Displaying items by tag: Contemporary Art

The man who runs London's Tate Modern - an art gallery in a former power station that looms over the River Thames - was named on Thursday the most powerful figure in the world of contemporary art.

Nicholas Serota has been in the top 10 of the "Power 100" every year since the list was launched by ArtReview magazine in 2002, which said his museum "has come to epitomize almost all the elements of the current 'global' artworld."

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles has elected four new members to its board of trustees, the latest sign of growing confidence in the museum under new director Philippe Vergne.

Prominent L.A. artist Mark Bradford is among the additions, who also include legislative and public policy strategist Heather Podesta, entrepreneur and art collector Cathy Vedovi and banking executive and philanthropist Christopher Walker.

The additions announced Wednesday raise the number of board members to 50, which the museum said nearly restores the board to its largest size in the last decade.

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, a vibrant modern and contemporary art museum in Buffalo, New York, is gearing up for its first expansion in over fifty years. Earlier this month, the 152-year-old institution announced that it will hold a series of meetings with its members and the public to help determine the size and scope of its eventual growth and development. The meetings, which will be followed by a series of focus groups, are slated to begin on October 27.

While Albright-Knox’s parent organization, the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, was founded in 1862, construction on the Gallery didn’t begin until 1890. Designed by prominent local architect Edward B. Green and funded by Buffalo entrepreneur and philanthropist John J. Albright, the Greek Revival structure opened to the public in May 1905.

A painting from Cy Twombly’s celebrated “blackboard” series could set a record for the artist at auction. “Untitled” (1970) is expected to fetch between $35 million and $55 million on November 12 at Christie’s in New York. Before being offered to buyers at the auction house’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, the work will be exhibited in London and San Francisco.

Twombly, who is best known for his calligraphic, graffiti-like paintings, executed his “blackboard” series  between 1966 and 1971. Using contrasting lines against a light or dark background, these rhythmic works feature geometric shapes, words, letters, and numbers, calling to mind a classroom blackboard or a pupil’s notebook. With its swirling landscape of loops drawn in white crayon against a dark gray background, “Untitled” is hypnotic, entrancing the viewer with its formulaic loops.

It keeps no permanent collection, and its exhibition focus is on new artwork. But the past is ever-present at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

In fact, an old hand-drawn map of the site, dating to when this sprawling campus of 26 buildings was home to Arnold Print Works, serves just fine as a visual aid for museum director Joseph C. Thompson as he stands in a conference room and points out spots on the museum campus that are targeted for an ambitious expansion plan.

Buildings that now showcase art are marked on the old map as blacksmith shops and coal sheds.

After its Essl Collection sale on Monday kicked off the Frieze-week frenzy, Christie’s returned on Thursday night with its main event of the week.

Peter Doig’s first tropical painting led a carefully edited postwar and contemporary auction. The house tried to catch the prevailing mood favoring young artists—like the many being exhibited at this week’s fairs—and the German masters now on view in many of the British capital’s biggest galleries.

Still, the top lot was Doig’s “The Heart of Old San Juan,” dating from 1999, showing an emerald-green basketball court by the sea. The tranquil painting attracted some interest in the salesroom and sold for £4.56 million (about $7.26 million).

In the spring of 2010, a Queens foundry owner offered to sell a bronze sculpture of a U.S. flag to an art collector. The creator, the foundry owner said, was American contemporary artist Jasper Johns, and the price was around $10 million.

On Thursday, the foundry owner, Brian Ramnarine, was sentenced to 30 months in prison in federal court in Manhattan after pleading guilty in January to three counts of wire fraud, including one for making an unauthorized copy of the sculpture, named “Flag,” and creating false documents purporting that it was a rare gift from Mr. Johns.

Tate has acquired 100 works as an addition to their collection thanks to The Outset /Frieze Art Fair Fund to benefit the Tate Collection. The selection panel includes Agustín Pérez Rubio (Artistic Director, MALBA, Buenos Aires) and Laurence Rassel (Director, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona) and also Frances Morris (Head of Collections, International Art, Tate), Ann Gallagher (Head of Collections, British Art, Tate), Tanya Barson (Curator, International Art, Tate) and Clarrie Wallis (Curator, Contemporary British Art, Tate). The fund is organized and financed by Outset and in 2014 enjoys continued support from Leviev Extraordinary Diamonds. The annual fund at Frieze London, allows Tate to acquire important works of art at the fair for the national collection. This year the Fund is set at £150,000.

Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate said of the fund: “For more than a decade, the Outset Contemporary Art Fund has played a major role in helping Tate to build the national collection of contemporary art for the benefit of audiences across the country and in London. We are immensely grateful to Outset for this support."

The Contemporary Arts Center will have a new visual arts curator beginning in January 2015. New Orleans area native Andrea Andersson is returning home after having lived in New York City since 2001, where she was a freelance curator and taught at New York University and Barnard College.

Andersson, 36, who spoke by phone while visiting Montreal, who attended St. Martin Episcopal school, said that she grew up in Metairie, "right on the levee, looking over the lake."

Christie’s has announced that they will auction 45 works from the estate of the late Austrian actor Maximilian Schell in London, Amsterdam, and Paris, "Salzburger Nachrichten" reported. The film and stage actor died on February 1 of this year at the age of 83.

The sale includes works by Josef Albers, Jean Dubuffet, Franz Kline, Jean Tinguely, and Roy Lichtenstein. Highlights include Albers’ "Study for Homage to the Square: Kind Regards" (1958) which is due to hit the auction block in Amsterdam as part of the Postwar and Contemporary evening sale, and is slated to sell for between €150,000 to €200,000 ($190,000-$250,000).