Displaying items by tag: Smithsonian

Its death sentence came down in a public courtroom, but the priceless estate of the Corcoran Gallery of Art is being divvied up under a cloak of secrecy.

Museum-goers who grew up with Rembrandt Peale’s portrait of George Washington and George Inness’s landscapes don’t know if these and other treasures from the city’s oldest private museum will hang on the walls of the National Gallery of Art or at one of the Smithsonian museums — or if they will be consigned to a storage facility.

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.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has appointed Stephane Aquin from the Montreal Museum of Fine Art as its new chief curator.

Museum director Melissa Chiu announced the appointment Tuesday. Aquin is the second major hire for Chiu, who became director in September. She previously hired Gianni Jetzer as Curator-at-Large.

Aquin will lead a staff of six curators responsible for planning the exhibitions at the Smithsonian museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art. Aquin succeeds Kerry Brougher, who  served as the museum’s interim director before leaving in May to become director of the new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum in Los Angeles.

From ancient cave drawings to Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machines, birds have always played a central role in art and imagination. “For millennia, humans have been fascinated by birds,” says Joanna Marsh, curator of “The Singing and the Silence: Birds in Contemporary Art,” opening Friday at the American Art Museum. “Birds can fly, while we’re stuck in our own earthbound existence. They are accessible to us yet out of reach — a paradox that is fruitful creatively.” The new exhibit features 46 works by 12 artists.

On the final leg of its Smithsonian-organized, cross-country tour, Annie Leibovitz’s “Pilgrimage” exhibition will land at the New-York Historical Society from November 21 through February 22, 2015. While Leibovitz may be best known as a portraitist to the stars, this collection of images contains nary a celebrity portrait — at least not in the traditional sense.

When Leibovitz’s longtime partner Susan Sontag died in 2004, she took to the road to visit places and things that the couple had always wanted to see together.

The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., is kicking off its 40th anniversary celebration with the long-term installation “At the Hub of Things: New Views of the Collection.” Featuring works from the collection from the past 75 years, “At the Hub of Things” is organized thematically rather than by artist or movement, revealing a fresh perspective on the Hirshhorn’s holdings of modern and contemporary art. The exhibition creates a lively conversation between artworks from different countries and generations.

“At the Hub of Things” is the first exhibition to be held in the Hirshhorn’s newly renovated third-floor galleries. The $1 million overhaul, which is the first full renovation that the galleries have received since their inception, has restored the space to architect Gordon Bunshaft’s original vision.

The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City is the only museum in the United States devoted exclusively to design. It was founded in 1897 by the Cooper/Hewitt family as part of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of the Science and Art and became a part of the Smithsonian in 1967. The institution has a collection of more than 200,000 items, houses an amazing design library, offers educational programs, and sponsors the National Design Awards. It is the foremost authority on design in the country but was long overdue for a makeover. Later this year, the museum will reopen with a new identity befitting the nation's preeminent repository of good design but their relaunch has already started online with a new website and a tailor-made typeface.

More than a decade after its initial display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Cup, crafted by Gianmaria Buccellati of the Italian jeweler, House of Buccellati, is now back on view in the museum’s Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals. The Cup was originally dedicated to the Smithsonian in honor of the “Buccellati: Gold, Silver and Gems” exhibition, which opened at the museum in October 2000. Since then, it has been on loan to several institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 2002, the Boca Raton Museum of Art in 2005 and at the Kremlin in Moscow from 2008 to 2009.

“Over the past 13 years, the Cup has served as a traveling ambassador for the Smithsonian,” said Jeffrey Post, curator of the National Gem Collection. “We are delighted to have it home for a while and to be able to once again exhibit it here at the Natural History Museum.”

The American metal sculptor Albert Paley is the subject of a major exhibition currently on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. “American Metal: The Art of Albert Paley” presents a retrospective of Paley’s varied career. The exhibition begins with his work as a jeweler and forger of metal, and progresses through Paley’s recent large-scale sculptural projects. The show was curated by Eric Turner, Curator of Metalwork, Silver, and Jewelry at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Paley began his nearly 50-year career as a goldsmith before shifting his focus to blacksmithing in the early 1970s. Spanning six galleries, the exhibition at the Corcoran presents everything from jewelry, furniture, and small-scale domestic metalwork to gates and doors. The exhibition’s centerpiece is “Portal Gates,” a 1974 commission for the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery. One of Paley’s most significant projects, “Portal Gates” exemplifies the artist’s innovative style as well as his mastery of the metalworking craft. The Renwick Gallery, which was the Corcoran’s original home, is currently closed for renovations.  

A $5.4 million donation from David M. Rubenstein, co-founder and co-chief executive of D.C.-based private-equity firm The Carlyle Group, and a philanthropist known for contributions to landmarks of American history, has completed fundraising for the renovation of the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery.

The building, the Smithsonian’s third oldest, houses craft objects and decorative arts from the 19th century to the present, and the donation is the final part of a two year, $30 million public/private campaign to overhaul infrastructure and renovate the Grand Salon, which will be named in honor of Rubenstein.