Displaying items by tag: worcester art museum

The Worcester Art Museum announced today that it has obtained a gift of $4 million to endow its director position, which is currently held by Matthias Waschek. The gift, which the museum is touting as the largest award for a staff position in WAM history, came from the Myles & C. Jean McDonough Foundation, on behalf of Jean McDonough. The position will now be named the C. Jean and Myles McDonough Director.

New England was at the forefront of the industrial revolution. It was also a prime location for the rise of the middle class and evolution of the American folk art movement.

These elements of 19th century American life are documented in a new exhibition Folk Art, Lovingly Collected, on view at the Worcester Art Museum July 15-Nov. 29.

It features more than 40 works from an important private collection, based in central Massachusetts that is recognized as one of the best of its kind in existence.

There is something mysterious going on at Worcester Art Museum and one of the greatest painters in the history of the Western art is deeply involved.

It is a tale of two Madonnas, one by Raphael, the revered master of the High Renaissance, and the other by a mystery painter who aimed to imitate him and came pretty close. Washington's National Gallery of Art has loaned Raphael's "Small Cowper Madonna" to WAM, where it will be on view now through Sept. 27. Hanging next to the Raphael in a small gallery is the "Northbrook Madonna," a thematically and stylistically similar work that WAM has owned since the 1940s.

Massachusetts’s Worcester Art Museum (WAM) is unveiling two newly restored William Hogarth (1697–1764) pendant portraits, the first paintings by the artist owned by an American museum, in the latest exhibition in the Jeppson Idea Lab series, which goes behind the scenes in the institution’s conservation lab.

The companion paintings, titled William James and Elizabeth James, were painted in 1744. Purchased by the museum way back in 1910 from a London art dealer, the pair was on display for nearly 100 years before they were taken down to make way for gallery renovations in 2008. When curators realized the paintings, thought to be in good condition, had never been examined by conservation experts, they seized the chance to take a closer look at the beloved canvases.

On December 31, after a long battle with budget deficits, the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, MA will close for good. The institution opened to the public in 1931 and housed the collection of John Woodman Higgins, a steel magnate and collector of American arms and armor.

The most important works from the collection (along with the Higgins’ nearly $3 million endowment) will go to the nearby Worcester Art Museum. The objects are planned to go on display in March; a permanent gallery for the Higgins pieces is planned for 2015. Other pieces from the Higgins’ collection are being sold periodically at auction. The future of the Higgins building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is undecided.

For nearly 8 decades, the Higgins Armory was the only museum in the U.S. devoted solely to arms and armor.  

The Worcester Art Museum has acquired Paolo Veronese’s Venus Disarming Cupid (circa 1560), one of the last works by the Renaissance master still in private hands. The work was gifted to the museum by the New York-based collector Hester Diamond and will go on view on September 20, 2013 alongside works by Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael and El Greco as part of the exhibition (remastered).

Hester acquired Venus Disarming Cupid at Christie’s in 1990 when its owner consigned it to the auction house as Circle of Francois Boucher. Shortly before the sale, the painting was attributed to Veronese and enthusiastically endorsed by the art historian and Veronese expert Terisio Pignatti. The revered painting has an impressive provenance, once residing in the collection of the German Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechinger and appearing on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006.

Matthias Waschek, the Worcester Art Museum’s director, said, “It is rare that a museum can announce the acquisition of a single Italian Renaissance work, let alone one as spectacular as this Veronese. Venus Disarming Cupid is a game changer for our collection.”