Displaying items by tag: grant

The Philadelphia Museum of Art will regild the thirteen-foot sculpture Diana (1892-94), which resides in the its Great Stair Hall. The work, which is by the Beaux-Arts sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), once sat atop Madison Square Garden in New York City.

The undertaking was made possible by a grant from Bank of America through its Global Art Conservation Project and will be helmed by the institution’s Conservation Department and the department of American Art. The regilding is expected to take four months to complete. and will require corrosion removal, surface preparation and the laying of 180 square feet of gold leaf. This process will be followed by any adjustments necessary to improve the appearance and lighting of the sculpture. The work was significantly eroded while on view at Madison Square Garden and cleaning and repair efforts that took place before the sculpture was installed in 1932 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art added to the damage.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art will document each step of the conservation and regilding process so that the public can monitor Diana’s progress.

The American Folk Art Museum in New York received a $1.6 million grant from the Henry Luce Foundation that will help fund a major traveling exhibition of works from its collection. Since moving to a smaller location in 2011, the Folk Art Museum has only been able to display a portion of its collection. The traveling exhibition will allow for a more comprehensive experience.  

The Henry Luce Foundation grant will enable Self-Taught Genius: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum to visit 5 American cities over the course of 3 years. It will go on view at the American Folk Art Museum from May 13-August 17, 2014 before embarking on its journey. The show will feature over 100 works including quilts, paintings, drawings and sculptures.

Henry R. Luce, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Time Inc., established the Luce Foundation in 1936. One of the Foundation’s missions is to strengthen international understanding and foster innovation in a variety of arenas including the arts. Since its founding, the Luce Foundation has given grants totaling over $145 million to approximately 250 institutions through its American Art Program.

On June 10, 2013, Bank of America announced the recipients of its 2013 Art Conservation Project. The program provides grant funding to international nonprofit museums to conserve historically and culturally significant works of art that are in danger of deterioration.

This year, Bank of America’s Art Conservation Project will provide funding for 24 works in 16 countries. One of the most significant undertakings is the restoration of Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers in Los Angeles. Built between 1921 and 1953, the Watts Towers are an iconic part of the city and have fallen into disrepair. The towers are part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Other projects include the restoration of Jackson Pollock’s (1912-1956) Number 1A, One, and Echo at the Museum of Modern Art; 13 mural drawings by Diego Rivera (1886-1957) at the Detroit Institute of Arts; four Tudor paintings at the National Portrait Gallery in London; a Rembrandt (1606-1669) study at the National Gallery in Prague; and a Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) photography collection at La Casa Azul in Mexico.    

Bank of America launched its Art Conservation Project in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in 2010. It was expanded to include the Americas, Asia, and Australia in 2012. Including this year’s recipients, Bank of America will have funded the conservation of 57 projects in 25 countries.

In 2000, the Denver Art Museum received a painting titled Venice: The Molo from the Bacino di S. Marco from the foundation of a deceased local collector. Covered in grime, the work was attributed to a student of the Italian 18^th century painter Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697-1768), better known as Canaletto, and placed in storage.

In 2007, Timothy Standring, the museum’s curator of painting and sculpture, noticed the canvas while doing routine inventory. Standring saw past the layers of discoloration to the masterful brushstrokes and detailed figures that lay beneath the grime. Intrigued, Standring embarked on a Canaletto-based research project that eventually brought him to London to meet with Charles Beddington, a renowned expert on the artist. After their meeting, during which Standring presented a photograph of the painting, Beddington agreed to visit the Denver Art Museum to examine the painting in person.

In January 2012, Beddington arrived in the United States and identified the work as an authentic Canaletto; he also dated the painting 1724, meaning it is one of the artist’s earliest undocumented works. The museum soon received a grant from the European Fine Art Fair Restoration Fund to restore the painting, a job that was delegated to James Squires, the institution’s associate conservator of paintings. Over 100 hours of restoration later, Squire’s uncovered the masterpiece that was there along. The painting, which features a brightly colored Venetian scene, is currently on view at the Denver Art Museum.

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. has announced that its Renwick Gallery, which houses the museum’s American craft and decorative arts collection from the 19^th to 21^st centuries, will undergo a major renovation. The Renwick Gallery, which opened to the public in 1972, will close to accommodate the project in early 2014 and is expected to reopen in 2016.

Project details are still being worked out and an exact cost for the renovations is yet to be determined. The Smithsonian is planning to use public funds to pay for half of the project and the rest will be paid through private partnerships. The project has already received a $335,000 grant from the National Park Service’s Save America’s Treasures initiative, as the Renwick Gallery is located in a National Historic Landmark building. The building’s construction began in 1859 and went on to house the city’s first art museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, upon its completion.

Museum officials plan to convert all of the Renwick Gallery’s lighting to energy efficient LED lights and wireless Internet access will be provided throughout the entire gallery. Heating, plumbing, electrical, air conditioning, and fire safety systems will all be gutted and replaced. This will be the Renwick Gallery’s first renovation in 40 years.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia announced plans to build a new gallery to display their works on paper collection. The addition will be housed in the museum’s Historic Landmark Building, which was designed by the acclaimed American architect, Frank Furness (1839-1912). A $250,000 grant from The Richard C. von Hess Foundation will be used to fund the project.

Works on paper are a huge component of PAFA’s permanent collection, encompassing over 75% of the museum’s holdings. The collection features drawings, watercolors, sketchbooks, prints, photographs, and experimental media from all periods of American art. Highlights include a collection of photographs by Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), studies and sketchbooks by William Glackens (1870-1938), and works by John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Arthur Dove (1880-1946), and Robert Motherwell (1915-1991).

The new gallery will allow the institution to significantly expand public access to its vast collection while keeping the light-sensitive objects safe. A separate space will be allotted for scholars conducting research and curators and faculty who will use the collection for educational purposes. PAFA has selected the Philadelphia-based architectural firm Atkin Olshin Schade to design the Works on Paper Gallery. Construction is expected to start early this year and last until Summer 2013.

The Whitney Museum of American Art announced yesterday that it had received a $1 million grant from the Keith Haring Foundation. The endowment is to go towards exhibitions in the Museum’s downtown Manhattan building, which will open in 2015. Designed by Renzo Piano, the building is currently under construction and will allow the Whitney to increase the size and range of its exhibitions, programs, and permanent works on view.

The Museum began working with Haring in 1983 when he was presented for the first time in a Whitney Biennial and in The Comic Art Show at the Museum’s downtown branch. Adam D. Weinberg, the Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney said, “Keith Haring was an extraordinary artist, exuberant, humane, passionate, and unflinching in his honesty. The Whitney has been a staunch supporter of Keith’s work for thirty years and this grant is a testament to our enduring relationship with Keith, his work, and his legacy.”

A year after his death, Haring went on to appear in the 1991 Whitney Biennial and in 1992 in an Independent Study Program exhibition, The Power of the City/The City of Power. The artist’s first full retrospective, Keith Haring, took place at the Whitney in 1997. He was also featured in American Century: Art and Culture 1950–2000 in 1999 and in 2010, the museum grew its Haring collection through a gift from longtime supporter of the Whitney, Emily Fisher Landau. The Whitney now counts four of his works in its permanent collection.