Displaying items by tag: gift

Nicolas M. Salgo (1914-2005), a Hungarian native and former United States ambassador to Budapest, was fascinated by the art of the goldsmith in Hungarian culture and formed his own “treasury” by collecting pieces that are individual and unique. "Hungarian Treasure: Silver from the Nicolas M. Salgo Collection" will celebrate the gift to The Metropolitan Museum of Art of the major part of the silver collection assembled by this focused collector over three decades.

This large collection of silver—about 120 pieces, most dating from the 15th to the late 18th century—comprises a variety of types with especially refined appearance and high levels of craftsmanship, representing Hungarian silver at its best. The earliest works in the Salgo collection are medieval: seven objects, including two rare chalices with mastered filigree enameling.

A suburban Kansas City school district has found a new home for a Thomas Hart Benton painting that it was keeping locked up because it was considered too valuable to display at a school.

The painting "Utah Highlands" will be on long-term loan at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, starting in late April, the school and museum announced this past week.

The Shawnee Mission School District had kept the painting in a vault for safekeeping after it was appraised at $700,000. Students who donated the painting in 1957 as a class gift began asking where the painting was after The Kansas City Star reported earlier this year that it was no longer being displayed.

Fraktur—decorated Germanic manuscripts and printed documents—have long been admired as an extraordinarily vibrant and creative art form (Fig. 1). A European tradition brought to America by German-speaking immigrants, who began settling in southeastern Pennsylvania in 1683, fraktur are among the most distinctive and iconic forms of American folk art. The Philadelphia Museum of Art was one of the first major institutions to collect Pennsylvania German fraktur and decorative arts. In 1897, then-curator Edwin Atlee Barber acquired the museum’s first fraktur and, in 1929, the museum opened to the public the first period rooms of Pennsylvania German art. Many of the furnishings were donated by J. Stogdell Stokes, with additional furniture, ironwork, textiles, redware, and other objects acquired from Titus C. Geesey. The museum’s fraktur were never on par with the rest of the collection, but with the recent promised gift of nearly 250 fraktur from the collection of Joan and Victor Johnson (Fig. 2), the museum’s fraktur collection is now one of the finest in the country.

The Johnsons, Philadelphia natives, began collecting fraktur nearly sixty years ago, initially to help fill the walls of a historic farmhouse they bought and restored after their marriage in 1955. Joan, who studied contemporary art at Goucher College, loved the Bauhaus and planned to collect accordingly—but Victor, who worked in the computer industry, didn’t want to live with modern art.

Visit InCollect.com to read more about Pennsylvania German Fraktur.

The Williams College Museum of Art has received a donation of 68 works of contemporary art from the collection of computer programmer and philanthropist Peter Norton.

WCMA is one recipient in a series of gifts to university and college art museums throughout the country. The art, from Norton’s personal collection, is intended to support the integration of the visual arts in higher education, to connect diverse audiences with contemporary art, and to foster creative museum practice.

The gift to WCMA is part of Norton’s second such philanthropic project, following one in 2000 in which he gave more than 1,000 pieces to 32 institutions.

Italian police are trying to establish the true owner of a Picasso painting worth €15 m (£11m) after confiscating it from a pensioner who says he was given it for free.

The Rome resident, a former frame-maker, told detectives he received the work in 1978 as a thank-you gift for an act of kindness towards a recently bereaved customer.

A widower had come into his shop in a state of distress after breaking a photo frame in which he kept a picture of his late wife. Touched, the frame-maker replaced the glass for free.

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.

With a $200,000 donation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation will be the lead foundation donor for the US pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale.

Last week, curator Okwui Enwezor announced the 136 artists and collectives included in the “All the World's Futures," the Biennale's main exhibition.

The gift was announced by the MIT List Visual Arts Center, the organizer of the US pavilion, which will feature an immersive multimedia installation from veteran video and performance artist Joan Jonas, inspired by the work of writer Halldór Laxness as well as other literary sources.

The Rhode Island School of Design has received $2.5 million from David Rockefeller to endow a curatorial position at the school’s museum and to support a new gallery.

RISD announced Monday that Rockefeller’s pledge would fund and expand the museum’s collection of decorative arts and design.

RISD says the majority of the money will go toward a position to lead the department of decorative arts and design.

The Cleveland Museum of Art announced a $19 million campaign challenge gift from trustee and Dealer Tire CEO Scott Mueller, which nearly completes the institution's decade-long capital fundraising effort. When combined with Mueller's initial campaign commitment of $1 million, three $1 million restricted gifts, and his annual contributions, at more than $23 million, he ranks among the top donors in the museum's history.  

"Mr. Mueller's historic commitment represents the capstone of our capital campaign. We are simply in awe of his generosity and believe that these gifts further establish his standing among Cleveland's storied philanthropists," said Cleveland Museum of Art director William Griswold. "Mr. Mueller's giving has impacted so many dimensions of the museum's work and reinforces everything we're trying to accomplish."

More than 200 prints by the American pop artist Jim Dine, featuring imagery including paintbrushes, bathrobes, tools and hearts, have been gifted to the British Museum.

The collection was the largest gift made to the museum’s prints and drawings department in 2014.

“It is very exciting,” said the museum’s curator of modern prints, Stephen Coppel, who was allowed to select from Dine’s entire oeuvre, starting in the 1960s.

“It was a very generous offer, given that he has made over a thousand prints,” said Coppel. “Choosing was fun. It took some time and there was a lot of backing and forthing, but it is a really great group of things.”