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Friday, 15 April 2011 03:36

The 'Sobranie.Photoeffect' fund, created by fund managers Agana, comprises nearly 300,000 original prints by 250 domestic and foreign photographers and is worth a combined $467 million.

The fund, partly made up of Soviet Union collections with the potential for adding contemporary Russian photographers, will target foreign investors in the Russian market offering a safe "investment money shelter," said Ekaterina Aleksandrova, Agana's deputy director general.

The portfolio included photographs of Russia's Tsarist family, the Romanovs, as well as early paparazzi shots of Italian actress Sophia Loren.

"Art investment has proven over a century to be reliable, profitable and not volatile. Art indexes have been growing faster and falling slower than stocks in the S&P 500 index in past decades," Alexandrova said, adding that the 2008-09 financial crisis only affected sale volumes, not prices.

Thursday, 14 April 2011 05:21

The Jordanian Department of Antiquities (DoA), announce the launch today of the Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities, Jordan – known as MEGA_J – an Arabic-English, web-based geographic information system (GIS) that aims to standardise and centralise information on archaeological sites throughout the country into a single system.

“The preservation of Jordan’s archaeological heritage depends upon a comprehensive understanding of historic site locations, dimensions, and their key characteristics, but the boundaries of ancient cities and sites are increasingly at risk from a range of threats including tourism and urban encroachment,” said Dr. Ziad Al-Sa’ad, Director General of the DoA. “The database will greatly facilitate the work of the DoA staff, Jordanian scholars and academic colleagues worldwide, and will play an important role in preserving Jordan’s archaeological treasures.”

MEGA-J will allow the DoA to assess the potential impact of projects such as construction of buildings, roadways, and pipelines on or near archaeological sites. This particular encroachment risk is especially relevant in Jordan today due to the recent influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees, regional investment in the country, and the resulting boom in development.

Importantly, MEGA-J will enable the DoA to coordinate heritage site data with other national authorities, such as ministries dealing with infrastructure development, agriculture, and tourism, as well as provincial and municipal governments, and better track World Heritage site requirements.

Thursday, 14 April 2011 05:18

The Queens Museum broke ground Tuesday on a $65 million expansion.
The conversion of the old ice skating rink will add another 50,000 square feet of space to the museum, doubling its size.

Upon completion it will include galleries, classrooms, public event spaces, a cafe and museum store.

The museum director estimates 250,000 people drive by the Queens Museum every day on the Grand Central Parkway and don't even know the treasures it holds.

"A lot of people grew up in Queens, they don't know where we are. We're clearing the trees away -- moving the trees away. There's going to be a 220 foot long work of art on that side of the building facing the Grand Central, so you will know where the Queens Museum is," said Queens Museum Executive Director Tom Finkelpearl.

Thursday, 14 April 2011 05:12

The UK's biggest art charity, the Art Fund, intends to increase the amount it makes available for galleries to buy works of art by more than 50% by 2014 – warning that at a time of government spending cuts, museum collections risk being "fatally undermined".

The charity also launched a new National Art Pass, which will give members of the charity free entry to over 200 museums and half-price admittance to temporary shows. The pass has been dubbed "the aesthete's Oyster" by Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum – a museum's equivalent of the card that regulars use on the London transport network.

Annually, the Art Fund will hand out £7m, rather than the £4.5m it grants currently. According to the Art Fund director Stephen Deuchar: "In the past six months, as I have been talking to museum directors ... about how we can help them, I've been struck by growing worries that as belts tighten, and national and local funding diminishes severely, that acquisitions of major works of art may not be possible and all past progress in creating world-class collections may be fatally undermined."

Museums and galleries, he said, could not continue as lively and vital institutions reflecting the society around them without renewing their collections. "We can't just stop collecting," he said. "It would be like a theatre not saying it wasn't going to mount any more new productions or a library saying they weren't going to buy any new books."

The Art Fund, formally the National Art Collections Fund, is the UK's largest art charity. Founded in 1903, it exists to help museums and galleries buy works of art that would otherwise be lost from public view. It is largely funded by the £35 annual fee paid by its 80,000 members and has mounted many successful fundraising campaigns to save artworks for the nation, including, last year, the fundraising effort to buy the Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasures and Pieter Bruegel the Younger's The Procession to Calvary.

Thursday, 14 April 2011 05:10

LONDON.- Sotheby’s auction of Russian Art in New York brought $16,089,390 in total today, in excess of the pre-sale high estimate and the highest result for an auction in New York in this category since April 2008*. The Russian paintings on offer were highlighted by Petr Petrovich Vereshchagin’s View of St. Petersburg from the collection of Mikhail Baryshnikov, which sold for $746,500 above a pre-sale high estimate of $500,000. The sale was led by Henryk Siemiradzki’s The Sword Dance, which achieved $2,098,500 and set a new record for the artist at auction, as well as works by Nicholas Roerich, Boris Grigoriev and Yuri Pimenov. Russian works of art were led by An Important and Rare Micromosaic Table by Gioacchino Barberi, Made for the Russian Court, 1830-33, which more than tripled its high estimate in bringing $1,986,500. Competition came down to three determined bidders, who battled for several minutes before the winning bid was cast by an anonymous purchaser over the telephone.

Russian Paintings
“We are very pleased with the results of today’s sale, as we continue to see exceptional works perform well” commented Sonya Bekkerman, Head of Sotheby’s Russian Paintings department. “This sale will be followed by our auction of Important Russian Art in London this June and in New York this November, which will focus on bringing more top-quality works to our clients.”

The morning session kicked off with the sale of Petr Petrovich Vereshchagin’s View of St. Petersburg from the collection of Mikhail Baryshnikov, which brought $746,500, well in excess of its $500,000 high estimate. Five phone bidders vied for the work–whose proceeds will benefit the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City–before it finally sold over the phone to a German private collector.

Five lots later, Henryk Siemiradzki’s work The Sword Dance more than doubled its pre sale high estimate in achieving an impressive $2,098,500, marking a new record for the artist at auction. On offer from the Slotkowski Collection, The Sword Dance is one of the 19th-century Polish artist’s most recognizable and accomplished compositions.

Works from the 20th century were led by Nicholas Roerich’s The Novgorod Market from Sadko, which sold for $842,500, and Boris Grigoriev’s Boy in a Sailor Suit, which achieved $782,500–both well in excess of their pre-sale high estimates. Soviet Realist works by Yuri Pimenov were highlighted by The Pianist, which set a new auction record for a work on paper by the artist in selling for $602,500. Sotheby’s now holds the auction records for both a painting and work on paper by Pimenov.

Russian Works of Art
“Today’s sale demonstrated that a strong demand for unique and interesting material persists in the market for Russian works of art,” commented Karen Kettering, Vice President and Senior Specialist in Sotheby’s Russian Works of Art department. “We continue to achieve extraordinary results for fresh objects, many of which have been hidden away in private collections for years. We will continue to focus on sourcing such material and bringing it to auction for our clients.”

The works of art on offer opened with fierce competition for a group of Soviet porcelain figures from the Lomonosov State Porcelain Factory, Leningrad. The group was led by a Pair of Very Rare Soviet Porcelain Figures: A Young Blacksmith and a Young Thresher, circa 1926 that soared past a high estimate of $18,000 to sell for $188,500. A Rare Soviet Porcelain Figure: The Apple Seller, circa 1927, was also sought-after by multiple bidders, driving the final price to $98,500, more than ten times the high estimate of $9,000.

An Important and Rare Micromosaic Table by Gioacchino Barberi, Made for the Russian Court, 1830-33 led the afternoon session in achieving $1,986,500–more than three times the high estimate of $600,000–and set a record for any mosaic table at auction. Beyond its artistry and remarkable construction, Sotheby’s intensive research into the history of the table suggests that it was made for Nicholas I, Emperor of Russia from 1825-55, or a member of his court.

Other remarkable results for the works of art on offer include A Monumental Russian Bronze Group: Arabic Horse Games, which set a new record for Evgeny Lanceray in selling for $482,500 (est. $140/160,000). A Fabergé Study of Cornflower and Oats in a Rock Crystal Vase, Workmaster Henrik Wigström, St. Petersburg, circa 1910 brought $662,500, nearly nine times the high estimate of $75,000.

*Pre-sale estimates do not include buyer’s premium

Thursday, 14 April 2011 05:06

If you enjoy spending your leisure time visiting art galleries, but instead end up wasting time in airports, you're in luck. This season, many airports around the country are hosting intriguing temporary exhibitions and unveiling new permanent public artwork that can turn a long layover into a cultural adventure. Or at least keep you from getting bored.

Here are some highlights:

Atlanta 

At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, you'll soon find an exhibit of couture fashions made entirely from trash by Nancy Judd of Recycle Runway.

Included among the 18 pieces is an outfit commissioned by Delta Air Lines that Judd has dubbed "Environmental Steward-ess." The vintage-style flight attendant uniform, which includes a hat and purse, is made from worn-out leather seat covers from Delta planes. The purse, made by Tierra Ideas, has a liner made from recycled wool curtains. The best part: The cape, which was inspired by Wonder Woman's invisible plane from early comic book days, is made from outdated seatback safety cards, discarded pretzel bags, old plane tickets and past issues of Sky Magazine.

Find it: The Recycle Runway exhibit opens April 18th and continues until April 2012 in nine cases on Atlanta International Airport's Concourse E. A video about Recycle Runway will also run on the airport's CNN channel at each gate.

San Francisco

The recently rebranded SFO Museum already maintains about 20 exhibit spaces throughout San Francisco International Airport. The museum gets yet another gallery to program in the renovated Terminal 2, which opens to the flying public on April 14th. The first exhibition is as shiny as the new terminal and features bronze candlesticks, pewter and sterling silver bowls and more than one hundred other extraordinary examples of silver and metalwork design and craftsmanship from throughout the world.

Find it: A Century of Silver and Metalwork from the Margo Grant Walsh Collection is post-security in SFO Terminal 2 through October 2, 2011. For those not traveling on American Airlines or Virgin America, the two airlines with gates in T2, there is an online exhibition.

Thursday, 14 April 2011 05:02

An undocumented Mark Rothko painting could fetch as much as $22 million at Christie’s in New York next month as collectors from Moscow to Qatar vie for trophy art.

“Untitled No. 17,” depicting pink and red rectangles on a tangerine-yellow background, will be offered at Christie’s postwar and contemporary art auction on May 11.

The 1961 painting, which hasn’t been seen publicly since 1965, is one of several rediscovered art works on the block this year. Christie’s is offering Roy Lichtenstein’s, “Drawing for Kiss V,” which re-emerged after decades of obscurity with an estimate range of $800,000 to $1.2 million. It was originally bought with a $10 lottery ticket in 1965.

An unpublished 1967 self-portrait by Andy Warhol fetched 10.8 million pounds ($17.4 million) at Christie’s in London earlier this year.

“Untitled No. 17” is one of 10 Rothko paintings discovered since the publication of the artist’s catalogue raisonne in 1998.

“It’s one of the very few that got away,” said David Anfam, London-based art historian and the author of “Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas.” “It went to a private collection soon after it was made and those collectors just kept a very low profile.”

Rothko painted 22 mostly somber canvases in 1961, the year of his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

“This work is coming in between two milestones of his late development,” Anfam said. “He has finished the Seagram murals, and he is on the brink of getting into the Harvard murals; that’s going to be in 1962.”

Thursday, 14 April 2011 04:54

A new show, "Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective," opening on Wednesday at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, exposes nearly 40-years worth of the artist's drawings, sketches and works on paper.

"My drawings are seen very infrequently ... so I think for a lot of people who don't know the work, it's probably going to be an eye opener," Serra, 71, told reporters on Monday, adding "I don't mean that good or badly."

The show, which progresses chronologically, is the first to gather the whole span of Serra's drawings, all of which are black and white.

In charcoal drawings on paper from the early 1970's, black shapes are either cleanly defined and starkly geometrical, or have erratic smudges and pencil lines. One 18-part series, called "Drawings after Circuit," consists of thin vertical black lines on yellow paper creating the illusion of a wall of irregular matchsticks.

Other works, painted in solid black with a paint stick on thick linen sheets, are stretched across walls in irregular shapes and angles, like giant swatches of ship sails.

Thursday, 14 April 2011 04:47

Opening Night: Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Internationally recognized for its outstanding cutting-edge contemporary decorative arts and design, the 14th International Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fair (SOFA NEW YORK) will open to the public on Thursday, April 14, and continue through Sunday, April 17, 2011, at the Park Avenue Armory, it was announced by Mark Lyman, Founder/ Director of SOFA and President, The Art Fair Company.

SOFA NEW YORK 2011 Opening Night Preview, by invitation only, is on Wednesday, April 13, from 5:00-7:00 pm, with the vernissage open to the public from 7-9pm by ticket purchase.  Opening Night attendees may also support New York’s Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) by purchasing a ticket to attend a private dinner in the Armory’s Tiffany Room, which starts at 6:00pm.

“This year, SOFA NEW YORK welcomes a number of outstanding new international exhibitors,” said Lyman. Making their debut are contemporary Asian specialists Korean Craft and Design Foundation (Seoul) and Ippodo Gallery (New York).  Gallery S O (London), Sarah Myerscough Fine Art (London), and Litvak Gallery (Tel Aviv) round out the fifty-five dealer roster.

Top dealers returning to SOFA NEW YORK include: Heller Gallery, Joan B. Mirviss Ltd., Scott Jacobson Gallery, and Dai Ichi Arts, all from New York; London gallerists Clare Beck at Adrian Sassoon, Joanna Bird, Katie Jones, and Contemporary Applied Arts; Donna Schneier Fine Arts (Palm Beach), TAI Gallery (Santa Fe), Ferrin Gallery (Pittsfield, MA), Jane Sauer Gallery (Santa Fe), Snyderman-Works  (Philadelphia), Schantz Galleries (Stockbridge, MA), and Ann Nathan Gallery (Chicago).

Art jewelry gallerists include Sienna Gallery (Lenox, MA), Ornamentum (Hudson, NY), Jewelers' Werk Galerie (Washington, DC), Charon Kransen Arts (New York), and Aaron Faber Gallery (New York).

Expanding to three days this year, the highly popular lecture series with  internationally prominent scholars, artists, and curators will take place in the Armory’s Tiffany Room on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, April 14, 15, and 16th.  In-booth artist talks at individual dealer stands are also planned.  The series includes a panel with Ann Hedlund, PhD., curator of ethnology at Arizona State Museum and professor of anthropology at University of Arizona, Grace Glueck, former New York Times art critic, and artist Archie Brennan.  Among artists scheduled to speak are: Christie Brown (Contemporary Applied Arts), Michael Eden (Clare Beck at Adrian Sassoon), Sergey Jivetin and Jennifer Trask (Ornamentum), and Geoffrey Mann (Joanna Bird).  Museum notables speaking include: Michael Petry, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Curator of the Royal Academy Schools Gallery (London), and Jeannine Falino, Curator of the Museum of Art and Design (New York).

On Thursday, April 14, a designer breakfast preview and panel discussion, moderated by Greg Cerio, editor of “Modern,” a Brant publication, features the highly acclaimed modernist designers Alexander Gorlin, Amy Lau, and Juan Montoya. The topic is “Contemporary Design Viewpoints: Where Do We Go From Here?”  Gorlin, Lau and Montoya are co-chairs of the SOFA National Design Committee joined by Jamie Drake, Nancy Epstein, Steven Gambrel, David Ling, and Joyce and Maya Romanoff.

Rounding out the schedule is an exclusive VIP Program for upper-level collectors and gallery clients to visit important private collections and museums.

Thursday, 14 April 2011 04:39

The Palm Beach Show Group, regarded as the nation's leading producer of premier fine art, antique and jewelry shows, has announced that Scott Diament has been promoted to President and CEO of the company and its four annual shows - the Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show, the DALLAS International Art, Antique & Jewelry Show, the Baltimore Summer Antiques Show and the recently announced Naples Art, Antique & Jewelry Show.
 
"My goal for the Palm Beach Show Group is to produce successful events that are well advertised, marketed, promoted and organized," said Diament.  "I want to focus on a complete 365/24/7 solution for the challenges that our exhibitors face related to meeting new clients and young collectors, increasing awareness among current clients and developing business in existing and new markets."
 
With more than 18 years of experience in the fine art, antiques and jewelry industry, Diament is determined to continue the success of the Palm Beach Show Group brand and further improve each show and the company's e-commerce solution, CollectorsArtnet.com. 
 
CollectorsArtnet.com is an international marketplace for fine art, antiques and jewelry where members can view and purchase the world's most exquisite treasures 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year. Created especially for dealers, collectors and interior designers, the site is unique in that it is the only online resource where members can virtually interact with and purchase from an exclusive, handpicked community of Palm Beach Show Group dealers.
 
Now, collectors that visit a Palm Beach Show Group show can further their relationship with the dealers even after the show ends thanks to CollectorsArtnet.com. More importantly, dealers now have the lucrative opportunity to make pre-show and post-show sales from buyers all across the world, in addition to the sales made during the actual show. 
 
A graduate of Florida Atlantic University, Diament is a G.I.A. graduate gemologist and currently owns several businesses in addition to the Palm Beach Show Group, including six jewelry stores, an asset-based lending company, a licensing company, and a commercial and residential real estate development and management company.
 
"With the addition of our new Naples show and CollectorsArtnet.com, we are now able to offer an even better vehicle for our dealers to connect with serious buyers and collectors on a global scale," said Diament. "I look forward to continuing to meet the needs of each and every Palm Beach Show Group dealer and to find new ways to grow their businesses."
 
For more information about the Palm Beach Show Group, please call 561.822.5440 or visit
www.palmbeachshow.com. 

Wednesday, 13 April 2011 01:12

The HK$3.49 billion tally for its 8-day Asian sales in Hong Kong -- now considered the world's third most important art auction hub after New York and London, was the firm's best season ever underpinned by strong Chinese buyers -- eclipsing even its blockbuster $400 million autumn season last October.

But beneath the banner results were some signs of weakness in the red-hot Chinese ceramics market that is now a cornerstone of Sotheby's biannual and closely watched Asian sales.

A major collection of Chinese ceramics, seen as one of the best to be sold in decades, failed to live up to expectations in a conspicuous setback for the market, with 30 percent of the porcelain going unsold amid muted bidding, while a collection of Chinese imperial objets d'art including ancient jades, a gilt dragon and a golden robe ended up 55 percent unsold.

The Meiyintang collection, assembled over half a century by Swiss pharmaceutical tycoons, the Zuellig brothers, was seen to be perhaps the best remaining classic Western collection of Ming and Qing ceramics, but flaws in a few major works, tighter credit requirements for buyers and sky-high estimates weighed on sentiment, dealers and collectors said.

"I think they (Sotheby's) pushed a bit too hard on the prices," said Nader Rasti, a Western dealer of Asian antiques.

One exceptional piece -- an eight-inch tall Qing vase with a brilliantly painted pair of golden pheasants, near flawless save for a crack on the stem fastened by rivets, had been expected to fetch $23 million, but bidding spluttered after the opening price was set at HK$100 million.

The so-called "falangcai" vase with exquisite enamelling, hammered off in 1997 for just HK$9 million, was sold privately after the auction for HK$200 million, Sotheby's said.

Wednesday, 13 April 2011 01:11

A missing statue of King Tutankhamun has been returned to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, along with three other objects lost during the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak from power, an Egyptian minister said.

A small part of the crown on the gilded wooden statue of Tutankhamun standing on a boat is missing, as well as pieces of the legs, Zahi Hawass, minister of state for antiquities, said in an e-mailed statement today. The king will be reunited with the boat, which is still in the museum, and restored, he said.

Wednesday, 13 April 2011 01:04

The $10 billion market for Chinese antiques is about to be transformed by the unexpected fallout from an auction at a saleroom in a suburb of London.

An 18th-century vase found in a house clearance, bid to an auction record for any Chinese artwork, has become the biggest example of slow payments from Chinese buyers. With no payment reported by Bainbridges for the 51.6 million pound ($83.2 million) Nov. 11 sale, other auction houses yesterday told Bloomberg that they are demanding deposits from would-be buyers.

The deposits will safeguard sellers, while deterring some bidders and potentially cooling prices at a time when the Asian market is growing faster than that in the U.S. and U.K.

“There must be a problem with payment, otherwise the auction houses wouldn’t do this,” the London-based dealer John Berwald said. “It’s a difficult balance to strike between being stringent with the buyers and not making them discouraged.”

China overtook the U.S. as the world’s biggest auction market for fine art last year, according to research company Artprice. Chinese sales of antiques were alone valued at 6 billion euros ($8.6 billion) and grew 160 percent year-on-year, according to a European Fine Art Foundation report published last month. Further auctions and dealer transactions in the West have turned the trade in Chinese artifacts into a business worth more than $10 billion, according to Bloomberg calculations.

Growing Millionaires

Buying at auctions of Asian art in Europe and the U.S. is now routinely dominated by bidders from China, which last year became the world’s second-biggest economy. The country’s growing number of millionaires is bidding to unprecedented levels to repatriate works of art, particularly when they have Imperial associations. Some bidders have been reluctant payers, said dealers.

In the London sale, auctioneer Peter Bainbridge broke his hammer after spending half an hour taking bids from an excited crowd of more than 40 Chinese collectors, dealers and agents that had traveled to Ruislip in the hope of buying an elaborately decorated vase that had once been owned by the Qianlong Emperor.

Wednesday, 13 April 2011 01:01

Whenever I have been to the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona – and I have visited Josep Lluís Sert's lovely building on Montjuïc many times over the last quarter-century – I try to see Miró's great 1968 triptych Painting on White Background for the Cell of a Recluse. It isn't always on display. There's nothing much to the three white canvases. No colour, no forms. Each enormous canvas is painted with a single black line over an unevenly primed white ground. You can tell where the slender brush has run out of paint, is recharged, then continues on its way with the same unknowable purpose, like the passage of an ant or a bird in flight, or the journey the eye makes along a horizon. Or like a long hair lost in the bedsheets, a memory of something or someone.

The recluse of the title might be the artist himself, painting one afternoon with the shutters closed against the brightness of the day in his studio on the island of Mallorca, during the month that the students rioted in Paris and General Franco still ruled Spain. It is a daft idea, to paint just a skinny wandering line across such a big canvas. How could it possibly work? But it does. There is a palpable difference between a line that's alive and tense and somehow natural, and one that dies like a bum note. You can feel the vitality of Miró's line from your head to your toes, your hand clenching and unclenching in your pocket, somehow feeling in your own body the artist's concentration – the tensing of his wrist, the movement of his hand – as you follow the line on its way to nowhere. I imagine Miró holding his breath as he draws, and I hold mine too as I look.

This work, along with three other late, large triptychs, is now being shown in two beautifully installed octagonal rooms towards the end of a new retrospective at Tate Modern. Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape brings us his art not just in its most characteristic guises – playful, childlike, direct – but attempts to bring out Miró the "international Catalan" and internal exile in Franco's Spain; Miró the political artist; and the avant-garde surrealist and modernist who wanted – so he once said – to assassinate painting.

Wednesday, 13 April 2011 00:58

When the recession forced museums to cut back on expensive loan shows a few years ago, some worried that it would hurt attendance: With great works from around the world replaced by stuff hauled up from storage rooms, would art lovers’ hearts still flutter?

Now, though, many museum directors are finding virtue in necessity. Shows built largely from in-house collections have drawn well, they say, and curators are introducing the public to unsung treasures.

“If the recession has compelled us as museums in this country to focus even more intensely than we have in the past on our collections, that’s a good thing,” said Glenn D. Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art. “Because they’re our primary responsibility.”

Last year, for example, the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition on Picasso, stocked completely from the museum’s own holdings, drew 700,000 visitors. And when the Los Angeles County Museum of Art opened its Resnick Pavilion last fall, it celebrated by showcasing its new collection of early European fashions.

“The public doesn’t care whether you own it or borrow it,” said Michael Govan, the director of that Los Angeles museum. “They’re just interested in the presentation and the content.”

Wednesday, 13 April 2011 00:50

A profound statement of living history, the recently remodeled Neues Museum in Berlin bears witness to its past -- and it just won the 2011 Mies van der Rohe Award in recognition of its subtle transition into the 21st century. Lead architect David Chipperfield set out to preserve the museum, which was nearly destroyed during the Second World War, while adding to its continuity through carefully introduced design elements. The result is a unique space that blends historic art relics with a facade pierced by bullet holes during WW2 to tell the story of human history.

Wednesday, 13 April 2011 00:15

Lu Qing was asked to take documents with her, but ironically, she couldn't- she'd had them confiscated by police.
Her husband, Ai Weiwei, has long been a prominent figure in the art world.  He designed the Olympic stadium in Beijing, along with Herzog and De Meuron, and his his sunflower seeds exhibition is currently displayed at Tate Modern, in London.

But it seems his fame has not played at his advantage in denouncing the regime's lack of freedom, and he's now under investigation for alleged economic crimes. The general sentiment is that the allegations are a cover for detaining him for his political campaigning. “China in many ways is just like the Middle Ages,” Ai Weiwei told officials at Beijing airport, after surveillance cameras were installed at his gate entrance, his phone was tapped and his mircroblog censored.

Saturday, 09 April 2011 05:19

BATH, UK – America, as it looks from the other side of the pond, is examined in contrasting exhibitions celebrating the 50th anniversary of the American Museum in Britain in Bath this year. The results may surprise you.
 
Monroe Mania
With the fiftieth anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death approaching in 2012, tributes are rolling in. “Marilyn – Hollywood Icon,” on view through October 30, satisfies public curiosity about the doomed diva while making a compelling argument for cinema as America’s greatest 20th century art form. The show has been a massive hit with visitors.
 
“Devotees are coming in great droves,” acknowledges the museum’s curator, Laura Beresford, who organized the display that showcases film costumes and personal gowns assembled by the Channel Islands collector David Gainsborough Roberts. The show includes two of Monroe’s hottest numbers, the “wiggle” dress that established her blonde-bombshell reputation in Niagara in 1952 and the red-sequined gown from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes of 1953.  A brass figure of a dancer, a rare keepsake from M.M.’s orphanage days, joins original photographs and posters in the display.
 
“The girl who extolled the virtues of diamonds died $400,000 in debt.  She owned very little. Most of her money was spent on a great circle of hangers on,” laments the curator.
 
Fabulous Folk Art
Monroe memorabilia contrasts with the folk art that is at the heart of the American Museum in Britain’s 15,000 object collection, the finest of its kind outside the United States. Most of it was acquired in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the museum’s founders, Dallas Pratt (1914-1994), an American psychiatrist and heir to a Standard Oil fortune, and John Judkyn (1913-1963), an English antiques dealer who became an American citizen.  The partners established the museum with the goal of improving Anglo-American relations and heightening awareness of American folk art, not well understood outside of the United States.
 
“Here in Britain, the emphasis has been on the folk, not on the art. We have contextualized these pieces in a gallery setting,” Beresford says of the museum’s new Folk Art Gallery, installed in a recently renovated neoclassical picture gallery. In “Fab@50,” on view through October 30, fifty folk-art treasures, some rarely shown, are scattered throughout the period rooms at Claverton Manor, the Grade II stately house that is home to the American Museum in Britain.
 
Known for brokering the Gunn Collection to the New York State Historical Association, Southport, Ct., dealer Mary Allis advised Judkyn and Pratt on the their purchases for Claverton Manor. When Judkyn died in a road accident in France in 1963, Allis presented the museum with a penetrating portrait by the deaf-mute itinerant, John Brewster, Jr.  Folk sculpture, including cigar store Indians and a ship’s figurehead, came from Helena Penrose, a Tarrytown, N.Y., dealer who supplied Henry F. DuPont, among others.
 
Museum highlights include a gilded copper Indian weathervane much like the one that New York collector Jerry Lauren bought for $5.8 million in 2006 and a Susan’s Tooth. Among the first pieces of American scrimshaw to be studied, Susan’s teeth, engraved by Frederick Myrick aboard the Susan of Nantucket in 1828 and 1829, enjoy iconic status among collectors. In August 2010, Cape Cod dealers Alan Granby and Janice Hyland paid $200,600, a record at auction, for one at Northeast Auctions in Portsmouth, N.H.

The itinerant painter Sturtevant J. Hamblen (1817-1844) is represented by the oil on canvas portrait of Emma Thompson. “He tried so hard but ended up selling gentlemen’s trousers,” the curator says of her favorite artist.
 
Written by Laura Beresford, Folk Art from the American Museum in Britain is an informative and lushly illustrated guide to the museum’s enviable holdings. It joins Classic Quilts: The American Museum in Britain, also by Beresford.
 
Judkyn, Pratt and their milieu will come into sharper focus later this year with the publication of A Kind of Archaeology:  Collecting American Folk Art, 1876-1976 by Elizabeth Stillinger.  A companion to her well-thumbed reference, The Antiquers, this exhaustive new volume from University of Massachusetts Press studies folk art’s most ardent enthusiasts, from the pioneers Henry C. Mercer and Edwin AtLee Barber to Jean Lipman and Mary Allis.

Write to Laura Beach at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Friday, 08 April 2011 03:27

April 28—May, 2011
Park Avenue Armory at 67th Street, NYC
For information call 707.343.1301 or visit www.springshownyc.com

The Art and Antique Dealers League of America (AADLA) are proud to announce a brand new art fair opening in April 2011. The Spring Show NYC will feature over fifty-five top-notch dealers, many of whom are members of the esteemed AADLA. Taking place during Art and Antiques Week in New York, Clinton Howell, the League’s President, thinks that the show will stand out from the crowd. Howell says, “The Spring Show has an outstanding line-up and I think it will generate new interest in art and antique fairs in New York City.” The League will offer a guide listing all of the satellite events that will take place around Manhattan that week. Appealing to all tastes, The Spring Show NYC will include fine and decorative arts, rare books, and tapestries. The works which range from antiquities to twentieth century masterworks will all be vetted by a panel of experts for authenticity and comprehensive labeling. Exhibiting dealers include Mary Helen McCoy, Thomas Colville, Questroyal, Leo Kaplan, and Charles and Rebekkah Clark. An opening night benefit preview will be held on April 27, 2011 at the Armory. Sponsored by the online luxury marketplace for antiques, estate and fine jewelry, vintage couture and fine art, 1stdibs.com, the preview’s proceeds will all go to the ASPCA. The renowned interior designer, Lars Bolander, will apply his signature style of combining antiques with whimsical decorative objects to create a dramatic mise-en-scene at the Armory for the duration of the show.

Friday, 08 April 2011 03:21

George Ault and 1940s America

March 11–September 5, 2011
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
For information visit www.americanart.si.edu or call 202.633.7970

During the turbulent 1940s, artist George Ault (1891-1948) created precise, yet eerie pictures—works of art that have come to be seen, following his death, as some of the most original paintings made in American in those years. The beautiful geometries of Ault’s paintings make personal worlds of clarity and composure to offset a real world he felt was in crisis.

To Make a World captures a 1940s America that was rendered fragile by the Great Depression and made anxious by global conflict. Although much has been written about the triumph of the Second World War, what has dimmed over time are memories of the anxious tenor of life on the home front. Viewers will be brought back into the world of the American 1940s, not through grand actions, cataclysmic events, posters, or headlines, but through the least likely of places and spaces. The exhibition centers on paintings Ault made between 1943 and 1948, with additional works by twenty-two other artists, some as celebrated as Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, and others scarcely known to today’s audience. From their remote corners of the country, these artists conveyed a still quietude that seems filled with potentialities.

The exhibition will travel to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, where it will be on view from October 8 to December 13, 2011, and then to the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia, from February 18 to April 16, 2012. An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

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