Displaying items by tag: objects

Four hundred objects go on public display for the first time in the newly refurbished Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. More than 550 items dating from the sixth century to today are on show, including 30 new acquisitions.

The gallery initially opened in 1986, and houses works from the V&A’s collection of Japanese art and design which was founded in the 19th century.

Four rare artworks believed to have been stolen are being returned to India by an Ohio art museum.

Director Brian Kennedy recently announced that the Toledo Museum of Art made arrangements with the Embassy of India to return the objects, including an 11th-century bronze sculpture depicting the deity Ganesh and a carved stone.

Ernest Hemingway was a maker of lists and a collector of his life’s ephemera. For the first time, some of the objects that this American writer gathered during his long career — bullfighting stubs from Pamplona in Spain, boastful fishing logs from expeditions off the Cuban coast, coy letters to a mistress, penciled drafts of stories — will be on display in an exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum from Sept. 25 through Jan. 31.

A Wunderkammer is a collection of small, wondrous objects, both natural and manmade, often very precious and intricate in their making. Sixteenth-century princes liked putting them together and a few, all in the Germanic realm, have come down to us almost intact—the imperial Wunderkammer in Vienna, the Dukes of Bavaria’s in Munich and the Electors of Saxony in Dresden.

A thief who stole £800,000 worth of rare Imperial Russian court Fabergé objects and jewelery from Christie's Auctioneers last December, has gone on trial in London. Richard Tobin, 45, a Glaswegian confessed to the theft from the west end auction house. 

Southwark Crown Court were told that there is still no sign of the missing items. Jack Talbot the suspect's defence lawyer added: "He accepts he took the items. It may be part of the mitigation that he did not know their value." Judge Owen Davies explained to the defendant : "What happened to the property is uppermost in the court's mind. "The court does not have time to consider carefully your case so you will be appearing via video link on April 8. "You will be remanded in custody and you face a long prison sentence."

Two New York philanthropists are donating a major collection of more than 300 ancient Greco-Roman and Near-Eastern glass vessels to The Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

The gift from Robert and Renee Belfer was announced by the museum Wednesday. It comes as the institution celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. An exhibition titled “A Roman Villa — The Belfer Collection” showcasing approximately 100 of the objects will be on view at The Israel Museum from June 5 through Nov. 21.

The collection is “one of the most important private holdings of antiquities anywhere,” museum Director James Snyder said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

The Walker Art Center, which is 75 years old this year, has acquired around 4,000 objects amassed by the late Chinese-American artist Martin Wong. The artist Danh Vo turned the hoard into an installation, "I M U U R 2," for a solo show at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2013 after winning its Hugo Boss Prize.

When the Walker bought the piece last September, it fulfilled Vo’s hope that the trove would enter a museum. The Danish-­Vietnamese artist made the work from the bric-a-brac that Wong had collected over four decades: Chinese teaware, calligraphy, Disney figurines, and assorted Americana alongside Wong’s own paintings.

The Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art in Washington, DC, are due to release their entire collections online on January 1, 2015. More than 40,000 works, from ancient Chinese jades to 13th-century Syrian metalwork and 19th-century Korans, will be accessible through high-resolution images without copyright restrictions for non-commercial use. The vast majority—nearly 35,000 objects—have never been seen by the public.

The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery are the first Smithsonian museums and the only Asian art museums to complete the labor-intensive process of digitizing and releasing their entire collections online.

Some 250 ancient Egyptian artifacts that were found in the luggage of passengers arriving in Paris four years ago were returned Thursday.

French customs handed the trove over to the Egyptian embassy, Associated Press reports.

The items, including rings, amulets, clay pots, funeral statues and other objects, come from different periods during the Egyptian empire, with some dating back as far as 2,000 B.C.

The Harvard Art Museums at 32 Quincy St. announced the launch of their redesigned and expanded website. The website, www.harvardartmuseums.org, provides an enhanced digital platform, increasing access to the museums’ collections of approximately 250,000 objects.

Works from the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, comprising the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger and Arthur M. Sackler Museums, feature prominently throughout the site, and each of the approximately 250,000 objects also has an individual page with details about its exhibition history, provenance and conservation. Object images are a key component; users can examine works using the site’s improved scrolling and zoom functionality. In many cases, multiple photos are available of the same object at various stages in its history, offering insight into conservation and condition over time.