Displaying items by tag: Paul Gauguin

In November 2013, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) will unveil its new Paintings Conservation Studio as part of the institution’s initiative to establish a more comprehensive on-site conservation program. Three long-term research projects that will utilize new analytical techniques and technologies will inaugurate the space.

The DMA’s new conservation studio features cutting edge technology including a digital x-ray system and will serve as a center for study and research as well as conservation treatments. The studio, which is enclosed by a glass wall, will be open to visitors so that guests of the museum can observe daily conservation activities.

As part of its efforts to improve its conservation capabilities, the Dallas Museum of Art has embarked on a number of projects with museums and universities in north Texas. The DMA is currently working with the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of North Texas in Denton on various initiatives including the study of ultramarine pigment discoloration, the pigment and medium analysis of a work by Paul Gauguin, and the development of atomic sampling techniques for silverplated objects.

Maxwell L. Anderson, the Dallas Museum of Art’s Eugene McDermott Director, said, “The launch of these new conservation initiatives supports the DMA’s commitment to responsible stewardship of our collection, and the advancement of conservation research and practices in the region and across the museum field. We look forward to strengthening the DMA’s culture of conservation with the opening of this new facility and integrating conservation into the fabric of the Museum experience for the benefit and enjoyment of our community.”

Experts investigating the catastrophic art heist that rattled the Netherlands in October 2013 have found the burned remains of at least three oil paintings in a home belonging to the mother of one of the chief suspects. Olga Dogaru, who had previously admitted to burning the works and then withdrew her claim, originally said that she incinerated the canvases – two Monets and one Picasso – in an attempt to protect her son.

Investigators found traces of three or four paintings in ashes taken from a wood-burning stove along with nails and tacks. Ernest Oberlaender-Tarnoveanu, head of Romania’s National History Museum, which analyzed the contents of the stove, said, “The number and the type of nails we found (in the ashes) indicate that we have at least three paintings there. There are also tacks that could belong to a fourth one.” While investigators did find the remains of burned oil paintings, it is yet to be determined whether or not they are the same works that were stolen from the Kunsthal Museum.

Dogaru, her son, Radu, and four other Romanians will go on trial on Tuesday, August 13, 2013 in Bucharest. The thieves made off with Pablo Picasso’s Tete d’Arlequin, Claude Monet’s Waterloo Bridge, London and Charing Cross Bridge, London, Henri Matisse’s La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune, Paul Gauguin’s Femme devant une fenetre ouverte, dite la Fiancee, Meyer de Haan’s Autoportrait, and Lucian Freud’s Woman with Eyes Closed. The works were on loan from the Triton Foundation to celebrate the Kunsthal Museum’s 20^th anniversary.

Four of the stolen works were oil paintings and three – including Pablo Picasso’s Tete d’Arlequin and Claude Monet’s Waterloo Bridge – were either pastel or colored ink on paper and would be impossible to identify if burned.

Olga Dogaru, a Romanian woman who told investigators that she burned seven modern art masterpieces to protect her son, denied her claim in court on Monday, July 22, 2013. Dogaru’s son, Radu, was one of six suspects involved in the Kunsthal Museum heist, the biggest art-related robbery to take place in the Netherlands in years.

During the hearing, Dogaru alleged that she “made up” the story about incinerating $130 million worth of art in a desperate attempt to guard her son, who had admitted to stealing the paintings last October. If she is found guilty of “destruction with very serious consequences” Dogaru could serve up to 30 to years in prison under Romanian law. Last week, news circulated that forensic investigators had found trace evidence in the ash in Dogaru’s stove.

The heist took place on October 16, 2013 and proceeded to shake the art world. The six suspects made off with Pablo Picasso’s Tete d’Arlequin, Claude Monet’s Waterloo Bridge, London and Charing Cross Bridge, London, Henri Matisse’s La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune, Paul Gauguin’s Femme devant une fenetre ouverte, dite la Fiancee, Meyer de Haan’s Autoportrait, and Lucian Freud’s Woman with Eyes Closed in less than 90 seconds. The works were on loan from the Triton Foundation to celebrate the Kunsthal Museum’s 20^th anniversary.

The suspects will stand trial next month.    

The mother of Radu Doragu, one of the suspects in the Kunsthal Museum art heist, admitted to burning seven stolen paintings including works by Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet. She said that she incinerated the works, which were valued at $130 million to “destroy any evidence.”

Doragu along with five other Romanians are accused of stealing Picasso’s Tete d’Arlequin, Monet’s Waterloo Bridge, London and Charing Cross Bridge, London, Henri Matisse’s La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune, Paul Gauguin’s Femme devant une fenetre ouverte, dite la Fiancee, Meyer de Haan’s Autoportrait, and Lucian Freud’s Woman with Eyes Closed from the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam. The works were taken on October 16, 2012 in less than 90 seconds.

The suspects will stand trial in August for what is being called one of the most significant thefts in history.

Boston-based collector, Dorothy Braude Edinburg, has gifted nearly 1,000 works of art to the Art Institute of Chicago, making it one of the most significant donations in the museum’s history. The gift includes approximately 800 works on paper – primarily European prints and drawings from Old Mast to modern – and 150 works of Asian art. The donation will complement the considerable long-term loans and prior gifts made by Edinburg including works by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954).

The most recent gift, along with Edinburg’s previous donations, is part of the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection, which honors Edinburg’s parents. Highlights include nearly 50 extremely rare Japanese volumes, many of which are from the Edo period, a sorely unrepresented period in American museum collections; Chinese celadons from the 12^th and 13^th centuries; and prints and drawings by Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Claude Monet (1840-1926), Edvard Munch (1863-1944) and James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), among many others.

Edinburg said, “I have never thought of my collection as a personal endeavor. I have always believed that it should ultimately enter a major museum and serve a broad public…I have seen the Art Institute as the eventual home for my entire collection for many years, and I am thrilled to taking another step forward with this gift in honor of my parents.”        

London’s Courtauld Gallery, which was founded by the English industrialist and renowned art collector, Samuel Courtauld, in 1931, boasts the most comprehensive collection of Paul Gauguin’s (1848-1903) works in the UK. The Courtauld’s Gauguin holdings include five major paintings, ten prints and one of only two marble sculptures ever created by the Post-Impressionist master.

Collecting Gaugin: Samuel Courtauld in the ‘20s presents the museum’s complete collection complemented by two works that were once in Courtauld’s private collection. Martinique Landscape and Bathers at Tahiti are on loan from the Scottish National Gallery and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts respectively.

Courtauld began collecting works by Gauguin in 1923 when he purchased Bathers at Tahiti, which he later sold, and The Haystacks, which the artist painted in France. Courtauld continued to collect Gauguin’s works until 1929 when he acquired Te Rerioa (The Dream), which resided in his London home for three years before being presented, along with most of his other Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, as a portion of his founding gift to the Courtauld Institute.

Collecting Gaugin: Samuel Courtauld in the ‘20s will be on view at the Courtauld Gallery through September 8, 2013.

The Museum of Modern Art’s William S. Paley collection is currently on view at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine. A Taste for Modernism presents 62 works that cover all of the pivotal movements that defined the art world during the late 19^th and 20^th centuries. The exhibition features works by 24 major artists including Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Joan Miró (1893-1983), Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), and Francis Bacon (1909-1922). The William S. Paley collection has been on a North American tour since 2012 and the Portland Museum of Art is the only venue in New England that the exhibition will visit.

Highlights from the exhibition include two works by Cézanne, which Paley acquired from the artist’s son; eight works by Picasso that trace his artistic evolution over the first three decades of the 20^th century including Boy Leading a Horse (1905-06) from his Rose Period, the Cubist painting An Architect’s Table (1912), and the collage-inspired composition Still Life with Guitar (1920); Gaugin’s The Seed of the Areoi (1892), which was inspired by the artist’s trips to Tahiti; and Edward Hopper’s (1882-1967) realist landscapes.

William S. Paley (1901-1999), the media mogul responsible for building the CBS broadcasting empire, was an important art collector and philanthropist during the 20th century. Paley began collecting in the 1930s and took a particular liking to French modernist movements including Fauvism, Cubism, and Post-Impressionism. Paley played a major role in cementing the Museum of Modern Art as one of the most significant institutions in the world. MoMA was founded in 1929 and Paley fulfilled various roles at the museum including patron, trustee, president, and board chairman from 1937 until his death.

A Taste for Modernism will be on view at the Portland Museum of Art through September 8, 2013. It will them travel to the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (October 10, 2013-January 5, 2013) and The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas (February-April, 2014).

Starting today, May 1, 2013, the Museum of Modern Art in New York will be open seven days a week. The Metropolitan Museum of Art made a similar announcement in March and will implement their week-round schedule in July.

After considerable renovations in 2004, MoMA has seen its annual visitor numbers climb from 1.5 million to 3 million. The seven-day-a-week schedule will help accommodate the museum’s growing audience. MoMA, which is located in Midtown Manhattan, is home to one of the most renowned collections of modern art including works by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973).

MoMA has been closed on Tuesdays since 1975, when officials introduced the tactic to cut back on museum spending. Prior to that, the museum had been open seven days a week since it’s founding in 1929.

The Louvre’s new outpost in Abu Dhabi, which is slated to open in 2015, has assembled the 130 paintings, miniatures, sculptures, and other artworks that will form its permanent collection. Museum officials allowed reporters a sneak peek of the works including paintings by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Rene Magritte (1898-1967), Édouard Manet (1832-1883), and Paul Gauguin (1848-1903). The entire collection will be on view from April 22 to July 20, 2013 as part of the exhibition The Birth of a Museum at a gallery on the island of Saadiyat, close to where construction for the new museum is currently underway.

Louvre Abu Dhabi’s collection is comprised of numerous works from private collections, many of which have never been on public view before. Highlights from the museum’s holdings include Picasso’s gouache, ink, and collage work on paper Portrait of a Lady (1928); Gauguin’s Children Wrestling (1888); and Paul Klee’s (1879-1940) Oriental Bliss (1938).

The Louvre’s new venue, which was designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, is the museum’s first branch outside of France. The venture is expected to bring the Louvre and its French partner museums approximately $1.31 million over 30 years. The Louvre also has an offshoot location in the northern city of Lens.

Sotheby’s will offer the Collection of Alex and Elisabeth Lewyt in a series of auctions in New York and Paris beginning on May 7, 2013. The works, which include paintings and drawings by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), will lead Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Sale in New York. Proceeds from the sale will benefit a charitable foundation to be created in the couple’s name. The 200 works, which also include illustrated letters by artists such as Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), are expected to garner anywhere from $67 million to $98 million.

The first sale of the series will present a selection of 20 works from the Lewyt’s collection. Highlights include a seminal Cézanne still-life titled Les Pommes, which the Lewyts bought from the Wildenstein Galleries in 1953; Modigliani’s sensual portrait of the socialite Marguerite de Hasse de Villers titled L’Amazone; and various works by Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Georges Seurat, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque (1882-1963), and Marc Chagall (1887-1985).

Alex Lewyt, a New York-based vacuum cleaner inventor who died in 1988, and his wife, Elisabeth, an animal-welfare activist who died this past December, began amassing their remarkable collection in the 1950s.