Displaying items by tag: installation

The Cloisters museum and gardens, a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art located in northern Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park, will celebrate its 75^th anniversary this year. Assembled from architectural elements, both domestic and religious, that date from the 12^th through the 15^th century, the Cloisters houses approximately 3,000 works of art from medieval Europe.

To commemorate its 75^th year, the Cloisters has a number of celebratory exhibitions planned. Search for the Unicorn: An Exhibition in Honor of the Cloisters’ 75^th Anniversary will present the Unicorn Tapestries (1495-1505), a series of seven tapestries, which were a gifted to the museum by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. when the Cloisters opened in 1938. The Tapestries are the museum’s best-known masterpieces, but their history and meaning remain mysterious. The Unicorn Tapestries will be exhibited alongside approximately 40 works from the Metropolitan, sister institutions, and private collections. Search for the Unicorn will be on view from May 15-August 18, 2013.

In September, the Cloisters will mount an installation by Janet Cardiff (b. 1957). The Forty Part Motet (2001) is comprised of 40 speakers, each playing the sound of one singer in a 40-voice choral performing “Spem in alium numquam habui” (circa 1573) by the Tudor composer Thomas Tallis (circa 1505-1585). The installation will play on a loop in the Cloister’s Fuentidueña Chapel through December 8, 2013. The Forty Part Motet is the first piece of contemporary art to be featured at the Cloisters.

The Cloisters will wrap up its anniversary celebrations with the exhibition of six near life-size stained glass windows on loan from England’s historic Canterbury Cathedral. It will be the first time the panels have left the cathedral since their creation in 1178-80. Current repairs to the cathedral’s stonework required the removal of the windows, which have recently been conserved. The stained-glass windows that will be on view at the Cloisters feature six figures from an original cycle of 86 ancestors of Christ, the most comprehensive stained-glass cycle known in art history. The Romanesque masterpieces will be on view from March through May 2014.

Despite its stellar reputation, the Detroit Institute of Arts’ collection of early American silver has spent the past ten years in storage. Much to the public’s satisfaction, the museum recently decided to put 59 of its most important works back on view.

The Detroit Institute’s silver collection was placed in storage in 2002 while the museum’s historic building was undergoing renovations, which lead to the closure of the American colonial galleries. When the revamped museum reopened in 2007, depleted funds rendered the institution unable to buy new exhibition cases for the silver collection. It wasn’t until 2011 when the Michigan-based Americana Foundation awarded the Detroit Institute a grant that the museum was able to obtain state-of-the-art exhibition cases for their silver collection. The Americana Foundation’s grant also supported new research on the museum’s silver collection.

The Detroit Institute of the Art’s new installation includes American silver as well as two important pieces of late 18^th century Chinese export bowls. Highlights include a tankard made in Boston by Edward Winslow (1669-1753) in approximately 1695; a sugar bowl with cover made in New York by Myer Myers (1723-1795), the preeminent Jewish silversmith in colonial America; and a sugar basket made by silversmith and patriot Paul Revere (173-1818) in 1780.

From May 23-26, 2013, Art Basel will host 245 exhibitors at their first show in Hong Kong, which will replace the region’s biggest art fair, Art HK. Held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, Art Basel Hong Kong will feature works from emerging artists as well as 20^th century masters from both Asia and the West. While Art Basel currently runs two major international shows in Switzerland and Miami Beach, the organization is striving to maintain an emphasis on the Asian region for the Hong Kong fair.

Top galleries from 35 countries will meet at Art Basel Hong Kong, which is divided into four categories: Galleries, Insights, Discoveries, and Encounters. Galleries will present over 170 modern and contemporary exhibitors; Insights will feature galleries solely from Asia and the Asia-Pacific region; Discoveries presents a showcase of one and two-person exhibitions by emerging international contemporary artists; and Encounters features large-scale sculptural and installation works by artists from around the globe.

Exhibitors at the upcoming Art Basel Hong Kong show include Dominique Levy Gallery (New York), Cecilia de Torres, Ltd. (New York), Wentrup (Berlin), Galeria Pedro Cera (Lisbon), Leo Xu Projects (Shanghai), Blindspot Gallery (Hong Kong), and Schoeni Art Gallery (Hong Kong).

The inaugural Frieze Masters fair is already drawing comparisons to TEFAF Maastricht, the pinnacle of Old Masters fairs that takes place annually in the Netherlands. Featured alongside the contemporary art world staple, the Frieze Art Fair, Frieze Masters has been watching the sales add up.

Highlights include a Louise Bourgeois bronze, Avenza Revisted (1968–69), that was sold by New York’s Cheim & Reid gallery for $1.5 million, Bruce Nauman’s installation, Parallax Shell (1971), along with the drawing for it, which was sold by Sperone Westwater (New York) for $2–3 million, and Pablo Picasso’s Homme et Femme au Bouquet (197) which brought in around $9 million during the fair’s preview thanks to Wan de Weghe Fine Art (New York).

Concluding on October 14, Frieze Master still has plenty of time to keep the sales coming.

Sotheby’s hosted a number of sales in Hong Kong this past week. On October 7^th, the Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian paintings sale achieved $15.5 million, soaring past the pre-sale estimate of $5.8 million. The sale achieved the highest auction total for this category and the painting Fortune and Longevity by Lee Man Fong, an Indonesian modern master, set a record for any Southeast Asian painting when it sold for $4.4 million. The final price for the painting was almost three times the pre-sale estimate.

The Contemporary Asian Art sale totaled $15.1 million and Tiananmen No. 1 by Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter, Zhang Xiaogang, was the top lot at $2.69 million. Liu Wei’s Revolutionary Family Series – Invitation to Dinner was the second highest sale at $2.24 million, a world record price at auction for the Beijing-based artist who works in various mediums including video, installation, drawings, sculpture, and painting.

The 20^th Century Chinese Art sale brought in $24.6 million and sold 90% by lot. Works from Europe, the United States, and around Asian sold well and many were above their pre-sale estimates. The top lot was Potted Chrysanthemums by the Chinese modern art pioneer, Sanyu, which sold for $3.99 million.

The following day, the Fine Chinese Paintings sale totaled $53.2 million, the highest of the four art auctions. Offering many works from private collections, the total sale was more than double the pre-sale estimate and sold 97.2% by lot. The two top lots at the auction, Zhang Daqian’s Swiss Peaks; Calligraphy in Xingshu and Fu Baoshi’s Lady at the Pavillion, both sold for $2,974,278.

Last year China beat out the United States as the world’s largest art and antiques market and the autumn sales reflect that power swap. There was a bit of controversy when a 60-year-old Taiwanese Buddhist sister demanded that a $1.65 million sale be halted at the Fine Chinese Paintings auction. Sotheby’s canceled the sale of a painting by Zhang Daqian after Lu Chieh-chien requested a court hearing to prevent bidding on Riding in the Autumn Countryside (1950) which she claims was the property of her family and had been consigned without consent.

Known for his massive environmental works of art that interact with the natural landscape, the Bulgarian artist, Christo (b. 1935), has been ordered by a federal judge to halt the installation of his latest project until a lawsuit involving the work reaches a conclusion.

Created by Christo and his late wife, Jeanne-Claude (they worked collaboratively under the moniker Christo), Over the River involves hanging long stretches of translucent fabric for two weeks above various parts of the Arkansas River in Colorado. Girded by steel cables that will be anchored on either bank, the project will consume almost seven miles of the river.

The environmentalist group Rags Over the Arkansas River Inc. (ROAR) brought the lawsuit against Christo as they fear the project will affect local fisheries and natural habitats and disturb the locals. Although the Bureau of Land Management approved the project in 2011, Christo will serve as a co-defendant alongside the Bureau in order to uphold his and Jeanne-Claude’s vision.

The couple’s iconic body of work includes The Gates, which was installed in New York City’s Central Park in 2005, and Running Fence, a 24 mile-long artwork that ran through California’s Sonoma and Marin counties in 1976. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s projects often stirred up controversy based on their sheer scale, but it is also this otherworldliness that makes them visually unforgettable.