Displaying items by tag: curators

In an effort to connect more directly with the global museum community, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will host the inaugural “Global Museum Leaders Colloquium.” The two-week program is slated to take place in April 2014 and will bring together over a dozen directors from Asia, Africa and Latin America. The colloquium will explore the major challenges that museum directors face including conservation issues and the well-being of the global economy.

The Met has been an international institution since its founding in 1870 and has continued to collaborate with museums across the globe through exhibitions, excavations, training and research projects. In addition, the museum runs a number of programs that bring international curators, conservators and scholars to New York.

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Met, said, “I wanted to establish a program that would strengthen our existing ties with our overseas peers and encourage a more focused dialogue between museum leaders.”

In 2010, New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum embarked on a six-year project with the luxury automobile brand BMW. The BMW Guggenheim Lab was to include three 5,000 square feet pop-up structures that would travel in consecutive cycles to one location in the U.S., one in Europe and another in Asia. The architect-designed pieces were to remain in each location for 3 months, accompanied by Guggenheim curators who would helm programs for leaders in the fields of architecture, art, science, design, technology and education in an effort to curb issues relating to urban living.

The project’s first lab opened in Manhattan’s East Village in 2011 and attracted over 54,000 visitors. The project transformed a gritty, empty lot into a handsome community center designed by the Tokyo-based architecture firm, Atelier Bow-Wow. The Lab, which was the first and last for the project, traveled to Berlin and Mumbai following its stint in NYC.

BMW officials assured the public that the company will continue to be a global partner of the Guggenheim and that they are still considering future collaborations. The lab project, which was slated to last through 2016, was supposedly reconsidered due to “strategic shifts within the company” at BMW. The exhibition Participatory City: 100 Urban Trends from the BMW Guggenheim Lab will prematurely wrap up the project. The show will be presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York from October 11, 2013 through January 5, 2014.

The German startup, Auctionata, sold Egon Schiele’s (1890-1918) Reclining Woman (1916) for $2.3 million, breaking the record for any artwork sold as part of an online auction. The company, which is less than a year old, auctioned the watercolor on Friday, June 21, 2013 via webcast. The online auction record was previously help by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) whose Flowers series garnered $1.3 million in 2011.

Auctionata, which is helmed by Alexander Zacke, a former Ebay advisor, is planning to expand its online auction offerings to include various categories such as jewels, classic cars, wine and fine art. Along with holding weekly auctions, the company is hoping to establish an online showroom in New York City.

Auctionata currently employs around 250 people including specialists, curators and appraisers. Besides its online auction platform, the website boasts an online store where visitors can purchase antique or special items at their leisure.

The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA has reopened its modern and contemporary art galleries following a major reinstallation. The updated galleries will be part of the Carnegie International, which is slated to open October 5, 2013. This year’s International will bring together 35 artists from 19 countries and will include a major exhibition of international art, the presentation of the museum’s collection, and a series of events organized in cooperation with the city of Pittsburgh.

Curators Dan Byers and Tina Kukielski helmed the reinstallation of the Scaife Galleries, which hold the Carnegie’s modern and contemporary art collections. Together they selected over 200 objects, many of which had been acquired through past Internationals, and redistributed them throughout 8 galleries.

Industrialist Andrew Carnegie founded the Carnegie Museum in 1895. Determined to build a bold collection of modern art, Carnegie organized annual contemporary exhibitions and sought to educate visitors, promote international understanding of art, and attract the world to Pittsburgh. Through acquisitions made from these yearly exhibitions, Carnegie built the museum’s impressive collection. The Carnegie International became an annual occurrence in 1896 and is the oldest exhibition of international contemporary art in North America and the second oldest in the world.

The fourth edition of Art Antiques London will open on June 13, 2013 at Kensington Gardens in London. The show attracts collectors, curators, and exhibitors from across the globe and presents everything from furniture, paintings, and jewelry to sculpture, ceramics, and silver. This year, Art Antiques London is happy to welcome a number of new international exhibitors including Roell Fine Art (The Netherlands), Sabbadini (Italy), and Christopher Perles (France).

The fair, which is held through June 19, 2013, includes a private viewing on June 12, a collectors’ dinner on June 13, and a lecture series, which will feature a talk on Russian Imperial porcelain and sculptures led by Dr. Ekaterina Khmelnitskaya, the curator of Russian porcelain at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg Russia.  

Art Antiques London is organized by Haughton International Fairs. For more information visit http://www.haughton.com/international-fairs/19/fair_pages/art-antiques-london.

Officials at the Louvre in Paris unveiled a new lighting system for Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) Mona Lisa. The masterpiece, which is the most visited artwork in the museum, now boasts LED bulbs in a new system by Toshiba. The company has a multi-year agreement with the Louvre and will gradually update all of the museum’s lighting.

Mona Lisa’s new lighting system can be adjusted to highlight the painting’s natural colors. It also minimizes ultraviolet and infrared rays, which can make the work appear faded. Curators at the Louvre worked alongside Toshiba to reach the ideal lighting.

Toshiba has completed updating the lighting in the Louvre’s I.M. Pei-designed outdoor pyramid and a portion of the ceiling lighting has been redone. The company is currently working on the lighting in the museum’s Napoleon Hall.

On May 1, 2013 the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam will re-open after being closed for months due to ongoing renovations. The exhibition that will inaugurate the newly updated space is Van Gogh at Work, an extensive overview of Vincent van Gogh’s (1853-1890) oeuvre that happens to coincide with the 160^th anniversary of the artist’s birth. What the Van Gogh Museum kept quiet until now is that the exhibition will reveal research amassed during an eight-year analysis of the artist’s work.

The project, which was led by scientists at Shell in collaboration with the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency and curators at the Van Gogh Museum, entailed analyzing hundreds of van Gogh’s canvases, pigments, letters, and notebooks. The research provided previously unknown insights into van Gogh’s temperament and personality. Contrary to popular belief spurred by the artist’s struggles with mental illness, van Gogh was not a manic painter, but painstakingly methodical. The use of an electric microscope and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry revealed that van Gogh used grids to accurately portray proportions and to create precise depth of field in his early landscapes.

Another insight the researchers uncovered involved van Gogh’s pigments. Tests done at the Shell Global Solutions labs revealed that some of the pigments used by van Gogh were chemically unstable and faded prematurely. In particular, scientists discovered that the color of the walls in van Gogh’s seminal painting The Bedroom was inaccurate. Van Gogh had used red and blue paints to create a violet hue but the red faded, leaving behind a much bluer color than he intended.

Beginning in September, the Van Gogh Museum will exhibit two versions of The Bedroom – one from its own collection and one from the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection. Van Gogh painted three versions of his room in Arles between 1888 and 1889 and all three of them have the same blue-hued walls. The presentation will also include a digital reconstruction of what the painting may have looked like when van Gogh first created it.

Van Gogh at Work will be on view through January 12, 2014.

On April 2, 2013, the exhibition Japanese Masterpieces will open in Osaka, Japan. The show, which was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston, is in the midst of a 15-month tour of Japan. Works on view include a 1,300-year-old Buddhist painting; rare folding screens; treasured Japanese scroll paintings; and many other rare works. While all of the objects are part of the MFA’s illustrious collection of Japanese art, the exhibition will not be shown in Boston. In fact, many of the works from the museum’s impressive collection remain out of the public’s view.

The MFA does present a selection of their Japanese art holdings on a rotating basis in their galleries, but limited display space and the works’ sensitivity to light means a large portion the collection remains in storage. While the museum did mount a new display of Japanese art in January 2013, when the works from Japanese Masterpieces return to Boston this summer, they will not be exhibited.

The MFA began working on Japanese Masterpieces over 15 years ago when a number of Japanese scholars traveled to the MFA to work with the museum’s curators. The team analyzed the MFA’s Japanese art collection and launched a significant conservation project, which was geared at the current show. Japanese Masterpieces was organized in collaboration with the Tokyo National Museum and has been on view at three venues so far. Attendance has already surpassed one million visitors. The show will be on view in Osaka through June 16, 2013.

Following the lead of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and PBS, Google will launch a series of monthly digital “Art Talks.” The project aims to bring gallery and museum collections to life through virtual hangouts with curators, museums directors, historians, and educators from the world’s most distinguished cultural institutions. The talks will explore various arts-related topics including the curating process, popular themes throughout art history, art education, and the significance of specific masterpieces and artists.

The first Art Talks hangout will take place at 8PM on March 6, 2013 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Deborah Howes, the museum’s Director of Digital Learning, will join a panel of artists and students to discuss the process of teaching art online.

Upcoming Art Talks include Caroline Campbell and Arnika Schmidt from London’s National Gallery discussing depictions of the female nude throughout art history (March 20, 2013) and a panel discussion of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s (1525-1569) Tower of Babel featuring Peter Parshall, curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (April 2013). Additional talks are planned for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico.

The talks will be posted on the Google Art Project‘s YouTube channel after they air.

2nd Annual Naples Art, Antique & Fine Jewelry Show
February 8–11, 2013; Preview: February 7, 2013
Naples Exhibition Center, 100 Goodlette Road
South Naples, Florida 34102

10th Anniversary Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show
February 16–19, 2013; Preview: February 15, 2013
Palm Beach Country Convention Center, 650 Okeechobee Blvd.
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401

After its successful debut in 2012, The Palm Beach Show Group (PBSG) is proud to announce that the Naples Art, Antique & Jewelry Show will be held this year from February 8th to the 11th. More than 75 high-caliber dealers will be exhibiting. As an indicator of how strong the inaugural show was, the majority of the 2012 participating dealers signed up again for 2013.

Scott Diament, President and CEO of the PBSG remarked, “The second annual Naples Show will again provide exhibitors with the unique opportunity to not only meet sophisticated and educated clientele from Florida’s Paradise Coast, but also from the Midwest region, an area from which many attendees travel during this peak season.” Show visitors will gain access to major works of art, antique and estate jewelry, furniture, porcelain, Asian antiquities, American and European silver, glass, textiles, sculpture, contemporary art and many more of the world’s most beautiful collections.

The show's location is ideal for collectors and decorators alike, located just steps from Fifth Avenue, Naples’ world-renowned shopping, dining and entertainment district, and its cultural attractions including museums, theaters, and art galleries.

On President’s Day Weekend, following just four days after the Naples Show, the Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show is celebrating its 10th anniversary. With the addition of so many top painting dealers this year, it has become the preeminent show for American and European art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the art and antiques industry, this is an annual must-attend event and a hallmark in Palm Beach. Many exhibitors, including Peter Finer (the world’s leading specialist in antique arms and armour and new to the show this year) also exhibit at other top-notch shows such as TEFAF Maastricht, The Winter Antiques Show, Masterpiece London and The American Art Fair.

The Palm Beach Show was so successful last year that over 50 dealers were waitlisted for this year's show since the demand to exhibit exceeded capacity, an exceedingly rare situation in this volatile economic climate.

“Our Naples Show is the perfect complement to our Palm Beach Show,” adds Diament. “We are now providing our exhibitors with tremendous back-to-back exposure to the most affluent collectors from the Northeast, who choose to winter in Southeast Florida, and the most affluent collectors from the Midwest, who choose to spend their winters on the West Coast of Florida. Thousands of patrons—from private collectors to museums curators to investors—are anticipated to attend.