Displaying items by tag: Acquisitions

In celebration of recent major gifts, this summer The Phillips Collection presents for the first time a major photography exhibition drawn exclusively from the museum’s permanent collection. "American Moments: Photographs from The Phillips Collection" features more than 130 photographs that evoke a sense of time, place, and experience. More than 30 renowned artists are represented in the exhibition, including Esther Bubley, Bruce Davidson, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Louis Faurer, Joel Meyerowitz, and Arnold Newman.

A prized Picasso portrait, which has been in the Goldwyn family collection since it was acquired by Hollywood legend Samuel Goldwyn Sr. in 1956, has been sold to another film and entertainment mogul from halfway around the world.

Wang Zhongjun, chairman and co-founder of entertainment giant Huayi Brothers Media Group, purchased Pablo Picasso’s “Femme au chignon dans un fauteuil” at Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on May 5 for US$29.93 million (HK$233 million).

The Cleveland Museum of Art has boosted its smallish but choice pre-Columbian collection significantly by acquiring a dozen rare and important gold objects of a type that once lured Spanish conquistadors to the New World.

Bought in March in a private sale arranged by Sotheby's in New York for an undisclosed price, the gold pieces will go on view at the museum in a special exhibition starting Saturday May 16. The museum plans to install them in the pre-Columbian galleries by August, after making room by adjusting space in display cases.

The Phillips Collection’s Director Dorothy Kosinski announced today the acquisition of several hundred gifts of photography to the museum’s permanent collection, accepted from a small group of collectors. Nearly 300 of the photographs were given to the museum in 2014, increasing the collection by more than 25 percent. Many of these new acquisitions, including superb color prints and black-and-white photographs from masters such as Berenice Abbott, Esther Bubley, Louis Faurer, and Joel Meyerowitz, will be displayed at the museum for the first time on June 6 with the opening of the special exhibition "American Moments: Photographs from The Phillips Collection."

No museum exhibition is perfect, but some are less perfect than others. Surprisingly, even these shows sometimes turn out to be exceptionally valuable. They clarify notions of quality and the pleasures and rigors of looking, for curators and visitors alike.

“Embracing Modernism: Ten Years of Drawings Acquisitions” at the Morgan Library & Museum is one of these flawed gems. Of its nearly 100 drawings, about half are either weak or just acceptable, which is not good enough for an institution of the Morgan’s stature.

The Huntington spent nearly $1 million to buy two paintings and a ceramic sculpture that will fill gaps in the museum’s American art galleries.

At an annual meeting last month, The Huntington’s Art Collectors’ Council purchased two 1936 paintings — “Burlesque” by Milton Avery and “Irises (The Sentinels)” by Pasadena artist Helen Lundeberg — as well as a Sargent Claude Johnson sculpture, “Head of a Boy.”

"Gratitude is the theme of our 50th anniversary," Michael Govan, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's chief executive, said at the media preview for the new exhibit "50 for 50: Gifts on the Occasion of LACMA's Anniversary."

The show, which is in member previews this week and opens to the public Sunday, follows a star-studded celebratory gala on April 18 that raised $5 million and featured a performance by Seal. The "50 for 50" exhibit showcases more than $675 million in gifted art from patrons including LACMA trustees Jane Nathanson and Lynda Resnick.

"There's nothing better than knowing that the big gala fundraiser is lasting in the form of '50 for 50,'" Govan said.

On Saturday, April 18, 2015, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art celebrated the museum’s 50th anniversary at a special fundraising gala, co-chaired by LACMA trustees Ann Colgin, Jane Nathanson, and Lynda Resnick. The evening welcomed approximately 750 guests and raised $5 million, the proceeds of which will benefit the museum’s programming and acquisitions. LACMA’s 50th Anniversary Gala was sponsored by Christie’s.

In honor of the occasion, Mrs. Nathanson and Mrs. Resnick gifted significant works of art to the museum’s collection; in addition, the two trustees led a campaign encouraging other patrons to donate or bequeath major artworks to LACMA.

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.