Displaying items by tag: furniture

On Tuesday, October 28, the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation was inaugurated by Prince Albert of Monaco. The opening of the private non-profit institute coincided with the 105th anniversary of the birth of the postwar British artist. Located in Monaco, the foundation brings together over 2,000 Bacon-related items, including artworks, photographs, works on paper, and working documents, as well as examples of the artist’s furniture and rug designs from his early career. Some of these objects have never been publicly displayed.

The Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation was established by the Lebanese-born Swiss property developer Majid Boustany to promote a deeper understanding of the work and life of Bacon worldwide.

A painting of the French king Henri III (1551-89) that disappeared from the Louvre during the Second World War turned up at a Paris auction last week. The work was found by a curator at the Château de Blois thanks to an internet search alert, and will soon return to the Louvre.

The small portrait depicting Henri III at prayer, estimated at €400-€600, was due to be sold on Friday, 17 October, in an auction of antique paintings, furniture and art objects held by Ader-Nordmann at the Hôtel Drouot.

An art collection amassed by the late movie star Lauren Bacall, including eight sculptures by Henry Moore, will go under the hammer next year in New York, Bonhams auction house said on Friday.

Bacall, the husky voiced actress who was married to and appeared with Humphrey Bogart in films such as "The Big Sleep" and "Key Largo," died in August in New York at the age of 89.

The Bacall Collection, estimated to be worth $3 million, will be sold at Bonhams in March 2015.

The Louvre kicked off its latest crowd-funding campaign on Tuesday with an appeal for a million euros to help fund the €12.5 million purchase of a jeweled piece of 18th-century furniture, known as the “Table of Peace,” which belonged to a French diplomat who negotiated the end of a Bavarian war.

After two years of budget cuts in state aid for cultural institutions, the Louvre is the second major French museum to turn to Internet fund-raising this month to pay for projects and acquisitions. For the first time, the Musée d’Orsay last week called for €30,000, or about $37,600, in contributions to help finance the €600,000 restoration of Gustave Courbet’s enormous painting of his studio, “L’Atelier du peintre.” By Tuesday, it had collected more than €20,000.

From the utilitarian mid-17th century cabinets to the playful curves of the Louis XV style and the straight lines of the late 18th century, the upcoming exhibition “The 18th aux sources du design: Furniture masterpieces from 1650-1790” at the Palace of Versailles will offer visitors a crash course on the evolution of early furniture design.

The exhibition aims to showcase the avant-garde nature of some of the techniques and shapes used at the time by presenting the 100 or so items of furniture against a contemporary backdrop rather than the ornate Versailles décor, showcasing each piece as a work of art on its own right.

Rosewood parlor furniture that has scarcely been moved for more than 150 years is about to be shipped across Louisiana.

The New Orleans Museum of Art has bought the parlor contents (for an unspecified price) from the owners of Butler Greenwood Plantation, a 1790s property along the Mississippi River in St. Francisville. It will go on view at the museum in a year or so, after minor repairs.

Descendants of the original owners live at Butler Greenwood, which also has a bed-and-breakfast on the grounds. (Rentable quarters include a dovecote and an original kitchen.)

Following Sotheby’s two previous selling exhibitions of Western fine and decorative arts held in 2012 and 2013, the renowned international auction house will mount its third annual “Age of Elegance: European Paintings, Furniture and Sculpture” sale in Beijing on September 7 and 8.

Hosted in the Grand Ballroom of the Kerry Hotel, “Age of Elegance” contains an exquisitely curated selection of 65 items that embody the stellar craftsmanship and extravagantly ornamental tastes of European decorative arts from the rococo period up until the 20th century.

At the very highest end of the scale is Francois Linke’s extraordinary Grand Bureau (US$6 million), a gilt bronze writing desk and chair first shown at the Paris World Expo in 1900 that represents the summit of belle époque splendor.

Precious crockery from the Élysée Palace, home to the French president, has turned up on eBay, Le Figaro reports. The publication claims that a military attaché who served during the 1950s got into the habit of giving manufacture de Sèvres plates away as presents.

The embarrassing revelation comes after the Court of Auditors declared 32 artworks and 625 pieces of furniture missing from the presidential residences: the Élysée Palace, the Versailles hunting lodge La Lanterne, and the Fort de Brégançon on the French Riviera, which is soon to be turned into a national monument.

The de Blasio's have redecorated historic Gracie Mansion with $65,000-worth of furniture and tchotchkes from Dumbo-based purveyor West Elm. That's right, New York's first family has opted to live amongst the same squat sofas and side tables that grace (get it?) the apartments of just about everyone who's graduated from Ikea. West Elm has donated the sum of interior goods to the Gracie Mansion Conservancy and not the de Blasios per se, so sorry all, there will be no sidewalk give-aways of stained, worn goods when the family departs.

Not everyone is on-board with the de Blasios' choice to decorate the stately manse with rather lowbrow furnishings—the Times made a note that the redecoration saw the removal of a 1690 Dutch-inspired cupboard—especially after Bloomberg's $7 million Baroque-style renovation in 2002.