Displaying items by tag: Contemporary Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has announced plans for a major renovation of its Lila Acheson Wallace Wing. Completed in 1987, the Wing houses the museum’s Modern and contemporary collection, which includes works by the circle of early American modernists around Alfred Stieglitz, including Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe, and John Marin; large-scale paintings by Abstract Expressionists, such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko; and modern design, from Josef Hoffmann and members of the Wiener Werkstätte to Art Nouveau jewelry by René Lalique.

The Met, which is the largest art museum in the United States, is in the midst of re-evaluating its layout, and addressing the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing’s shortcomings is a top priority. As it stands, the Wing does not allow for a chronological presentation of the museum’s collection, creating a disjointed visitor experience. To remedy the issue, The Met plans to rebuild the Wing, potentially from scratch. Enhanced exhibition space will also allow the museum to better display its Modern and contemporary art holdings, which got a considerable upgrade last spring when philanthropist and cosmetics mogul Leonard A. Lauder donated 79 Cubist paintings, drawings, and sculptures.

From May 27 – 31, 2015, Reed Exhibitons will bring FIAC, one of the world’s leading international art fairs, from Paris to Los Angeles. A convergence of FIAC’s forty year history of dynamic growth and the city’s rise as a cultural capital, under the stewardship of Director Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts, FIAC LA will establish a new paradigm for the international art fair. Set against the backdrop of one of America’s fastest growing neighborhoods, FIAC LA will bring a program of modern masters, contemporary art, architecture and design to Downtown’s Los Angeles Convention Center.

FIAC was founded forty years ago as a fair for gallerists by gallerists, with an aim to present a curated vision of contemporary art to a wider public. Over the years Reed Exhibitions, has invented, explored and expanded the fair. during the last decade, fiac has become one of the three most important art fairs in the world. In 2013, FIAC welcomed more than 75,000 visitors and over 100 international museum groups to the Grand Palais.

By the time Art Basel Hong Kong opened to VIPs on May 14, Edouard Malingue had already sold out his entire inventory of paintings. He spent the rest of the fair fending off disappointed would-be buyers.

“Some of my clients got really upset with my staff and I had to intervene,” said Hong-Kong-based Malingue, after all seven works by Chinese painter Yuan Yuan were sold in advance of the fair. “I explained that we’ve been selling to new collectors and the artist isn’t a factory.”

The government of Saudi Arabia is spending more than $1.7bn on building 230 new museums as part of a programme to promote the country’s culture. At a conference held in Oxford early in April, entitled “Green Arabia”, the influential HRH Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, nephew of King Abdullah and president of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA), said, “We have entered a new age; we have transitioned. Antiquities are the seat of a continuum to bring the life and history of Saudi Arabia closer to the hearts and minds of the people of the Kingdom—particularly the young.”

Building has already begun on 14 of the new museums, which will not only contain antiquities but the latest Saudi contemporary art. “Our artists are among some of the most vibrant in the world,” said Prince Sultan. He added that the museums will be run in part by women. “Women in Saudi Arabia have come a long way—this is not something new,” he said. “They have carried a lot of the history of Saudi Arabia on their shoulders. If you look throughout history, Bedouin women were the backbone of life.”

From May 17 to October 2, 2014, The Irvine Museum presents Then and Now: 100 Years of Plein Air Painting, a special exhibition featuring California landscape paintings from 1903 to 2013.

The exhibition features a selection of The Irvine Museum's celebrated historic landscape paintings alongside contemporary plein air works. Works range from A Clear Day by William Wendt (c. 1903), to the most recent work featured in the exhibition, Sunset by Alexander Orlov (2013).

Featured historic artists include Benjamin Chambers Brown (1865-1942), Frank Cuprien (1871-1946), Frederick Melville DuMond (1867-1927), Euphemia Charlton Fortune (1885-1969), John Bond Francisco (1863-1932), John Frost (1890-1937), William Alexander Griffith (1866-1940), Paul Grimm (1891-1974), Sam Hyde Harris (1889-1977), Anna Hills (1882-1930), Emil Kosa, Jr. (1903-1968), and William Wendt (1865-1946).

Anyone looking to meet the director of the tiny but highly regarded Museum of Contemporary Art here has two choices. Head into the museum, where its interim director, Alex Gartenfeld, has an office. Or go next door to City Hall, where the mayor’s appointee to the same position, Babacar M’Bow, is essentially working in exile.

The dueling directors are just part of the chaos emanating from a bitter showdown that has erupted between MoCA, as the museum is known, and the city that founded it.

The museum’s board wants to leave this working-class city and merge with the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, its wealthier and more glamorous neighbor. It says that North Miami has neglected the museum building and failed to support a needed expansion.

Artists Gillian Wearing from the UK, Pierre Huyghe from France, Manfred Pernice from Germany, Willem de Rooij from the Netherlands, and Anri Sala from Albania and France have been shortlisted for the Vincent Van Gogh Biennial Award  and stand to win €50,000 when the winner is announced on November 21. The contemporary art award will promote much-needed unity in the European Union, according to the head of the Hague’s Gemeentemuseum.

One of the nation’s oldest museums, known for its daring contemporary art exhibitions next to the White House and for its financial troubles, is being taken over by two larger institutions and will soon close for renovations.

Under an agreement signed Thursday, the long-struggling Corcoran Gallery of Art and its College of Art and Design will merge with George Washington University and the federally funded National Gallery of Art.

The three sides agreed the Corcoran will close around Oct. 1 for an undetermined amount of time and undergo renovations. When it reopens, it will offer free admission like the National Gallery’s other buildings on the National Mall.

A Mark Rothko painting owned by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen helped boutique auctioneer Phillips sell $132 million worth of art, capping two weeks of marathon sales in New York.

Estimated at $50 million to $60 million, “Untitled (Red, Blue, Orange)” attracted bids yesterday from four staffers competing on behalf of clients. August Uribe, senior director and worldwide co-head of contemporary art at Phillips, placed the winning bid of $50 million, or $56.2 million with fees.

A new museum of modern and contemporary art is to open in the Citroën building in Brussels in 2017.

As revealed by daily publication L’Echo, the Brussels region has come to an agreement with car manufacturer PSA-Peugeot Citroën in order to gain access to the building — a space of as much as 16,000m² — as a site for the new museum, situated on Place de l’Yser.

The Minister-President of the Brussels-Capital region, Rudi Vervoort, explains that the canal zone was chosen in order to “unite the two sides of Brussels”, adding: “It is a very strong symbol which demonstrates our interest in developing the zone.”