Displaying items by tag: Chuck Close

The Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis, announced today it has acquired 200 new works through donation and purchase over the past year. The acquisitions include pieces by artists such as Trisha Brown, Beauford Delaney, Chuck Close, Joseph Kosuth, Liz Larner, Allen Ruppersberg, Barry Le Va, Danh Vo, and Akram Zaatari.

Deschenes’s piece Gallery 7 (2015) is a site-specific installation commissioned by the Walker, and an homage to the museum. A year-long production, it utilized the natural light from the gallery’s windows to expose a series of free-standing panels coated with photosensitive paper.

The Parrish Art Museum will debut an extensive survey of the photography of Chuck Close, one of the most important figures in contemporary art, opening this Sunday, May 10 with a reception at 11 a.m.

On view through July 26, the exhibition will feature some 90 images from 1964 to the present, showcasing an arc of the artist’s exploration of photography— from early black and white maquettes to monumental composite Polaroids and intimately scaled daguerreotypes and his most recent Polaroid nudes. The exhibition explores how Mr. Close has stretched the boundaries of photographic means, methods and approaches.

A group of 54 artists and other art worlders has signed a letter asking Mayor de Blasio and Meenakshi Srinivasan, chair of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, to deny the Frick Collection’s proposed plan for expansion.

“Those of us in the art world who cherish the unique and tranquil ambiance offered by the Frick are urging the Frick to withdraw its proposed plan and consider alternative methods of expansion that would preserve the character essential to its appeal,” says the missive, which is signed by gallerists Paul Kasmin and Irving Blum, filmmaker Sophia Coppola, and artists Jeff Koons, Chuck Close, John Currin, Brice Marden, Frank Stella, Cindy Sherman, Deborah Kass, Cecily Brown, Lisa Yuskavage, Rudolf Stingel, and Sarah Sze, among others.

A selection of 100 works from the nearly 10,000 acquired during the tenure of the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum, Arnold Lehman, is being presented in his honor on the occasion of his retirement in the summer of 2015. "Diverse Works: Director’s Choice, 1997–2015," on view through August 2, 2015, includes works in a wide range of media from every corner of the globe. Spanning many centuries, the exhibition brings together important objects from all of the Museum’s collecting areas.

The selections range from an ancient Chinese mythical carved figure (5th–3rd century b.c.e.) to contemporary works by Kiki Smith and Chuck Close, and a mixed-media collage (2013) in a customized frame from the American artist Rashaad Newsome.

On Saturday, January 31, 2015, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, will unveil its reinstalled collections of post-war and contemporary art. Featuring work from 1945 to the present, the collections will be housed in three dedicated galleries that have been newly renovated and refurbished over the past year.

The Wadsworth’s illustrious post-war and contemporary holdings will be divided between the Huntington Gallery, where mid-century abstract painting and sculpture by artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Willem de Kooning, Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Tony Smith will be displayed; the Hilles Gallery, which will feature works by Robert Rauschenberg, Kara Walker, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, and Richard Tuttle; and the Colt building’s mezzanine gallery, where one of Sol LeWitt’s famed wall drawings will be on view as well as works by other minimalists and conceptualists.

The Bellevue Arts Museum in Bellevue, Washington, is currently hosting the exhibition “Under Pressure: Contemporary Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation.” The show, which features works by artists such as Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Barbara Kruger, Sol Lewitt, and Andy Warhol, traces printmaking’s rise to prominence in post-war American art. Drawn from real estate mogul Jordan D. Schnitzer’s vast collection, “Under Pressure” includes examples from major movements within contemporary art such as Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Photorealism, and Minimalism.

During the late 1950s, the art world experienced a groundswell of interest in printmaking. Ignoring the stigma associated with the process, pioneering artists such as Rauschenberg and Johns began experimenting with a variety of techniques, including offset lithography, screen printing, wood-cutting, lino-cutting, and laser-cutting.

This past November, Francis Bacon’s triptych portrait Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969) sold for $142.4 million at Christie’s, setting an artist’s record and becoming the most expensive work ever sold at auction. Less than a month later, the massive contemporary masterpiece turned up on loan, not at a modern-day art mecca like New York’s Museum of Modern Art (as Edvard Munch’s The Scream did), but on the opposite end of the US, at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. The painting, which remained on view there through early April, was loaned by its new owner Elaine Wynn, ex-wife of casino mogul and top collector Steve Wynn. Mrs. Wynn, a resident of Nevada, was reportedly entitled to save more than $10 million in taxes by first parking the painting at the Portland Art Museum before bringing it to her home state.

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, announced that it will use a series of gifts totaling approximately $4 million to expand its photography initiatives. The museum, which is home to the most comprehensive photography program in the American Southeast, began acquiring photography in the early 1970s. The High’s holdings include American works from the 20th and 21st centuries, images made in and of the South, and the most significant grouping of vintage Civil Rights-era prints in the country. 

The most substantial gift has been promised by Donald Keough, the former president and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, and his wife, Marilyn. The couple, who helped fund the museum’s 2005 expansion, will donate $2 million to endow a permanent curatorial position in photography and support ongoing photography programs and acquisitions at the institution. Lucinda W. Bunnen, an Atlanta-based photographer and avid collector, has donated an unspecified amount that will go to the establishment of a photography gallery. Bunnen is a longtime supporter of the High’s photography initiatives and previously donated prints by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Chuck Close, and Cindy Sherman to the museum. Paul Hagedorn, an Atlanta-based artist and supporter of the High since 2005, has donated $500,000 for acquisitions and the Yellowlees Family, also longtime supporters of the museum, have donated $400,000 for the acquisition of Southern photography.

Michael E. Shapiro, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr. director, said, “These landmark gifts represent a transformational moment for photography at the High. Photography is our fastest growing area of collecting, research and programming, and these gifts will ensure that the High can continue our commitment to new scholarship and commissioning new works by living artists. We hope that these significant gifts inspire others to support our photography programs and the growth of our collection.”

The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, NY is holding an anniversary weekend celebration from Saturday, November 9 through Monday, November 11. A full schedule of events including gallery talks, live music, and “meet the artist” events will ring in the Parrish’s one-year anniversary of its expansive, Herzog and DeMeuron-designed space.

During the celebratory weekend the Parrish will unveil seven new galleries in its 12,200-square-foot structure, which will house the museum’s permanent collection. The institution’s holdings include over 2,600 works ranging from the early 19^th century through the 21^st century. Childe Hassam, John Sloan, James McNeill Whistler, Dan Flavin and Chuck Close are all represented in the museum’s collection. The Parrish also boasts extensive holdings of works by William Merritt Chase and Fairfield Porter.

A biennial juried exhibition titled Artists Choose Artist will also take place. The event will showcase the artists of Long Island’s East End and the relationships that have helped create a strong artistic community there.  

On January 21, 2013, the Cleveland Museum of Art opened Gallery One, an interactive gallery that brings together art and technology to enhance as well as personalize each museum visitor’s experience. Gallery One features the largest multi-touch screen in the United States, which displays images of over 3,500 objects from the institution’s permanent collection. Known as the Collection Wall, the touchscreen spans 40 feet and helps patrons create their own tactile tour of the museum while rotating works according to theme, time period, and technique.

Gallery One, which includes works by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), and Chuck Close (b. 1940), employs different hands-on activities to engage visitors using the power of technology. For example, one game asks viewers to recreate the poses of sculptures in the museum’s collection; the ArtLens ipad application illustrates how works of art were made, where they came from, and what inspired their creation. The ArtLens application uses image recognition software and allows visitors to scan objects and access additional multimedia content such as audio tours and educational information for up to 9 hours after their visit.

David Franklin, the Cleveland Museum’s Sarah S. and Alexander M. Cutler Director, said, “Gallery One offers an unparalleled experience for visitors of all ages. The space connects art and people, art and ideas, and people with people…we are especially proud to lead the way internationally in using technology to enhance and customize the art museum experience.”