Displaying items by tag: dallas museum of art

The touring exhibition The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece: Masterworks from the British Museum is currently on view at the Dallas Museum of Art through October 6, 2013. Presenting 120 objects from the British Museum’s renowned collection of Greek and Roman art, each work explores the human form and humanity as sources of artistic inspiration. The show spans three millennia of Greek civilization and includes marble and bronze sculptures, painted pottery, terracotta, and jewelry.

The Body Beautiful is divided into 10 thematic sections that illustrate the various ways the Greeks interpreted the human body including Cycladic figures and realistic Roman genre sculptures. Highlights from the exhibition include the Diskobolos (discus thrower) sculpture from the second century A.D., which is on view for the first time in the United States, and a model of Ancient Olympia as it would have appeared around 100 B.C. A video installation will be shown alongside the model providing glimpses of the original Olympic sites and artworks depicting the ancient athletic event.

Maxwell L. Anderson, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, said, “We will present a visually engaging and thought-provoking exploration of the human condition as seen by the ancient Greeks, and, equally, of the origins of our construct of beauty today.”

Marguerite Steed Hoffman, a current trustee and former chairman of the Dallas Museum of Art, has donated $17 million to the institution to create the Marguerite and Robert Hoffman Fund for European Art Before 1700. Hoffman specified that $13.6 million is to be used for acquisitions and the remaining $3.4 million is allotted for exhibitions and planning. Hoffman’s generous gift is one of the country’s largest geared towards the purchase and care of Old Master works.

While the Dallas Museum of Art has a substantial collection of late 19^th and early 20^th century works, its Old Master holdings are lacking. Hoffman’s donation will help expand its European Renaissance and Baroque collections; her gift also more than doubles the museum’s acquisition endowment.

Hoffman created the fund in honor of her late husband, Robert, who died in 2006. The two were important benefactors of the museum for years and participated in an important gift of modern and contemporary art that took place in 2005. The gift was part of a campaign that helped raise over $185 million for the museum.

After Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) painting Salvator Mundi was rediscovered in 2011, the Dallas Museum of Art turned to their patrons and after much campaigning, managed to raise tens of millions of dollars in hopes of buying the work. Museum officials recently made a formal offer to the painting’s owners but were sadly rebuffed after weeks of negotiation.

Lost for years, Salvator Mundi spent months in the Dallas Museum’s basement before being returned to its owners. If the institution had succeeded in acquiring the oil on wood portrait of Christ, it would have become the second museum in the United States to count a da Vinci as part of its permanent collection. Currently, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is the only U.S. institution that owns a work by the Italian Renaissance master.

England’s King Charles I once owned Salvator Mundi and the painting was acquired by American art dealer Alex Parish in the mid-2000s. Parish and two other dealers currently share ownership of the work. Valued at $200 million in 2011, the owners turned down an offer of $100 million before the painting headed to the Dallas Museum of Art.

While the rejection was a disappointment for the museum, the institution witnessed an inspiring outpouring of support when they decided to launch their campaign.  

The Dallas Museum of Art announced today that it will nullify its $10 general admission fee, effective January 21, 2013. The museum will also launch an online rewards program that could even make membership free.

In recent years, many institutions have reversed their decision to charge visitors and are now free to the public. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore, and the Detroit Institute of the Arts have all decided that free admission will help their institutions become more widely accessible, which, in turn, will keep visitor numbers up.

While it appears that the aforementioned museums have started a trend, many institutions in major tourist destinations are not so quick to jump on the free entry bandwagon. In New York, the Museum of Modern Art charges $25 and the Guggenheim Museum charges $22. San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, another major tourist attraction, charges $18. Other big-name museums that require visitors to pay are the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Carnegie Museum of Art.

A curator at the Dallas Museum of Art discovered an unsigned painting likely created by the American landscape painter, George Inness. The work has been in the museum’s collection for more than 80 years but had been attributed to Asher B. Durand, one of the leading figures of the Hudson River School painters. The mid-19^th century art movement had a profound influence on Inness’ work.

After experts at the museum questioned In the Woods’ attribution, American art curator Sue Canterbury decided to do some research on the oil on canvas. Canterbury explored other artists whose work fit with In the Woods’ aesthetic and stumbled upon Michael Quick’s George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonne. Within the raisonne Canterbury found a pen and ink drawing that bore a striking resemblance to In the Woods. It was then that the museum decided to reattribute the painting to Inness.

The bucolic forest scene has been renamed Stream in the Mountains by curators and will be display at the museum. It is a significant work because it is from Inness’ early years and not many of his works from this era have survived.

After two years in beta, Art.sy’s public version went live this past Monday. Using intuitive sites such as Pandora and Netflix as guides, Art.sy gets to know its users and presents them with suggestions and recommendations based on their individual likes and dislikes. Art.sy offers a free repository of 20,000 and counting digitized fine art images as well as an art appreciation guide. Art.sy can already count 275 galleries, private collectors, and 50 museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art, SFMoMA, and Fondation Beyeler as partners.

A start-up backed by millions of dollars in venture capital from art world giants such as Larry Gagosian and Dasha Zhukova, Art.sy already has 600,000 registered users. The site is moving past mere image sharing and has begun partnering with major art fairs, serving as the exclusive online platform for Design Miami/ in December and the Armory Show in March.

Art.sy offers a unique experience to collectors, allowing them to speak with a specialist, connect directly to a gallery, or submit offers on works remotely. A different feature on the site will allow collectors to buy outright as long as the dealer chooses to utilize the e-commerce option. Art.sy plans to bring in most of its revenue from sales commissions on works sold through the site.