Displaying items by tag: Museums

Piece by piece, the furnishings of the last Hawaiian queen, Liliuokalani, are returning to Iolani Palace here, on a grassy square wedged between office buildings and populated by egrets. The royal property was dispersed through auctions and giveaways around 1900, but benefactors are retrieving it from antiques stores, thrift shops, backyards, storage units, museums and government offices worldwide.

During a recent tour of the palace, an Italianate 1880s building that became a museum in 1978, its curator, Heather Diamond, and its docent educator, the historian Zita Cup Choy, described how chairs, tables, dinnerware and cuff links had ended up scattered.

Asian art is gloriously basking in the sun this year. While 42 extraordinary galleries from around the globe open their doors with one-of-a-kind exhibitions during Asia Week New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is celebrating the centennial of its world-renowned Department of Asian Art. Even Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour jumped on the bandwagon as she recently visited Beijing to promote the Met Costume Institute’s upcoming exhibition "China: Through the Looking Glass."

Works of art from all over the Asian continent and spanning over four millennia will be shown throughout Manhattan by international Asian art specialists during Asia Week New York, starting March 13 to March 21, 2015.  Art lovers can take in museum-caliber treasures including the rarest and finest Asian examples of painting, sculpture, bronzes, ceramics, jewelry, jade, textiles, prints, and photographs from all over Asia.

From February 8 to June 28, Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, is to exhibit the works of artist Paul Gauguin.

Around 50 masterpieces by the artist will be displayed at this exhibition, having been lent from leading international museums and private collections. Gauguin’s paintings are characterised by their luminous colors and elementary forms and have been incredibly influential in Modern art.

An exhibition of excellent modern French paintings created by Impressionists Renoir, Monet and other artists began Saturday at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Tokyo’s Maru-nouchi district.

Titled “Intimate Impressionism from the National Gallery of Art, Washington,” the exhibition is organized by The Yomiuri Shimbun and other entities. More than half the 68 works from the major museum in the U.S. capital are being shown to the public in Japan for the first time.

Sotheby’s announced the auction, on March 18 in Paris, of the private collection of the Dillée family, a renowned Parisian dynasty of specialists and collectors of furniture and works of art. Consisting of 450 lots, the sale will be divided into two sessions, including French decorative arts from the 17th to the 19th centuries, Old Master paintings and drawings, bronzes, scientific objects and Antique arms.

Mario Tavella, Deputy Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe and Chairman Private Collections, said: “Our auction house is deeply honoured to be entrusted once again with the sale of an iconic collection of works of art, which, in this instance, has been carefully selected by the expert eyes of three generations of the Dillée family. Their Cabinet d’Expertise has seen some of the most beautiful objects go through its doors before being passed onto collectors, auction houses and institutions. We are hoping that the Dillée sale will attract new and old generations of collectors, as well as the notable museums that the Dillée family has dealt with in the past.”

Many of the biggest museums around Southern California will offer free general admission to the public for one day only on Saturday, Jan. 31, as part of the 10th annual "Museums Free-For-All" program.

Among the participating museums this year will be the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the California Science Center and the Skirball Cultural Center. The full list of participating institutions, below, comprises 25 individual venues, including some museums that already offer free admission on a daily basis.

A mecca for the arts, New York City has also become one of the most multicultural cities in the country, with no single dominant racial or ethnic group and residents who speak more than 200 languages, according to the Department of City Planning.

Whether its cultural institutions reflect those demographics is another issue.

To find out, the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs is embarking on its first effort to measure diversity at the city’s many museums and performing arts groups. The aim is to help cultural organizations connect with New York’s increasingly polyglot population.

Curators across the Americas are collaborating on an unprecedented scale with exhibitions being co-organized by museums from Buenos Aires to Toronto, not just in Southern California where museums in Los Angeles have been working with South American partners on the Getty-funded Pacific Standard Time 2 shows for 2017.

In New York, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is due to open “Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980” in March (until 12 July). Sixty years ago the first MoMA survey of the Modern architecture of South America was organized by one US-born curator.

Most of the large museums in the Netherlands had more visitors this year than last year. The Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam especially had many visitors, 2.5 million and 1.6 million respectively. This is according to a survey done by the ANP.

Five museums had a record year: the Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the Spoorwegmuseum (Railway museum) in Utrecht and the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities) in Leiden.