Displaying items by tag: photographs

After releasing about 6,400 high-resolution images for public use without fees or restriction back in August, The Getty Research Institute has released a second batch of works, bringing the total number of images available to approximately 10,000. The initiative is part of the Getty’s Open Content Program, which will make images from the Getty’s illustrious collection available for publications, research and a variety of personal uses.

The works recently made available on the Getty’s site include drawings, watercolors, artists’ sketchbooks, rare prints, architectural drawings and photographs. Before launching the Open Content Program, the Getty’s images were only available upon request, for a fee and carried certain terms and conditions. The images will now be available for direct download on the website, free of charge. Officials plan to keep adding works to the Getty’s site until all of the Institute-owned or public domain images are available.    

Getty President and CEO, Jim Cuno, said, “This project goes to the heart of the Getty’s mission to share its collections and research as widely as possible. We look forward to seeing the ingenious, creative and thoughtful ways these images are being used.”

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.

The Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, NJ will celebrate its 100^th anniversary on January 15, 2014. Beginning this fall and continuing throughout the following year, the museum will hold a variety of celebratory events and activities. In addition, the Montclair Museum will install the first in what it hopes to be a series of commissioned works for the institution’s outdoor sculpture garden. The sculptor Jean Shin will create works for this year’s installation.

Highlights from the upcoming centennial celebration include 100 Year, 100 Voices, a crowdsourced audio-tour project that invites members of the Montclair community to comment on their favorite work in the upcoming exhibition 100 Works for 100 Years; a lecture by University of San Francisco professor and author of Riches, Rivals and Radicals: 100 Years of the Museum in America, Marjorie Schwarzer; and Robert Smithson’s New Jersey, an exhibition highlighting the monumental works of New Jersey native and one of the founders of the Land Art movement, Robert Smithson.

The Montclair Art Museum is devoted to American art and Native American art forms. Its collection consists of over 12,000 works and includes paintings, prints, drawings, photographs and sculpture dating from the 18^th century to the present. The museum has the only gallery in the world dedicated solely to the work of the 19^th century American painter George Inness, who lived and worked in Montclair.

The Getty, which includes the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute and the Getty Conservation Institute, has lifted restrictions on the use of images that the Getty holds the rights to or are in the public domain. Jim Cuno, the president and CEO of the Getty, made the announcement in a post on The Iris, the Getty’s blog.

Approximately 4,600 images of paintings, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, antiquities, sculptures and decorative arts from the J. Paul Getty Museum are now available in high resolution on the Getty’s website. The Getty Research Institute is currently deciding which images from its collections can be made available under the initiative and the Getty Conservation Institute is working to make images from its international projects available to the public.

Timothy Potts, the J. Paul Getty Museum’s director, said, “The Museum is delighted to make these images available as the first step in a Getty-wide move toward open content. The Getty’s collections are greatly in demand for publications, research and a variety of personal uses, and I am please that with this initiative they will be readily available on a global basis to anyone with Internet access.”

Previously, the Getty’s images were only available upon request, for a fee and carried certain terms and conditions. The images will now be available for direct download on the website, free of charge.   

The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. announced that they have acquired 100 photographs from The Irving Penn Foundation. Irving Penn, one of the most celebrated artists of the 20^th century, revolutionized fashion photography and was also well known for his still lifes and portraits that frequently appeared in Vogue.

The recently acquired photographs include rare, mostly unpublished works from the late 1930s and 1940s, images of post-war Europe and iconic portraits of celebrated figures such as Agnes de Mille, Langston Hughes and Truman Capote. The collection also includes commercial photography, self-portraits and some of Penn’s most recognizable fashion images. Penn had donated 61 photographs, spanning from 1944 to 1986, to the Smithsonian during his lifetime. He also gifted 60 works to the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in 1990.

To celebrate the acquisition and the expansion of the Smithsonian’s Penn holdings, the museum will organize a touring exhibition of approximately 160 works that will open at the Smithsonian in the fall of 2015.

American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe will open at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on August 17, 2013. The exhibition will draw from MoMA’s extensive collection of American art made between 1915 and 1950. Using some of the finest paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and sculptures from the period, American Modern will illustrate the evolution of society and culture during the first half of the 20^th century.

Subjects explored in the exhibition will include urban and rural landscapes, scenes of industry, still lifes and portraiture. Works by modern art masters such as George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz and Andrew Wyeth will be arranged thematically.

American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe will be on view at MoMA through January 26, 2014.

On Friday, July 19, 2013, the Museum of Modern Art in New York will present Walker Evans American Photographs. The exhibition celebrates the 75^th anniversary of MoMA’s first one-person photography show, which featured Walker Evans’ work. The landmark exhibition was accompanied by an equally revered publication of images, which will be rereleased for this show.

Through his groundbreaking exhibition and publication, which he painstakingly assembled, Evans created a collective portrait of the United States from the late-1920s to the mid-1930s. Using the signs and symbols of commercial culture and vernacular, Evans captured a truly pivotal period in American history.

The exhibition is split into two sections – the first focuses on the portrayal of American society through images of individuals and social context, while the second consists of images of American cultural artifacts such as rural churches, wooden houses and the architecture of Main streets across the country.

Walker Evans American Photographs will be on view at MoMA through January 26, 2014.  

Freeman’s Auctioneers and Appraisers in Philadelphia announced that they will be selling over 90 photographs from the art collection of the global beauty products company, Avon. The works will be part of the Photographs & Photobooks sale, which will be held on September 10, 2013. A portion of the proceeds from the sale will benefit the Avon Foundation for Women, a charitable organization dedicated to breast cancer research and ending domestic violence.

Works from the Avon Collection is comprised entirely of photographs by female artists such as Louise Dahl-Wolfe (1895-1989) and Cindy Sherman (b. 1954-). The offerings include landscapes, portraiture and fashion photography and span six decades. Sheri McCoy, CEO of Avon, said, “The Avon art collection represents many impressive female artists and we are happy to partner with Freeman’s to share these significant pieces of work.”

The Avon Collection also includes modern and contemporary sculpture, paintings and works on paper. The collection currently resides in Avon’s global headquarters in New York City.  

The Meadows Museum at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas has acquired an album of drawings, photographs and letters amassed by the sugar tycoon and art collector William Hood Stewart. Stewart was an avid collector of European art and the Modern Spanish School and his holdings include correspondence with artists such as Jean-August-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) and Jéan-Léon Gerôme as well as with fellow collectors. The Meadows Museum acquired the album from New York’s Spanierman Gallery for an undisclosed amount.

The collection will be presented at the Meadows Museum in the exhibition The Stewart Album: Art, Letters and Souvenirs to an American Patron in Paris from August 25 through November 10, 2013. While Stewart had a sizable estate in his hometown of Philadelphia, he spent much of time in Paris, socializing with the artists he so admired. Stewart’s unique collection provides a glimpse into the careers, personal lives and artistic developments of a number of important European artists.

In 1898, Seven years after Stewart’s death, his collection was broken up at an auction and paintings were dispersed among the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and a handful of other institutions. The Meadows Museum is planning to organize an exhibition that will reunite parts of Stewart’s collection that were separated over 100 years ago.

The 44^th edition of Art Basel closed on Sunday, June 16, 2013 after welcoming a record 70,000 visitors. Exhibitors at the highly anticipated fair reported exceptionally strong sales throughout the show’s six-day run and patrons were impressed by the quality of the works offered.

This year, Art Basel hosted 304 international exhibitors at Messe Basel, a venue situated at the border of Switzerland, France and Germany. Among the offerings were paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs, which drew strong sales across the board. The buying frenzy began during the fair’s two-day VIP opening, which lasted from June 11^th through the 12^th and saw the $12 million sale of Alexander Calder’s (1898-1976) Sumac (1961) by London’s Helly Nahmad Gallery.  

Next year, Art Basel will be held from June 19-22, 2014.