Displaying items by tag: gifts

When the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opens its new building to the public in 2016, its free admission policy will expand from visitors 12-years-old and under to 18 and under. The initiative was spurred by the museum’s commitment to inspire more young people by promoting intimate art experiences and is intended to encourage repeat visits by Bay Area youths. The expansion is expected to result in as many as 30,000 additional visitors annually between the ages of 13 and 18.

The updated free admission policy was made possible in part by a $5 million donation from Arthur Rock and Toni Rembe Rock. Following the Rocks’ major gift, SFMOMA succeeded in raising the total $10 million endowment required to ensure free admission to the museum’s young visitors. The additional $5 million was donated by Maryellie and Rupert Johnson, Harriet Heyman and Sir Michael Moritz, Lisa and John Pritzker, Irwin and Concepcion Federman, and Patricia W. Fitzpatrick.

 Grant donor Arthur Rock, said, “It’s an honor to be able to further the Bay Area community’s ability to experience all that SFMOMA has to offer. The museum is an indispensable educational resource and an aid to personal development that must be provided to our children barrier-free.”

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.

After acquiring a considerable number of important drawings, the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City has mounted an exhibition to showcase their recently added works. Spanning from the Renaissance through the 19^th century, the drawings were acquired through gifts, purchases, and bequests. Over 100 of these works will be featured in Old Masters, Newly Acquired.

The Morgan has greatly improved its Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Symbolist holdings by acquiring a number of works by such artists as Édouard Manet (1832-1883), Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940), and Odilon Redon (1840-1916). The museum also acquired over forty Danish drawings including sheets by several Golden Age masters including C.W. Eckersberg (1783-1853) and Johan Lundbye (181-1848). The Morgan added to their British watercolor collection with works by John Martin (1789-1854) and Samuel Palmer (1805-1881). William M. Griswold, director of the museum, said, “The Morgan’s collection of drawings is among the finest in the world, and the institution has been very fortunate to have long-standing relationships with some of America’s most important collectors. This exhibition celebrates their connoisseurship and their commitment to the Morgan.”

Old Masters, New Acquired will be on view at the Morgan Library & Museum through August 11, 2013.

Officials at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. announced that the museum’s East Building will undergo a $30 million renovation, adding over 12,260-square-feet of exhibition space and a rooftop sculpture garden to the structure. Designed by famed architect I.M. Pei (b. 1917) and opened in 1978, the East Building houses the museum’s collection of modern paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints as well as study and research centers and offices.

The East Building galleries will gradually close beginning in July and ending in December 2013; they will remain shuttered for approximately three years once renovations begin in January 2014. The project will create two sky-lit Tower Galleries within the East Building, which will be adjoined by an outdoor sculpture terrace. The East Building will continue to house the museum’s modern art collection and may see the addition of a room dedicated to the work of Mark Rothko (1903-1970). Museum officials hope that the additional exhibition space will inspire future donations to the National Gallery’s permanent collection.

The East Building project is part a Master Facilities Plan, which started in the museum’s West Building in 1999 and involved bolstering the building’s infrastructure and renovating its main floor and sculpture galleries. A number of established Washington-based philanthropists are donating $30 million for the East Building project; it is one of the largest gifts the museum has received from private donors in a decade.

Between 1938 and his death in 1956, G. David Thompson, a steel tycoon and passionate art collector made a number of sizable donations to his alma mater, Peru High School in Indiana. Thompson’s generous gifts were in honor of his art teacher, John Whittenberger, who inspired the former troublemaker to change and his ways and helped set him on the path that led to his eventual success.

Thompson graduated from Peru High School in 1913 and established his own investment banking company in Pittsburgh during the Great Depression. By 1945, he was at the helm of four steel companies in the city. With ample funds, Thompson became a fervent art collector, often buying works by unknown artists who went on to become quite established. His multi-million dollar collection included works by Paul Klee (1879-1940), Georges Braque (1882-1963), Claude Monet (1840-1926), Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Jackson Pollack (1912-1956), Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), and Edgar Degas (1834-1917).

While Thompson made a number of donations to major museums, he ultimately gifted 75 paintings and prints, one sculpture, and 54 pieces of oriental pottery to Peru High School. The exhibition Hidden Treasures: The John Whittenberger Collection of G. David Thompson at Peru High School at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art features a portion of the dozens of works Thompson sent to Whittenberger. Works on view include pieces by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Hidden Treasures is on view through February 24, 2013.  

Romare Bearden: The Paper Truth opens October 24 at the 92^nd Street Y’s Milton J. Weill Art Gallery in Tribeca. Featuring 44 works on paper by Romare Bearden who is best known for his expressive depictions of African-American life, the exhibition includes watercolors, collages, and mixed media pieces.

The Paper Truth wouldn’t be possible without Russell Goings, a longtime friend of Bearden. The two met in the late 1960s when Goings was the chairman of the Studio Museum in Harlem and Bearden was a member of the institution’s board. The two struck up a friendship that resulted in Goings’ impressive collection of hundreds of Bearden’s works, some that he bought from Bearden and some he received as gifts from the artist.

The exhibition includes a self-portrait that Bearden made just days before his death in 1988 at age 75. Drawn on a page from a book of Jewish mysticism, the works has never been shown publicly. Two series, The Odyssey and The Historical Figures are also part of exhibition. Bearden made several versions of The Odyssey but the 22-piece series being shown has not been displayed in its entirety in New York in over thirty years. The Historical Figures series, a small collection of portraits of people of all races who helped to shape African-American history, has never been exhibited in New York.

The exhibition, which is on loan from the collection of Russell Goings and Evelyn Boulware (Goings’ longtime companion), will be on view through December 9.