Displaying items by tag: patrons

On May 23, 2013, after a two and a half year renovation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will unveil 45 updated and expanded galleries of European paintings. The new space, which has increased by about a third, boasts 600 works of art dating from 1250 to 1800. Arranged in chronological order and grouped by country, the collection includes the Met’s renowned holdings of early Dutch, French, and Italian paintings.

The reimagined European painting galleries include 23 high profile loans, mainly from private collections. Works by Jan Van Eyck (1395-1441), Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), and Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) will be on view for at least six months thanks to the generosity of the Met’s trustees, and patrons.

The Met’s European painting galleries have not been fully renovated since the early 1950s. When the new galleries open next week, the Met will offer various walking guides as well as online versions of the tours.

The 2013 Spring Show NYC opened to the public on Thursday, May 2, 2013 at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan. Organized by the Art and Antique Dealers League of America, this is the third edition of the Spring Show NYC, which features furniture, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, glass, decorative arts, and much more.

This year’s show includes over 60 international galleries. Highlights from the fair include Ammi Phillips’ (1788-1865) Portrait of a Child from Jeffrey Tillou Antiques, French landscape painter Eugene Louis Boudin’s (1824-1898) Village aux Environs de Dunkerque from Rehs Galleries, and a set of eight George II carved mahogany dining chairs from Clinton Howell Antiques.

The Spring Show NYC will be ongoing at the Armory through May 5, 2013. Tonight, the fair will host Arts Night Out, allowing 30 young patron groups from New York ‘s top cultural institutions to visit the show. Proceeds from the event will benefit the ASPCA.

Two years ago, the Folk Art Museum in New York City was on the brink of closure due to its poor financial standing. Most of the museum’s troubles stemmed from a $32 million construction project that placed a flagship building next door to the Museum of Modern Art on West 53^rd Street in Manhattan. After the project drew to a close in 2001, the Folk Art Museum struggled to pay off their debt to the Trust for Cultural Resources and in 2009 the institution defaulted on its payments. Desperate, the Folk Art Museum sold their flagship building and moved into a smaller space and drastically reduced its budget.

Now, after some major sacrifices, it appears that the Folk Art Museum has regained its footing. Attendance is expected to reach 80,000 this fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2013; last year the Folk Art Museum welcomed 66,000 patrons. A number of major donors are back on board with the museum including the Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund, which recently gifted $25,000 to the institution. The Folk Art Museum will also participate in this summer’s highly anticipated Venice Biennale by sending an artwork from its collection to the show.

The Folk Art Museum has been strengthening its relationships with other institutions through collaborative exhibitions. The museum is currently hosting an exhibition of William Matthew Prior (1806-1873) oil paintings titled Artist and Visionary: William Matthew Prior Revealed (on view through May 26, 2013), which was organized by the Fenimore Art Museum is Cooperstown, NY. The exhibition Bill Traylor: Drawings from the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, which features a range of works by the self-taught artist, Bill Traylor (1854-1949), will open on June 11 and run through September 22, 2013.

Starting July 1, 2013, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will stay open seven days a week for the first time in over forty years. The museum is currently closed on Mondays with the exception of holidays that fall on a Monday. Opening hours will also be moved from 9:30am to 10am.

Thomas Campbell, the Met’s director and CEO, made the announcement on Thursday, March 28, 2013. The goal of the increased hours of operation is to make the museum more accessible to patrons. A record 6.28 million people visited the Met last year and Campbell hopes to maintain the museum’s ongoing success.

The changes also apply to the Cloisters, the Met’s museum of medieval art and architecture located in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan.  

On March 8, 2013 the New-York Historical Society will launch Audubon’s Aviary: The Complete Flock (Parts I-III). The three-part exhibition, which will be on view for three years, celebrates the 150^th anniversary of the Society’s purchase of John James Audubon’s (1785-1851) avian watercolors. The exhibition coincides with the release of the book Audubon Aviary: The Original Watercolors for ‘The Birds of America,’ which was published by the New-York Historical Society and Skira Rizzoli Publishing.

 Audubon’s Aviary: Part I of the Complete Flock will run from March 8-May 19, 2013 and offers patrons a rare glimpse into Audubon’s earlier years. A self-taught artist, this segment of the exhibition explores how Audubon developed his unmatched style and his use of experimental media. The exhibition will include a selection of rare, early pastels on loan from the Houghton Library of Harvard University and the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de la Rochelle in France. Part I will also feature 220 of Audubon’s avian watercolors including the first 175 models engraved in The Birds of America.  

Between the exhibition’s three parts, the Historical Society will present all 474 avian watercolors in its collection. The preparatory watercolor models for the seminal The Birds of America (1927-38) will appear alongside progressive media installations that aim to reinforce the connection between art and nature.

Although the exhibition Chihuly at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts closed on February 10, 2013, the show’s success left a lasting mark on the Richmond institution. The exhibition, which opened on October 10, 2013, was devoted to the popular American glass artist and sculptor, Dale Chihuly (b. 1941), who is credited with revolutionizing the Studio Glass movement.

Chihuly at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts brought a record number of visitors during its nearly four-month run. The show welcomed around 160,000 patrons, far exceeding the 115,000 visitors museum officials were expecting. The exhibition also set records for the museum store where Chihuly Studio editioned glass sculptures and lithographs were for sale. The store sold 69 works priced between $4,600-$8,600 and $2,500-$2,800 between November, December, and January.

The show at the Virginia Museum was the third major exhibition in the U.S. to focus on Chihuly’s work in recent years. He was also the subject of record-breaking shows at San Francisco’s de Young Museum (2008) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2011).

An Edward Hopper (1882-1967) retrospective, which was on view from October 10, 2012 to February 3, 2013 at the Grand Palais in Paris, welcomed a surprising number of visitors during its run. A total of 784,269 patrons visited the exhibition in less than four months, surpassing a blockbuster exhibition featuring the work of long-time Paris resident Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), which ran from 2008-2009 at the same French institution.  

To accommodate the high number of visitors, the museum stayed opened around the clock during the show’s final weekend. 48,000 people visited the Grand Palais to catch a final glimpse of the Hopper show, including Jill Biden, the wife of US Vice President, Joe Biden.

The exhibition’s popularity came as somewhat of a surprise to museum officials as the American realist painter and printmaker has never drawn such a crowd in the United States. While he came close, Hopper was unable to surpass the popularity of the 2010-2011 Claude Monet (1840-1926) retrospective, which saw 913,064 visitors.

Hopper, who didn’t sell his first painting until he was 40, has grown considerably in popularity since his death at 85. Wildly successful exhibitions in Madrid, London, Milan, and Rome, which took place before Hopper’s show at the Grand Palais are a testament to the artist’s continued relevance.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced that on January 18, 2013, the number of visitors to the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia hit the one million mark. The renovated galleries, which reopened to the public on November 1, 2011, draw approximately 2,550 patrons each day.

The Met’s Islamic Art collection, which is comprised of over 1,200 works and spans 1,300 years, is considered one of the most comprehensive collections of its kind. The holdings are presented in 15 different galleries, the result of an eight-year project that included renovations, expansions, and reinstallations.

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, said, “Since these galleries reopened in their new configuration just over a year ago, we have been truly gratified by the exceptional interest that our visitors – both local and international – have taken in this newly conceived presentation of Islamic art.”

To commemorate the Met’s milestone, the one-millionth visitor to the Islamic art galleries received a catalogue of the collection.

On January 21, 2013, the Cleveland Museum of Art opened Gallery One, an interactive gallery that brings together art and technology to enhance as well as personalize each museum visitor’s experience. Gallery One features the largest multi-touch screen in the United States, which displays images of over 3,500 objects from the institution’s permanent collection. Known as the Collection Wall, the touchscreen spans 40 feet and helps patrons create their own tactile tour of the museum while rotating works according to theme, time period, and technique.

Gallery One, which includes works by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), and Chuck Close (b. 1940), employs different hands-on activities to engage visitors using the power of technology. For example, one game asks viewers to recreate the poses of sculptures in the museum’s collection; the ArtLens ipad application illustrates how works of art were made, where they came from, and what inspired their creation. The ArtLens application uses image recognition software and allows visitors to scan objects and access additional multimedia content such as audio tours and educational information for up to 9 hours after their visit.

David Franklin, the Cleveland Museum’s Sarah S. and Alexander M. Cutler Director, said, “Gallery One offers an unparalleled experience for visitors of all ages. The space connects art and people, art and ideas, and people with people…we are especially proud to lead the way internationally in using technology to enhance and customize the art museum experience.”

A Chicago Park District panel recently approved an admission fee hike for the city’s Art Institute. On February 1, 2013 prices for adult visitors who are residents of Chicago will potentially climb from $16 to $18 and admission for out-of-state patrons will jump from $18 to $23. Chicago’s Committee on Programs and Recreation also approved the fee increase and the district’s full board is expected to pass the hike this afternoon. The Art Institute hasn’t raised its admission prices since 2009.

Art Institute officials said that the admission fee increase would help compensate for the rising costs experienced by any organization over time. For example, the museum now pays about $200,000 a year for water usage and sewer maintenance, utilities that used to be covered by the city of Chicago.

Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry is also facing an admission fee increase, which has been approved by both the Chicago Park District panel and the Committee on Programs and Recreation. The Science and Industry raise would see prices go from $13 to $15 for city residents and from $15 to $18 for non-residents.