Displaying items by tag: sculptural

Settled by the Dutch and claimed by the English, New York, from the start, was “a Babel of peoples—Norwegians, Germans, Italians, Jews, Africans . . . Walloons, Bohemians, Munsees, Montauks, Mohawks, and many others,” as writer Russell Shorto has observed. In the landscapes they shaped, buildings and furniture they made, New Yorkers created a place “unlike any other, either in the North American colonies or anywhere else.” This unique legacy is reflected in New York furniture featuring elaborate Dutch-inspired turnings, solid English construction methods, French sculptural carving, and Germanic painted decoration. In assembling the collection at Winterthur, Henry Francis du Pont created a world-class destination for viewing New York furniture in all of its splendid variety.

Steven Holl Architects has been selected to design a new extension to one of India’s oldest museums, the Mumbai City Museum, also known as the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum. Selected over OMA, Studio Mumbai Architecture, Zaha Hadid and four others, Holl is now the first architect ever to be chosen through an international competition to design a public building in Mumbai.

“The winning design was distinctive for its sculptural and calligraphic qualities,” stated the official press release. “It proposes a simple volume, which is enlivened by deep subtracting cuts, creating dramatic effects of light and shade. Its central feature is a reflecting pool in a new garden courtyard between the old and new buildings. The scheme will establish a cultural campus around the Museum in this growing district within Mumbai.”

It's not the sort of thing you generally see in a museum: a comfortable easy chair, a working TV set turned to an afternoon talk show on which "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" mom Kris Jenner is making salsa.

But this unlikely arrangement is, in fact, a work of art, on view as part of the Hammer Museum's Robert Heinecken retrospective, "Object Matter." The longtime L.A. artist, who passed away in 2006, was known for his pioneering use of found photographs in sculptural assemblages and vast wall installations. He was also known for undertaking guerrilla actions, such as surreptitiously printing images into new editions of "Time" magazine and then returning the copies to the newsstand. (San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art has an example.)

The Portland Museum of Art in Maine presents Shangaa: Art of Tanzania. The first major exhibition in the United States to focus on the traditional arts of Tanzania, Shangaa includes 165 objects on loan from private and public collections throughout the U.S. and Europe. While most of the works are sculptural in nature, styles range from expressionistic to abstract to refined.

“Shangaa” means “to amaze” in Swahili and that is the intent of the exhibition. Curated by Tanzanian art specialist Dr. Gary van Wyk, Shangaa includes works ranging in date from the 19^th century through today. The exhibition illustrates how Tanzanian culture uses art to channel energy, mark the passage into adulthood, and celebrate life among many other things.

Shangaa: Art of Tanzania will be on view through August 25, 2013.

The nonprofit Architectural League of New York is the latest party asking the Museum of Modern Art to reconsider their decision to raze the former home of the American Folk Art Museum. The organization wrote an open letter signed by members of its board of directors to MoMA on Monday, April 22, 2013. Prominent architects such as Richard Meier, Thom Mayne, Steven Holl, Hugh Hardy, and Robert A.M. Stern voiced their support against the demolition of the building, which was designed by notable New York-based architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.

The monumental building, which features a sculptural bronze façade, was erected twelve years ago on West 53^rd Street by the American Folk Art Museum. After the institution fell into financial turmoil, the building was sold to MoMA and the Folk Art Museum moved to a smaller location. Now, as plans for an expansion gain steam, MoMA has announced their decision to level the building. Officials justified the ruling by claiming that the Folk Art Museum’s former home didn’t mesh with MoMA’s sleek glass façade and that structure’s location was logistically problematic as it is slightly set back from MoMA’s main building.

The decision to demolish the structure, which has quickly become a Midtown landmark, has been met with a wall of opposition. Last week, a New Haven, CT resident, Robert Bundy, launched a petition against MoMA’s decision and garnered over 2,000 signatures in a matter of days.

As it stands, MoMA expects to begin renovations in 2014 by which time the Folk Art Museum’s former home will be destroyed.

The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. will unveil its first permanent installation in over 50 years. Founded by the art collector and critic Duncan Phillips (1886-1966) in 1921, the Phillips Collection is the United States’ first modern art museum.

The new addition to the institution is a room made entirely from beeswax titled Wax Room. The experimental piece is the work of Wolfgang Laib (b. 1950), a conceptual German artist who is well known for his sculptural works made from natural materials. Laib has been making his beeswax chambers for over 25 years using hundreds of pounds of melted beeswax to coat walls and ceilings. The otherworldly spaces he creates are warmly lit by single hanging light bulbs.

The Phillips Collection’s other permanent installation is its Rothko Room, which holds four paintings by the abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970). The intimate presentation of Rothko’s works was added as a permanent exhibit in 1960, six years before Duncan Phillips’ death. Phillips worked closely with Rothko, deciding which walls to hang each painting on and the kind of lighting and furniture that would best suit the room. The Phillips Collection was the first American museum to dedicate a space to Rothko’s work and it remains the only one designed in collaboration with the artist himself.

Laib’s progressive work is a welcomed addition to the Phillips Collection. While Phillips’ holdings consisted of many Impressionist paintings and other mainstream works, he also had a taste for the unconventional. Phillips was one of the earliest patrons of American modernists including John Marin (1870-1953) and Arthur Dove (1880-1946) and also harbored great admiration for Abstract Expressionism before it became a respected art movement.

Laib’s Wax Room will be unveiled on March 2, 2013.

A major exhibition titled Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind is now on view at the British Museum in London. With works dating as far back as 40,000 years, the show presents ice age objects from across Europe alongside works by modern masters including Henry Moore (1898-1986), Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), and Henri Matisse (1869-1954). The juxtaposition is meant to illustrate the fundamental human desire to explore life and oneself through art.

Many of the ice age-era works on view are made of mammoth ivory and reindeer antler and tend to be diminutive in stature. Highlights include a 40,000-year-old flute made from a vulture’s wing bone, a mammoth tusk carved to resemble a pair of reindeer, and a 23,000-year-old abstract ivory sculpture found in Lespugue, France that had a profound influence on Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) sculptural work of the 1930s.

The works, which range from 10,000 to 40,000 years old, will be on view through May 26, 2013.

From May 23-26, 2013, Art Basel will host 245 exhibitors at their first show in Hong Kong, which will replace the region’s biggest art fair, Art HK. Held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, Art Basel Hong Kong will feature works from emerging artists as well as 20^th century masters from both Asia and the West. While Art Basel currently runs two major international shows in Switzerland and Miami Beach, the organization is striving to maintain an emphasis on the Asian region for the Hong Kong fair.

Top galleries from 35 countries will meet at Art Basel Hong Kong, which is divided into four categories: Galleries, Insights, Discoveries, and Encounters. Galleries will present over 170 modern and contemporary exhibitors; Insights will feature galleries solely from Asia and the Asia-Pacific region; Discoveries presents a showcase of one and two-person exhibitions by emerging international contemporary artists; and Encounters features large-scale sculptural and installation works by artists from around the globe.

Exhibitors at the upcoming Art Basel Hong Kong show include Dominique Levy Gallery (New York), Cecilia de Torres, Ltd. (New York), Wentrup (Berlin), Galeria Pedro Cera (Lisbon), Leo Xu Projects (Shanghai), Blindspot Gallery (Hong Kong), and Schoeni Art Gallery (Hong Kong).

The Kentucky Museum of Arts and Craft is celebrating the career of Wendell Castle (b. 1932) with the exhibition Wendell Castle: Forms within Forms – The 21^st Century. The show is meant to coincide with Castle’s 80^th birthday as well as a number of other concurrent exhibitions taking place at various galleries and museums across the country. Castle, a furniture artist who helped lead the American craft movement, has been a pioneering presence in the design world for over 50 years.

Forms within Forms focuses on Castle’s newer works, many of which employ stack-lamination, a technique he first used in the 1960s, and draws connections to his previous pieces, illustrating how the artist has been influenced by his own work. Besides showcasing Castle’s biomorphic, sculptural furniture pieces, the exhibition also explores Castle’s powerful presence in a field populated by few artists.

The exhibition will be on view through February 4, 2013.