Displaying items by tag: Modern Art

On Thursday, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art will welcome its newest exhibit.

Robert Morris’ Glass Labyrinth sits on the south lawn of the museum, in the Donald J. Hall Sculpture Garden.

Morris in an internationally recognized artist who is from the Kansas City area. The Nelson-Atkins Museum has wanted to include one of his pieces in its collection for many years.

“I think we were all thinking something indoors, but this is the perfect way to celebrate him and to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park,” said Jan Schall, Sanders Sosland Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

The Orange County Museum of Art has been without a director since the end of 2013, leading many in the local art world to speculate about the executive search being conducted by museum leaders.

On Wednesday, the Newport Beach museum announced that it has named Todd DeShields Smith as its new chief executive and director. Smith has served as executive director of the Tampa Museum of Art in Florida for the last six years.

Smith will begin his term at OCMA on Aug. 4. He succeeds Dennis Szakacs, who served as the director and CEO of the museum for 10 years before stepping down in 2013.

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.

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.”

A billion pound collection of modern masterpieces which has languished in a storeroom bunker under Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran may finally see the light of day, under changes in the new government's policy. Paintings by Picasso, Miro, Calder, Bacon, Pollock, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Van Gogh and Monet have languished in a storeroom beneath the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art since the  Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The collection was put together in the 1960s and 1970s by Queen Farah Pahlavi, the wife of the last shah of Iran. Fearing that they would be destroyed by the religious turmoil that gripped the the country, the works were carefully packed up, crated and removed from public view.

Christie’s sold $134.6 million of contemporary art in New York in an hour as international buyers from 26 countries chased after works including Andy Warhol’s electric chair silkscreen and Martin Kippenberger’s slouching man in his underwear.

Titled “If I Live I’ll See You Tuesday,” the auction yesterday surpassed its high target of $124.1 million as 11 artist records were set, including those for Richard Prince, On Kawara, Wade Guyton, Dan Colen and Kippenberger. Of the 35 lots offered, all but one found buyers. Similar to last week’s Impressionist and modern art auctions, Asian collectors competed fiercely, winning at least two of the top 10 lots, Christie’s said.

Scratch an art dealer, and you’ll often find a curator. That’s the case with Craig Starr, who seems to operate in the secondary art market mainly to support his persistent curatorial itch. For nearly a decade, he has been mounting sharp-focus shows of historical works by prominent American postwar artists in his jewel-box gallery on the Upper East Side.

Mr. Starr’s latest effort — one of his best — is “Robert Rauschenberg: The Fulton Street Studio, 1953-54.” With 15 works borrowed from private collections, this exhibition delves into a formative period in the development of Rauschenberg (1925-2008), when he was in his late 20s and moving fast. It presents his sensibility in a nutshell, his broad aesthetic range, omnivorous curiosity, playfulness and intuitive elegance.

Pablo Picasso’s colorful 1932 oil painting “The Rescue” sold for $31.5 million at a New York auction Wednesday, far exceeding its $14 million to $18 million estimate.

“The Rescue” led the bidding at a Sotheby’s sale of impressionist and modern art. The auction house sold 50 pieces, raising about $219 million.

It was the second straight night a painting by the Cubist master changed hands for a big price. Picasso’s 1942 painting of his mistress in a purple dress titled “Portrait of Dora Maar” sold Tuesday for $22.5 million at Christie’s.