Displaying items by tag: collection

“Drei, zwei, eins!” With a rousing countdown in German, Stephanie Stebich, the executive director of the Tacoma Art Museum, led a group ribbon cutting Saturday morning that officially opened the museum’s new wing, showcasing art of the American West and doubling the museum’s gallery space.

Erivan Haub, the German grocery store magnate who donated his family’s Western art collection to TAM and paid for the new wing with a $20 million gift, beamed from a wheelchair pushed by his wife, Helga, during the celebration.

The expansive collection of Russia's Hermitage Museum just got a little bit bigger: Helen Drutt English, the pioneering collector and dealer of American modern and contemporary craft, known in the art world as Helen Drutt, has donated to the Hermitage a collection of 74 works, including ceramics, furniture and jewelry, worth approximately $2 million, reports the "Moscow Times."

The gift coincides with the St. Petersburg institution's 250th anniversary, and is intended to help foster the relationship between Russia and the US.

Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al-Thani, the former minister of culture and heritage in Qatar, who spent more than $1bn (£630m) of the oil rich country's money on art, has died aged 48. A cousin of Qatar's current Emir, Sheikh Al-Thani was in charge of developing libraries and museums. According to "The Art Newspaper," between 1997 and 2005, he spent more than any other individual on art. Details of his death have not been announced.

His huge collection is spread across five existing and planned museums: the Museum of Islamic Art, the National Library, the Natural History Museum, a Photography Museum, and a museum for traditional textiles and clothing.

As a junior talent agent at MCA a half-century ago, Jerry Perenchio was assigned to accompany British actor Charles Laughton as he toured the U.S. giving staged theatrical readings.

In his off-hours, Laughton wanted to visit art museums, and Perenchio went along with him. A lifelong fascination with art had begun, and as Perenchio rose in the entertainment industry — ultimately becoming chairman of Univision Communications — he used his wealth to amass some of the world's greatest art.

At his Bel-Air home Wednesday, the 83-year-old Perenchio said that he will be giving almost all of it — at least 47 works valued at $500 million — to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The collection of Edith and C.C. Johnson Spink has given the St. Louis Art Museum 225 works valued at no less than $50 million, including two paintings by Norman Rockwell, two each by Andrew and Jamie Wyeth, and more than 200 works of Asian art.

The Rockwells and Wyeths are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. But it is the Asian pottery, ceramics, bronzes, glass and jade, some thousands of years old, that will make the largest impact on the museum’s collection, officials said Tuesday.

She was married to Humphrey Bogart. Shot films with the likes of John Wayne and Paul Newman. And over her long career racked up a pair of Tony Awards and an honorary Oscar. But if there was one figure who made screen legend Lauren Bacall weak in the knees it was British sculptor Henry Moore. 

Bacall, who passed away in August, was a longtime art collector, who amassed hundreds of artworks. Her tastes were broad and wide-ranging and her collection included African art and Pablo Picasso. But the actress had special affinity for works by Moore, whom she began collecting in the 1950s and first met in person in the mid-1970s.

Jewish World Congress president Ronald Lauder has publicly threatened the Kunstmuseum Bern with an "avalanche" of lawsuits if the institution accepts the collection of approximately 1,300 artworks bequeathed to it by the late Cornelius Gurlitt - stated in an article published by German weekly "Der Spiegel." The museum is currently still in the process of making this delicate decision - whether or not to accept the collection - which includes works by Henri Matisse, Max Liebermann, Otto Dix, and Marc Chagall, among others famous artists.

Gurlitt died on May 6th of this year, leaving the entire collection to the Swiss museum - but nearly 600 works from the collection are suspected to be of questionable provenance, possibly Nazi loot.

The Badische Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe, Germany has announced that it has identified seven Nazi looted artworks within its collection. The discovery follows a four-year-long audit of the museum's entire collection, specifically looking for Nazi looted artworks, reported Die Welt.

The six paintings and one late Gothic sculpture had been kept in one of the museum's warehouses for over 70 years. The provenance researcher at the museum, Katharina Siefert, established that the works belonged to a Mannheim-based Jewish family.

A significant collection of works, never before on the market, by Man Ray will be offered at Sotheby's, Paris on 15 November. This will be the very last opportunity to acquire works by Man Ray coming directly from the studio of the artist, the artist’s estate. Following the first sale of works by Man Ray, coming from the studio of the artist held at Sotheby’s London in 1995, the auction will be the largest and most important sale of works by the ground-breaking artist in nearly 20 years.

As observed by Andrew Strauss, Vice-president of Sotheby’s France and leading authority on Man Ray: “Today’s auction presents a selection of the remaining significant works from the artist’s estate, many of which have never been seen previously.

It has evolved into one of New York’s longest-running fights over an estate.

For more than a decade, the family of C. C. Wang, a collector whose name graces a gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has been battling over a trove of classical Chinese paintings and scrolls that has been described as among the finest in the world.

Now, the feud has escalated. In the past month, two of Mr. Wang’s children, who have been fighting in Surrogate’s Court in Manhattan since his death in 2003 at 96, filed lawsuits in state and federal courts accusing each other of looting and deceit.