Displaying items by tag: collection

Coinciding with the release of a quasi-confession from Bill Cosby, whose art collection is on view until early 2016 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African art, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden announced Tuesday the acquisition of new works by a dozen artists and artist groups from Iran, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the U.K., and the United States.

A Wunderkammer is a collection of small, wondrous objects, both natural and manmade, often very precious and intricate in their making. Sixteenth-century princes liked putting them together and a few, all in the Germanic realm, have come down to us almost intact—the imperial Wunderkammer in Vienna, the Dukes of Bavaria’s in Munich and the Electors of Saxony in Dresden.

Paris’ Fondation Louis Vuitton collection was designed according to four axes: contemplative, subjective expressionist, Pop art, and music/sound. Following two hangings—the first in the autumn of 2014, which exhibited a limited set of works representative of the four categories and from the field of architecture, and the second taking place in the winter of 2014 until the spring of 2015, adhering to the expressionist and contemplative axes—the third part of the collection was inaugurated on June 3, 2015, bringing together Pop art and sound works, which are to be exhibited until October 2015.

When Bernard Blistène arrived at the Pompidou Center just over 30 years ago as a young curator, the massive factory-like windows of the Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano-designed museum didn’t look out onto the sun-sprinkled streets of Paris as they do today.

“It was the mid-1980s and people wanted walls,” recalls Mr. Blistène, 60 years old, who succeeded the museum’s longtime director Alfred Pacquement in 2013.

The collection of the highly regarded sculptor and philanthropist Lolo Sarnoff will be presented over several several sales in New York and London throughout the spring. The selection of work on offer  spans important Impressionist & Modern Art, follows Sotheby’s legendary six-day, 700 lot auction in 1978 of the collection of Lolo Sarnoff’s step-father, Robert von Hirsch. Works by artists such as Picasso, Chagall and Renoir are expected to sell for above the estimates. 

Warren Weitman, Chairman of Sotheby’s Americas, commented: “It is a great privilege for Sotheby’s to present works from this extraordinary collection."

A collection of belongings from Hollywood legend Lauren Bacall’s Manhattan apartment sold for $3.6m (£2.45m) after a two-day auction at Bonhams in New York.

Bonhams said more than 1,500 bidders from 34 countries vied for the collection belonging to the Hollywood star, who died in August at age 89.

“We have been humbled by the worldwide outpouring of enthusiasm for this sale,” said Jon King, director and vice-president at Bonhams, as well as a friend of the actress. “Bacall’s legacy will live on in the homes of her countless admirers.”

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today the launch of a new online video series, The Artist Project, in which 100 artists respond to works from The Met's vast collection, which spans more than five millennia and cultures throughout the world.

Since its founding in 1870, The Met has been a place where artists go to gain inspiration from the art of their own time, and across time and cultures. Beginning this month and continuing for a year, The Artist Project will share with the public what artists see when they look at The Met.

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 Goldwyn family, the great Hollywood film dynasty, will sell its art collection following the death of producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr. two months ago. With an estimated worth of $25 million–$30 million, the collection will be parceled out over nine auctions at Sotheby's New York between May and October.

The centerpieces of Goldwyn's holdings are Pablo Picasso's "Femme au Chignon Dans un Fauteuil" (1948), a portrait of the artist's lover Françoise Gilot and, and "Anémones et Grenades" (1946), a Matisse still life. The Picasso is estimated to sell for as much as $18 million, while the Matisse, bought for $13,500 in 1948, is tagged at upwards of $5 million.