Displaying items by tag: Smithsonian

Mitsubishi is donating $1 million to the Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art aimed at expanding communication among Japanese and American audiences and scholars.

The gift announced Tuesday will support Japanese initiatives at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery through 2020.

On Sunday night, Maya Lin was standing in the main hall of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., next to a sculpture of Maya Lin. It was not of her own design, nor did it look anything like her work. It was by a fellow artist, the Berlin-based Karin Sander, who uses 3-D ink-jet printing to fabricate mini-models of men and women out of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. It looks like a Maya Lin action figure. It’s called Maya Lin 1.5.

“Dorothy Moss, the curator, said that they’re always interested in new ways of portraiture,” said Lin, who currently has an installation up at the newly renovated Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian that re-creates the Chesapeake Bay using 168,000 marbles.

“Le Onde: Waves of Italian Influence (1914–1971)” runs Aug. 22–Jan. 3, 2016, at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. This exhibition of nearly 20 works from the museum’s collection follows Italian contributions to the transnational evolution of abstraction, through movements and tendencies such as futurism, spatialism, op art and kinetic art.

The exhibition includes several works that have been exhibited only rarely or not at all since entering the collection. Among those that have not been on view since the Hirshhorn’s inaugural exhibition in 1974–1975 are works by Zero group founder Heinz Mack, French op artist Yvaral and Italian painter Carlo Battaglia and several works by Italian artist Enrico Castellani.

The Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has hired Lisa Gold as director of public engagement, a newly-created position.

Gold comes to the Washington, DC museum from her former post as the executive director of the Washington Project for the Arts (WPA), a non-profit organization that aids and advises local artists on topics like arts management, grantsmanship, career development, and legal rights.

Over the past seven months, as sexual misconduct allegations against Bill Cosby mounted, a top Smithsonian official met privately with museum directors across the sprawling complex on the National Mall to decide what to do about an exhibit showcasing Cosby’s private art collection.

While many companies and universities were distancing themselves from the comedian, Smithsonian officials ultimately concluded that the exhibit should continue.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe has announced a $1 million gift to the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian Asian art museums, to support their ongoing work to promote his country’s art and culture.

The gift was announced during a dinner Wednesday at the Freer that was part of the Japanese leader’s official visit to Washington.

“I would like to express my appreciation to the Freer Gallery of Art for its dedication to Japanese art but also for giving us such a wonderful venue to promote people-to-people exchanges between Japan and the United States,” Abe said.

Dutch graphic artist Irma Boom is renowned for designing books whose contents have been filtered through her idiosyncratic view of the world. How fitting, then, that she was asked to design a book for New York’s Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum as it celebrated its recent renovation of the Carnegie Mansion.

The Cooper Hewitt is the only museum in the U.S. exclusively devoted to design, and its vast collection (more than 210,000 objects, spanning 30 centuries) must have served as a near-limitless playground for Boom’s imagination.

The board of trustees of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden announced today that five new trustees have been elected to the Museum’s board. The new trustees are Haryanto Adikoesoemo, Jill Bernstein, Stéphan Crétier, Trinh D. Doan, and Jill Cooper Udall. The Hirshhorn has added a total of eight new trustees sincce Melissa Chiu became director in September.

Based in Jakarta, Haryanto Adikoesoemo is president director of PT AKR Corporindo Tbk, deputy chairman of the Indonesian Public Listed Companies Association, and a member of the Honor Council of APINDO, and the Young Presidents’ Organization.

The Freer Gallery of Art – the Smithsonian’s first art museum – will close for 18 months for renovations beginning Jan. 4, 2016, officials announced Wednesday.

Repairs to the 180,000-square-foot building, a National Historic Landmark, will include updating the climate control systems and installing technological upgrades to its auditorium and storage and conservation areas. In addition, some of the galleries will be returned to the original aesthetic created by architect Charles Platt.

The Smithsonian plans to open its first international exhibition space at a new cultural complex being developed at the former Olympic park in London, officials announced Tuesday.

The deal would mark the first time in the institution’s 168-year history that it would have a public presence outside the United States. It also would make the Smithsonian part of an elite group of museums — including the Guggenheim in New York and the Louvre in Paris — that have opened venues in other parts of the world.