Displaying items by tag: art institute of chicago

"American Gothic," the famous American Regionalist painting by Grant Wood, is on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum for the first time through Nov. 16, 2014. The masterpiece joins Wood’s "Daughters of Revolution" in the exhibition, "Conversations around American Gothic."

The two celebrated paintings of the 1930s are the focus of an historic loan exchange between the Art Institute of Chicago, the permanent home of "American Gothic," and the Cincinnati Art Museum, which houses "Daughters of Revolution." In turn, "Daughters" will journey to Chicago, Paris and London in the 2016 exhibition, "Freedom and the Brush: American Painting in the 1930s."

Chicago's remarkable architecture is far from the only thing that earns the city rave reviews. The Windy City is also home to the world's top museum, according to TripAdvisor users.

Glowing reviews over a recent 12-month period have earned the Art Institute of Chicago the top ranking in TripAdvisor's Travelers' Choice awards for museums.

The institute's vast collection of impressionist, post-impressionist and American paintings has evidently made a lasting impression on museum-goers.

Phillips launches its Fall Photographs season with selections from The Art Institute of Chicago’s renowned collection that include superb works by many of the leading classic photographers. The Auction features 117 lots with a combined pre-sale low estimate of $1,148,200/ £688,085 / €857,154 and a pre-sale high estimate of $1,659,800/ £994,672 / €1,239,073.

“The sale of Photographs from the Collection of The Art Institute of Chicago presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for collectors to purchase a work with a most desirable provenance. The breadth and caliber of the collection is as much a celebration of the medium as it is of the Art Institute’s vision in building one of the foremost institutional collections of photography in the world.” Vanessa Kramer Hallett, Worldwide Head of Photographs and Senior Director, Photographs.

The 7-foot-tall sculpture of two feet at Chicago’s Oak Street Beach has legs.

That is, it’s expected to move to other locations around the city as long as the Art Institute of Chicago is hosting an exhibit inspired by René Magritte, the Belgian surrealist artist. The beach installation is a larger-than-life marketing campaign to bring attention to the Magritte exhibit at the Art Institute.

The feet, each of which is 800 pounds and made of plywood and carved foam with a urethane hard coat, were installed at Oak Street Beach.

Next month, billboards and signs in select cities across the country will get major makeovers as part of the Art Everywhere U.S. campaign. The project, which is being organized by the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, will put images of 58 artworks from the aforementioned museums on display at 50,000 sites across the United States. The initiative was inspired by Art Everywhere UK, which was launched last year by beverage mogul Richard Reed. 

Earlier this year, the five participating museums created a master list of 100 American artworks from their combined holdings and asked the public to vote for their favorite pieces.

A nicely suited man slips a hand into a trouser pocket and tilts his head toward the gramophone. His coat is slung over a nearby chair beside a suitcase. He seems to be savoring a few final bars before taking his leave, an exit that seems unrushed.

Beyond his view, two bowler-hatted men lie in wait, one with a net, the other a club. Just behind him, a woman lies naked, eyes closed and blood raining from her mouth. There it is — the inevitable bit of bloodletting in the otherwise bloodless, tidy paintings of Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte.

This is the potency of Magritte's popular, endlessly reproduced and much underestimated works, enigmatic paintings that inspired the green apple on the Beatles' record label, the bottle-filled sea in the title credits for HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" and any number of book covers on psychology, among many other pop culture riffs.

It may come as no surprise that when you ask Americans to choose their favorite artwork, Edward Hopper’s iconic “Nighthawks” sits at the top of the list. For the Art Everywhere US initiative (imported from the UK), online voters picked Hopper’s 1942 noir masterpiece and 57 other works from a curated selection of 100 pieces from the collections of five museums — the Art Institute of Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Art, LACMA, the National Gallery of Art, and the Whitney. Starting August 4, the works will adorn as many as 50,000 billboards and signs across America.

The works to go on view range from patriotic picks like Gilbert Stuart’s 1821 portrait of George Washington and Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” to more contemporary choices like photographs from Robert Mapplethorpe and Cindy Sherman. As part of a special presentation at the annual meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors, Art Everywhere will present the full list of works.

Scholars have discovered a previously unknown portrait by James McNeill Whistler hidden beneath a painting of a bridge over the River Thames from 1862. The subject is thought to be Whistler’s young mistress and model Jo Hiffernan, who lived with the artist in London for five years. Prior to the discovery, experts believed Whistler created only around six portraits of Hiffernan, including the well-known Symphony in White, No. 1: the White Girl, 1862, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York are joining forces with the Outdoor Advertising Association to execute the “outdoor art show,” Art Everywhere. The interactive art campaign will display images of the greatest American artworks on billboards and signs in select cities across the United States.

The participating museums have created a master list of 100 American artworks from their combined holdings and are asking the public to visit www.ArtEverywhereUS.org and vote for their favorite pieces. The 50 most popular works will be featured throughout August on approximately 50,000 billboards and signs across the country. Art Everywhere’s master list includes paintings, drawings, decorative objects, photographs, and multimedia works from the 18th century to 2008. Artists represented on the ballot include Edward Hopper, Mark Rothko, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Frank Lloyd Wright, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock.

Voting will remain open until June 20 and the chosen works will be unveiled on August 4.

On March 7, the Whitney Museum of American Art launched its 77th Whitney Biennial -- a highly-anticipated survey of the latest developments in American art. This will be the last Biennial in the Whitney’s building on Madison Avenue before the museum moves downtown to its new Renzo Piano-designed building in the spring of 2015.

The 2014 Whitney Biennial was co-curated by Stuart Comer, the Chief Curator of Media and Performance at the Museum of Modern Art, Anthony Elms, an Associate Curator at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Contemporary Art, and Michelle Grabner, an American artist and Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The curators have selected 103 participants that together, offer a sweeping view of contemporary art in the United States. Two Whitney curators, Jay Sanders and Elisabeth Sussman, both of whom organized the renowned 2012 Biennial, oversaw the process. 

Donna De Salvo, the Whitney’s Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs, said, “The 2014 Biennial brings together the findings of three curators with very distinct points of view. There is little overlap in the artists they have selected and yet there is common ground. This can be seen in their choice of artists working in interdisciplinary ways, artists working collectively, and artists from a variety of generations. Together, the 103 participants offer one of the broadest and most diverse takes on art in the United States that the Whitney has offered in many years.”

The 2014 Whitney Biennial will take place through May 25, 2014.