue Armory runs from September 21 to 27, 2008. Fifty artists are represented in this presentation about the upcoming election. Admission is free.Posted by Stan Parchin New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is open for a Holiday Monday on Labor Day, September 1, 2008. The durations of the popular exhibitions Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy and Radiance from the Rain Forest: Featherwork in Ancient Peru have been extended for this reason. In addition to the public cafeteria and several of the gift shops, the following exhibitions will also be open:
Posted by Stan Parchin The Onassis Cultural Center in New York is sponsoring The Minoan World: Exploring the Land of the Labyrinth, a day-long international conference of 15 scholars on Saturday, September 13, 2008 from 9:15 AM to 5:45 PM. Open to the public and free-of-charge, the gathering is being organized in conjunction with the special exhibition From the Land of the Labyrinth: Minoan Crete, 3000-1100 B.C. (March 13-September 13, 2008). Topics covered by the presenters include:
Posted by Stan Parchin Sections of the first-floor Medieval Art galleries of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art are being renovated and reinstalled thanks to the generosity of longtime supporters Mary and Michael Jaharis. Portions of this area are consequently closed until November 2008. Changes include the incorporation of the apse beneath the Great Hall Stairs into the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine Art. The adjacent former Tapestry Hall is being transformed into a state-of-the-art installation of European art in all media from the Early Middle Ages to the beginning of the 14th Century. The newly acquired Jaharis Lectionary (ca. 1100 A.D.), a rare Byzantine manuscript, will finally be displayed. Visitors may travel to The Cloisters, a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan's Fort Tryon Park, to see more medieval art. Choirs of Angels... Just in time for the holidays and the annual appearance of the museum's Christmas tree and Neapolitan Baroque crèche (November 25, 2008-January 6, 2009), the side aisles of the Medieval Sculpture Hall will feature Choirs of Angels: Painting in Italian Choir Books, 1300-1500 (November 25, 2008-April 12, 2009). Two dozen examples from The Met's collection of choral manuscript illuminations include images of singing angels, heroic saints, Hebrew prophets and Renaissance princes. The works were produced by artists from Florence and Siena, among them Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci (1339-1399), Lorenzo Monaco (ca. 1370-1423/24), Sano di Pietro (1406-1481) and Mariano del Buono (1433/4-1504). Each wonderfully embellished work superbly fuses calligraphy, musical notation and painting. After viewing Choirs of Angels..., visitors should also see Art and Love in Renaissance Italy (November 18, 2008-February 16, 2009) in the museum's second-floor Special Exhibition galleries.Posted by Stan Parchin The Art Institute of Chicago announced on August 20, 2008 its purchase of The Captive Slave (1827) by British portraitist John Philip Simpson (1782-1847) from London's Ben Elwes Fine Art. Painted during Great Britain's abolitionist movement, the oversized image of the manacled slave, held in private collections since the 19th Century, was last seen publicly in an 1828 London and Liverpool exhibition. At the time of its creation, Simpson, a student assistant to Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), took a great professional risk in expressing an anti-slavery sentiment in his work. The Captive Slave depicts a black man against a muted background, his wrists shacked with heavy chains as he looks upward. Simpson's empathetic portrayal of the desperate slave imbued him with a sense of nobility, clearly an abolitionist viewpoint. Free-born American Ira Aldridge (1807-1867), the first great black Shakespearean actor in Great Britain, was Simpson's model for the painting. The Captive Slave is on view in the institute's recently refurbished and reinstalled Gallery 220.Posted by Stan Parchin Environmental installation artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude will be at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. for a screening of Running Fence (1978) and artists' conversation on September 6, 2008 at 3:00 PM. The documentary, directed by filmmakers David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin and Albert Maysles, describes the five-year efforts of Christo and Jeanne-Claude to erect Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-76. The temporary 24 1/2-mile construction of white fabric and steel poles in the hills of California’s Sonoma and Marin Counties and into the Pacific Ocean existed for two weeks. It is now only remembered through the artists' related works and documentation. Free tickets for the event in the McEvoy Auditorium are available at the museum's information desk in the G Street lobby on September 6 beginning at 2:00 PM. There is a limit of two tickets per person.Posted by Stan Parchin Houdon from the Louvre at the Denver Art Museum (October 11, 2008-January 4, 2009) features 21 portrait busts by the French Neoclassical sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828). Paris' Musée du Louvre possesses the largest collection of works by the prominent artist of the Enlightenment age. Born in Versailles, Houdon spent most of his working life in Paris. Awarded the Prix de Rome in sculpture in 1761, he made amazingly realistic portraits of important intellectual and political leaders of his time as well as his wife and children. Houdon, influenced by ancient and Renaissance art, worked in a variety of media, such as bronze, marble, plaster and terracotta. The exhibition examines his artistic process and largely unknown methods. Among Houdon's sculptures on display in the Bonfils Stanton Gallery of the Denver Art Museum's North Building are: Benjamin Franklin (1778); George Washington (1786); Madame Houdon (1786); Sabine Houdon at the Age of Ten Months (1788); Sabine Houdon at the Age of Four Years (1791); and Rousseau (in the French style) (1779).Posted by Stan Parchin Tickets are now on sale for Babylon at the British Museum (November 13, 2008-March 15, 2009). They may be obtained online through the BM's website, in person and by telephone. Prices are £8.00 for adults and seniors, £7.00 for students and disabled visitors and free for museum members. The exhibition, a more focused presentation of the show previously at the Musée du Louvre and Pergamon Museum, describes the history, culture and archaeology of the fabled Mesopotamian city during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605-562 B.C.) through artifacts, ancient sculptures, cuneiform texts and a scale model of the ruler's capital. Later myths and traditions about Babylon, such as the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens, are illustrated by oil paintings, works on paper and contemporary art. The installation concludes with an examination of the site's recent history and plans for its future conservation through video and still photography.Posted by Stan Parchin Tiffany Lamps: Articles of Utility, Objects of Art and Tiffany and the Gilded Age (September 21, 2008-January 4, 2009) at New York's Nassau County Museum of Art explore the art and age of Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933). The first exhibition features some 45 works and an in-depth explanation of how Tiffany's glass and lamps were produced. The objects come from the important Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass, portions of which are always on view at the Queens Museum of Art. The second installation examines Tiffany's influence on decorative styles of his day, including Art Nouveau, through an interior reconstruction. On view are period furniture, ceramics, objets d'art, jewelry and paintings by avant-garde artists Charles Prendergast, Childe Hassam and others.Posted by Stan Parchin The Vander-Ende Onderdonk House of New York's Greater Ridgewood Historical Society presents Rites of Passage beginning July 26, 2008. The exhibition traces the history of cemeteries, makers of funerary monuments and florists in New York's Queens County. The Rural Cemeteries Act of 1847, a law that provided for the development of commercial burial grounds in New York State, dramatically changed the look of Queens and many of its neighborhoods' identities. Previous to the act's passage, interments occurred on church or private property. Large tracts of farmland were acquired and turned into beautiful cemeteries through the skillful work of talented landscape architects, sculptors and florists. A whole new breed of business evolved rapidly in the county. The Onderdonk House's presentation, arranged in seven display cases, features photographs, documents and artifacts related to a century of cemetery development in Queens. A central freestanding vitrine exhibits the work of early stonecutters in the form of inscribed grave markers.Posted by Stan Parchin Los Angeles, California's J. Paul Getty Museum announced on July 25, 2008 that it received the 2008 MUSE Award for Audio and Visual Tours. The Getty was honored for its bilingual recorded tour of the special exhibitionThe Goat’s Dance: Photographs by Graciela Iturbide (December 18, 2007-April 13, 2008). The MUSE awards competition is produced by the Media and Technology Standing Professional Committee of the American Association of Museums (AAM). In their 19th year, the accolades recognize outstanding achievement in museum media. The Goat's Dance... featured iconic black and white images of Hispanic culture from Oaxaca to Los Angeles to the American South by Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide. The show's audio tours were narrated by writer and scholar Roberto Tejada. They contained an original instrumental guitar score composed specifically for the exhibition's photographs.Posted by Stan Parchin London's Telegraph and the Associated Press reported on July 30, 2008 that a brass astrolabe quadrant, an instrument of Islamic invention used to determine the height of the sun, locate astronomical bodies and tell local time, will remain in Great Britain despite its sale at auction to a private bidder in 2007. London's British Museum, following a successful export ban, recently purchased the rare 14th-century object for £350,000 with assistance from three sources: the National Heritage Memorial Fund (£125,000), the Art Fund (£50,000) and the British Museum Friends (£175,000). The Canterbury Astrolabe Quadrant (ca. 1388) is an important piece of technological history that helps to explain the movement of sophisticated scientific knowledge among the Christian, Jewish and Muslim cultures of the Middle Ages. The device, one of eight that has survived from medieval times, is unique in that it was manufactured in England. It was discovered in an archaeological dig in 2005. The instrument goes on temporary display at the British Museum this month. It will be centrally located in the institutution's new permanent Europe 1000-1500 gallery in 2009.Posted by Stan Parchin Representatives of the Dresden State Art Collections and J. Paul Getty Museum signed the cooperation agreement for Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575-1725 in Germany on July 25, 2008. This landmark exhibition (December 16, 2008-May 3, 2009) is the third collaboration between the two institutions, following From Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter: German Paintings from Dresden (October 5, 2006-April 29, 2007) and The Herculaneum Women and the Origins of Archaeology (July 12-November 5, 2007). Dresden is loaning 27 paintings to the presentation. They are joining an additional 17 works from southern California, including nine from the Getty Museum and others from Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum, San Diego's Timken Museum of Art and a private collection. Captured Emotions... describes the revolution in painting begun in Bologna by Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), his brother Agostino (1557-1602) and his cousin Ludovico (1555-1619). The visual representation of emotions perfected by the Carracci resonated throughout Baroque Italy and Europe well into the first decades of the 18th Century.Posted by Stan Parchin Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Sun and Shadows of the Pharaohs at Geneva, Switzerland's Musées d'art et d'histoire (October 17, 2008-February 1, 2009) explains the relation of art, religion and power during the reign of ancient Egypt's "heretic" pharaoh. Artifacts describe how Akhenaten (r. 1353-1336 B.C.) and his queen, the beguilingly beautiful Nefertiti, attempted to replace Egypt's polytheistic religion with the belief in a single deity, manifested in the sun's disk. Innovations in art, disruptions in literary canons and the short-lived relocation of the civilization's capital to Amarna are thoroughly examined. Emphasis is placed on modern archaeologists' reconstruction of Akhenaten's cultural milieu from the objects on display. The pharaoh's scheme of urban planning, a reflection of his belief in a singular solar god, is illustrated. The intolerance Akhenaten and his court encountered by adversaries of his theological reforms is also discussed.Posted by Stan Parchin Washington, D.C.'s National Museum of American History will reopen on November 21, 2008 after a two-year 120,000-square-foot renovation costing $85 million. Changes were made to the 44-year-old building's core, including a grand glass-and stainless steel staircase and five-story skylit atrium. More than 400 artifacts from the museum's collection of three million pieces are on view in the atrium's state-of-the-art vitrines. They document the cultural, political and technological history of the United States. Exhibits are devoted to printing during the Civil War, cameras and toys, among other subjects. Also displayed is a Civil War-era ambulance used by nurse Clara Barton. The wool-and-cotton Star-Spangled Banner, measuring 30 ft. x 34 ft., has been reinstalled in a new climate-controlled gallery. Multimedia displays and related works explain the history of the American flag and the National Anthem. Also on view is the last of five handwritten drafts of the Gettyburg's Address (1863) by Abraham Lincoln in the new Albert H. Small Documents Gallery. It's on loan from the White House from November 21, 2008 to January 4, 2009.Posted by Stan Parchin Agence France-Presse reported on July 25, 2008 that Greece's High Council of Archaeology approved plans to restore the western façade of the Parthenon from 2009 through 2012. The work is being undertaken to repair some 700 bullet holes inflicted on the western side of the building during the Greek uprising against the Ottoman Turks in 1821. High humidity and the earthquakes of 1981 and 1999 have also caused damage. Several of the façade's friezes will be moved permanently to the new Acropolis Museum and replaced by copies.Posted by Stan Parchin New York's Museum of Biblical Art will present Scripture for the Eyes: Bible Illustration in Netherlandish Prints of the Sixteenth Century (June 4-September 27, 2009). This first-time exhibition describes how printed illustrations of Old and New Testament subjects changed art and influenced religion during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation movements. Some 130 engravings, woodcuts, illustrated Bibles and books demonstrate the socially transformative power of prints in 16th-century Northern Europe. Artists represented include Lucas van Leyden, Maarten van Heemskerck and Hendrick Goltzius. The works on display are arranged according to function rather than by date and theme.Posted by Stan Parchin The Enamels Room in New York's Frick Collection reopened on July 25, 2008 after nearly two months of refurbishment. Some 25 enamels, bronzes and clocks are displayed in this gallery with works by Italian Renaissance painters Cimabue, Duccio, Gentile da Fabriano, Piero della Francesca and others. Making its debut in the Frick's upgraded installation is a Maiolica Dish with "The Judgment of Paris" after Raphael (ca. 1565) by the Fontana Workshop. The tin-glazed earthenware charger, a recent gift of Dianne Modestini, fills in a gap in the museum's collection of decorative arts. Maiolica works were produced by Spanish and Islamic potters before the 16th Century. During the Renaissance, these luxury items were manufactured by centers in Florence, Gubbio, Urbino (where the Frick's recent acquisition came from) and several other Italian locations.Posted by Stan Parchin New York's Museum of Modern Art announced on July 24, 2008 the appointment of Juliet Kinchin as Curator in its Department of Architecture and Design. A specialist in the history of modern design, her chief responsibilities are the management of the permanent collection's 28,000 works, acquisition of new ones and organization of upcoming special exhibitions. Juliet Kinchin has a B.A. from Cambridge University and an M.A. from the Courtauld Institute of Art of the University of London. The author of books and articles on 19th- and 20th-century design and decorative arts, Kinchin taught at Scotland's Glasgow School of Art and New York's Bard Graduate Center for Study in the Decorative Arts. Since 2001, she's been a Senior Lecturer in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Glascow. In addition to her academic assignments, Kinchin curated exhibitions in Glascow as well as at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. She' s particularly interested in the works of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Hungarian Art Nouveau.Posted by Stan Parchin Conservation in Focus (September 11-October 26, 2008) at the British Museum permits visitors to observe and interact with conservators whose actual work is largely unseen by the public until it's completed. Experts demonstrate the procedures, techniques and instruments they use on objects from the museum's permanent collection. How such works of art are in many cases reinterpreted and prepared for display is examined. The exhibition is divided into three two-week cycles:
Posted by Stan Parchin Bloomberg News reported on July 18, 2008 that Pompeii is being destroyed by tourists and thieves. The same Italian government that earlier this month declared the archaeological site to be in a state of emergency has also allowed Pompeii to become the victim of bureaucratic cutbacks. Renato Profili, nearby Naples' former Chief of Police, has been placed in charge of Pompeii's 188 acres. His job involves preventing the touching, flash photography, defacing and plundering of precious fresco paintings. Next year's budget cuts of 8 billion euros ($13 million) will affect Italy's Ministry of Culture and ultimately its ability to help authorities at Pompeii to enforce rules for its 2.6 annual visitors. Eliminating unlicensed tour guides and vendors is Commissioner Profili's top priority, followed by a systematic reopening of Pompeii's restored villas. The issues of stray dogs on the premises and the need for more security guards have not been effectively addressed. The 349 officers, an inadequate number down 19% from 2001, must be shared by the sites of Boscoreale, Ercolano (Herculaneum), Oplontis, Pompeii and Stabia.Posted by Stan Parchin The Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee is the next venue for Medieval Treasures from the Cleveland Museum of Art (February 13-June 7, 2009). The exhibition was previously on view at the Bavarian National Museum in Munich, Germany (May 11-September 16, 2007) and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California (October 30, 2007-January 20, 2008). Medieval Treasures... features more than 120 examples of armor, carved ivories, enamels, gold and silver decorative works, illuminated manuscripts, paintings and sculptures from the 3rd through 16th Centuries. Arranged chronologically and by place of origin, the works illustrate the historical progression of Late Antique, Early Christian, Byzantine and Western European art during the Middle Ages. Highlights of the Exhibition
Posted by Stan Parchin The Associated Press reported on July 7, 2008 that Syria returned to Iraq a marble artifact looted from an archaeological site in Nimrud, the capital of the Assyrian Empire some 15 miles south of Mosul. Measuring 4' x 1.5 ', the block is carved with the image of a bearded man kneeling in prayer. Lines of cuneiform text appear on the object's surface. The sculpture joins 701 additional artifacts returned to Iraq from Syria in recent weeks, along with 2466 others repatriated from Jordan. In earlier and related news, a July 1, 2008 article in The Art Newspaper quoted an international team of specialists who insist that eight important archaeological sites in southern Iraq have not been looted since the 2003 coalition invasion of the country. The British Army provided seven scholars with an armed Merlin helicopter for their unpublicized ground and aerial inspections of Eridu, Larsa, Lagash, Tell el-Lahm, Tell el-Ouelli, Ubaid, Ur and Warka, all north of Basra. The group, called the Cultural Heritage Initiative by its organizer, Dr. John Curtis, the British Museum's Keeper of the Middle East Department, included three other academicians: Professor Elizabeth Stone of the State University of New York at Stony Brook; Dr. Margarete van Ess, Director of Berlin's German Archaeological Institute; and Dr. Paul Collins, a specialist in Mesopotamia from the British Museum. Despite the absence of looting, the team found evidence for military damage to the region. Distressing is the neglect of ancient buildings at Ur that were reconstructed in the 1960s and 1970s. They require immediate conservation.Posted by Stan Parchin London's Royal Academy of Arts revealed on July 16, 2008 the appointment of Kathleen Soriano as its new Director of Exhibitions. Beginning January 1, 2009, she replaces Sir Norman Rosenthal, the RA's former Exhibitions Secretary for 31 years. The Director of the Compton Verney art gallery since Spring 2006, Soriano previously served as the National Portrait Gallery's Head of Exhibitions and Collections Management.Posted by Stan Parchin According to Reuters on July 9, 2008, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology will begin in September to produce a "digital spine" on the Internet that will catalogue its entire collection, numbering some one million pieces. The cost of the three-year project is estimated to be between $7 million and $10 million. Only 5% of the world-renowned Philadelphia institution's holdings is currently on view. A greater presence on the Internet will provide scholars, students and the general public with virtual access to the museum's vast treasures. The new website will complement Penn Museum's active program of cultural explorations, archaeological digs, exhibitions and lectures. Among the works to be digitized will be the museum's important Mesopotamian artifacts from the Sumerian royal tombs of Ur (ca. ca. 2500 B.C.). Penn Museum jointly excavated the site with the British Museum's Sir Leonard Woolley in the early 20th Century. The BM will supply the website with images and information from its corresponding Sumerian pieces. Also scheduled to be recorded digitally are exquisite examples of Precolumbian ornamental goldwork from Panama's ancient cemetery of Sitio Conte, excavated by the museum's archaeologists in the 1940s.Posted by Stan Parchin Nan Rosenthal, Senior Consultant for Modern and Contemporary Art at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, retired on July 1, 2008 after 15 years of distinguished service. She will be succeeded this Fall by Marla Prather. Rosenthal organized a number of landmark exhibitions, including:
Posted by Stan Parchin BBC News reported on July 10, 2008 that the she-wolf of the Lupa Capitolina, the statue depicting the suckling of twins Romulus and Remus, dates to the 1200s and is not an Etruscan work from around 500 B.C. Some 20 tests, including carbon-dating, were recently conducted on the statue of the wolf to determine its true age. It has been known for quite some time that the figures of the two infants seated under the beast's belly were fabricated in the 15th Century.Posted by Stan Parchin MarketWatch reported on July 11, 2008 that antiquities collector Shelby White will return to Greece two artifacts illegally excavated and exported but acquired in good faith by the philanthropist and Leon Levy, her late husband. An agreement concluded between White and the Greek Ministry of Culture calls for the objects to be transferred later this month. One work is the upper part of an early 4th-century B.C. grave stele depicting a warrior and a youth. The fragment will eventually be reunited with the sculpture's lower section presently on view in the Vravrona Archaeological Museum. The other artifact, a bronze calyx krater (ca. 340 B.C.), most probably came from an illegally excavated royal tomb in Pieria, northern Greece. Upon repatriation, both works will be displayed in Athens' National Archaeological Museum. They will subsequently be returned to their regional museums.Posted by Stan Parchin 5000 square feet of new gallery space devoted to contemporary art will open at the Brooklyn Museum on September 19, 2008. 21: Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum, the inaugural long-term exhibition, is devoted almost exclusively to works in the institution's collection produced since 2000. The list of acquisitions on display includes:
Posted by Stan Parchin Farouq Hosni, Egypt's Minister of Culture, announced on July 3, 2008 that the traveling exhibition Egypt's Sunken Treasures will tour Japan and the United States after its European tour concludes in Italy this year. The exhibition has been viewed by more than 1.5 million people in Berlin, Paris, Bonn and Madrid. Details about the additional venues will be available shortly.Posted by Stan Parchin July 5, 2008 was Opening Day for Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Berlin, Germany. London's Guardian newspaper reported that less than three minutes after the staff welcomed its first guests, a 41-year-old man identified only as Frank L., second in line to enter the building, shoved past a security guard and another museum employee and ripped the head off a statue of Adolf Hitler. The former police officer and left-wing activist was arrested and charged with vandalism and causing bodily harm to the slightly injured guard. Agence France-Presse subsequently revealed that Madame Tussauds is repairing the decapitated waxwork and will return it to display as quickly as possible. Despite the widespread criticism in the media that the museum's image of Hitler has aroused, a Madame Tussauds spokeswoman said, "Adolf Hitler represents a defining moment in German history that cannot be denied." The exhibition space is a recreation of Hitler's underground bunker. The defeated dictator is seated behind a desk and beneath a large map of Europe while studying the advance of Allied forces. A sign near the roped-off display asks visitors to refrain from taking photographs of or posing with the €200,000 likeness out of respect for those who perished during World War II. The vandal has since expressed regret for his act.Posted by Stan Parchin Giovanni Bellini, the first critical examination and monographic exhibition of the Venetian Renaissance master's works since 1949, will occur at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, Italy from September 30, 2008 to January 11, 2009. Some 80 paintings from museums, private collections and churches in Europe, North and South America and recognized as by the hand of Bellini (act. by 1459, d. 1516) will be on view. Religious, allegorical and mythological works will be displayed chronologically along with portraits. Also included will be infrared reflectograms of many of the paintings, revealing their underdrawings and changes in the artist's compositions.Posted by Stan Parchin Controversy regarding the authorship of the haunting El Coloso (ca. 1808) caused scholars to exclude the painting from the landmark exhibition Goya in Times of War at Madrid's Museo Nacional de Prado (April 15-July 13, 2008). An official release by the museum at a June 26, 2008 press conference stated that preliminary scientific evidence indicates the oil on canvas Colossus, formerly thought to have been a work by Spanish artist Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), was most likely painted by Valencian Asensio Juliá, one of Goya's friends and known collaborators. Technicians discovered the initials A.J. in the lower left-hand section of the restored composition. Careful investigations by the museum's curators into the recently cleaned work's authenticity continue. Definitive results will be made public shortly.Posted by Stan Parchin New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art revealed on July 1, 2008 that the blue-and-white lunette of Saint Michael the Archangel, a glazed terracotta relief by Italian Renaissance master Andrea della Robbia (1435-1525), came unfixed from its metal mounts in the second-floor European Paintings and Decorative Arts Galleries, landed on a stone floor and sustained some damage. The museum's expert team of object conservators is determining the amount of restoration work needed to repair the 15th-century sculpture. Saint Michael the Archangel was commissioned in ca. 1475 for the Church of San Michele Arcangelo in Faenza, a small town between Bologna and Ravenna on the Italian peninsula.Posted by Stan Parchin Late Antique Egyptian sculptures (395-642 A.D.) and modern replicas are compared in an upcoming exhibition in New York. Coptic Sculpture in the Brooklyn Museum (November 7, 2008-September 27, 2009) presents authentic works of art alongside reproductions ambitious in scale, detail and theme. A number of the objects on display were acquired by the Brooklyn Museum in the 1960s and 1970s, two decades when very little accurate information existed to guide curators in their purchases of Coptic statuary. The genuine works were carved for church decoration or funerary purposes, many merging Christian and pagan symbolism.Posted by Stan Parchin The Egyptology Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences will soon tour its recent archaeological finds from Luxor in the special exhibition Crypt of the Royal Mummies: Life and Death of the Great Pharaohs. Planned for display in Russia, Germany, France and Great Britain, the show presents artifacts discovered from 1998 to 2005, particularly those from the tomb known at TT320. Among the presentation's highlights from Egypt's New Kingdom period are statues of the pharaohs Tuthmosis III (r. 1475-1429 B.C.) and Ramesses II (r. 1279-1213 B.C.), royal jewelry and common household items.Posted by Stan Parchin Celebrate American Independence Day on Friday, July 4, 2008 at London's British Museum with three free events. No reservations are required. Just drop by.
Posted by Stan Parchin Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Zaha Hadid and Ben van Berkel of Amsterdam's UNStudio have been selected to design temporary pavilions in Millennium Park near the Art Institute of Chicago. Their works will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Plan of Chicago, a design for the metropolis by urban planner Daniel Hudson Burnham (1846-1912). The architects' innovative structures will be the focal points of the Burnham Plan Centennial, a series of arts events and educational programs. Hadid and van Berkel's pavilions will open in June 2009 with a full array of video exhibits and educational programming. Hadid is best known for her Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion in Spain and office buildings in Dubai and Moscow. Van Berkel is recognized for his Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany and Rotterdam's famous Erasmus Bridge.Posted by Stan Parchin The Neanderthal Flint Workers (1926) by American painter Charles R. Knight (1874-1953), an early attempt to depict mankind's prehistoric ancestors realistically, was unveiled at New York's American Museum of Natural History on June 19, 2008. The large work is part of a series of nine murals for the museum's original Hall of the Age of Man, a permanent installation from the early 1920s to 1966. The painting now joins The Cro-Magnon Artists (1920), Knight's restored and reframed work that was reinstalled at the AMNH in 2002. Knight's depictions of primitive man, dinosaurs and early mammals appear in more than 15 locations in the United States, including Chicago, Illinois' Field Museum.Posted by Stan Parchin Twenty-six works of art from the Ming (1368-1644) through Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and once owned by Pu Yi (r. 1908-1912) will be on view at New York's China Institute Gallery in The Last Emperor's Collection: Masterpieces of Painting and Calligraphy from Liaoning Provincial Museum (September 25-December 14, 2008). Examples of painting and calligraphy were collected by Chinese emperors since the 5th Century A.D. Although Pu Yi sold many to various buyers in 1949, the Liaoning Provincial Museum has been successful in reassembling a large portion of them. The rare loan exhibition introduces a selection of these treasures to the American public for the first time through handscrolls, one hanging scroll and reproductions of the collection's catalogues. It also focuses on the history and practices of Chinese imperial collecting over the centuries.Posted by Stan Parchin The Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio announced on June 17, 2008 that it has raised $204.5 million of the estimated $350 million necessary for the completion of its massive renovation and expansion program. This milestone was achieved with remarkable support from both public and private sources. The project will be finished in 2012. Begun nearly three years ago, the transformation of the museum's campus entails the complete renovation of the 1916 landmark Beaux-Arts building and late 1960s addition designed by Marcel Breuer. Several newly constructed wings will be united with the rest of the museum through Rafael Viñoly's 39,000 square-foot, glass-enclosed atrium. Phase One of the expansion comes to a close on June 29, 2008 with the opening of 19 new galleries in the Beaux-Arts structure devoted to 17th- through 19th-century European art and 18th- and 19th-century American works. New special exhibition galleries will open this Fall with Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique. The CMA's collections of modern and contemporary art will inaugurate the first of Viñoly's three new wings in June 2009.Posted by Stan Parchin A copy of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres) (1543), the principal treatise by Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), will be auctioned at Christie's New York on June 17, 2008. The Polish scientist's revolutionary volume describes the heliocentric theory of the solar system. Owned by retired physician Richard Green of Long Island, a collector of scientific documents, Copernicus' text is expected to garner $1.2 million at sale. Update: Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres) sold for more than $2.2 million.Posted by Stan Parchin The Richard and Mary L. Gray Wing, the north section of the Art Institute of Chicago's original Allerton Building, opened on June 14, 2008. The event coincided with the premiere of the special exhibition Collecting for Chicago: Prints, Drawings, and Patronage (June 14-September 14, 2008) in the wing's new Jean and Steven Goldman Prints and Drawings Galleries. The Grays facilitated the wing's construction through gifts to the AIC's Department of Prints and Drawings in 2006. Additionally, Mr. and Mrs. Gray and the Gray Collection Trust have announced a major promised gift to the museum: Collage (1929) by Spanish artist Joan Miró (1893-1983). The work is exhibited as part of Collecting for Chicago... The Richard Gray Gallery of Chicago and New York deals primarily in Impressionist, modern and contemporary art. The Grays, Distinguished Benefactors of the Art Institute of Chicago, personally collect Old Master drawings as well as 20th-century and recent paintings and works on paper.Posted by Stan Parchin Betrothal, matrimony and childbirth are the subjects of Art and Love in Renaissance Italy at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (November 18, 2008-February 16, 2009). This exhibition of some 150 objects and works of art from 1400 to 1600 travels next to Fort Worth, Texas' Kimbell Art Museum (March 15-June 14, 2009). The show, divided into three parts, describes love and marriage in 15th- and 16th-century Italy.
Posted by Stan Parchin New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is the sole venue for Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. On view from November 18, 2008 to March 15, 2009, the exhibition features works of ancient art from Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, Thrace, Anatolia, the Caucasus, mainland Greece and Iran. Some 350 objects in this landmark presentation, derived from palaces, temples, tombs and a shipwreck, describe the unusual movement of people, artworks and luxury goods across the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages (ca. 2000-1200 B.C.). The works on view are evidence of the international relationships of antiquity's great royal houses. Many of them were recently excavated; some have never been exhibited abroad. The complex intermingling of artistic traditions, a result of artisans, merchants, diplomats and soldiers having traveled throughout the region, is stressed. Attention is paid to the nomadic Hyksos, the Semitic invaders who ruled Egypt for some 100 years before the dawn of the New Kingdom's imperial Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1550-1295 B.C.). Artifacts retrieved from a ancient shipwreck near the southern Turkish site of Uluburun demonstrate the interaction of Mesopotamians, Mycenaean Greeks and Egyptians. Beyond Babylon... concludes with finely carved ivories and sophisticated gold, glass, faience and stone vessels from the 14th and 13th Centuries B.C. Together they illustrate the cross-fertilization of distinct artistic ideas during the Second Millennium B.C.Posted by Stan Parchin The Philadelphia Museum of Art, along with the City of Philadelphia, will mark the passing of Anne d'Harnoncourt, the institution's Director and Chief Executive Officer, with a Day of Appreciation. On Thursday, June 19, 2008, admission to the museum from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM will be free. A recorded tour of d'Harnoncourt's favorite works is included. At 11:30 AM that day, Philadelphia's City Council will honor the museum's late Director with a resolution noting her leadership and contributions to public service. The Philadelphia Boys Choir will perform a musical tribute to Anne d'Harnoncourt on the museum's East Terrace at 6:00 PM.Posted by Stan Parchin The Jean and Steven Goldman Prints and Drawings Galleries in the Art Institute of Chicago's Richard and Mary L. Gray Wing will open to the public on June 14, 2008. The space will feature rotating exhibitions of the AIC's works on paper, numbering some 70,000 prints and drawings. Designed by Kulapat Yantrasast of wHY Architecture in Los Angeles, California, the galleries' first presentation will be Collecting for Chicago: Prints, Drawings, and Patronage (June 14-September 14, 2008), works acquired by Chicago families and donated to the museum. A generous gift by the Goldmans in 1999 allowed for the development of the new galleries as well as the Jean and Steven Goldman Prints and Drawings Study Center. The state-of-the-art facility opened in 2002. Art historian, lecturer and AIC trustee Jean Goldman is a specialist in Old Master drawings, particularly those of 16th- and 17th-century Italy.Posted by Stan Parchin Five works from two important California foundations will be on view in Masterpieces of European Painting from the Norton Simon Museum at New York's Frick Collection (February 10--May 10, 2009). The museum's spacious first-floor Oval Room will play host to:
Posted by Stan Parchin The Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut will host the traveling exhibition Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of Dürer and Titian from September 9 to November 30, 2008. Presently installed at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center of Massachusetts' Wellesley College (March 19-June 8, 2008), the show will later appear at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania (January 31-April 26, 2009). Some 50 rare mural-size prints from the late 15th Century to 1630 are the subject of this presentation. As the advantages of printing grew in appeal to the rulers and wealthy of Renaissance Europe, so did the physical dimensions of their graphic commissions. Oversize works on paper became visual tools to assert and legitimize political rule as well as to adorn the walls of palatial dwellings. Artists from the German, Italian and Netherlandish schools represented in this unique show include Andrea Mantegna (1430/31-1506), Sandro Botticelli (1445 |
