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Thursday, 24 July 2014 11:16

A painting by Henri Matisse stolen more than a decade ago in Caracas and later recovered in an FBI sting is on display again in the Venezuelan capital.

The "Odalisque in Red Pants," worth around $3 million, was exhibited Tuesday for the first time in more than a decade at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

It had been replaced with a fake sometime between 1999 and 2002 and it was only in 2003 that Venezuelan authorities realized the original had been stolen.

Thursday, 24 July 2014 11:02

The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington received a surprising setback in court this week when a judge ruled that members of a group opposing the institution's planned takeover deal with the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University have legal standing and will be able to have their grievances heard.

On Monday, Judge Robert Okun in D.C. Superior Court ruled that nine members of the group Save the Corcoran must be allowed as intervening parties to the Corcoran's plan. According to the group, the nine include current students, a faculty member and a member of the gallery staff.

Thursday, 24 July 2014 10:49

A rendering of the new Museum for African Art, with its soaring four-story wall, curved ceiling of rare Ghanaian wood and elaborate spiraling staircase, still sits on an easel in an unfinished concrete skeleton facing Central Park.

But those distinctive features and the $135 million budget that would have paid for them have now been shelved. After years of outsize promises and repeated postponements, officials now acknowledge that fund-raising travails have compelled them to scale back the grand design for the museum’s new home on Fifth Avenue.

Wednesday, 23 July 2014 15:45

The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York is giving thanks to generations of benefactors with the exhibition “Shaping a Collection: Five Decades of Gifts.” Since the institution was founded in 1930, its permanent collection has grown primarily through the generosity of individual donors, beginning with sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s founding gift, which included over 500 works by artists such as Thomas Hart Benton, George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Maurice Prendergast, and John Sloan. Whitney continued to add to the museum’s collection throughout her lifetime and in 1948, the institution began accepting gifts from outside sources.

Since the Whitney’s Marcel Breuer-designed building opened to the public in 1931, its permanent collection has expanded from about 2,300 objects to more than 21,000. It is estimated that nearly two-thirds of the institution’s collection, including some of its most iconic holdings, were donated by museum trustees, collectors, foundations, and artists. While “Shaping a Collection” represents a small portion of the gifts received by the Whitney, the exhibition honors all of the benefactors who have helped make the Whitney’s collection what it is today.

Wednesday, 23 July 2014 11:28

A bite of the apple is said to have gotten Adam and Eve thrown out of the Garden of Eden.

Now the Norton Simon Museum wants another bite at the apple as it tries to have a legal threat to one of its most prized artworks thrown out of court. At stake are Lucas Cranach the Elder’s 1530 paired paintings “Adam” and “Eve,” which have hung in the Pasadena museum since the 1970s.

The museum has asked for a rehearing of a June decision that went against it in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, when two members of a three-judge panel revived Marei Von Saher’s claim to “Adam” and “Eve” after it had been dismissed two years earlier in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Wednesday, 23 July 2014 11:18

After two years on the job, Karen Kemp has resigned as executive director of the Albany Museum of Art.

Her resignation was confirmed Tuesday morning by museum Board of Trustees Past President Steve Hinton, who is handling day-to-day operations and described himself as the AMA’s “interim interim” director.

AMA Board of Trustees President Banks Margeson issued the following statement:

“Karen Kemp has resigned as executive director of the Albany Museum of Art for personal reasons,” Margeson said. “We appreciate all Karen has done for the museum over the past two years. The executive committee is working diligently on an action plan in finding a permanent replacement. We wish her well in her future endeavors.”

Wednesday, 23 July 2014 11:11

The Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) is planning to expand, Art In America reports. As part of the expansion plans the city will lend the neighboring Convent dels Àngels to the museum for an unspecified period together with the Plaça dels Angels square, which is located between the 16th century cloister and the museum.

Although MACBA has frequently used the chapel for performances and site-specific installations, by lending the additional 21,500 square foot space to the museum on a longterm basis, the city, “Reaffirms its commitment to making Barcelona one of the world capitals in contemporary art and culture,” according to its statement.

Wednesday, 23 July 2014 11:01

The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) is exhibiting a new installation drawn from the museum’s Native American art collection — the oldest, most comprehensive ongoing collection of its kind in the Western hemisphere.

Raven’s Many Gifts: Native Art of the Northwest Coast celebrates the rich artistic legacy of Native artists along the Pacific Northwest Coast while exploring dynamic relationships among humans, animals, ancestors and supernatural beings. Featuring nearly 30 works from the 19th century to present day, the installation includes superlative examples of works on paper, wood carvings, textiles, films, music and jewelry. Raven’s Many Gifts is on view through mid-2015.

Wednesday, 23 July 2014 10:52

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the Internet entrepreneurs perhaps best known for their associations with Facebook and Bitcoin, are the latest techies to leap into the art world. This week, the twins’ Winklevoss Capital announced an investment round in Paddle8, a New York-based art auction house known for their high-profile charity events including a recent Faberge Egg auction. Paddle8 has flirted publicly with the use of Bitcoins for art transactions in the past and is one of the more tech-savvy of the online auction houses looking for a piece of the international market. Winklevoss Capital declined to discuss the specifics of the investment but said it was their first in the art or auction arenas.

Because of more restrictive U.S. visa requirements in the wake of 9/11 and a growing appetite for Western art in emerging markets in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere, online fine art auctions have turned into a bit of a boom industry.

Wednesday, 23 July 2014 10:38

The Lombardy region of northern Italy is known for its many “villas of delight” — the “ville di delizia” that aristocratic Milanese families built in the 17th and 18th centuries as summer escapes and settings for lavish entertainments. Varese, in the foothills of the Alps, was a magnet for these estates, several of which are clustered on the parklike hill of Biumo Superiore. At its crest sits the Villa Menafoglio Litta Panza, the most storied, thanks to its longtime owner, Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, the Milanese businessman whose adventurous tastes and ardent appetites made him one of the most important art collectors of the last century.

“It’s not bad,” admitted his daughter, Maria Giuseppina Panza di Biumo, a smile escaping her lips as our eyes swept across eight acres of topiary and fountains.

Wednesday, 23 July 2014 10:35

More than a decade after its initial display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Cup, crafted by Gianmaria Buccellati of the Italian jeweler, House of Buccellati, is now back on view in the museum’s Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals. The Cup was originally dedicated to the Smithsonian in honor of the “Buccellati: Gold, Silver and Gems” exhibition, which opened at the museum in October 2000. Since then, it has been on loan to several institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 2002, the Boca Raton Museum of Art in 2005 and at the Kremlin in Moscow from 2008 to 2009.

“Over the past 13 years, the Cup has served as a traveling ambassador for the Smithsonian,” said Jeffrey Post, curator of the National Gem Collection. “We are delighted to have it home for a while and to be able to once again exhibit it here at the Natural History Museum.”

Wednesday, 23 July 2014 10:23

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced the two appointees who will inaugurate new curatorships within the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. Both positions were established this spring through a generous gift from Daniel Brodsky, the Museum’s Chairman, and his wife Estrellita B. Brodsky, an art historian and specialist in Latin American art.

Iria Candela will become the Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art in the fall, focusing on the art of 20th- and 21st-century Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. And Beatrice Galilee, the new Daniel Brodsky Associate Curator of Architecture and Design, began working at the Museum in late April. Both will work closely with the modern and contemporary curatorial team, under the leadership of Sheena Wagstaff, the Museum’s Leonard A. Lauder Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art, on researching and developing the collection and devising the program for both the main building and the Marcel Breuer-designed building that the Met will occupy once the Whitney Museum moves downtown in 2015.

Tuesday, 22 July 2014 17:33

On September 12, “Second Floor -- The Private Apartment of Coco Chanel” will open at the Saatchi Gallery in London, providing a first ever glimpse into the home of Coco Chanel. The  iconic fashion designer’s abode at 31 Rue Cambon, Paris, which remains in its original condition, was captured by the filmmaker and photographer, Sam Taylor-Johnson. While a privileged few have been granted access to the apartment, Chanel’s home has never been open to the public.

“Second Floor” will present 45 photographs that reveal how Chanel lived and decorated.

Tuesday, 22 July 2014 11:25

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) was born into a family of French aristocrats, but he had no interest in high society. He immersed himself instead in Parisian night life, becoming the great artistic chronicler of cafe concerts and dance halls. His work is now the subject of an exhibit beginning July 26 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

"The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec: Prints and Posters" features more than 100 of his works. His subjects include a range of characters who fell well short of respectability: performers and spectators at the Moulin Rouge, cancan dancers on stage and prostitutes reclining in bed.

Tuesday, 22 July 2014 11:12

Sections of 18th-century gilded walls and paintings of deities are sprawled across the floor of a warehouse on this city’s outskirts. After nine decades in limbo, this architectural salvage is being reorganized into period rooms that will rival Versailles’s for inventiveness and visual impact.

The pieces came from the interior of a townhouse built near the Louvre around 1707 for Philippe II, the duke of Orléans, a nephew of Louis XIV. In the 1920s, before demolishing the building so that its own quarters could expand, the Bank of France labeled and crated the pieces and pledged to recreate the rooms elsewhere. They will re-emerge in a year or so at a government building on Rue Vieille du Temple in the Marais, about a mile from their original home.

Tuesday, 22 July 2014 11:05

Damien Hirst’s art complex in south London, which was initially due to open this year, will take a little longer to complete. A spokeswoman for Science Ltd, Hirst’s company, says that it is now due to open “in May or June” next year. The centre, which is designed by Caruso St John architects, runs the length of Newport Street in Vauxhall. The former theatre carpentry and scenery production workshops will become six galleries. Office space and a restaurant are also planned.

Early in 2012, Hirst announced plans for the ambitious new venue which, he said will provide a place to show his collection of contemporary art. Hirst is now looking to hire a collection and exhibitions co-ordinator who will be based at the Newport Street complex.

Tuesday, 22 July 2014 11:01

Art Basel Asia Director Magnus Renfrew will join Bonhams as deputy chairman Asia and director of Fine Arts in September, he said by telephone today.

“This is a very exciting time to be involved in the Asian art market and building up an Asian collector base,” said Renfrew, 38, who will be responsible for boosting Bonhams’ classical, modern and contemporary Asian art offerings.

Renfrew oversaw Art Basel’s Hong Kong fairs in 2013 and 2014. The company, which runs international art fairs in Basel, Miami and Hong Kong, said it has not appointed his successor in an e-mail response.

Tuesday, 22 July 2014 10:56

Spain’s Museo del Prado has lost 885 artworks, according to El Pais. The newspaper, citing a report by Spain’s Audit Court, claims that the Madrid-based institution was missing 926 works at one point, 41 having been found between 2008 and 2012. Those works had been misplaced during a restructuring period of the country’s national collections held at the Prado and the Reina Sofia museum of contemporary art.

In their report, the court cites, “Lack of sufficient human resources,” as the culprit behind the missing artworks. They have demanded an internal review and continued searches within the museum’s collections and its lending history to identify the whereabouts of the missing art.

Tuesday, 22 July 2014 10:45

The art of French lacquer developed in the late 17th century in response to the rising popularity of Japanese and Chinese lacquerware and quickly led to concentration of gilder-varnisher workshops in the Saint-Antoine quarter in Paris where the cabinetmakers and joiners were already established. The French even developed their own technique, Vernis Martin — as recently retraced in an exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris — that enabled the craftsmen to generate blues, greens, and yellows, in addition to Asian reds and blacks. Vernis Martin was soon used to cover all kinds of materials and decorative objects, from woodwork paneling to musical instruments and even horse-drawn carriages.

While lacquering is most traditionally associated with wood and bamboo, it can also be applied on metal, and it is this technique that the skilled craftsmen and women at Hermès have applied in miniature to a new limited edition collection of three new watches under the Arceau Cheval d’Orient name.

Tuesday, 22 July 2014 10:38

How do you archive a performance? Can you put human speech and action under glass and frame it? Stow art that unfolds in three dimensions within acid-free archival boxes, to be filed away in a cool, dark vault?

The conundrum of how best to preserve the history of midcentury American performance art — art created before phones had video cameras — lies at the center of the Getty Research Institute's recently announced acquisition of Robert McElroy's archive. In more than 700 prints and 10,000 negatives, the photographer documented the performative works of Allan Kaprow, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg and other artists whose "Happenings" grew from niche New York art events into a full-fledged pop culture phenomenon.

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