Displaying items by tag: donations

The San Diego Museum of Art announced Monday the acquisitions of two major Spanish paintings and will celebrate with free public admission on the last weekends of January and February.

The two paintings are "St. Francis in Prayer in a Grotto" by Francisco de Zurbarán and "By the Seashore, Valencia" by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida. "St. Francis" will be on view beginning Jan. 21 and "By the Seashore" on Feb. 26..

The acquisitions were made possible by generous donations from Conrad Prebys and Debbie Turner, in the case of the Zurbarán, and the Legler Benbough Foundation, whose donation led to the acquisition of the Sorolla.

Graduates of Goldsmiths, University of London who have become household names in contemporary art, including Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley, Sarah Lucas, Yinka Shonibare and Michael Craig-Martin, are donating works to raise funds for a new art gallery at their old art school. Sam Taylor-Johnson, Julian Opie and Steve McQueen, whose "Twelve Years a Slave" won an Oscar last year, have also given pieces.

The works, including a spot painting and a swirl painting by Hirst, a bronze by Lucas, and one of Gormley’s cast iron standing men, are expected to raise most of the £2.8 million cost of the gallery at a Christie’s auction next month.

Buoyed by some of the largest donations in the city's history, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will unveil a $450 million project today that envisions its campus as the cultural heart of the city.

The plan includes two new buildings designed to complement the existing structures in a way that will enhance the experience of looking at art.

he project, by Steven Holl Architects, is the most exciting in the institution's 90-year history, board chairman Richard Kinder said. The plan, named the Fayez S. Sarofim Campus, is so transformational that in five years Houstonians might not recognize the 1000 block of Bissonnet.

It was a very good year for the Hood Museum of Art. In 2014, the Dartmouth College institution received two major donations of artwork from alums. The college was already an art lovers' destination, offering such attractions as the stunning "The Epic of American Civilization" mural by José Clemente Orozco in the Baker Library. Exhibits included the likes of Picasso prints, aboriginal paintings, and the recently closed "Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties." The gifts of contemporary photography from Nancy and Tom O'Neil (class of '79) and of European and American art from the late Barbara J. and David G. Stahl (class of '47) add nearly 160 pieces to the Hood's permanent collection.

It's not every day — or year — that a college art museum can boast such acquisitions.

The J. Paul Getty Trust is plugging a fresh executive into what's perhaps the art world's most counterintuitive job: getting rich folks, corporations and charitable foundations to make big cash donations to an organization that already sits on a pile of investments more than $6 billion high.

The Getty announced this week that Janet Feldstein McKillop, head fundraiser for St. Matthew's Parish School, a K-8 Episcopalian parochial school in Pacific Palisades, will step into a job whose only previous occupant did not gain a lot of discernible traction.

A long-lost painting by the Spanish Baroque artist Sebastián de Llanos Valdés, which was missing for over 70 years, has been discovered in the UK, after an unidentified individual tried to consign "Penitent Maria Magdalena" to Christie's, according to a DPA report. However, the Staatliche Museum Schwerin, which owns the painting, had previously entered the artwork into Germany's centralized "Lost Art" database for stolen artworks. Since the attempted sale the museum and auction house were able to negotiate the work's return; with the individual who found and consigned the Valdés reportedly being offered a reward by way of compensation.

The artist was born in Seville, and was a pupil of Francisco Herrera the Elder, he worked chiefly for private patrons. In 1660, the artist actively supported Bartolomé Esteban Murillo in founding the Academia de Bellas Artes (Academy of Art), afterwards making frequent donations of oil and other materials for the students' use.

When Delaware Art Museum leaders announced in 2001 an ambitious plan to nearly double the size of the institution's Kentmere Parkway location, they likely had no clue the project would threaten to bankrupt the institution – twice.

In the end, the $32.5 million expansion plagued by cost overruns and construction delays saddled the museum with a crushing debt, which severely depleted its investment reserve fund and discouraged corporate and individual donations.

The iconic Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Louvre‘s other star attraction, has been reinstalled following a 10-month restoration—partially crowd-funded through some 6,700 micro-donations adding up to €1 million ($1.36 million)—and goes on public view again on July 12, Le Figaro reports. The sculpture, which dates from circa 190 BCE and depicts the winged goddess of victory standing on the prow of a ship, occupies the landing of a grand staircase through which the lion’s share of the Louvre’s seven million annual visitors pass.

The 18-foot-tall, 30-ton statue was scrubbed clean of both dirt and yellowing paints and varnishes applied during earlier conservation efforts.

A handful of art collectors who have donated to the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami are seeking to clear up any confusion: They say they gave their art to the museum, not the city.

In a motion filed late Tuesday in the museum board’s lawsuit against the city, the collectors sought to explain the “intent behind their donations, which was always to donate to MOCA, the 501 (c)(3), and not to the city.”

The Walters Art Museum announced Monday that it's been awarded $913,000 in grants to support renovations and exhibitions at the museum, including a special show on Islamic art scheduled to open next year.

That sum is made up of six individual donations — four from government agencies and two from private foundations — Walters spokeswoman Mona Rock said in a news release.

The bulk of the money, $500,000 will be used to support "Pearls on a String: Art and Relationship in the Islamic World," which is scheduled to open in the fall of 2015.