Displaying items by tag: fashion

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is going east — far east, for The Costume Institute’s spring 2015 exhibition, to be titled “Chinese Whispers: Tales of the East in Art, Film, and Fashion.”

Incorporating the realms of fine and filmic art from the Department of Asian Art, the summer show will explore how China has fueled the creative imagination of designers all over the world for centuries, resulting in layers of cultural translations, re-translations, and, of course, mistranslations.

This morning the Met announced that its fall Costume Institute show will showcase 30 outfits worn by women in mourning (including dresses worn by Queen Victoria and Queen Alexandra) between 1815 and 1915. Scheduled to open in the Anna Wintour Costume Center on October 21 and run through February 1, the show is titled “Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire.” The exhibition is the first time the Met has planned a fashion show in the fall since 2007. We are dying to see the show, which will showcase many garments for the first time and “reveal the impact of high-fashion standards on the sartorial dictates of bereavement rituals as they evolved over a century,” according to the press release.

Tony Fusco and Robert Four, the arts promoters and producers behind Boston’s marketing and PR agency, Fusco & Four/Ventures, LLC, are adding Boston Design Week to their roster of annual art and design shows. They are also the producers of the Boston International Fine Art Show, the Ellis Boston Antiques Show, and AD20/21, which will anchor events in the new Boston Design Week. Fusco said, “The goal of Boston Design Week is to increase public awareness and appreciation of all aspects of design and foster recognition of the vital role design and creative industries play in our lives. We want to offer the public an opportunity to explore architecture, urban design, interior design, fashion, graphic design, product and industrial design, and studio design such as furniture, decorative arts, sculpture, textiles, jewelry and more.”

The 10-day citywide design festival, which is scheduled to take place March 20-30, 2014, will include over 60 design events, exhibitions, lectures, receptions, behind-the-scenes tours, and other activities throughout greater Boston. Highlights include the American Society of Interior Designers annual awards gala on March 20 at the Mandarin Hotel; the Boston Preservation Alliance’s 2014 forum, which will take place on March 20 at the Modern Theatre in Downtown Crossing; and ongoing open houses, lectures and special sales in Park Square and on Newbury and Boylston Streets.

AD20/21: Art & Design of the 20th and 21st Centuries will take place March 27 through March 30 at the Cyclorama, Boston Center for the Arts, during Boston Design Week’s final days. Now in its seventh year, the show and sale will present modern and contemporary fine art, jewelry, vintage and contemporary studio furniture, sculpture, photography, fine prints and more.

For more information visit www.bostondesignweek.com.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. announced that they have acquired 100 photographs from The Irving Penn Foundation. Irving Penn, one of the most celebrated artists of the 20^th century, revolutionized fashion photography and was also well known for his still lifes and portraits that frequently appeared in Vogue.

The recently acquired photographs include rare, mostly unpublished works from the late 1930s and 1940s, images of post-war Europe and iconic portraits of celebrated figures such as Agnes de Mille, Langston Hughes and Truman Capote. The collection also includes commercial photography, self-portraits and some of Penn’s most recognizable fashion images. Penn had donated 61 photographs, spanning from 1944 to 1986, to the Smithsonian during his lifetime. He also gifted 60 works to the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in 1990.

To celebrate the acquisition and the expansion of the Smithsonian’s Penn holdings, the museum will organize a touring exhibition of approximately 160 works that will open at the Smithsonian in the fall of 2015.

Beyond the Bed: The American Quilt Evolution, which is on view at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York, traces the evolution of the North American quilt from the early 19^th century to the present day. The exhibition is guest curated by Jean M. Burke of Vermont’s Shelburne Museum and explores how the form, fashion and, function of quilts have changed over the centuries.

Beyond the Bed presents a wide variety of objects from bed coverings, wall decorations, and clothing to three-dimensional sculptures and furniture accessories. While, some of the quilts on view are traditional in pattern and construction, others are more progressive.

Highlights include a rare pincushion quilt attributed to a member of the Vanderbilt family; Ella B. Chase’s (unknown-1919) Pickwick Papers Crazy Quilt depicting characters from Charles Dickens’ Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club; a tromp l’oeil quilt carved by Fraser Smith (b. 1971) from a 200-pound block of wood; and a free-standing quilted sculpture by Dominique Ehrmann.

Beyond the Bed: The American Quilt Evolution will be on view through June 16, 2013.

The fashion company DKNY will donate $25,000 to a YMCA on behalf of photographer Brandon Stanton after using his works without permission. Stanton, who lives in New York and runs a popular photo blog titled Humans of New York, was approached by DKNY a few months earlier when the company hoped to buy 300 of Stanton’s photographs for a worldwide storefront display. The photographer found their $15,000 offer too low and Stanton and DKNY were unable to reach a monetary agreement.

On Monday, February 25, 2013 a fan of Stanton’s blog sent him a picture of a DKNY storefront in Bangkok, which was full of his photographs. Rather than seeking legal action against DKNY for using his work without permission and compensation, Stanton asked his Facebook fans to share the story while urging the company to donate $100,000 on his behalf to a YMCA in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

After 28,907 people shared Stanton’s story, DKNY issued an apology and vowed to donate $25,000 in Stanton’s name to the YMCA of his choice. The company claimed that the use of Stanton’s work was a mistake and that the Bangkok outpost accidently used an internal mock up as a storefront display. The mock up, which included Stanton’s images, was meant to show the direction of the company’s spring visual program.

Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity, which will open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on February 26, 2013, will present Impressionist masterpieces alongside garments and accessories from the time. The innovative survey will explore how artists responded to and interpreted fashion from the 1860s through the mid-1880s.

The exhibition, which features 79 paintings and 14 dresses, draws stylistic connections between the canvases and the garments. Highlights include Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) Luncheon on the Grass (1865-66), Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s (1941-1919) Lise-The Woman with the Umbrella (1867), Édouard Manet’s (1832-1883) La Parisienne (circa 1875), Edgar Degas’ (1834-1917) The Millinery Shop (circa 1882-86), and Mary Cassatt’s (1844-1926) In the Loge (1878). Many of the works are on loan from museums such as the Paris’ Musée d’Orsay, the Art Institute of Chicago, London’s Courtauld Gallery, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The exhibition also includes period photographs and illustrations to reinforce the connection between fashion and art.

Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity will be on view at the Met through May 27, 2013. The exhibition will travel to the Art Institute of Chicago in June 2013.

The Louvre, Centre Pompidou, and Musee d’Orsay all reported record attendance numbers for 2012. Recent expansions, newly unveiled renovations, and impressive exhibitions are responsible for beckoning troves of visitors from across the world to the Parisian institutions.

The Louvre, which is the most-visited museum in the world, summons bigger crowds each year. 2012 marked the largest attendance figures ever recorded for the institution with nearly 10 million visitors this year. Expanded Islamic art galleries and a spate of well-received temporary exhibitions were of particular interest to visitors. In fact, they helped boost attendance 29-percent from 2011. Exhibition highlights at the Louvre in 2012 included a show devoted to Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and the birth of American Landscape painting, the presentation of Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) masterwork, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, and an exhibition of Raphael’s (1483-1520) later works, which he produced in Rome.

The Centre Pompidou, which specialized in modern and contemporary art, welcomed over 3.8 million visitors in 2012, a 6-percent increase from 2011. The Centre Pompidou held three major retrospectives this year, which helped raise visitor numbers. An exhibition devoted to Henri Matisse (1869-1954) titled Matisse, Paires et séries brought 495,000 visitors; a Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) retrospective brought 425,000; and a show of Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí’s (1904-1989) works has seen approximately 6,700 visitors per day since it opened on November 21.

After attendance figures declined from 2008 to 2010, it appears that the Impressionist institution, the Musée d’Orsay, has bounced back with 3.6 million visitors this year. A 15-percent increase from last year, the boosted attendance numbers were likely the result of the reopening of renovated gallery spaces and a major Edgar Degas (1834-1917) exhibition, which brought 480,000 visitors. The current exhibition, Impressionism and Fashion, is expected to see 500,000 guests before closing on January 21, 2013.

As part of a yearlong celebration of Italian culture hosted by Italy’s foreign minister, Michelangelo’s (1475-1564) iconic work, David-Apollo, will be go on view today at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Minister Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata unveiled the sculpture yesterday, December 12. David-Apollo will be on view in the West Building’s Italian galleries through March 3, 2013.

Michelangelo carved David-Apollo in 1530 for Baccio Valori, who served as the interim governor of Florence per the Medici pope Clement VII’s appointment. Michelangelo and the pope were at political odds, but the artist wished to make peace with the Medici through his work. Michelangelo never finished David-Apollo as he left Italy and never returned after Clement VII’s death.

Part of the Museo Nazionale del Barello’s collection in Florence, David-Apollo traveled to the National Gallery once before in 1949. The masterpiece’s installation in Washington over sixty years ago coincided with former president Harry Truman’s inaugural reception and attracted more than 791,000 visitors. In 2013, David-Apollo’s presentation will coincide with President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

The Year of Italian Culture, launched by Sant’Agata under the auspices of the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, will bring a range of Italian masterpieces to nearly 70 cultural institutions across the United States. Works range from classical and Renaissance to baroque and contemporary and cover the realms of art, music, theater, cinema, literature, science, design, fashion, and cuisine.    

The anxiously awaited event, Art Basel, begins tonight, December 5, with a VIP preview and runs through Sunday, December 9. Now in its 11^th year, Art Basel has become a defining event in the art world and each year the city of Miami is taken over by collectors, curators, artists, celebrities, and art enthusiasts as well as a host of art fairs.

Taking place at the Miami Beach Convention Center, Art Basel features over 260 big-name galleries from around the world and exhibits works by more than 2,000 artists of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Renowned for its support of young and emerging artists and galleries, Art Basel includes performance art, public art projects, lectures, and video art installations. Some exhibitor highlights include Acquavella Galleries, Mary Boone Gallery, Gagosian Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Lisson Gallery, and White Cube, among many others.

Regarded as Miami art week’s anchor fair, Art Miami got a head start on Art Basel and hosted a VIP preview on December 4 at the Art Miami Pavilion in the city’s Wynwood Arts District. The fair, which features modern and contemporary offerings from more than 125 international galleries, runs from December 5 through December 9. While Art Basel tends to be spotlighted during Miami’s art week, Art Miami is the original and longest-running contemporary art fair to be held in the area with 23 years under its belt. Exhibitors include Douglas Dawson Gallery, Eli Klein Fine Art, Haunch of Venison, Hollis Taggart Gallery, Jerald Melberg Gallery, Michael Goedhuis, and Waterhouse & Dodd.

This year, Art Miami coincides with the inaugural CONTEXT art fair, which features 50 galleries representing emerging and mid-career artists. Located in an ultramodern pavilion adjacent to Art Miami, CONTEXT boasts indoor and outdoor projects as well as solo artist installations, curated projects, and multimedia exhibits. Between Art Miami and CONTEXT, there will be over 200,000 square feet of exhibition space and over 250 participating galleries.

Another highlight of the city’s art week is Scope Miami, which opened on December 4 with a VIP preview and will run through December 9 at a new location in the midtown arts district. With a 100,000 square foot pavilion, Scope features 20 new galleries as part of its “Breeder Program” and 85 established exhibitors. Besides modern and contemporary art, there will be design, music, and fashion offerings.

Pulse Miami opens to the public on December 6 and runs through December 9 at The Ice Palace Studios. One of Art Basel’s many satellite fairs, Pulse is in its eighth year and features 86 international galleries exhibiting works on paper, paintings, sculptures, performances, installations, and video art. Pulse also includes its signature series, Pulse Projects, a selection of installations proposed by galleries and not-for-profit institutions. This year’s Pulse Projects includes a short film by Zackary Drucker shown earlier this year at MoMA PS1, marble installations courtesy of Venske & Spanle and Margaret Thatcher Projects, and a special screening of street artist Invader’s Art 4 Space, courtesy of Jonathan LeVine Gallery.

While there are countless fairs, events, parties, concerts, and openings happening in Miami this week, one not to be missed affair is the Masterpieces from the Berardo Collection exhibit at the Gary Nader Art Centre. Opening on December 5, the show features pieces from one of the finest modern and contemporary art collections in existence. Hand-picked from the private holdings of Joe Berardo, a Portuguese mogul, the 110 works are worth $500 million. Featured artists include Francis Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and many more.