Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure, which is now on view at the National Gallery in London, presents the art of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) and his contemporaries alongside rare musical instruments and songbooks. A reoccurring theme in Dutch painting, the presence of a musical instrument represented a variety of things such as the social position of the sitter if present in a portrait.

The paintings on display include the National Gallery’s two works by Vermeer, A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal and A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal; The Guitar Player, which is on loan from the Kenwood House in north London; the Royal Collection’s Music Lesson; and a work from a private collection. In total, the exhibition present 5 of the 36 Vermeer paintings known to exist. A selection of music-themed paintings by other Dutch golden age artists such as Jan Steen (1626-1679) and Pieter de Hooch (1629-1684) complement the Vermeer works. Musical instruments on view include a virginal (a type of harpsichord), lutes and an extravagantly decorated guitar.

Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure will be on view at the National Gallery through September 8, 2013 in the museum’s Sainsbury Wing.

Freeman’s Auctioneers and Appraisers in Philadelphia announced that they will be selling over 90 photographs from the art collection of the global beauty products company, Avon. The works will be part of the Photographs & Photobooks sale, which will be held on September 10, 2013. A portion of the proceeds from the sale will benefit the Avon Foundation for Women, a charitable organization dedicated to breast cancer research and ending domestic violence.

Works from the Avon Collection is comprised entirely of photographs by female artists such as Louise Dahl-Wolfe (1895-1989) and Cindy Sherman (b. 1954-). The offerings include landscapes, portraiture and fashion photography and span six decades. Sheri McCoy, CEO of Avon, said, “The Avon art collection represents many impressive female artists and we are happy to partner with Freeman’s to share these significant pieces of work.”

The Avon Collection also includes modern and contemporary sculpture, paintings and works on paper. The collection currently resides in Avon’s global headquarters in New York City.  

The Meadows Museum at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas has acquired an album of drawings, photographs and letters amassed by the sugar tycoon and art collector William Hood Stewart. Stewart was an avid collector of European art and the Modern Spanish School and his holdings include correspondence with artists such as Jean-August-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) and Jéan-Léon Gerôme as well as with fellow collectors. The Meadows Museum acquired the album from New York’s Spanierman Gallery for an undisclosed amount.

The collection will be presented at the Meadows Museum in the exhibition The Stewart Album: Art, Letters and Souvenirs to an American Patron in Paris from August 25 through November 10, 2013. While Stewart had a sizable estate in his hometown of Philadelphia, he spent much of time in Paris, socializing with the artists he so admired. Stewart’s unique collection provides a glimpse into the careers, personal lives and artistic developments of a number of important European artists.

In 1898, Seven years after Stewart’s death, his collection was broken up at an auction and paintings were dispersed among the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and a handful of other institutions. The Meadows Museum is planning to organize an exhibition that will reunite parts of Stewart’s collection that were separated over 100 years ago.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s (1960-1988) neo-expressionist painting Untitled (1982) sold for $29 million at Christie’s in London on June 25, 2013, surpassing its pre-sale estimate of $24.7 million. The work, which was acquired by the seller for $1.7 million in 2002, sold to a telephone bidder. Untitled was painted in the same year as Dustheads, the Basquiat painting that sold for $48.8 million in May 2013, setting the record for the artist at auction.

Other highlights from the Post-War and Contemporary art sale included Roy Lichtenstein’s (1923-1977) Cup of Coffee (1961), which sold for $4.2 million and exceeded its $3 million high estimate; Willem de Kooning’s (1904-1997) uncharacteristically serene Untitled XXVIII, which brought $4.4 million, well past its high estimate of $3.5 million; and Yves Klein’s (1928-1962) SE 181 (1961), a sculpture in the artist’s signature blue hue, which garnered $4.1 million, surpassing its high estimate of $2.7 million. However, not all lots fared so well. Andy Warhol’s (1928-1987) Colored Campbell’s Soup Can (1965) failed to meet its low estimate of $3.4 million due to its unpopular color palette. Steven S. Cohen, the disgraced founder and CEO of SAC Capital Advisors LP, previously owned the work.

Overall, the sale realized a total of $108.4 million and sold 90% by value and 80% by lot. Francis Outred, International Director and Head of Post-War & Contemporary Art, said, “Overall the auction showed an intelligent, solid market and a depth of global bidding, which is a testament to the worldwide interest in Post-War and Contemporary art.”

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 Department of Justice has restrained Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Compotier et taste (1909) on behalf of the Italian government. The request is part of an ongoing investigation that Italian officials have been conducting. The painting, which is worth $11.5 million, is tied to Gabriella Amati and her late husband, Angelo Maj, who were charged by the Italian Public Prosecutors’ Office with embezzlement and fraudulent bankruptcy offenses. The restraining order was sought in connection with the criminal proceedings.

Amati and Maj, along with a public official in Naples, are accused of misappropriating tax receipts for the city. The trio also planned schemes to embezzle Naples’ tax revenue and fraudulently claimed refunds to Naples taxpayer to make transfers to their own bank accounts seem legitimate. The city of Naples lost approximately $44 million due to Amati and Maj’s schemes.

The Picasso painting, which was recovered by special agents in New York while it was being offered for private sale, will remain in the court’s jurisdiction. The U.S. is working closely with the Italian Public Prosecutors’ Office to forfeit the painting to Italy. Restraining the painting will hopefully help recovered the millions of dollars Naples lost because of Amati and Maj.

The German startup, Auctionata, sold Egon Schiele’s (1890-1918) Reclining Woman (1916) for $2.3 million, breaking the record for any artwork sold as part of an online auction. The company, which is less than a year old, auctioned the watercolor on Friday, June 21, 2013 via webcast. The online auction record was previously help by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) whose Flowers series garnered $1.3 million in 2011.

Auctionata, which is helmed by Alexander Zacke, a former Ebay advisor, is planning to expand its online auction offerings to include various categories such as jewels, classic cars, wine and fine art. Along with holding weekly auctions, the company is hoping to establish an online showroom in New York City.

Auctionata currently employs around 250 people including specialists, curators and appraisers. Besides its online auction platform, the website boasts an online store where visitors can purchase antique or special items at their leisure.

An 18^th century portrait of the German Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach commissioned by the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has been returned to its rightful heirs after 70 years. The oil painting by Angelika Kauffmann went missing from the duchess’ descendants’ palace in Poland during World War II. The work did not resurface until 2011 when a Polish consignor brought the work to Sotheby’s.

The painting was returned to the city of Weimar during a ceremony at the Weimar palace. Michael Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, the heir of the painting, has decided to loan the work to the city permanently. Upon its completion, the work, which is said to be worth hundred of thousands of euros, hung in the Roman House in Weimar, which was also commissioned by Goethe. The painting was later moved to the palace in Weimar and then to a family residence in Silesia, which is now part of Poland.

A Sotheby’s employee in London was the first to spot the painting on a German database for lost art. After reporting its reappearance to Weimar city officials, Sotheby’s held on to the painting until an agreement was reached. An exhibition of the work at the Roman House is being planned for next year.

London’s Courtauld Gallery, which was founded by the English industrialist and renowned art collector, Samuel Courtauld, in 1931, boasts the most comprehensive collection of Paul Gauguin’s (1848-1903) works in the UK. The Courtauld’s Gauguin holdings include five major paintings, ten prints and one of only two marble sculptures ever created by the Post-Impressionist master.

Collecting Gaugin: Samuel Courtauld in the ‘20s presents the museum’s complete collection complemented by two works that were once in Courtauld’s private collection. Martinique Landscape and Bathers at Tahiti are on loan from the Scottish National Gallery and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts respectively.

Courtauld began collecting works by Gauguin in 1923 when he purchased Bathers at Tahiti, which he later sold, and The Haystacks, which the artist painted in France. Courtauld continued to collect Gauguin’s works until 1929 when he acquired Te Rerioa (The Dream), which resided in his London home for three years before being presented, along with most of his other Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, as a portion of his founding gift to the Courtauld Institute.

Collecting Gaugin: Samuel Courtauld in the ‘20s will be on view at the Courtauld Gallery through September 8, 2013.

An exhibition of monumental works by the British sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986) is now on view at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The show, which includes 12 large-scale sculptures, inaugurates the museum’s new “outdoor gallery,” which was created as part of a major institution-wide renovation that concluded this spring.

The exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Henry Moore Foundation and features many works that have never been on public view in the Netherlands. Highlights of the exhibition include Reclining Woman: Elbow 1981, which has not left the Leeds Art Gallery since its creation over 30 years ago; the interactive sculpture Large Two Forms 1966; and Large Reclining Figure 1984, which measures nearly 30 feet tall. The sculptures, which are made of either bronze or fiberglass, span Moore’s post-war career and include his semi-abstract forms as well as his renowned sculptures of reclining figures.

The Henry Moore exhibition is the first in a series of annual international sculpture displays that will take place at the Rijksmuseum over the next five years. Moore’s sculptures will be on view in the gardens through September 1, 2013.

Pablo Picasso’s Paris studio where he painted the iconic Guernica in 1937 is at the center of a legal battle. The cultural group The National Committee for Artistic Education (CNEA) has been using the historic loft as its headquarters since 2002 but a French court is considering evicting the committee.

Founded in 1966, CNEA promotes arts education in schools and was given the space by Paris’ Chambre des Huissiers de Justice. As property prices in the artsy Saint-Germain-des Prés soar, the Chambre could make a considerable profit from the loft.

Besides being Picasso’s home and studio from 1936 to 1955, No. 7 Rue Grands-Augustins was the setting of a Honore de Balzac short story, the first home of Jean-Louis Barrault’s theatre company and a popular meeting place for Jean-Paul Sartre, George Bataille and Jean Cocteau. CNEA has hosted over 700 events at the loft.

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.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presents 8 large-scale steel sculptures by Mark di Suvero (b. 1933) at historic Crissy Field for a free, yearlong exhibition. Organized in partnership with the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks, the exhibition kicks off an extensive program of off-site exhibitions that SFMOMA will offer while the museum is undergoing a massive renovation and expansion. The museum is slated to re-open in early 2016.

Mark di Suvero at Crissy Field spans 5 decades of the artist’s career and coincides with di Suvero’s 80^th birthday. The exhibition, which includes one never-before-seen sculpture, is the largest survey of the artist’s work ever presented on the west coast. Crissy Field offers striking views of the Golden Gate Bridge, which has long been a source of inspiration for di Suvero who immigrated to San Francisco from Shanghai as a child.

Mark di Suvero at Crissy Field will be on view through May 26, 2014.

The Boxer at Rest, an ancient bronze sculpture from the Hellenistic period, is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This is the first time the work has been exhibited outside of Europe as it typically resides at the Museo Nazionale Romano in Rome. The sculpture is on view in the Met’s Greek and Roman Galleries as part of the initiative 2013 – Year of Italian Culture in the United States, which is spearheaded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

 The Boxer at Rest was discovered on the Quirinal Hill of Rome in 1885 and displayed alongside another Hellenistic bronze in the Rotunda of the Baths of Diocletian. The sculpture, which features a boxer in repose, is believes to be from somewhere between 350 B.C. and 50 B.C. It was made section-by-section and later welded together; it features copper inlays to depict the boxer’s wounds, drops of blood, and lips. The ancient bronze statue sits atop a modern stone base that is a close approximation of what the ancient base looked like.

The Boxer at Rest is one of very few original Greek bronze sculptures preserved from antiquity. The work will be on view at the Met through July 15, 2013.

The Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art that took place at Sotheby’s London on June 19, 2013 garnered $165.9 million, surpassing its high estimate of $164.3 million. The auction, which featured 71 works, sold 81.7% by lot and bidders hailed from 33 countries around the world.

The sale’s top lot was Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) painting of Venice, Le Palais Contarini (1908), which sold for $30.8 million after a three-way bidding battle. Other highlights included a Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) painting in the artist’s quintessential palette titled Red, Yellow and Blue (1927), which was scooped up by a telephone bidder for $14.5 million and Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866-1944) Bauhaus-era work on paper Ineinander (1928). A number of Surrealist works fared well at the sale including Max Ernst’s (1891-1976) La Horde (1927), which sold to New York’s Acquavella Galleries for $3.2 million and René Magritte’s (1898-1967) L’Idee, which features one of the artist’s well-known floating green apples and brought $7.1 million.

Helena Newman, Chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department in Europe, said, “There was an extraordinary dynamic at play in the sale room. Established collectors – drawn out by the quality of the estate collections presented in the sale – competed with many of the new contender’s in today’s market. Record levels of participation were driven by a truly global audience.”

The evening auctions continue at Christie’s London on June 25, 2013 with its Post-War and Contemporary Art sale.

Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale took place on June 18, 2013 in London. The sale garnered $100.4 million and sold 84% by lot and 87% by value. The top lot of the night was Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866-1944) Studie zu Improvisation 3 (1909), which sold for $21.1 million, a few million shy of its $24.7 million high estimate. The painting is from the artist’s renowned “Improvisation” series, which signaled his transition into abstraction. Many of Kandinsky’s works from this period reside in museum collections.

Other highlights from the sale include Amedeo Modigliani’s (1884-1920) portrait of the art dealer Paul Guillame (1916), which brought $10.6 million; Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Femme assise dans un fauteuil (1960), which sold for $9.5 million; Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) landscape painting Sainte-Adresse (1873), which garnered $4.4 million; and Auguste Rodin’s (1840-1917) iconic marble sculpture Eve après le péché (1900-1915), which earned $4.4 million. Records were set for Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) and Eugène Boudin (1824-1898).

Jay Vincze, International Director and Head of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s London, said, “There was great depth of bidding on works of high quality at all price levels, with strong participation from many new and existing collectors from both traditional and growth markets.”

From Colony to Nation: 200 Years of American Painting is an exhaustive exhibition now on view at the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan. The show presents over 80 works dating from 1729 to 1918 from the Historical Society’s own comprehensive collection of American paintings. From early Colonial portraits to urban Impressionism, the exhibition tells the tale of America’s past through art.

Many of the works on view have not been exhibited in decades and have recently undergone conservation efforts. Highlights include John Singer Sargent’s (1856-1925) portrait Mrs. Jacob Wendell (1888), which is the first work by Sargent to join the New-York Historical Society’s collection; Charles Wilson Pearle’s (1741-1827) The Peale Family (1773-1809), which brings together several generations in the artist’s studio; and Childe Hassam’s (1859-1935) Flags on 57^th Street, Winter (1918), which offers a glimpse of New York City during its early years as a budding metropolis. From Colony to Nation is arranged thematically. Topics explored include The Early Republic: Patriots, Citizens & Democratic Vistas; A Second War of American Independence: The War of 1812; The Native Scenery & American Narratives; and The Gilded Age: Identity, Nostalgia & the Modern City.

From Colony to Nation: 200 Years of American Painting will be on view at the New-York Historical Society through September 8, 2013.

The Hudson River School Art Trail will open for the season on June 22, 2013.The trail boasts guided hikes, which are organized by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, New York and take visitors on a tour of the vistas, mountains and valleys that influenced the Hudson River School painters including Thomas Cole (1801-1848), Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900), and Sanford Gifford (1823-1880).

The Hudson River School Art Trail is divided into a number of large geographic areas and allows visitors to walk in the footsteps of some of the most significant artists of the 19^th century. The Hudson River School was the first major art movement to sweep America and it dominated the visual arts for over 50 years. The trail includes the home of Thomas Cole who is credited with founding the Hudson River School; Olana, the home of Frederic Edwin Church, an important figure in the movement; and views of the landscapes that are featured in the artists’ paintings.

The Hudson River School Art Trail was expanded last year, more than doubling its size from its original 8 sites in New York to 20 sites in New York, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

The Swiss government has launched a website that will help claimants, museums, and researchers track Nazi-looted artworks that have made their way to Switzerland. Switzerland became a hub for Nazi plundered artworks following World War II. The country was a popular place for Jewish art dealers who were fleeing the Nazis and many Swiss museums, collectors and dealers acquired works stolen from the Jews by the Nazis.

The new site will provide visitors with guidance on provenance research, links to relevant databases and archives, and details on Swiss museums’ own analyses of their collections. Switzerland is one of 44 countries that sanctioned the Washington Principles on returning Nazi-looted art in public collections in 1998. Under the policy, governments agreed to find “just and fair” solutions for the victims of Nazi plundering and their heirs as well as to allocate resources to identifying looted art. In spite of Switzerland’s cooperation, it is still believed that there is a fair amount of Nazi-looted artworks in Swiss collections. Provenance research has only been conducted among a select few of the government museums, private collections, and foundations that have artworks from this tragic period.

Switzerland’s newly launched website for tracking Nazi-looted artworks is www.bak.admin.ch/rk.

The Nassau Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor, New York is currently presenting the exhibition Alex Katz: Selections from the Whitney Museum of Art. The solo show consists of an array of large, striking portraits by the American artist Alex Katz (b. 1927). The exhibition is drawn from the Whitney Museum of American Art’s extensive collection of the artist’s work.  

A primarily figurative painter, Katz often portrays his friends and family, especially his wife Ada, in simple, brightly colored compositions. Because of these aesthetic predilections, he has often been associated with the Pop Art movement. Katz’s expansive oeuvre also includes numerous landscapes, particularly of New York City and Maine. Since 1951 Katz has been the subject of over 200 solo exhibitions and he has been included in nearly 500 group shows worldwide.

Alex Katz: Selections from the Whitney Museum of Art will be on view at the Nassau Museum of Art through October 13, 2013.