Displaying items by tag: Contemporary Art

Douglas Druick, President and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, announced today that Chicago attorney Irving Stenn Jr. has given the museum more than 100 drawings from his exceptional collection of seminal works produced in the 1960s. The drawings, by a who's-who of contemporary artists, represent a foundational period in the history of drawing when the way works on paper were made, used, and appreciated was undergoing radical change.

The gift includes works by Mel Bochner, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, and Fred Sandback, as well as pieces by Agnes Denes, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Nam June Paik, and Ellsworth Kelly.

Jackson Pollock, the master of Abstract Expressionism, reached an endgame with his groundbreaking drip paintings in 1950, and then experimented with a new technique, akin to drawing, of pouring thinned black enamel onto unprimed cotton duck.

“The power of Pollock’s allover drip paintings from 1947 to 1950 is so all-commanding that they’ve forced a blind spot in our ability to look at other aspects of the artist’s genius,” said Gavin Delahunty, senior curator of contemporary art at the Dallas Museum of Art. He began researching Pollock’s “black pourings,” made from 1951 to 1953, after conversations with artists including Wade Guyton, Jacqueline Humphries and Julie Mehretu, who discussed their influence.

The Morgan Library & Museum, which has been without a leader since late last summer, looked West to bring back a longtime New Yorker as its new director, choosing Colin B. Bailey, who has served since 2013 as director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco but was for many years before that the chief curator at the Frick Collection.

Mr. Bailey, a well-regarded Renoir scholar, succeeds William M. Griswold, who left last year to take over the Cleveland Museum of Art. Mr. Bailey comes to the Morgan almost a decade after an expansion, designed by Renzo Piano, enlarged not only the museum’s floor plan but also its ambitions, moving it more actively into contemporary art, collaborations with other institutions and high-end acquisitions.

A selection of 100 works from the nearly 10,000 acquired during the tenure of the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum, Arnold Lehman, is being presented in his honor on the occasion of his retirement in the summer of 2015. "Diverse Works: Director’s Choice, 1997–2015," on view through August 2, 2015, includes works in a wide range of media from every corner of the globe. Spanning many centuries, the exhibition brings together important objects from all of the Museum’s collecting areas.

The selections range from an ancient Chinese mythical carved figure (5th–3rd century b.c.e.) to contemporary works by Kiki Smith and Chuck Close, and a mixed-media collage (2013) in a customized frame from the American artist Rashaad Newsome.

The Santa Monica Museum of Art is suspending operations, calling a time out to consider its options for a future away from its longtime but no longer hospitable home at the Bergamot Station art complex.

Two current exhibitions that close Saturday will be the contemporary art museum’s last shows at Bergamot Station, the former rail depot that the museum, which opened in 1988 at another location, moved to in 1998.

It's official: the Whitney Biennial is now brought to you by Tiffany & Co.

With a $5 million gift, the high-end jeweler will be the lead sponsors for the next three editions of the contemporary art survey, through 2021. News of the sponsorship comes on the eve of the opening of the Whitney Museum of American Art's new Renzo Piano–designed building at the base of the High Line.

Lucian Freud's most famous and iconic subject will be offered as the highlight of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary sale on May 13. "Benefits Supervisor Resting" is regarded as Freud’s ultimate tour de force, a life-size masterwork in the grand historical tradition of the female nude, painted obsessively with intense scrutiny and abiding truth.

This bold and extraordinary example of the stark power of Lucian Freud’s realism reveals his unique ability to capture the reality of the human form in all its natural force. Chosen by Freud as the cover of the definitive monograph about the artist, "Benefits Supervisor Resting" was included by the artist in every major museum exhibition devoted to Freud, including Tate Britain, London, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the recent survey "The Facts and the Truth: Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery, London."

Today, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its plans for the opening of The Met Breuer, the building formerly housing the Whitney Museum. With the Whitney's move into their brand new building at the edge of the High Line and opening this May, the Met has finally publicized its plans for its takeover of the old museum site. With an opening planned for March 10, 2016, the Met's contemporary and modern art department will feature multiple exhibitions and programs at the Breuer Building.

A boxy, drab concrete building, the Madison Avenue structure was designed by Hungarian Marcel Breuer and built in 1966 specifically to house the collection that Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney left behind.

There's always a battle going on somewhere between Sotheby's and Christie's for some piece of the art cake. But to get a sense of the biggest confrontation on the calendar, London is the place to be next weekend when the two auction houses exhibit highlights from their forthcoming New York sales of Impressionist, Modern (Monet to late Picasso) and Contemporary art (Rothko to today).

The most significant exhibit without a doubt is Picasso's eye-popping "Les Femmes d'Alger," 1955, based on a painting by Delacroix, that has a whopping $US140 million ($183 million) estimate from Christie's.

Al Farrow’s meticulously crafted sculptures are both haunting and mesmerizing. Using materials such as deconstructed guns, bullets, bone, glass, and steel, Farrow creates ornate religious structures, ritual objects, and reliquaries that are visually striking and emotionally confounding. Through these shockingly beautiful sculptures, Farrow examines the abiding relationships between religion and violence, peace and brutality, the sacred and the unholy.

This unique exploration began after a trip to Italy when Farrow was confronted with a reliquary containing the remains of an ancient Saint. Reliquaries, which are containers that store and display precious relics, were often crafted of or enrobed in opulent materials such as  gold, silver, ivory, enamel, and gems.

Visit InCollect.com to read more about "Al Farrow: Wrath and Reverence," now on view at Forum Gallery in New York.