Displaying items by tag: birmingham museum of art

The Birmingham Museum of Art opened a new exhibit Saturday that features works of well-known Dutch and Flemish masters. The exhibition, called "Small Treasures," includes paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer and their contemporaries. These artists are often known for large canvases, but these paintings are small.

"We have two paintings by Rembrandt and two paintings by Vermeer," said Robert Schindler, the museum's curator of European art. "In terms of quality and the level of artistic skill that is on display here, [it] is just extraordinary. It does not get any better than this."

On February 22, “Delacroix and the Matter of Finish,” the first exhibition in the U.S. to focus on the French Romantic artist in over a decade, opened at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama. The exhibition, which features works from 27 international institutions including the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland, the Musée national Eugène Delacroix in Paris and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, was previously on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California and was organized by the institution’s assistant director and chief curator, Eik Kahng.

The show presents 25 paintings and 20 works on paper, including a previously unpublished version of Delacroix’s “The Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius,” which Kahng authenticated after several years of scholarly and technical study. Jeannine O’Grody, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Birmingham Museum of Art, said, “We are thrilled to be one of only two venues for this show, which represents works of collections from around the world including Paris, Zurich, Madrid, and Toronto.”

Delacroix is often referred to as the father of French Romanticism, the movement that dominated French painting in the first half of the 19th century. However, the exhibition explores the artist’s relationship to Neoclassicism, Romanticism’s alleged antithesis, due to the artist’s allegiance to classical subjects and his admiration for the art of the past. The exhibition also suggests that Delacroix, with his fiery palette and loose brushwork, was something of a forefather to Impressionism.

“Delacroix and the Matter of Finish” will remain on view at the Birmingham Museum of Art through May 18, 2014.

On October 27, 2013, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present Delacroix and the Matter of Finish, the first exhibition in the U.S. to focus on the French Romantic artist in over a decade. The show will include 27 paintings and 18 works on paper as well as a previously unknown and unpublished version of Eugène Delacroix’s masterpiece, The Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, which surfaced in a Santa Barbara private collection. After several years of scholarly and technical study, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Assistant Director and Chief Curator, Eik Kahng, authenticated the painting.  

Delacroix is often referred to as the father of French Romanticism, the movement that dominated French painting in the first half of the 19^th century. However, the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue by Kahng explore Delacroix’s relationship to Neoclassicism, Romanticism’s alleged antithesis, due to the artist’s allegiance to classical subjects and his admiration for the art of the past. The exhibition also suggests that Delacroix, with his fiery palette and loose brushwork, was something of a forefather to Impressionism.

Delacroix and the Matter of Finish features works from 27 international institutions including the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Musée national Eugène Delacroix in Paris and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. After it closes at the Santa Barbara Museum on April 20, 2014, the exhibition will travel to the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama.

Andy Warhol once said, “Good business is the best art.”  And while he wasn’t referring to art museums per se, he might as well have been. These days, museums across the country are fighting to stay in the black—and now some of them are asking folks to pay more in property taxes to make up the shortfall.

Last Tuesday, voters in three Michigan suburbs agreed to a raise their property taxes to save the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), which has struggled mightily with its finances for the past decade. Unlike most major metropolitan museums, the DIA operates without a significant endowment and receives no financial support from the city of Detroit or the state of Michigan.

Voters approved what’s known as a millage tax, a fee assessed on the value of your home. The more your property is worth, the higher your tax. In this case, the DIA levy costs approximately $15 for every $150,000 of a home’s fair market value, and will raise around $23 million a year from Oakland, Macomb, and Wayne counties (the last of which includes Detroit).