Displaying items by tag: Museums

Six museums in Maine are raising funds to help Newtown, Connecticut build a museum. Newtown is home to Sandy Hook Elementary School the location of a devastating school shooting that took place on December 14, 2012. Plans to build the EverWonder Children’s Museum in the small Connecticut town have been in discussion for years but the project gained momentum following the tragedy.

The contributing museums in Maine are offering free admission and accepting donations of Thursday, August 1, 2013. Currently the Maine State Museum in Augusta, the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, the Maine Discovery Museum in Bangor, the Maine Historical Society in Portland, the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath and the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport are participating.

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 an attempt to attract visitors from outside the region, a number of Pittsburgh institutions have embarked on a joint endeavor called the Pittsburgh Art and Architecture Tour. The Andy Warhol Museum, the Mattress Factory Art Museum and two seminal residences designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater and Kentucky Knob, make up the tour.

The arrangement was made possible by a planning grant from the Pittsburgh-based Benter Foundation, an organization aimed at making the city more culturally and socially vibrant. The Warhol Museum’s Director, Eric Shiner, said, “We are very excited about this collaborative effort to increase cultural tourism to the Pittsburgh region.”

The Pittsburgh Art and Architecture Tour’s website, www.pghtrip.org, offers sample itineraries by car, air and public transportation that include the best places to stay, eat and visit while in the area.

Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts will present the seminar “The World of Art and the Fine Art of Crime” this fall from October 14 to October 18, 2013. The seminar will be helmed by retired art crime specialists from the FBI and Scotland Yard and will explore issues relating to art management, operations and collecting, famous art crimes, and international repatriation efforts.

The seminar will include lectures by two renowned art crime investigators – Richard Ellis, a former detective with New Scotland Yard who helped lead the Art & Antiques Squad for over a decade, and Virginia Curry, a former FBI undercover agent and Art Crime Team member who has worked on a number of high profile cases. The daily talks will be complemented by trip to museums, galleries, and auction houses to speak with various arts managers. Topics will include security and provenance issues, Nazi thefts during World War II, the looting of Native American art, and issues of rightful ownership.

“The World of Art and the Fine Art of Crime” has been made possible by the Meadows School’s division of Arts Management and Arts Entrepreneurship.

Washington, D.C.’s Smithsonian Institution, which is comprised of 19 museums and 9 research centers devoted to the “increase and diffusion of knowledge,” has seen an rise in troubles relating to their storage system. The Smithsonian currently has 130 million objects ranging from paintings and furniture to skeletons in their storage and maintenance facilities, many of which reside in damaged containers or poorly organized archives. During a recent audit, the National Museum of American History was allegedly unable to locate 10% of their collection.

The Committee on House Administration held a hearing on Wednesday, July 17th to discuss the challenges facing the care of the Smithsonian’s collections of art, archival footage and delicate objects. Smithsonian Inspector, General Scott Dahl, claimed that the institution is still employing poor storage space that was built in the 1950s and never intended for long-term use. A report from the Smithsonian’s inspector general in 2006 showed that not only were the storage facilities inadequate, but that security and inventory controls were lacking, leaving some of the country’s most precious treasures susceptible to theft or misplacement.

The Smithsonian has been working to fix their storage and maintenance issues for the past seven years and has invested $462 million in collections management and $390 million in facilities improvements. However, ongoing budget cuts have made fixing these issues once and for all, increasingly difficult. In addition, a large portion of the Smithsonian’s budget is currently being used to digitize the museum’s collection, which could take years.

Back in May 2013, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles announced that it had bought Rembrandt Laughing, a 17^th century self-portrait by the Dutch master, from the London-based art dealer’s Hazlitt Gooden & Fox. On Tuesday, July 16, 2013, it was revealed that Britain’s culture minister, Ed Vaizey, had delayed approval of the Getty’s application for an export license until October 15, 2013, a tactic usually used to give collectors and museums enough time to collect the funds necessary to keep an artwork in the country.

In 2007, Rembrandt Laughing was put up for sale at a small auction house in England and said to be by a “follower of Rembrandt” even though a number of dealers thought it to be an authentic work by the artist. Eventually, scientific tests and studies by a leading Rembrandt scholar confirmed the attribution, causing the work’s value to skyrocket. In order to keep the painting in England past October 15, a British institution interested in buying the work will need to raise around $25.1 million, the price the Getty has agreed to pay for it.

The Getty has run into trouble exporting works out of Britain in the past. In 1994, the institution was told that they could not have Antonio Canova’s sculpture Three Graces, after raising $12 million and waiting five years.  

Edgar Degas’ (1834-1917) La Masseuse (The Masseuse), which was once owned by the German-born British painter Lucien Freud (1922-2011), has been given to the Walker Art Gallery as part of the British government’s Acceptance in Lieu (AiL) of law. The AiL is a provision under which inheritance tax debts can be written off in exchange for the acquisition of objects of national importance.

The Degas sculpture was one of three works by Degas bequeathed to England following Freud’s death. The Walker Art Gallery, which is located in Liverpool and houses one of the largest art collections in England outside of London, was granted the sculpture after a competitive process with other UK museums and galleries. La Masseuse, Degas’ only two-figure sculpture, will join the artist’s painting Woman Ironing at the Walker.

Xanthe Brooke, Curator of European Art at the Walker Art Gallery, said, ‘We’re very grateful to Arts Council England for allocating the sculpture to the Walker Art Gallery, where it will be appreciated by an enthusiastic and diverse audience.”

The Swiss government has launched a website that will help claimants, museums, and researchers track Nazi-looted artworks that have made their way to Switzerland. Switzerland became a hub for Nazi plundered artworks following World War II. The country was a popular place for Jewish art dealers who were fleeing the Nazis and many Swiss museums, collectors and dealers acquired works stolen from the Jews by the Nazis.

The new site will provide visitors with guidance on provenance research, links to relevant databases and archives, and details on Swiss museums’ own analyses of their collections. Switzerland is one of 44 countries that sanctioned the Washington Principles on returning Nazi-looted art in public collections in 1998. Under the policy, governments agreed to find “just and fair” solutions for the victims of Nazi plundering and their heirs as well as to allocate resources to identifying looted art. In spite of Switzerland’s cooperation, it is still believed that there is a fair amount of Nazi-looted artworks in Swiss collections. Provenance research has only been conducted among a select few of the government museums, private collections, and foundations that have artworks from this tragic period.

Switzerland’s newly launched website for tracking Nazi-looted artworks is www.bak.admin.ch/rk.

On June 10, 2013, Bank of America announced the recipients of its 2013 Art Conservation Project. The program provides grant funding to international nonprofit museums to conserve historically and culturally significant works of art that are in danger of deterioration.

This year, Bank of America’s Art Conservation Project will provide funding for 24 works in 16 countries. One of the most significant undertakings is the restoration of Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers in Los Angeles. Built between 1921 and 1953, the Watts Towers are an iconic part of the city and have fallen into disrepair. The towers are part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Other projects include the restoration of Jackson Pollock’s (1912-1956) Number 1A, One, and Echo at the Museum of Modern Art; 13 mural drawings by Diego Rivera (1886-1957) at the Detroit Institute of Arts; four Tudor paintings at the National Portrait Gallery in London; a Rembrandt (1606-1669) study at the National Gallery in Prague; and a Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) photography collection at La Casa Azul in Mexico.    

Bank of America launched its Art Conservation Project in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in 2010. It was expanded to include the Americas, Asia, and Australia in 2012. Including this year’s recipients, Bank of America will have funded the conservation of 57 projects in 25 countries.

In honor of the 150^th anniversary of the Norwegian artist’s birth, two museums in Oslo, Norway will organize the most comprehensive exhibit of Edvard Munch’s (1863-1944) work to date. Munch 150, which is currently on view at the National Gallery and the Munch Museum, includes the artist’s most recognizable works including The Scream, Vampire, and The Dance of Life.

The exhibition spans Munch’s extensive career from his earlier works to his death in 1944. The National Gallery’s show focuses on the artist’s formative years from 1882 to 1903 and the Munch Museum is handling his more mature works, created during the last 40 years of life.

Munch is revered for his visceral works that expertly capture the human condition but his home country did not readily accept him as a distinguished artist. In 1940, just days after the Nazis invaded Oslo, Munch bequeathed his entire oeuvre to the city in order to protect it. After the war, his works were placed in a nondescript building in the city, rarely visited, and poorly guarded.

Since then, Munch has become regarded as a highly important artist; exhibitions have been held across the globe to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of his birth and a version of The Scream, the only one in private hands, recently sold at auction for a record $119.9 million, securing his role as a powerful presence in the art market. In addition, Oslo authorities agreed to built a new Munch Museum in a more distinguished building, which is expected to open in 2018.

Munch 150, which includes 270 paintings and drawings, will be on view through October 13, 2013.