Displaying items by tag: Renovations

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced that on January 18, 2013, the number of visitors to the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia hit the one million mark. The renovated galleries, which reopened to the public on November 1, 2011, draw approximately 2,550 patrons each day.

The Met’s Islamic Art collection, which is comprised of over 1,200 works and spans 1,300 years, is considered one of the most comprehensive collections of its kind. The holdings are presented in 15 different galleries, the result of an eight-year project that included renovations, expansions, and reinstallations.

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, said, “Since these galleries reopened in their new configuration just over a year ago, we have been truly gratified by the exceptional interest that our visitors – both local and international – have taken in this newly conceived presentation of Islamic art.”

To commemorate the Met’s milestone, the one-millionth visitor to the Islamic art galleries received a catalogue of the collection.

The Louvre, Centre Pompidou, and Musee d’Orsay all reported record attendance numbers for 2012. Recent expansions, newly unveiled renovations, and impressive exhibitions are responsible for beckoning troves of visitors from across the world to the Parisian institutions.

The Louvre, which is the most-visited museum in the world, summons bigger crowds each year. 2012 marked the largest attendance figures ever recorded for the institution with nearly 10 million visitors this year. Expanded Islamic art galleries and a spate of well-received temporary exhibitions were of particular interest to visitors. In fact, they helped boost attendance 29-percent from 2011. Exhibition highlights at the Louvre in 2012 included a show devoted to Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and the birth of American Landscape painting, the presentation of Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) masterwork, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, and an exhibition of Raphael’s (1483-1520) later works, which he produced in Rome.

The Centre Pompidou, which specialized in modern and contemporary art, welcomed over 3.8 million visitors in 2012, a 6-percent increase from 2011. The Centre Pompidou held three major retrospectives this year, which helped raise visitor numbers. An exhibition devoted to Henri Matisse (1869-1954) titled Matisse, Paires et séries brought 495,000 visitors; a Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) retrospective brought 425,000; and a show of Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí’s (1904-1989) works has seen approximately 6,700 visitors per day since it opened on November 21.

After attendance figures declined from 2008 to 2010, it appears that the Impressionist institution, the Musée d’Orsay, has bounced back with 3.6 million visitors this year. A 15-percent increase from last year, the boosted attendance numbers were likely the result of the reopening of renovated gallery spaces and a major Edgar Degas (1834-1917) exhibition, which brought 480,000 visitors. The current exhibition, Impressionism and Fashion, is expected to see 500,000 guests before closing on January 21, 2013.

Considered one of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer’s (1632-1675) masterworks, Girl With a Pearl Earring has spent over a century at the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague. Sometimes referred to as the “Dutch Mona Lisa,” the painting, which is not dated, features a wide-eyed young girl whose gaze has been captivating audiences for hundreds of years.

Girl With a Pearl Earring is one of 15 paintings heading to the Frick Collection in New York from the Netherlands. Vermeer, Rembrandt and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting From the Mauritshuis opens on October 22, 2013 and runs through January 19, 2014. Because of the high level of interest in the enigmatic work, chief curator at the Frick, Colin Bailey, decided to give Girl With a Pearl Earring its own space in the museum’s Oval Room. The rest of the exhibition will be on display in the Frick’s East Gallery.

The Mauritshuis is currently undergoing renovations, which is why part of its collection has been sent out for exhibition. In addition to the Frick, the works will appear in Japan (through January 6, 2013), San Francisco’s de Young Museum (January 26, 2013-June 2, 2013), and Atlanta’s High Museum of Art (June 22, 2013-September 29, 2013). The rest of the Mauritshuis’ collection will remain in the Netherlands and will be exhibited at The Hague’s Gemeentemuseum until the renovations are completed.

Fans are breathing a sigh of relief after Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art decided against selling its historic Beaux-Arts home and moving to the suburbs. The cash-strapped institution shocked fans with the proposal, which was announced this summer. Ultimately, the Corcoran’s board of trustees decided that the museum and its associated College of Art and Design, which is in close proximity to the White House, should stay put.

Designed by Ernest Flagg, the Corcoran Gallery opened to the public in 1897 and remains the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, D.C. The museum, which specializes in American art, is currently in need of $130 million worth of renovations. While the institution’s façade was restored last year, the galleries are still in need of a major overhaul, which is the main reason why Corcoran officials were considering the sale to begin with.

Although the institution has been struggling financially for years, strong reaction to the potential move has proved inspirational. The Corcoran is considering embarking on partnerships with like-minded institutions and collaborations with other D.C. museums, including the National Gallery of Art, have been explored.

The Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C.’s oldest art museum, has been losing money for years and is currently in need of at least $130 million in renovations. The only major museum on the Mall that is privately owned, times have been tough for the Corcoran who must charge admission and raise large amounts of money to survive. Attendance has dropped drastically and donations to the museum have roughly halved since the recession.

The Corcoran’s commanding Beaux Arts façade and top-notch collection of 17,000 works including pieces by Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, and Willem de Kooning are simply not a big enough draw to keep the institution afloat, especially when every other institution on the Mall offers free admission. The Corcoran’s board of trustees are currently debating between a number of options to keep the museum active including selling the current building, combining forces with another institution, and moving out of the city.

While many find the loss of the Corcoran will leave the Washington Mall with a gaping hole, the museum announced that they have been discussing possible solutions with the National Gallery of Art, George Washington University, and a few other unnamed institutions. The Corcoran hired a real estate firm as its adviser in September and hopes to have its future mapped out by the first half of 2013.

The District of Columbia Historic Preservation League is looking to extend the landmark designation for the Corcoran’s exterior and interior. If the institution were approved, any major construction would be subject to public review.

This past Sunday, 75 Van Gogh paintings including Sunflowers, Irises, and Bedroom, were pulled off the walls of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum and transported across the city in an armored car. The masterpieces will be on view for the next seven months at the Hermitage, an Amsterdam dependency of the Russian state museum, while the Van Gogh Museum undergoes renovations.

Moving irreplaceable works of art proved to be no easy task. Each painting was loaded onto felt-covered trolleys and taken to a workshop where they were wrapped in protective insulation and then packed into hard-shell carrying cases. The cases were then assigned code numbers to keep the paintings’ identities under wraps. The decidedly huge undertaking went off without a hitch.

The Hermitage’s Van Gogh exhibit opens on Saturday, September 29^th and will run through mid-April. The revamped Van Gogh Museum is slated to re-open on April 25, 2013.

Best known for his dynamic and powerful seascapes, painter Winslow Homer (1836–1910) spent the last twenty-seven years of his life working diligently in a studio in Prout’s Neck, Maine. It was here, isolated on the craggy coast, that Winslow’s work matured and he created some of his most admired paintings. While in Maine, Homer became fascinated with the untold power of the natural world and often explored the theme in scenes of man versus nature, particularly the ocean.

Beginning September 25^th, after a multi-year, $2.8 million restoration by the Portland Museum of Art, Homer’s studio will be open for public tours. After Homer’s death, the studio was passed down from family member to family member and ultimately landed in the hands of his great-grandnephew, Charles “Chip” Homer Willauer. Willauer, now 74, spent many summers living in his great-granduncle’s studio and began to worry about the future of the building. Hoping to preserve the significant piece of American art history, Willauer sold the studio to the Portland Museum of Art in 2006 for $1.8 million.

The Museum took the undertaking very seriously and went to work on renovations. The foundation was stabilized, the balcony and windows were replaced, the chimney was restored, and the exterior returned to its original green hue with brown trim. The museum ultimately raised $10.6 million to pay for the purchase and renovation of Homer’s studio as well as an endowment and educational programs and exhibitions.

To celebrate the renovation and opening, the museum will present the exhibition “Weatherbeaten: Winslow Homer and Maine,” featuring 38 oil paintings, watercolors and etchings that Homer created in his secluded studio. “Weatherbeaten” will run through December 30^th.

Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton’s large-scale import of big-name artworks for her just-opened Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Ark., has been the talk of the nation for months.

Now, the board of another museum in the country’s sprawling middle has decided to sell off what one expert describes as the “crown jewel” of its collection.

The Birger Sandzen Memorial Gallery on the campus of Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kan., is scheduled to sell its sole work by Marsden Hartley, one of the leading American modernist painters of the 20th century.

Curator Ron Michael said the gallery fell $700,000 short on its recent capital campaign to fund much needed renovations and hopes to raise that amount and more by selling Hartley’s “Untitled (Still life)” (1919) at an auction Thursday at Sotheby’s in New York.

Executed in oil on board and measuring 32 by almost 26 inches, the work is estimated to bring between $700,000 and $900,000.

“It was a very tough decision to make,” Michael said. “The board decided it was in the best interest of the long-term sustainability of the gallery.”

“We really looked at a variety of options,” he added, “and felt this would be the most expedient way to complete the renovation.”

The Hartley still life, featuring a bouquet of flowers in a Pueblo Indian pot before a window with a view of the Southwestern landscape, entered the gallery’s collection in 1968 as a gift from a Bethany piano teacher, Oscar Thorsen.

Thorsen bought the piece in Santa Fe, N.M., during a trip there with Birger Sandzen, a widely exhibited Swedish-born painter whose reputation has climbed considerably in recent years. Sandzen taught at Bethany for more than 50 years. His family founded the Birger Sandzen Memorial Gallery.

Sandzen admired Hartley, whom he praised as “one of our best American moderns.” In 1919, he included two of Hartley’s paintings in a traveling exhibit he organized in Lindsborg.

When Thorsen died in 1968, he left his entire collection, including the Hartley still life and works by Sandzen and others, to the Sandzen Memorial Gallery.

The gallery decided to sell it, Michael said, “because the Hartley painting didn’t fit the gallery’s mission statement: to promote Birger Sandzen and his contemporaries and associates.”

“We felt the Hartley would be better utilized in another institution,” he added.

At least one illustrious alumnus of the college vehemently disagrees.

Randall Griffey, curator of American art at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College in Massachusetts, calls the sale “a tragedy.”

“They fell short on the capital campaign, so the board voted to sell its crown jewel,” he said.

Griffey, a Hartley scholar who earned a bachelor of arts degree at Bethany in 1990, said the Sandzen Gallery’s painting played a significant part in the trajectory of his career.

“It was the first Hartley I laid my eyes on when I was in college there,” he said.

The Van Gogh Museum is shutting its doors for six months for renovations starting next year, its director said Friday, becoming the latest major Dutch museum to close for reconstruction.

But dozens of the tormented Dutch impressionist's finest works will remain on public display, moving across the Amstel River to the Hermitage Amsterdam museum during the work, scheduled to last from October 2012 through March 2013.

Van Gogh Museum director Axel Rueger said some 75 paintings and other works will move to the Hermitage, which will be staging an exhibition on impressionism at the same time.

"Art lovers will be able to see a splendid survey of 19th-century art by Van Gogh and his contemporaries in the Hermitage Amsterdam," Rueger said. "This represents a rare opportunity, one not likely to happen again any time soon."