Displaying items by tag: Modern Art

Plans for a long-awaited Modern and contemporary art museum in the Belgian capital have stalled because the federal government of Belgium and the regional government of Brussels have very different visions for the project. Leading Belgian cultural figures have expressed concerns that Brussels’s equivalent of London’s Tate Modern or New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will ever be created.

Earlier this year, the president of the Brussels region (Brussels-Capital), Rudi Vervoort, told Belgian media that the regional government of Brussels planned to convert a 16,000 sq. m Art Deco building north-west of the city center, formerly owned by the French car manufacturer Citroën, into a Modern and contemporary art center.

For thirty-seven years, Josef Albers’ mural “Manhattan” graced the lobby of the MetLife (previously PanAm) Building on Park Avenue in New York City. Installed in 1963, the giant red, white, and black work was designed as an homage to New York, the city to which Albers emigrated in 1933. The mural was removed in 2000 during a lobby redesign and all but one of the panels ended up in a landfill site in Ohio after a failed attempt to remove asbestos from the backs of the tiles. Much to the delight of art lovers, “The Art Newspaper” has reported that the modernist masterpiece could make a triumphant return to New York City.

The forthcoming World Trade Center Transit Hub could be a possible home for the work, but no definitive plans have been announced. 

There's something quietly apocalyptic about so dramatic a cultural shift. But the day of reckoning isn't really sensed in "Urban Theater: New York Art in the 1980s," a new show (through Jan. 4) at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

There's plenty of flash and even some bombast. How could there not be, when artist Julian Schnabel was busily making the epic 1988 painting "Cortes"? A coarse, gashed, 20-foot-wide, olive-drab tarpaulin stained in map-like blotches, it's like a hazy chart for a massive military campaign.

Near the top hangs an embroidered Baroque altar front in royal purple and gold. Even the title, which refers to the Spanish conquistador who demolished the Aztec empire, speaks of feverish ambition.

The Armory Show has announced its exhibitor lineup for the 2015 installment of the big perennial modern and contemporary art fair held in New York,  March 5-8. On board this time are 195 galleries representing 28 countries from around the globe. The 2015 edition, the fair's seventeenth, will take place as before, on two piers  on the Hudson River: Pier 92, devoted to modern art; and Pier 94, dedicated to contemporary art.

Within the fair, on Pier 94, a special exhibition organized by London-based curator Omar Kholeif, "Armory Focus: Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean (MENAM)" highlights works by emerging and established artists from those regions.

Sotheby’s continues to build aggressively on its strength in the Impressionist and Modern market announcing today Matisse’s "Odalisque au fauteuil noir," estimated at between £9 and 12m, for its London sale of Impressionist and Modern art. Helena Newman, Sotheby’s Co-Head, Impressionist & Modern Art Worldwide, said, “This exquisitely colored painting is one of the finest of the artist’s celebrated ‘Odalisque’ paintings to come to the market.”

An exquisite portrait depicting Princess Nézy-Hamidé Chawkat, the great granddaughter of the last Sultan of Turkey, "Odalisque au fauteuil noir" (dated 1942 and estimated at £9-12m) is one of Henri Matisse’s finest paintings from his famed ‘Odalisque’ series, his depictions of the notorious concubine figure, with which he created one of the most recognizable emblems of eroticism in Modern art.

The “Nature and Metamorphosis” retrospective includes 56 paintings and 103 drawings from 1924 through 1990, spanning Peter Blume’s entire career. From jarring early works inspired by the machine age and growth of cities through profound ruminations on to power of nature. Blume’s work helped define American modernism.

While best known as a painter, Blume was a virtuoso, dynamic draftsman, and his drawings show a surprising range. The retrospective is curated by Robert Cozzolino, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) senior curator and curator of Modern Art. “Blume was critical to the development and reception of modernism in America. His work played a key role in disseminating avant-garde ideas in the U.S. art world using a method that resembled Flemish art transposed through the lens of Cubism and the unconscious.

On November 19, during the Whitney Museum of American Art’s annual fall gala, director Adam D. Weinberg announced that the institution’s long-awaited downtown location will open on May 1, 2015. The Whitney closed the doors of its Brutalist Marcel Breuer building last month, following a wildly successful Jeff Koons retrospective. The building, which was the Whitney’s home for nearly fifty years, will be leased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the next eight years, with the possibility of extending the agreement for a longer term. The Met plans to present exhibitions and educational programming in the iconic building.

The Whitney’s new home will be located at 99 Gansevoort Street in New York City’s vibrant meatpacking district, between the High Line, an elevated linear park, and the Hudson River. Designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, the new building will roughly double the Whitney’s exhibition and programming space, allowing the first comprehensive presentation of its collection of modern and contemporary American art.

Billionaire collector Steven Cohen, who recently added Giacometti's "Chariot" (1950) to his vast art collection for a cool $101 million, donated a tour of his Greenwich, Connecticut collection to the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research charity auction last week, as per "Page Six." Cohen, who was also actively involved with the Robin Hood Foundation for many years, was revealed as the buyer of the Giacometti sculpture, which sold on a single $90 million bid at Sotheby's on November 4 (see "$101 Million Giacometti Leads Sotheby's $400 Million Imp Mod Evening Sale") to David Norman, Sotheby's co-chairman of Impressionist and modern art worldwide, who was bidding for his client.

No word yet on whether the tour was successfully sold at the charity auction, or for how much—the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research did not respond for comment.

New leadership is on the way at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

John B. Ravenal, currently the curator for modern and contemporary art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, will take the helm as new executive director in mid-January. Interim director Katy Kline has been in place since the departure of Dennis Kois at the end of April. The Lincoln museum, which has an annual budget of about $5 million, was set to announce Ravenal’s appointment on Monday.

Kois left after a six-year tenure that was seen as a time of growth for the deCordova, overseeing enhanced fund-raising efforts and a sharper curatorial focus on sculpture, as well as a five-year strategic plan that went into effect in 2011.