Displaying items by tag: Research

The troubled life and demise of Vincent van Gogh follows a well-known trajectory: the precocious genius, the art world's indifference, the onset of angst and madness, and then, tragically, his suicide at age 37.

Or so we thought. But according to the groundbreaking research of Pulitzer Prize-winning biographers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, the painter didn't shoot himself: he was killed. When they first exposed this theory in their 2011 biography "Van Gogh: The Life," it was viciously attacked and contested. Rewriting history is not an easy task.

The Milwaukee Art Museum has hired a new curator to oversee its design and decorative arts collection. Monica Obniski will join the staff as the Demmer curator of 20th and 21st century design in January. She will lead the effort to rethink the display of MAM's design collection as part of a top-to-bottom renovation and reinstallation of the permanent collection.

For the last several years, Obniski has been at the Art Institute of Chicago as the Ann S. and Samuel M. Mencoff assistant curator of American decorative arts. She began her years at the Art Institute as a research associate and exhibitions coordinator in 2007.

The Toledo Museum of Art announced that it will return a nearly 1,000-year-old bronze sculpture of the Hindu god Ganesha to the Government of India.

The Ganesha was purchased in 2006 from art dealer Subhash Kapoor, who is currently awaiting trial in India on charges of illegal exportation, criminal conspiracy and forgery.

Research conducted by the Museum, with the assistance and cooperation of the Indian Consulate General, Dnyaneshwar M. Mulay, and the Ambassador of India, Dr. S. Jaishankar, and their respective representatives, led Museum Director Brian Kennedy to recommend the return to the Museum’s Art Committee. That committee voted on Aug. 21 to deaccession the Ganesha from the collection and facilitate its return.

After two years of fundraising, Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries have finally secured the £2.25 million (approx. $3.6 million) necessary to buy the personal archive of early photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot. Although Daguerre is often credited with the invention of photography, Fox Talbot’s book “Pencil of Nature” was an early development for paper-based processes and the first photographically-illustrated book. The archive includes objects photographed in the book, documents relating to both his work and his personal life, and many other items. The Bodleian Libraries have several plans in the works for the archive including a 2017 exhibition, a catalogue raisonné of his work, and an online archive for scholarly research.

Are there suddenly dozens more genuine Rembrandts in the world?

There are if art authorities accept the findings of Ernst van de Wetering, the Dutch art historian and longtime head of the Netherlands-based Rembrandt Research Project. In its sixth and final volume, published Wednesday, Mr. van de Wetering reattributes 70 paintings—often discounted by previous scholars as well as the institutions that own them—to the Dutch master. They include four at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Of those, Mr. van de Wetering is quick to emphasize “Portrait of a Man,” also known as “The Auctioneer,” dated 1658 by the researcher.

The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History will be inaugurated on October 29 with a gathering of prominent art historians and museum leadership from around the world. The Institute has been founded through a $17 million gift from longtime patron of the arts Edith O’Donnell to the University of Texas at Dallas, and will be one of the preeminent centers for art history research and training in the U.S., alongside the J. Paul Getty Museum; the Clark Art Institute; the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU; and the National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts.

Through its partnership with the Dallas Museum of Art, the Institute will be the first degree-granting program in the U.S. that incorporates both an institute and a museum, and is the first such program that is a collaboration between a public university and a public museum.

John Marciari first spotted the painting among hundreds of other works carefully filed in pullout racks in a soulless cube of a storage facility in New Haven, Connecticut. He was then, in 2004, a junior curator at Yale University’s renowned Art Gallery, reviewing holdings that had been warehoused during its expansion and renovation. In the midst of that task, he came upon an intriguing but damaged canvas, more than five feet tall and four feet wide, which depicted St. Anne teaching the young Virgin Mary to read. It was set aside, identified only as “Anonymous, Spanish School, seventeenth century.”

The French architect Jean Nouvel has revealed his modern, airy design for the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC). Located in the heart of Beijing’s cultural district, the 323,000-square-foot museum will house a variety of important collections spanning from the Ming dynasty to the present day.

The NAMOC, which will be in close proximity to the city’s 2008 Olympic stadium, will feature a number of galleries for permanent and temporary exhibitions, research and education centers, a grand terrace, an indoor garden, and an auditorium. According to Nouvel, the NAMOC “resists the laws of gravity while asserting its presence.”

Tate and the Terra Foundation for American Art announced the appointment of Alex J. Taylor as Tate's new Terra Foundation Research Fellow in American Art.

"Research plays a fundamental role in Tate’s mission to increase the public’s knowledge, enjoyment, and understanding of the art it collects," explained Tate’s Head of Collection Research. "This new initiative promises to forge new perspectives on post-war American art and deepen the rich interpretative information that Tate makes available to the public on works in the collection."

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe is developing a new fellowship for museum professionals that it hopes will grow into a larger think tank program in the future.

The museum said the fellowship is the first of its kind and will provide opportunities for those who work in museums time to do independent research as well as collaborate with others.

Douglas Worts has been appointed the 2014 fellow.