Displaying items by tag: Museum of Modern Art

When Henry Kravis, the co-chairman of the global investment firm KKR & Co., and prominent art collector Donald L. Bryant Jr. purchased a triptych by Jasper Johns (b. 1930) in 2008, the duo agreed to take turns exhibiting the works in their homes before eventually donating them to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In a lawsuit recently filed by Kravis and his wife, Marie-Josée, the couple claims that Bryant violated their agreement when he refused to hand the works over to them on January 14, 2013. The Kravises stated that Bryant is essentially holding the works hostage until their agreement is amended, nixing the pledge to donate the paintings.     

Considered one of the most important living American artists, Johns completed the three works titled Tantric Detail I, Tantric Detail II, and Tantric Detail III in 1980 and 1981. A powerful presence in the contemporary art market, Johns’ triptych is said to be worth between $15 million and $25 million. MoMA announced the Johns acquisition in a 2008 press release saying that the works were a “promised gift” from Bryant, who was one of the museum’s trustees at the time, Marie-Josée, the president of MoMA’s board of trustees, and her husband, Henry.

In their lawsuit, the Kravises ask that Bryant relinquish the works to them so that they can fulfill their vow to donate the paintings to MoMA.  

Surrealism, a cultural movement that includes visual arts, literature, film, and music, began in the 1920s with the musings of the French writer and poet, André Breton (1896-1966). Now celebrated and studied for its innovative and daring nature, surrealism pushed the boundaries in regard to established aesthetics and artistic techniques. While experimenting with modern conventions, surrealist masters such as Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), Max Ernst (1891-1976), René Magritte (1898-1967), and Joan Miró (1893-1983) went on to create some of the most revered artworks of the 20^th century.

Drawing Surrealism, an exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York, explores the surrealists’ relationship with drawing. While most exhibitions and scholars tend to focus on the surrealists’ paintings and sculptures, drawing played a pivotal part in the movement. The medium, which is highly connected to the brain and offers a sense of immediacy and spontaneity, was the perfect vehicle for the surrealists who valued the subconscious mind, dream imagery, language, and happenstance. The Surrealists used techniques such as automatic drawing and frottage, which requires rubbing graphite or another drawings material on a sheet of paper that is place over a textured surface, to bypass the conscious mind, creating instinctive and inimitable works.

Drawing Surrealism, which is co-organized with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), presents over 165 works on paper and occupies two of the Morgan’s galleries. The exhibition is organized chronologically, illustrating how surrealist drawing techniques evolved and spread throughout the world over time. The Morgan, LACMA, Tate Modern (London), the Pompidou Center (Paris), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Menil Collection (Houston) all contributed works for the exhibition.

Drawing Surrealism will be on view at the Morgan Library & Museum through April 21, 2013.

A painting worth $1 million by the French artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was recovered in Essex, England. Stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm in 1987, the location of Le Jardin (1920) has remained a mystery for more than twenty years.

The discovery occurred when British art dealer Charles Roberts of Charles Fine Art was offered the Matisse painting by a Polish collector. Roberts ran a search on the Art Loss Register (ALR) database, a hub for information regarding stolen artworks, and found Le Jardin listed. Christopher A. Marinello, executive director and general counsel of the ALR, facilitated the painting’s recovery and it is currently being held in the organization’s office before being returned to Sweden in the coming weeks.

Le Jardin was the only artwork stolen during the 1987 burglary when thieves broke through the museum’s front entrance with a sledgehammer and unscrewed it from the wall. The burglars escaped just minutes before private guards arrived to investigate the scene. Following the robbery, the thieves made several attempts to sell the painting back to the museum for an exorbitant sum. Museum officials resisted, knowing that the Matisse painting was too well known to sell on the open market and that it would resurface eventually.

The Museum of Modern Art is busy organizing the largest exhibition on the groundbreaking architect Le Corbusier ever to be held in New York. Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes is set to open on June 9 and run through September 23, 2013.

Born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, Le Corbusier defined modern architecture during his career, which spanned five decades. Le Corbusier was not just an architect, but also an urban planner, a painter, a writer, a designer, and a theorist. Le Corbusier’s best-known buildings include the Palace for the League of Nations in Geneva, Villa Savoye in Poissy, France, the Swiss Building in Paris, and the Secretariat at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

An Atlas of Modern Landscapes will be curated by the modern architecture scholar, Jean-Louis Cohen, and will cover Le Corbusier’s long and varied career. The exhibition will explore Le Corbusier’s contributions to architecture, interior design, and city planning. Works on view will include writings, photographs, sketches, watercolors, and models of some of Le Corbusier’s most renowned works.

Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925 opened on December 23 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and celebrates the bold art movement that swept across mediums and continents during the first half of the twentieth century. Severing ties with the realistic, practical images that dominated western art, abstraction infiltrated everything from sculpture and painting to poetry, music, and film.

Inventing Abstraction brings together over 350 works including paintings, stained glass, needlepoint, film, sculpture, and illustrated books. Organized by Leah Dickerman, a curator in MoMA’s painting and sculpture department, and Masha Chlenova, a curatorial assistant, the show includes many pieces that are on loan from outside museums.

Inventing Abstraction features works by Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), and many others. While extremely comprehensive, the exhibition draws connections between artists and illustrates the development of abstraction over time.

Designed by Renzo Piano, the museum that houses the collection of John de Menil and Dominique de Menil opened to the public 25 years ago. A sold-out gala is being held tonight, November 29, to celebrate. The fete has raised $2.2 million, exceeding its $1.5 million goal. This is only the third gala held by the Menil Collection as the institution already boasts an endowment of approximately $200 million thanks to support from the board, donors, and corporate sponsors.

The theme of the night will be “Celebration in Blue,” a tribute to Yves Klein, an important figure in post-war European art and a personal friend of the Menils. Among the 700 guests will be Pablo Picasso’s grandson, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, philanthropist Agnes Gund, president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, and hedge fund chief John D. Arnold.

A silent auction will also be held at the gala. The 31 lots include works by Ed Ruscha, Olafur Eliasson, and Richard Serra. Proceeds will support operations and exhibitions. The museum plans to expand their contemporary art collection and hope to build the Menil Drawing Institute to house and exhibit modern and contemporary works.

The free museum features over 15,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, and rare books from the 20^th century, all of which were once part of the Menils extensive private art holdings. Included in the impressive collection are works by Paul Cezanne, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Jackson Pollack.

The children of the New York art dealer, Ileana Sonnabend, have donated Robert Rauschenberg’s mixed media assemblage, Canyon (1959), to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. While the acquisition is a welcomed addition to MoMA’s existing Rauschenberg collection, the work wasn’t always so warmly regarded.

The Sonnabend heirs received Canyon after their mother’s death in 2007 and the work was soon at the center of a battle between MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the piece had been displayed intermittently since 2005. MoMA ramped up its efforts and promised to add Ms. Sonnabend’s name to the Founders Wall in the museum’s lobby. Officials also vowed to mount an entire show devoted to Canyon as well as Sonnabend, an important player in the modern art movement. While the Met made offers of their own, the Sonnabend family ultimately decided that MoMA was the right home for the work considering the expansive Rauschenberg collection already in the institution’s possession.

Sadly, this is not the first dramatic episode Canyon has been involved in. When the Sonnabend children inherited the work five years ago, appraisers valued the assemblage at $0. The presence of a stuffed bald eagle, a bird that is protected by federal laws, halted any possible sales of trades involving the work. The I.R.S., on the other hand, shrugged this off and claimed that Canyon was worth $65 million and demanded that Sonnabend’s family pay $29.2 million in taxes and another $11.7 million in penalties.

Eventually, a settlement was worked out and I.R.S. dropped all tax charges. In order for this to happen, the Sonnabends were required to donate Canyon to a museum where it could be put on public display. Canyon will be on view at MoMA beginning today, November 28.

The Dallas Museum of Art announced today that it will nullify its $10 general admission fee, effective January 21, 2013. The museum will also launch an online rewards program that could even make membership free.

In recent years, many institutions have reversed their decision to charge visitors and are now free to the public. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore, and the Detroit Institute of the Arts have all decided that free admission will help their institutions become more widely accessible, which, in turn, will keep visitor numbers up.

While it appears that the aforementioned museums have started a trend, many institutions in major tourist destinations are not so quick to jump on the free entry bandwagon. In New York, the Museum of Modern Art charges $25 and the Guggenheim Museum charges $22. San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, another major tourist attraction, charges $18. Other big-name museums that require visitors to pay are the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Twelve years ago, Rene Magritte’s five-volume catalogue raisonné was published. Overseen by British critic, David Sylvester, the project prompted hundreds of individuals to submit what they claimed to be works by Magritte to the Magritte Foundation. Drowning in potential yet unconfirmed works, a committee formed to vet each of the newly surfaced works.

 As it turns out, many of the submissions proved to be authentic and they have been assembled in the book, René Magritte: Newly Discovered Works, Catalogue Raisonné VI. Published by the Menil Foundation, Mercatourfonds, and the Magritte Foundation, the book is being distributed by Yale University Press and features 130 of the finds including paintings as well as works on paper. Several of the pieces were known to exist but could never be located.

 A Belgian surrealist, Magritte became well known for his witty and thought-provoking images, many of which feature black bowler hats, apples, curvaceous pipes, and bright blue skies. Coincidentally, the Museum of Modern Art is organizing Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary 1926–1938, the first major show to explore the artist’s early Surrealist period. Curated by Anne Umland, the show will open at MoMA next September and will travel to the Menil in Houston and the Art Institute of Chicago.    

The Museum of Craft and Folk Art (MOCFA) will be closing its doors on December 1, 2012, the date marking the institution’s thirtieth anniversary. Founded in 1982 by craft artist and well-known sculptor, Gertrud Parker, MOCFA is the only folk art museum in Northern California.

After three decades, the Museum’s overseers felt that their mission, to bring recognition and legitimacy to craft and folk art in the contemporary art arena, had been achieved. The poor climate for smaller art institutions was undoubtedly a contributing factor.

Although the art market and leading museums now embraces contemporary artists who borrow from craft traditions, the innovative and daring venues that helped these artists get there are suffering. For instance, this past summer amid financial troubles, the American Folk Art Museum in New York was forced to sell its building on 53^rd Street to the Museum of Modern Art and move to a smaller venue.

The MOCFA has exhibited hundreds of artists and significant local and national craft and folk art collections over the years. The Museum is devoted to collaborating with artists on commissions of new work as well as promoting artist-led projects and public programs. MOCFA has worked ardently to provide a place for makers and artists to come together and create, discuss, and learn. The Museum’s final exhibition, Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers, will be on view from now until December 1.