Displaying items by tag: commission

The national garden movement and, in particular, artists’ interest in gardens, has deep roots in Philadelphia, beginning with William Penn’s founding of his green and pleasant town in the seventeenth century and John Bartram’s establishing his botanical garden in 1728. In the early nineteenth century, artist Charles Wilson Peale retired to the cultivation of his garden at Belfield, and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society was founded (in 1827), two years later hosting its first flower show. Interest gained momentum with the Colonial Revival movement, itself an outcome of Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition, and continued into the twentieth century.1 In her popular 1901 Colonial Revival-inspired publication Old Time Gardens, Alice Morse Earle wrote of Philadelphia: “There floriculture reached by the time of the Revolution a very high point, and many exquisite gardens bore ample testimony to the ‘pride of life,’ as well as to the good taste and love of flowers of Philadelphia Friends.” 2

Horticultural obsession also permeated the Philadelphia art scene. One of the most iconic conjunctions of art and the garden is the commissioning from Maxfield Parrish and Tiffany Studios of the fabulous Dream Garden (1913–1915, installed 1916) for the Curtis Building. The work was commissioned by Edward W. Bok (1863–1930), the head of Curtis Publishing, the influential publisher of Ladies Home Journal for the company’s new headquarters in Philadelphia.

Visit InCollect.com to read more about American Impressionism and the Garden Movement.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has gifted $5 million to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, to support the development and presentation of exhibitions of contemporary art.

“Thanks to [the] Knight Foundation's visionary support we will be able to expand our ability to commission experimental and scholarly exhibitions by the most significant emerging and under-represented artists of our time,” said Alex Gartenfeld, ICA Miami’s deputy director and chief curator.

Frank Gehry’s 1987 Winton Guest House will go up for sale at auction on May 19, according to the seller, the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. The building currently stands on a 180-acre site in Owatonna, Minnesota, that the university sold to a health clinic last summer; the seller has until August 2016 to move the house from the new owner’s land. Chicago auction house Wright is organizing the sale, and is noted for previous sales of historic architecture — in particular for the successful 2006 auction of Pierre Koenig’s 1959 Case Study House #21 in Los Angeles.

Mike and Penny Winton commissioned Gehry to design a guest house on their lakeside property near the Twin Cities in 1982, in close proximity to a 1952 Philip Johnson brick-and-glass house that stood nearby on the same plot of land. Completed in 1987, Gehry’s structure is noted for geometric rooms arranged like individual homes; they project from a central 35-foot-tall pyramidal living room, and the entire house covers 2,300 square feet.

The city of Sacramento and the Kings have agreed to commission world-renowned artist Jeff Koons to create a sculpture for outside the new downtown arena.

In what is the largest budget for a public art installation in the region’s history, the Kings, the city and three team owners will pay $8 million for the art. Another $1.5 million from the Kings and local philanthropist and artist Marcy Friedman will commission work from local artists to be displayed at the arena.

Koons’ sculpture will be the fifth in his “Coloring Book” collection, a series of towering stainless steel sculptures that have been displayed in some of the most prominent art museums in the world.

Nearly three years after Garage Museum of Contemporary Art founder Dasha Zhukova and architect Rem Koolhaas first revealed designs for the Moscow museum’s new building in Gorky Park, Garage has announced that its new home will open on June 12.

When Zhukova first opened the institution circa 2008 as the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, the art center was housed in the 1926 Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, an icon of Russian avant-garde architecture designed by Konstantin Melnikov and Vladimir Shukhov. In 2012, the museum announced it would be relocating to the city center, and commissioned Shigeru Ban (this year’s Pritzker Prize laureate) to construct a temporary cardboard pavilion in Gorky Park while Koolhaas and his Rotterdam-based firm OMA worked on the museum’s nearby permanent home.

Richard Avedon may be synonymous with iconic fashion photography, but the lensman was known for his striking portraits of powerful personalities too.

While on commission by Rolling Stone magazine to cover the 1976 presidential election, Avedon created black and white portraits of luminaries such as Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford; A.M. Rosenthal, a former managing editor of the New York Times who gained fame for publishing the Pentagon Papers; and W. Mark Felt, also known as “Deep Throat.” Sixty nine of these portraits, collectively titled “The Family,” will feature as part of “Richard Avedon: Family Affairs,” now on at the National Museum of American Jewish History (NMAJH) in Philadelphia.

The National Portrait Gallery's recently acquired self-portrait of Sir Anthony van Dyck was today displayed at Turner Contemporary, Margate, the first venue in its nationwide tour. It is set to be one of the star attractions of the Kent gallery's new exhibition "Self: Image and identity - self-portraiture from Van Dyck to Louise Bourgeois" which opens to visitors on Saturday, January 24, 2015.

The portrait will be on public view for the first time since August 2014 when it was on display at the National Portrait Gallery prior to a period of conservation which is detailed in specially commissioned films on the Gallery's website.

It has been announced that five teams are the running to restore Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s celebrated school of art in Glasgow. UK based John McAslan + Partners (who restored Mackintosh’s last major commission), Scottish practice Page \ Park, and London and Hong-Kong based architects Purcell are all in the frame to lead the restoration of the Mackintosh Building amid a debate over how best to approach the rebuilding of the library and the areas of the building that were devastated by fire in May of last year. The selection of Avanti Architects and LDN Architects complete the roster.

Fourteen practices, from over one hundred initial expressions of interest, formally submitted documents in the first round of the tender.

One way to know you’re in a great museum: You’re rushing to see the latest blockbuster and get waylaid by something amazing that catches your eye. How come you never noticed it before? The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual seasonal blockbuster—New York’s museum version of “The Nutcracker”—is the magnificent Christmas tree decorated with a magical 18th-century Neapolitan crèche and ornaments, on view through Jan. 6. Almost literally in its shadow, easy to miss en route to holiday joy, sits an even more breathtaking exhibition of pages from the Winchester Bible. And they won’t be on view next Christmastime—the show packs up after March 9.

William the Conqueror’s grandson Henry of Blois (1098-1171) probably commissioned the Winchester Bible while he was Bishop of Winchester, one of the world’s great cathedrals.

The painting, "Public Health and Morale" (circa 1943) depicts an idealized American family against a backdrop of busy wartime factories, with a squadron of military airplanes over head. It is one of two commissioned by E.R. Squibb and Sons (now Bristol-Myers Squibb). The other painting, "The American Mother" (1941), was given to the Brandywine River Museum of Art by the company in 1977. The paintings were commissioned for use as advertising window displays, and were also used in internal publications.

“We are pleased that 'Public Health and Morale' will become part of the museum’s permanent N.C. Wyeth collection so that those who are inspired by the work of N.C. Wyeth, his son Andrew, and grandson Jamie, can enjoy this work for years to come,” said John Elicker, senior vice president, Public Affairs and Investor Relations, Bristol-Myers Squibb.