Displaying items by tag: collection

Looking to visit the Smithsonian American Art Museum without actually going to the Smithsonian? You might soon be able to do so from the comfort of your own smartphone.

On Friday, the White House announced in a blog post that the Smithsonian American Art Museum would soon open up its digitized collection to developers so they can build it into educational apps. According to the White House, “even museum curators do not have easily accessible information about their art collections. This information will soon be available to everyone.”

It was announced on Monday, April 28, 2014, that The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Instagram account was selected as the Webby Award Winner in the Social: Arts & Culture category in the 18th Annual Webby Awards. The Webby Awards, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. The IADAS, which nominates and selects The Webby Award winners, is comprised of web industry experts. With 12,000 entries from all 50 states and more than 60 countries, and two millions votes in the Webby People’s Voice Awards, the 18th Annual Webby Awards were bigger than ever before.

The American Folk Art Museum announced that it will open an annex for its collection and library in Long Island City, Queens, near the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center. The 17,000-square-foot facility, which is expected to open early next year, will provide the museum with extra space for storage and exhibitions.

In 2001, the Folk Art Museum opened its monumental Tod Williams and Billie Tsien-designed building on West 53rd Street in Manhattan. The museum soon fell into financial turmoil and  in 2011, was forced to sell the building to the Museum of Modern Art and move to a smaller location in Lincoln Square. The Museum of Modern Art has since decided to raze the Folk Art Museum’s former home to make way for an upcoming expansion.

Founded in 1961, the American Folk Art Museum is devoted to traditional folk art and contemporary self-taught artists. Its collection includes over 5,000 objects from the 18th century to the present.   

In 2013, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art sold 3,290 objects worth a total of $5.4 million -- the institution’s highest revenue from such sales in eight years. So far, $3 million worth of paintings have been sold in 2014.

The works, which were offered at auction, previously resided in the museum’s storage facility. In 2013, the Met reported a $4.4 million operating deficit, which was said to be caused by Hurricane Sandy and other factors. The institution stated that the proceeds from the sales did not go toward its debt. Rather, the museum sold the works to refine its collection and to make room for future acquisitions. Museums are forbidden by the state Board of Regents from selling artworks in order to fund operating costs.

The Met sold Old Master paintings, Renaissance works, and clothing and accessories from its Costume Institute. The museum currently owns upward of 1.5 million objects.

The Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington announced on Wednesday that it had decided to sell up to four works from its collection, to save the museum from closing. The institution found itself in grave bond debt following an expansion and renovation in 2005. The museum did not specify which works it plans to sell, but said that it expected to bring in $30 million from the sale, which is enough to pay off the institution’s $19.8 million bond debt and renew its endowment.

The Delaware Art Museum’s Chief Executive Officer, Mike Miller, released an official statement saying, “After detailed analysis, heavy scrutiny and the exhaustion of every reasonable alternative to relieve our bond debt, the Trustees had two agonizing choices in front of them — to either sell works of art, or to close our doors. While today’s decision is certainly hard to bear, the closure of this 100-year-old museum would be, by comparison, unbearable.”

Miller went on to explain that repayment terms for tax-exempt bonds issues in 2003 for the expansion of the institution’s historic Kentmere Park building became accelerated due to restrictive banking regulations, causing the museum to default on performance covenants. At the same time, the museum’s endowment dwindled as a result of stock market performance, forcing the Trustees to make significant budget cuts, including staff layoffs and funding cuts for exhibitions.

The Delaware Art Museum, which focuses on American art of the 19th through the 21st centuries and English Pre-Raphaelite art of the mid-19th century, expects the sale to be finalized in the next six months.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. will receive 30 photographs from Robert E. Meyerhoff, a longtime supporter of the museum, and his partner, Rheda Becker. The gift includes photographs by a number of German artists including Andreas Gursky and Bernd and Hilla Becker as well as works by Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, and Hiroshi Sugimoto.

The gift will substantially improve the National Gallery of Art’s photography collection, which contains few works by prominent living artists. The museum began assembling its photography collection in 1949 when Georgia O’Keeffe donated 1,720 photographs made by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, to the institution. The National Gallery of Art did not establish a separate photography department until 1990.

In 1987, Meyerhoff and his late wife, Jane, agreed to donate their entire art collection to the National Gallery of Art. The gift included works by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, and Brice Marden and was displayed at the museum in 1996 and again in 2010. This recent gift will go on view when the museum’s East Building reopens in the fall of 2016 after a renovation and expansion.    

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. has received Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Green Wheat Fields, Auvers,’ from the estate of museum benefactor, Paul Mellon. The work, which was painted late in the artist’s life, is the ninth Van Gogh painting to enter the museum’s collection. The work has not been displayed publicly since 1966.

‘Green Wheat Fields, Auvers’ is one of Van Gogh’s “pure landscapes,” which he painted following his confinement in an asylum. Scholars suggest that the artist found solace in the tranquility of nature towards the end of his life as his mental health deteriorated.

‘Green Wheat Fields, Auvers’ is currently on display in the National Gallery’s West Building alongside two other works by Van Gogh: the still life ‘Roses’ and the portrait ‘La Mousmé.’

The Dallas Museum of Art announced an anonymous gift of $9 million to be spread out over the course of three years. The donation was made to ensure free general admission to the museum and enable the institution to digitize and ultimately publish its entire collection online.

The Dallas Museum of Art is the largest museum in the region and provides access to its collection as well as educational and public programming for the community. In January 2013, the institution implemented a free general admission policy in order to reflect its dedication to ever-increasing accessibility. The digitization of its entire collection will help the Dallas Museum further this particular goal. The images and data will be available to students, teachers and scholars under Open Access licenses for free personal and educational use.

Maxwell L. Anderson, the museum’s Eugene McDermott Director, said, “This is an exciting moment in the Museum’s history, and we are deeply grateful to our donor for the exceeding generosity and the significance of this gift. With this donation, the DMA will become one of the world’s most open and accessible museums. This opportunity reinforces our deep commitment to serve as an important educational resource for our local and regional community, as well as for our growing online audiences worldwide.”

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas has acquired a portrait by John Singer Sargent depicting Edwin Booth, the renowned 19^th century Shakespearean actor and brother of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth. The Players, a private club for actors founded by Booth and his peers, commissioned the full-length portrait in 1890.

Edwin Booth was housed at The Players club until 2002, when debt forced the organization to sell the work to a private collector. The painting had only gone on public display twice before being acquired by the Amon Carter Museum: once in 1926 as part of Sargent’s memorial exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and from November 2003 to February 2004 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Andrew Walker, Director of the Amon Carter Museum, said, “Sargent is one of the most important American artists and we are thrilled to add another one of his masterpieces to our collection. We are particularly intrigued by this painting as it is among his most brilliantly conceived full-length male portraits.” The museum also owns Sargent’s Alice Vanderbilt Shepard, which was acquired in 1999.

Edwin Booth, which was purchased for about $5 million, is currently on its first extended display in the museum’s main gallery.

On September 25, 2013 The Boston Athenæum will present the exhibition Collecting for the Boston Athenæum in the 21^st Century: Paintings and Sculptures. The show will feature a portion of the 50 works the Athenæum, which is one of the oldest independent libraries in the United States, has acquired since 2000.

Highlights from the upcoming exhibition include nineteenth century portraits by William McGregor Paxton, early genre paintings by William Holbrook Beard, scenes of Boston by Frank Duveneck, works by prominent Boston School artist William Morris Hunt, and paintings by the Ashcan painter John Sloan. Collecting for the Boston Athenæum will also include a number of important paintings that have been promised as future gifts to the institution.

The Boston Athenæum began collecting significant works of art shortly after its founding in 1807 and held its first formal exhibition in 1827. It continues to acquire works through gifts and purchases and recently received a grant from the National Endowment of the Art for the compilation of a comprehensive, scholarly catalogue of its fine art collection, which includes books, maps, manuscripts, prints, photographs, paintings and sculptures.

Collecting for the Boston Athenæum, the first in a series of four exhibitions to be held in the institution’s Norma Jean Calderwood Gallery between 2013 and 2018, will be on view through February 15, 2014. Together, the exhibitions will celebrate the Athenæum’s commitment to scholarship, preservation and the dissemination of knowledge as represented by its extensive collections of rare and unique materials.