Displaying items by tag: Museum of Modern Art

On Saturday, November 1, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York will present the world premiere of a Joseph Cornell film that was recently discovered in its own collection. Cornell, a celebrated exponent of assemblage, was also an avant-garde experimental filmmaker. MoMA holds an extensive collection of Cornell’s films, which were donated to the institution in 1995 by the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

“Untitled Joseph Cornell Film (The Wool Collage)” (circa 1940-55) was discovered in 2011 during a research project led by MoMA’s Film Conservation Manager Peter Williamson.

Before he became obsessed with Picasso and Braque, there were Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Back in elementary school, Leonard A. Lauder, the 81-year-old philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon, used to go to the movies at the Museum of Modern Art several times a week. Sometimes he would hang out in the galleries, too, soaking up the art. “I didn’t discover Cubism then,” he said. “But just by looking, you learn what’s good.”

Decades later, in 1976, on one of his regular visits to Sotheby’s, Mr. Lauder happened upon a Cubist drawing by Léger that he ended up buying.

One of the richest prizes in the arts, the $300,000 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, is being awarded to the artist Maya Lin.

Ms. Lin, who first caught the world’s attention in 1981 with her design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, will collect the award at a private event at the Museum of Modern Art on Nov. 12.

The prize, now in its 21st year, was established by Lillian Gish’s will, and it is given annually to “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”

Gustav Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer II, one of two formal portraits that the artist made of Adele Bloch-Bauer, an important patron of the artist, is on view at The Museum of Modern Art as a special long-term loan from a private collection.

Adele Bloch-Bauer was the wife of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy industrialist in Vienna, where Klimt lived and worked. Completed in 1912, the composition emphasizes Bloch-Bauer’s social station within Vienna’s cultural elite. Her towering figure, in opulent dress, is set against a jewel-toned backdrop of nearly abstract patterned blocks that suggest a richly decorated domestic interior.

About seven years ago, an enlightened group of councilmen, business people and local supporters of the arts began efforts to transform a strip of wasteland along this city's Charlotte Avenue into a public amenity. On Aug. 20, after much community engagement, including "Design Your Neighborhood" workshops for young interns, Nashville's mayor Karl Dean dedicated the revitalized Edmondson Park. The once neglected site is now Nashville's first "art park"—a neatly fenced, tree-studded, undulating field of Bermuda grass with a walking path and a children's area, with a sophisticated "green" water-capture system, that forms a handsome backyard for a row of modest, attractive clapboard houses that bear witness to the city's ambitious urban redevelopment program. As a fitting tribute, during the 60th anniversary of the civil-rights movement, the park is named for William Edmondson (1874-1951), the city's celebrated self-taught sculptor, the son of former slaves, who lived nearby. Edmondson, who said that his carvings of figures and animals were divinely inspired, was the first African-American to have a solo show at New York's Museum of Modern Art, in 1937.

The Museum of Modern Art announces the launch of Picasso: The Making of Cubism 1912–1914, the Museum’s first digital-only publication and the first monographic e-book to be authorized by the Estate of Pablo Picasso. Edited by Anne Umland, The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Curator of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA, and Blair Hartzell, independent art historian and curator, it embraces the innovative features and infinite real estate of the digital format in order to present new scholarship on a breakthrough moment in the history of Cubism and twentieth-century art. Scott Gerson, private art conservator and former Associate Conservator, MoMA, served as conservation editor on this cross-disciplinary project, which presents in-depth studies of 15 objects made by Picasso between 1912 and 1914. Contributing scholars include Elizabeth Cowling, Professor Emeritus and Honorary Fellow, History of Art, The University of Edinburgh; Jeremy Melius, Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Art History, Tufts University; and Jeffrey Weiss, Adjunct Professor, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and Senior Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

In early May, Christie's invited a group of 18 new collectors from China to visit New York. The auction house escorted the guests on guided tours through the Museum of Modern Art, arranged VIP tickets to a local art fair and threw a lavish dinner in the Rockefeller Center ballroom of Christie's. Auctioneers also reserved two discreet skyboxes overlooking the house's saleroom so the group could watch its major spring sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art.

Christie's efforts paid off: During its May 13 contemporary art sale, members of the group placed bids on at least half the top 10 priciest pieces in what became an historic, $745 million auction.

A seven-day schedule implemented last year at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art brought a 7% increase in attendance at the former but no change at the latter, Crain’s New York reported. MoMA started admitting visitors on Tuesdays beginning May 1, 2013; the Met’s transition from six to seven days took place two months later, in July.

A spokesman for the Met told Crain’s that the flat figures were caused by an “unusually harsh winter” along with ongoing construction, begun in late 2013, on the museum’s entrance plaza.

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.

After a triumphant tour of Japan, then the United States and ending in Italy, the "Girl with a Pearl Earring" has returned home to the Mauritshuis royal picture gallery in The Hague. For ever. The museum, which reopened last month after two years' renovation work, will no longer allow Vermeer's masterpiece out. Officially the Mona Lisa of the North has been gated in order to please visitors to the Mauritshuis who only want to see that painting. Its fame has steadily increased since Tracy Chevalier published her novel in 1999 followed in 2004 by the film by Peter Webber starring Scarlett Johansson. Anyone wanting to see the portrait will have make the trip to the Dutch city.

"Girl with a Pearl Earring" thus joins the select band of art treasures that never see the outside world. Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" never leaves the Uffizi in Florence; "Las Meninas" by Velázquez stays put at the Prado in Madrid; Picasso's "Guernica" remains just down the road at the Reina Sofia museum; and his "Demoiselles d'Avignon" can only be seen at MoMA in New York.