Displaying items by tag: clark art institute

During the culturally repressive late-16th and 17th centuries, Spanish kings often secreted away their nude paintings in rooms known as “salas reservadas,” where they could enjoy them in private.

Eventually, these works made it out into the open and, in 1830, into a gallery at the Prado Museum in Madrid, where they remain among the finest of that institution’s holdings.

Thomas J. Loughman, associate director of program and planning at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., has been appointed the 11th director and CEO of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, it was announced Thursday.

The current director, Susan Lubowsky Talbott, announced her retirement a year ago, on Dec. 19, 2014. Loughman, 44, who was introduced to the Atheneum staff on Thursday, will assume his duties at the nation's oldest public art museum on Feb. 1.

A new exhibit at the Clark Art Institute highlights a 20-year period of growth and expansion for the Williamstown museum.

While the exterior of the Clark may be the museum’s most recognizable change in recent memory thanks to a $145 million expansion unveiled last year, what’s inside is truly the driving force. And the Clark is hoping to hone that message through an exhibition titled An Eye for Excellence.

James McNeill Whistler’s 1871 painting best known as “Whistler’s Mother” depicts an unsmiling matriarch locked forever at age 67, eyes failing, ailing in a damp city, bad teeth hidden behind a set jaw.

Over the years, this mother has been a symbol of either the caregiver who nurtures her children or the grump who raps their knuckles. An exhibit opening Saturday at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., explores Anna McNeill Whistler’s migration from patriotic emblem of American motherhood to comically stern pop-culture icon.

Someday, museums will run out of themes for packaging van Gogh exhibitions, and that’s fine. He’s one of those artists you just want to spend time with, no pretext needed, because he’s some kind of instant soul mate, startling, difficult, vulnerable, always willing to make so much of himself available to you.

Still, a theme, even a broad one, can be useful in directing us to aspects of an artist’s life and work we might not otherwise zero in on. Such is the case with “Van Gogh and Nature,” which opens on Sunday at the Clark Art Institute here and qualifies as one of the summer’s choice art attractions. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a special display of four van Goghs and advertises it as a show.

Michael Conforti, the longtime director of the Clark Art Institute, is retiring. Conforti, who’s held the post since 1994, told the institute’s board of trustees that he’s leaving
Aug. 31.

“It has been an extraordinary privilege for me to have the opportunity to be a part of the Clark’s growth over these last 20 years,” he said in a statement. “There have been many wonderful opportunities that have propelled the Clark in new directions and have set the course for an even brighter future.”

The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has received a fifteen-million-dollar gift—one of the largest in its history—reports the "New York Times"’ Robin Pogrebin. The money will support the Clark’s campus expansion and programs.

The gift came from Felda and Dena Hardymon, who split time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Berkshires.

Thomas Kren, the associate director for collections at the J. Paul Getty Museum, will retire after more than 35 years, the museum announced Thursday.

When Kren leaves the Getty in October, Richard Rand, senior curator of paintings and sculpture at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., will replace him. Rand began his career at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1989.

Kren arrived at the Getty in 1980 as the associate curator of paintings. In 1984 he became the first senior curator of manuscripts, a position he held until 2010, when he took on his current role.

The Clark Art Institute has received sixty-three Japanese color woodblock prints, dating from 1832 to 1971, from long-time Clark docent Adele Rodbell. The Rodbell Family Collection includes landscape prints spanning from the late ukiyo-e through the shin hanga and sōsaku hanga movements of the 1920s and ‘30s to postwar Japan.

Among the works are a Hokusai landscape, a number of works from Hiroshige’s series “100 Famous Views of Edo,” and the Zen architecture prints of Saitō.

The Seattle Art Museum and New England’s Clark Art Institute are wagering temporary loans of major paintings based on the outcome of Super Bowl XLIX between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. The masterpieces that have been anted up showcase the beautiful landscapes of the Northwest and the Northeast respectively.

The Stakes: "The majestic Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast" from 1870 by Albert Bierstadt from SAM’s American art collection is wagered by Kimerly Rorschach, SAM’s Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO. Winslow Homer’s masterpiece, "West Point, Prout's Neck" (1900), one of the greatest works in the Clark’s noted Homer collection, is wagered by Michael Conforti, director of the Clark Art Institute. The winning museum will receive a three-month loan of the prized artwork. All shipping and expenses will be paid by the losing museum.