Displaying items by tag: metalwork

The Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art in Washington, DC, are due to release their entire collections online on January 1, 2015. More than 40,000 works, from ancient Chinese jades to 13th-century Syrian metalwork and 19th-century Korans, will be accessible through high-resolution images without copyright restrictions for non-commercial use. The vast majority—nearly 35,000 objects—have never been seen by the public.

The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery are the first Smithsonian museums and the only Asian art museums to complete the labor-intensive process of digitizing and releasing their entire collections online.

The American metal sculptor Albert Paley is the subject of a major exhibition currently on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. “American Metal: The Art of Albert Paley” presents a retrospective of Paley’s varied career. The exhibition begins with his work as a jeweler and forger of metal, and progresses through Paley’s recent large-scale sculptural projects. The show was curated by Eric Turner, Curator of Metalwork, Silver, and Jewelry at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Paley began his nearly 50-year career as a goldsmith before shifting his focus to blacksmithing in the early 1970s. Spanning six galleries, the exhibition at the Corcoran presents everything from jewelry, furniture, and small-scale domestic metalwork to gates and doors. The exhibition’s centerpiece is “Portal Gates,” a 1974 commission for the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery. One of Paley’s most significant projects, “Portal Gates” exemplifies the artist’s innovative style as well as his mastery of the metalworking craft. The Renwick Gallery, which was the Corcoran’s original home, is currently closed for renovations.  

This May, the Dallas Museum of Art will welcome one of the most comprehensive collections of Islamic art in private hands. The works will be on long-term loan to the museum and will transform the institution’s Islamic art collection into the third largest of its kind in North America. The collection’s signature work, a rock crystal pitcher, will go on view at the Dallas Museum this year, followed by more than 50 works in 2015.

The Keir Collection of Islamic art was assembled over five decades by the late art collector Edmund de Unger. According to museum officials, the collection “is recognized by scholars as one of the world’s most geographically and historically comprehensive, encompassing almost 2,000 works in a range of media that span 13 centuries of Islamic art-making.” The Keir Collection, which is named after the 18th-century British mansion where is was housed, includes textiles, carpets, ceramics, rock crystal, metalwork and works on paper from the western Mediterranean to South Asia.

The lender is covering all costs related to the packing and shipping of the collection to the Dallas Museum of Art, along with any conservation that is required and any print publications the museum plans to produce. The museum was not charged a fee for acquiring the collection, but it will pay to have the works insured as well as any costs relating to the display of the objects.

Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO of the enterprise software company, Oracle, has loaned a portion of his inimitable collection of Japanese art to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco for the exhibition In the Moment: Japanese Art from the Larry Ellison Collection. The show presents 64 objects that span over 1,000 years.

Highlights from the show include significant works by well-known artists of the Momoyama (1573-1615) and Edo (1615-1868) periods as well as important examples of religious art, lacquer, woodwork and metalwork. Ellison assembled a large portion of his collection with the help of the Asian Art Museum’s former director, Emily Sano. Serving as Ellison’s personal art curator and advisor, Sano helped the billionaire acquire hundreds of important Japanese art objects including 17^th century folding screens by Kano Sansetsu and 18^th century paintings by Maruyama Okyo.

In the Moment: Japanese Art from the Larry Ellison Collection will be on view at the Asian Art Museum through September 22, 2013.