Displaying items by tag: Brooklyn Museum

Eight notebooks used by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat that have never before been shown in public are due to go on view at the Brooklyn Museum in April. “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks” (3 April-23 August 2015) includes 160 unbound pages from journals the artist filled with sketches and notes between 1980 and 1987. The notebooks come from the collection of Larry Warsh, and another 30 drawings and paintings from other collections will be shown as well.

Tricia Laughlin Bloom, who co-organised the show with the scholar Dieter Buchhart, says the exhibition reveals a side of the artist that tends to be glossed over by the traditional narrative.

Bloomberg Philanthropies, the nonprofit founded by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, announced that it is expanding its funding for cultural institutions’ digital projects. The foundation is committing $17 million to six museums to help increase visitor engagement and education through innovative technology tools. The recipients of the expanded grant program are the American Museum of Natural History (New York), the Brooklyn Museum (New York), the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum (New York), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Gardens by the Bay (Singapore), and the Science Museum (London).   

The latest round of funding will support a spate of new technologies.

Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman announced yesterday at the fall meeting of the Board of Trustees that he will retire in mid-2015.

Lehman, who turned 70 in July, joined the Brooklyn Museum as its director in September 1997.

Under his leadership, the Brooklyn Museum- one of the oldest and largest museums in the country- has undergone nearly two decades of sustained growth, more than doubling its audience and its endowment, refocusing attention on the visitor, expanding and significantly enhancing its landmark building, re-envisioning and re-installing much of its permanent collection, developing a dynamic exhibition program for its Brooklyn site as well as for its national traveling exhibitions, pioneering new technology and, overall, renewing the commitment of a world-renowned institution to its metropolitan area community of artists, families and young people.

Like vodka and fun-house mirrors and trips to Japan, the Internet can make you feel bigger than you are.

It persuades vitamin D-starved shut-ins to try their hand as webcam stars. It tempts the rude to imagine their impertinence catching global fire through that perfectly worded comment. It seduces the artisanal cheese maker with visions of a worldwide market beyond the alley boutique.

And it can make even the oldest-school art museum wonder: Could our collection reach the villages of China and the universities of Peru and perhaps a prison or two? Could it touch those who have no chance of entering our physical doors? Could it spread to the whole world?

The Brooklyn Museum’s suggested general admission fees for adults will increase to $16 from $12, and entry for visitors 19 and under will be free starting Sept. 3, the museum announced on Wednesday.

“This younger audience segment represents the future of all museums, and we must do everything possible to make it easier for them to visit,” said Arnold L. Lehman, the museum’s director. “At the same time, economic realities make necessary this modest increase in our suggested admission fees for other audience segments.”

The Brooklyn Museum has received a $5 million gift from the Leon Levy Foundation to endow the position of director, the museum is expected to announce on Tuesday. The gift is the largest the museum has received from a donor who was not a member of its board of trustees. Arnold L. Lehman, the director of the museum since 1997, will become, formally, the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum.

Acquavella Galleries in New York is currently hosting the exhibition “Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawing: Works from the Schorr Family Collection.” The show was curated by Fred Hoffman, who was introduced to Basquiat by fellow art dealer Larry Gagosian in 1982. Hoffman helped Basquiat produce five editions of prints, which were published in 1983 by New City Editions in Venice, California. Hoffman also assisted in the production of the artist’s 1984 silkscreen paintings and co-curated Basquiat’s retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum in 2005. He is the Ahmanson Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

“Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawing” features 22 works on paper and two paintings from the collection of Herbert and Lenore Schorr, Los Angeles-based collectors who met the artist in 1981, before his first exhibition in New York. The Schorrs quickly became Basquiat’s devoted collectors, supporters, and friends. While the couple owns several seminal Basquiat paintings, what makes their holdings so unique is their vast collection of works on paper. Hoffman said, “The Schorrs astutely understood that working on paper was equally central to his practice as painting on canvas. The collection demonstrates both the focus and ambition that the artist invested in the medium of drawing.” Drawing is an essential component of Basquiat’s graffiti-inspired Neo-expressionist and Primitivist works. Between 1980-1988, the artist produced approximately 1,000 works on paper that exemplify his frenetic, bold, and gestural style.

The two paintings on view at Acquavella Galleries include a portrait that Basquiat painted of the Schorrs and “Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits,” which was part of an exhibition at Fun Gallery in New York in 1983. The show didn’t receive any critical attention and the Schorrs were the only people to buy a painting. “Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits” is now considered a foremost example of Basquiat’s work. Lenore Schorr said, “We had so much confidence in him from the beginning and couldn’t understand why other people couldn’t see it.”

Today, Basquiat, who died in 1988 at the age of 27, commands extremely high prices at auction. In May 2013, “Dustheads” sold for $48.8 million at Christie’s, setting the record for Basquiat at auction. His work is included in private and public collections throughout the world, including the Broad Art Foundation in California, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Museu d’art Contemporani de Barcelona in Spain, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Acquavella Galleries was founded by Nicholas Acquavella in 1921. The gallery initially specialized in works of the Italian Renaissance, but in 1960, when Acquavella’s son William joined the business, the gallery expanded to major works of the 19th and 20th centuries, including masters of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. The gallery has since expanded and the entire scope of the 20th century is now represented.

“Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawing: Works from the Schorr Family Collection” will remain on view at Acquavella Galleries through June 13.

New York’s Brooklyn Museum has finished renovating two rooms from an historic home in Saratoga Springs, New York. The late 19th-century Parlor and Library of the Colonel Robert J. Milligan House have been conserved and refurbished for the first time since they were installed in the museum in 1953. The Brooklyn Museum acquired the rooms as well as their furnishings in 1940. 

The rooms have been repainted and bold carpeting has been added to the Library’s previously bare wood floors. The museum has also restored and installed the Parlor’s original chandelier by Cornelius and Baker of Philadelphia and decorated the rooms with recently acquired objects and several Victorian furnishings original to the rooms but not previously on view in Brooklyn. Each room illustrates a revival style popular in interior decoration in mid-19th century America -- the Parlor exhibits the Louis XV Revival style while the Library depicts the Gothic Revival style. 

The Milligan House was completed in 1856 and is still standing in Saratoga Springs.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is currently hosting the exhibition “John Singer Sargent: The Watercolors.” During the late 1800s, John Singer Sargent gained recognition for his technically masterful portraits that revealed the personality and individuality of his sitters. As the 20th century approached, Sargent ventured into watercolors, eventually mastering the medium and creating some of the most celebrated works in his oeuvre.

“John Singer Sargent: The Watercolors” presents 100 watercolors including early 20th-century scenes of landscape, labor and leisure. The works on view are from two of the most significant collections of Sargent’s watercolors -- holdings from the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This exhibition marks the first time in history that the two collections have been on view together.

The watercolors featured in the show were created during the artist’s trips through the Mediterranean region and the Middle East. They are organized geographically and subjects include the people of the Bedouin community, Venetian architecture, villa gardens, marble quarries, and gondoliers at work.

“John Singer Sargent: The Watercolors” will remain on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through May 26, 2014. The exhibition was previously on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Brooklyn Museum.

The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA has selected New York-based Ennead Architects to design their $200 million, 175,000-square-foot expansion. The project is part of the museum’s comprehensive, $650 million Advancement Campaign, which was announced in 2011. The goal of the Campaign is to celebrate outstanding artistic and cultural creativity in ways that transform people’s lives. Besides the expansion, which will include galleries, a restaurant and additional space for public programs and education, the endeavor includes reinstalling the museum’s collection, several infrastructure improvements and other initiatives.

Ennead Architects previously designed the renovation and expansion of the renowned Yale University Art Gallery. The firm has also worked on projects at the Brooklyn Museum, Natural History Museum of Utah and the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History.

Groundbreaking for the Peabody Essex Museum’s expansion project is expected to commence in 2015 and the new wing is slated to open in 2019. The museum will remain open throughout the renovation process until the final months, when the collection will be reinstalled.