Displaying items by tag: collection

Stéphane Aquin holds a distinguished profile in the Canadian art world and abroad, in part because he arrived to the role of curator from art criticism, but also because, in an era of revolving doors and fast-tracked career-making, Aquin has stayed with one institution—the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA)—for a long stretch of time, putting his head down and achieving increasingly strong exhibitions. Over the course of 16 years, he has accomplished major solo exhibitions with the likes of Pipilotti Rist, Tom Wesselman, and, most recently, Peter Doig, what many consider (including Aquin) his crowning achievement at the MMFA. In addition, he has curated interpretations of the Chapman brothers, Andy Warhol, and Alfred Hitchcock, and expanded the museum's collection by more than a thousand artworks, including works by David Altmejd, Kiki Smith, Antony Gormley, Dorion FitzGerald, and Michael Snow.

The Rhode Island School of Design has received $2.5 million from David Rockefeller to endow a curatorial position at the school’s museum and to support a new gallery.

RISD announced Monday that Rockefeller’s pledge would fund and expand the museum’s collection of decorative arts and design.

RISD says the majority of the money will go toward a position to lead the department of decorative arts and design.

William Louis-Dreyfus, the billionaire businessman and art collector (and father to actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus), is selling his art collection to support a very good cause: the Harlem Children's Zone, an organization that provides support to underprivileged children.

Louis-Dreyfus, who is 82 years old, has spent the past 50 years assembling a massive 3,500-piece collection, which is estimated to be worth between $10 million and $50 million.

Lucian Freud’s treasured collection of paintings and drawings by his friend Frank Auerbach is to be distributed to galleries across the UK in lieu of around £16m in inheritance tax, it has been announced.

The 40 paintings and drawings were offered to the nation after Freud’s death in 2011, representing the largest ever single agreement under the acceptance in lieu (AIL) scheme.

On Monday Arts Council England, which administers the scheme, announced that every part of the UK would benefit, with galleries in cities including Belfast, Aberdeen, Cardiff and Newcastle all set to be get Auerbachs.

A museum rarely publicizes its doubts about rights to works in its collection—but that’s what Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum is doing in an exhibition that opens Friday.

“The Stedelijk Museum in the Second World War” recounts the daring ways in which the museum’s employees fought Nazi censors after Germany conquered the Netherlands in May 1940. But the show also features 16 works in the permanent collection by artists including Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Henri Matisse that the museum says it might not rightfully own.

Two New York philanthropists are donating a major collection of more than 300 ancient Greco-Roman and Near-Eastern glass vessels to The Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

The gift from Robert and Renee Belfer was announced by the museum Wednesday. It comes as the institution celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. An exhibition titled “A Roman Villa — The Belfer Collection” showcasing approximately 100 of the objects will be on view at The Israel Museum from June 5 through Nov. 21.

The collection is “one of the most important private holdings of antiquities anywhere,” museum Director James Snyder said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

Its death sentence came down in a public courtroom, but the priceless estate of the Corcoran Gallery of Art is being divvied up under a cloak of secrecy.

Museum-goers who grew up with Rembrandt Peale’s portrait of George Washington and George Inness’s landscapes don’t know if these and other treasures from the city’s oldest private museum will hang on the walls of the National Gallery of Art or at one of the Smithsonian museums — or if they will be consigned to a storage facility.

Collector Michael Buxton announced on Wednesday that he will donate AUS$26 million to create a new contemporary art museum in Melbourne.

The donation includes $10 million worth of art from his impressive collection. The 300 works are by 53 major contemporary artists including Howard Arkley, Ricky Swallow, Tracey Moffat, Emily Floyd, Patricia Piccinini, and Bill Henson.

The Australian property mogul will also put forth $16 million to construct a new building for the gallery that will be called the Michael Buxton Centre of Contemporary Arts (MBCOCA).

Kunstmuseum Bern (Museum of Fine Arts Bern), Switzerland has agreed, today, to accept artworks from the collection of Cornelius Gurlitt's 1,300 works that has been bequeathed to the museum by German collector. Christoph Schaeublin of the Bern Art Museum told a news conference in Berlin that the museum would accept parts of the artworks bequeathed by Cornelius Gurlitt, who died in May at the age of 81.

The collection has been known colloquially as the “Munich Art Trove,” and collated by Cornelius Gurlitt’s father, Hildebrand Gurlitt. Gurlitt senior was one of four art dealers entrusted with selling so-called degenerate art during the Nazi regime’s rule. The collection includes a number high-value works from the period by Henri Matisse, Max Liebermann, Otto Dix, and Marc Chagall, among others. Originally estimated at the value of nearly £700 million - the value has dropped significantly as many pieces are believed to have been looted from Jewish families by the Nazis.

Christie’s announced it has been entrusted with the sale of the Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, the distinguished American scholar, dealer and collector of Asian Art who passed away in August 2014. Widely recognized throughout Asia and the Americas for his ground-breaking role in the study and appreciation of Asian Art, Mr. Ellsworth was a distinguished connoisseur who opened new arenas of collecting to Western audiences and built a successful business purveying the very finest works of art to his generation’s foremost collectors. His personal collection of over 2,000 items was assembled over a lifetime and widely recognized as the most important grouping of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian sculpture, paintings, furniture and works of art. To celebrate this exceptional collection and the generous and benevolent man behind it, Christie's is organizing free public exhibitions and a special five-day series of auctions and online-only sales to be held during Asian Art Week at Christie's New York in March 2015. A global tour of highlights from the collection kicks off November 21 in Hong Kong, and will continue to stops throughout Asia and Europe prior to the New York sales.