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LINKS to some current ART, ART NEWS & EVENTS . .
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. . some thoughtful thoughts . .
"The arts, it has been said, cannot change the world, but they may change human beings who might change the world" - Maxine Greene “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have lots of dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solution without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” –Steve Jobs |
. . and here are LINKS to some articles I think you might enjoy reading, from various publications . . [titles are linked to full article/original publication]
San Francisco to paint over historic George Washington mural
By SAMANTHA MALDONADO AP News
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco will spend up to $600,000 to paint over historical artwork at a public school depicting the life of George Washington, a mural once seen as educational and innovative but now criticized as racist and degrading for its depiction of black and Native American people.
The “Life of Washington” was painted by Victor Arnautoff, one of the foremost muralists in the San Francisco area during the Depression. The San Francisco School Board’s decision to paint over the 83-year-old mural is prompting some to worry that other artwork from the so-called New Deal era could face a similar fate because of changing sensitivities.
In addition to depicting Washington as a soldier, surveyor and statesman, the 13-panel, 1,600-sqaure foot mural at George Washington High School contains images of white pioneers standing over the body of a Native American and slaves working at Washington’s Mount Vernon estate in Virginia.
The board’s decision last week comes at a time when the legacies of Washington and other historical figures who owned slaves are being re-examined. Some cities have changed the names of streets and buildings named after slave owners . . . .
By SAMANTHA MALDONADO AP News
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco will spend up to $600,000 to paint over historical artwork at a public school depicting the life of George Washington, a mural once seen as educational and innovative but now criticized as racist and degrading for its depiction of black and Native American people.
The “Life of Washington” was painted by Victor Arnautoff, one of the foremost muralists in the San Francisco area during the Depression. The San Francisco School Board’s decision to paint over the 83-year-old mural is prompting some to worry that other artwork from the so-called New Deal era could face a similar fate because of changing sensitivities.
In addition to depicting Washington as a soldier, surveyor and statesman, the 13-panel, 1,600-sqaure foot mural at George Washington High School contains images of white pioneers standing over the body of a Native American and slaves working at Washington’s Mount Vernon estate in Virginia.
The board’s decision last week comes at a time when the legacies of Washington and other historical figures who owned slaves are being re-examined. Some cities have changed the names of streets and buildings named after slave owners . . . .
TUNE-IN to the PBS Series - NYC-ARTS
. . this week there's a great segment on Vermeer paintings at the Frick Collection, and an interesting interview with Jack Lenor Larson, Textile Designer and founder of LongHouse Reserve, a magnificent sculpture garden in East Hampton, NY . . .
Obama Portraits Blend Paint and Politics, and Fact and Fiction
By HOLLAND COTTER NYTimes
WASHINGTON — With the unveiling here Monday at the National Portrait Gallery of the official presidential likenesses of Barack Obama and the former first lady, Michelle Obama, this city of myriad monuments gets a couple of new ones, each radiating, in its different way, gravitas (his) and glam (hers).
Ordinarily, the event would pass barely noticed in the worlds of politics and art. Yes, the Portrait Gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution, owns the only readily accessible complete collection of presidential likenesses. But recently commissioned additions to the collection have been so undistinguished that the tradition of installing a new portrait after a leader has left office is now little more than ceremonial routine.
The present debut is strikingly different. Not only are the Obamas the first African-American presidential couple to be enshrined in the collection. The painters they’ve picked to portray them — Kehinde Wiley, for Mr. Obama’s portrait; Amy Sherald, for Mrs. Obama — are African-American as well. Both artists have addressed the politics of race consistently in their past work, and both have done so in subtly savvy ways in these new commissions. Mr. Wiley depicts Mr. Obama not as a self-assured, standard-issue bureaucrat, but as an alert and troubled thinker. Ms. Sherald’s image of Mrs. Obama overemphasizes an element of couturial spectacle, but also projects a rock-solid cool . . . .
The Folly of Abolishing the N.E.A.
By THOMAS P. CAMPBELL NYTimes
Four years ago, in a small warehouse in central China, a team of Chinese archaeologists showed me objects that they had unearthed from a nearby ancient tomb. Laid out on a folding table was an exquisite array of vases, ritual vessels and a set of heart-stoppingly beautiful silver gilt tigers and dragons that fit in the palm of my hand, perhaps part of a long-forgotten regal board game.
These finds were a keyhole through which we could glimpse the sophistication of the Han dynasty rulers, who, 2,000 years ago, conquered and united the enormous region that was to become modern-day China.
This week, curators and conservators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art are in Beijing working with Chinese colleagues to pack these and other objects for transportation to New York, where they will be featured in an exhibition this spring. Supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the exhibition, “Age of Empires,” will teach our visitors about the origins of China, the superpower that is now playing a major role in the balance of world power and trade.
Although the N.E.A. grant was a small part of the exhibition’s overall budget, it was crucial in persuading others to add their support. Similar grants have helped the Met mount exhibitions on the art of Jerusalem, India, Korea, Islam, Africa and Afghanistan.
Sadly, it has become clear that the N.E.A. is, once again, under threat of being abolished, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities. The purported reason is cost savings . . . .
By THOMAS P. CAMPBELL NYTimes
Four years ago, in a small warehouse in central China, a team of Chinese archaeologists showed me objects that they had unearthed from a nearby ancient tomb. Laid out on a folding table was an exquisite array of vases, ritual vessels and a set of heart-stoppingly beautiful silver gilt tigers and dragons that fit in the palm of my hand, perhaps part of a long-forgotten regal board game.
These finds were a keyhole through which we could glimpse the sophistication of the Han dynasty rulers, who, 2,000 years ago, conquered and united the enormous region that was to become modern-day China.
This week, curators and conservators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art are in Beijing working with Chinese colleagues to pack these and other objects for transportation to New York, where they will be featured in an exhibition this spring. Supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the exhibition, “Age of Empires,” will teach our visitors about the origins of China, the superpower that is now playing a major role in the balance of world power and trade.
Although the N.E.A. grant was a small part of the exhibition’s overall budget, it was crucial in persuading others to add their support. Similar grants have helped the Met mount exhibitions on the art of Jerusalem, India, Korea, Islam, Africa and Afghanistan.
Sadly, it has become clear that the N.E.A. is, once again, under threat of being abolished, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities. The purported reason is cost savings . . . .
For the umpteenth time, the National Endowment for the Arts deserves its funding
by DANA GIOIA Los Angeles Times
. . The NEA’s 2017 budget is $149.8 million. In a nation of 319 million people that amount doesn’t allow the agency to subsidize much of anything. But the endowment has found ways to make the money work with outsized effectiveness and efficiency. It makes thousands of small grants to nonprofit organizations — on average 2,100 a year. Each grant requires the recipient to raise matching local funds — often at a ratio of two or three local dollars for each federal one. So the NEA mostly serves as a catalyst for local groups to raise private and state money to serve their own communities.
On its modest budget, NEA funding now reaches every state, every congressional district, and even most counties — rural and urban — in the United States. Grants fund programs in schools, libraries and military bases . . . .
by DANA GIOIA Los Angeles Times
. . The NEA’s 2017 budget is $149.8 million. In a nation of 319 million people that amount doesn’t allow the agency to subsidize much of anything. But the endowment has found ways to make the money work with outsized effectiveness and efficiency. It makes thousands of small grants to nonprofit organizations — on average 2,100 a year. Each grant requires the recipient to raise matching local funds — often at a ratio of two or three local dollars for each federal one. So the NEA mostly serves as a catalyst for local groups to raise private and state money to serve their own communities.
On its modest budget, NEA funding now reaches every state, every congressional district, and even most counties — rural and urban — in the United States. Grants fund programs in schools, libraries and military bases . . . .
Visual Arts Center of New Jersey awarded National Endowment for the Arts Grant
Submitted to Independent Press, Summit NJ
Artist Matthew Jensen explores arborglyphs (tree carvings) at the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.
The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey is proud to announce the receipt of a prestigious "Imagine Your Parks" grant award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The grant of $25,000.00 will support the residency and exhibition of artist Matthew Jensen who will bring 4 New Jersey landscapes to life in a museum setting.
The Art Center is the only museum in New Jersey to be awarded an "Imagine Your Parks" grant, and only one of fifty-one "Parks" grants nationwide. "Imagine Your Parks" is a grant initiative from the National Endowment for the Arts created in partnership with the National Park Service to support projects that use the arts to engage people with memorable places and landscapes of the National Park System. Jensen, a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, has exhibited at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, the Brandywine River Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. His work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Jensen will spend 120-days exploring four northern New Jersey landscapes including the Passaic River waterway; Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge; Watchung Reservation and Gateway National Park, Sandy Hook Unit. His explorations begin as walks, and his resulting artwork integrates photography, sculpture, found materials and local history. By bringing visual traces of surrounding landscapes into a museum setting, his work fosters connections between our natural and cultural resources . . . .
The Art Center is the only museum in New Jersey to be awarded an "Imagine Your Parks" grant, and only one of fifty-one "Parks" grants nationwide. "Imagine Your Parks" is a grant initiative from the National Endowment for the Arts created in partnership with the National Park Service to support projects that use the arts to engage people with memorable places and landscapes of the National Park System. Jensen, a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, has exhibited at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, the Brandywine River Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. His work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Jensen will spend 120-days exploring four northern New Jersey landscapes including the Passaic River waterway; Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge; Watchung Reservation and Gateway National Park, Sandy Hook Unit. His explorations begin as walks, and his resulting artwork integrates photography, sculpture, found materials and local history. By bringing visual traces of surrounding landscapes into a museum setting, his work fosters connections between our natural and cultural resources . . . .
SPRING STUDIO has been in SoHo since 1994. Its new home is at 293 Broome Street.
SoHo Artist’s Studio, a Space Detached From Time, Is Forced to Move
By JAMES BARRON NYTimes
Bennett Miller, the director of “Capote,” “Moneyball” and “Foxcatcher,” was explaining the “cluttered magic that this place has” — the place being a dim, dingy room in a basement half a block from that landmark of downtown cool, the brasserie Balthazar.
“It begins the moment you descend these dusty, dirty steps,” he said. “It’s cluttered — the old stools, the junk around the edges. It has a feeling of a time, pre-cellphones and pre-surveillance cameras. You feel like you’ve descended into the SoHo of the ‘70s.”
It is a studio for artists. In the semicircle of tables and easels are beginners, strivers, advancing amateurs, retirees, even some professionals, perhaps graphic artists practicing their figure-drawing skills — and even the occasional movie director — sketching away morning, noon and night . . . .
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Op Art Through a Latin Lens
By KEN JOHNSON NYTimes In the winter of 1965, the Museum of Modern Art opened “The Responsive Eye,” the landmark show that introduced Op Art and related trends to the general public. It was the museum’s most popular exhibition to that date. Now, 51 years later, “The Illusive Eye: An International Inquiry on Kinetic and Op Art” at El Museo del Barrio looks back on that show and finds it wanting. On the face of it, “The Illusive Eye” is a more modest affair than its predecessor, but it’s animated by philosophical ambitions that are exciting to ponder. Presenting 65 works from the 1950s through the 1970s, it’s partly intended to reveal what the MoMA show overlooked: the extent to which Latin American artists contributed to . . . . |
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O'Brien Speaks With Faust on Arts and Education
By Sen Man Pak, CONTRIBUTING WRITER The Harvard Crimson
Around 500 students gathered in Sanders Theatre on Friday for a two-hour-long discussion on arts and education between Drew G. Faust, President of Harvard University, and Conan O’Brien ’85, late-night host, 1985 Harvard College graduate, and former Mather House resident. O’Brien certainly cracked a few jokes—but he also offered more serious advice to students based on his experiences at Harvard and in the entertainment industry.Although he encouraged students to pursue their passions, when asked about the pressure to do something more grandiose with a Harvard education, O’Brien commented that it is best to seek a balance between academic endeavors and the arts. “We don't want all of our best and brightest to be coming up with funny ideas and sketches,” he said. “But I think those things sort themselves out: People that are meant to be doing [creative work] end up doing it" . . . .
By Sen Man Pak, CONTRIBUTING WRITER The Harvard Crimson
Around 500 students gathered in Sanders Theatre on Friday for a two-hour-long discussion on arts and education between Drew G. Faust, President of Harvard University, and Conan O’Brien ’85, late-night host, 1985 Harvard College graduate, and former Mather House resident. O’Brien certainly cracked a few jokes—but he also offered more serious advice to students based on his experiences at Harvard and in the entertainment industry.Although he encouraged students to pursue their passions, when asked about the pressure to do something more grandiose with a Harvard education, O’Brien commented that it is best to seek a balance between academic endeavors and the arts. “We don't want all of our best and brightest to be coming up with funny ideas and sketches,” he said. “But I think those things sort themselves out: People that are meant to be doing [creative work] end up doing it" . . . .
Painting Offered a Different Palette for David Bowie’s Talents
By ROSLYN SULCAS for NYTIMES
LONDON — One day in the early 1990s, Karen Wright, then editor of the British magazine Modern Painters, received a phone call asking if David Bowie could come to dinner with her editorial board. “We arranged to meet at the Groucho Club” in London, Ms. Wright said in a telephone interview. “When I arrived, he was looking at a Picasso catalog, and we immediately began to talk about the images, and then quickly chose a cover for my next magazine.” Mr. Bowie joined the board, and over the next few years he interviewed numerous art world figures, including Balthus, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jeff Koons and Julian Schnabel. During this same period, Mr. Bowie was fervently creating his own art, producing hundreds of paintings, chalk and charcoal drawings, collages of computer-generated images and sculptural objects that began to find their way into auctions and exhibitions. Composer, pop icon, designer, movie star, fashion inspiration, conduit for the avant-garde — Mr. Bowie was all that, and a visual artist and collector, too, who at this particular moment in his life gave as much attention to painting, drawing and sculpture as he did to his music. “He was always passionately interested in art,” said Kevin Cann, author of the 2010 book “Any Day Now: David Bowie: The London Years (1947-1974).” He helped Mr. Bowie set up his London exhibition at the Gallery in Cork Street. “He once told me he had kept all his artwork from school; exercises, layouts, everything” . . . .
By ROSLYN SULCAS for NYTIMES
LONDON — One day in the early 1990s, Karen Wright, then editor of the British magazine Modern Painters, received a phone call asking if David Bowie could come to dinner with her editorial board. “We arranged to meet at the Groucho Club” in London, Ms. Wright said in a telephone interview. “When I arrived, he was looking at a Picasso catalog, and we immediately began to talk about the images, and then quickly chose a cover for my next magazine.” Mr. Bowie joined the board, and over the next few years he interviewed numerous art world figures, including Balthus, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jeff Koons and Julian Schnabel. During this same period, Mr. Bowie was fervently creating his own art, producing hundreds of paintings, chalk and charcoal drawings, collages of computer-generated images and sculptural objects that began to find their way into auctions and exhibitions. Composer, pop icon, designer, movie star, fashion inspiration, conduit for the avant-garde — Mr. Bowie was all that, and a visual artist and collector, too, who at this particular moment in his life gave as much attention to painting, drawing and sculpture as he did to his music. “He was always passionately interested in art,” said Kevin Cann, author of the 2010 book “Any Day Now: David Bowie: The London Years (1947-1974).” He helped Mr. Bowie set up his London exhibition at the Gallery in Cork Street. “He once told me he had kept all his artwork from school; exercises, layouts, everything” . . . .
How to Buy Art If You’re Not Filthy Rich
By Martha C. White TIME
Yes, there's art out there that the 99% can afford — here's how to find it
Earlier this month, a painting sold for a jaw-dropping $170.4 million, the second-highest price for a painting ever sold at auction and one of only 10 artworks that have cracked the $100 million mark.
Big sales may grab all the headlines, but fortunately for the rest of us, collecting art doesn’t have to be a pursuit reserved for the 1%. A new crop of online marketplace-slash-galleries are making art of all kinds more accessible, so it’s easier to learn about, look at, and buy pieces you love. Here are what art experts say are the most important points to consider before you buy.
Buy what you like. This is the cardinal rule. Yes, you can aim to purchase works that you hope will increase in value, but your focus should be on aesthetic rather than monetary appreciation. If you don’t know what you like, start by looking around. “We recommend that even the casual collector takes a weekend afternoon and visits his or her local museum to see what resonates,” says Thomas Galbraith, managing director of auctions at Paddle8.com.
Know the difference between originals and prints. An original is just that: there’s only one. But some works, particularly photos, might be produced in multiples. “If you’re talking about prints, you need to know the difference between a limited-edition print, where there will only be ten, let’s say, and then that’s it, and an open edition print, which can be printed forever,” says Rebecca Wilson, chief curator and vice president of art advisory at SaatchiArt.com. With a print, she says . . . .
By Martha C. White TIME
Yes, there's art out there that the 99% can afford — here's how to find it
Earlier this month, a painting sold for a jaw-dropping $170.4 million, the second-highest price for a painting ever sold at auction and one of only 10 artworks that have cracked the $100 million mark.
Big sales may grab all the headlines, but fortunately for the rest of us, collecting art doesn’t have to be a pursuit reserved for the 1%. A new crop of online marketplace-slash-galleries are making art of all kinds more accessible, so it’s easier to learn about, look at, and buy pieces you love. Here are what art experts say are the most important points to consider before you buy.
Buy what you like. This is the cardinal rule. Yes, you can aim to purchase works that you hope will increase in value, but your focus should be on aesthetic rather than monetary appreciation. If you don’t know what you like, start by looking around. “We recommend that even the casual collector takes a weekend afternoon and visits his or her local museum to see what resonates,” says Thomas Galbraith, managing director of auctions at Paddle8.com.
Know the difference between originals and prints. An original is just that: there’s only one. But some works, particularly photos, might be produced in multiples. “If you’re talking about prints, you need to know the difference between a limited-edition print, where there will only be ten, let’s say, and then that’s it, and an open edition print, which can be printed forever,” says Rebecca Wilson, chief curator and vice president of art advisory at SaatchiArt.com. With a print, she says . . . .
"Spider," a 1997 bronze by Louise Bourgeois, is estimated to sell for $25 million to $35 million next week at Christie's.
What to Watch in New York’s Fall Art Auctions
By DANIEL McDERMON NYTimes
It has been a banner year for the international art auction houses. Last November, the big fall auctions in New York saw sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s top $2 billion in two weeks. In May, Christie’s sold $1 billion worth of art in just three days. Included in that total was a 1955 Picasso, “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’),” which went for $179.4 million with fees — a record for any artwork at auction.
So expectations are high going into this auction season in New York, which starts Wednesday night at Sotheby’s. Hundreds of Impressionist, Modern and contemporary artworks will be up for bid at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips, and about $2 billion worth of art could change hands, although some analysts have suggested that the market is overheated.
Here’s what you need to know:
The Major Players:
Total sales in 2014 at Christie’s ($7.7 billion) outpaced Sotheby’s ($6 billion), and the two battle year-round for high-profile consignments of art, the best of which is sold during two weeks of auctions held in New York in May and November. (Both houses have major auctions in London and locations around the world.) A third house, Phillips, specializes in contemporary art, but at a smaller scale . . . .
By DANIEL McDERMON NYTimes
It has been a banner year for the international art auction houses. Last November, the big fall auctions in New York saw sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s top $2 billion in two weeks. In May, Christie’s sold $1 billion worth of art in just three days. Included in that total was a 1955 Picasso, “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’),” which went for $179.4 million with fees — a record for any artwork at auction.
So expectations are high going into this auction season in New York, which starts Wednesday night at Sotheby’s. Hundreds of Impressionist, Modern and contemporary artworks will be up for bid at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips, and about $2 billion worth of art could change hands, although some analysts have suggested that the market is overheated.
Here’s what you need to know:
The Major Players:
Total sales in 2014 at Christie’s ($7.7 billion) outpaced Sotheby’s ($6 billion), and the two battle year-round for high-profile consignments of art, the best of which is sold during two weeks of auctions held in New York in May and November. (Both houses have major auctions in London and locations around the world.) A third house, Phillips, specializes in contemporary art, but at a smaller scale . . . .
Harvard Medical School Launches Arts Initiative
By Melanie Y. Fu and Jiwon Joung, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
After years of planning, Harvard Medical School this fall launched a formal initiative to integrate the arts and humanities into the traditionally hard-sciences focused campus in an effort to cultivate more empathetic medical professionals.
The “Arts&Humanities@HMS” initiative— planning for which began in 2011— supports the arts in part by raising money to create fellowships for Medical School affiliates interested in the intersection of art and medicine. The initiative also looks to create more opportunities for students to explore music, visual arts, and drama by hosting events, including case narrative readings and performances by the Longwood Symphony Orchestra.
The initiative, which the school approved in June, comes at a time when universities across the nation are reimagining medical education as a more holistic growth process. For example, increasing numbers of students are taking gap years before medical school to reflect on their goals. And this fall, the Medical School rolled out a drastic overhaul of its curriculum, which focuses on “active learning” teaching methods like flipped classrooms . . . .
By Melanie Y. Fu and Jiwon Joung, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
After years of planning, Harvard Medical School this fall launched a formal initiative to integrate the arts and humanities into the traditionally hard-sciences focused campus in an effort to cultivate more empathetic medical professionals.
The “Arts&Humanities@HMS” initiative— planning for which began in 2011— supports the arts in part by raising money to create fellowships for Medical School affiliates interested in the intersection of art and medicine. The initiative also looks to create more opportunities for students to explore music, visual arts, and drama by hosting events, including case narrative readings and performances by the Longwood Symphony Orchestra.
The initiative, which the school approved in June, comes at a time when universities across the nation are reimagining medical education as a more holistic growth process. For example, increasing numbers of students are taking gap years before medical school to reflect on their goals. And this fall, the Medical School rolled out a drastic overhaul of its curriculum, which focuses on “active learning” teaching methods like flipped classrooms . . . .
Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot "A Morning. The Dance of the Nymphs" 1850
‘If It Doesn’t Dance, It’s Not Corot’
By Laurie Hurwitz ARTNews
A family steeped in Corot uses connoisseurship and instinct to distinguish the real paintings from copies and fakes
Back in 1953, ARTnews reported on the French saying that “Corot painted 2,000 canvases, 5,000 of which are in America.” While this is an obvious exaggeration, it is well known that—as the world’s leading Corot scholar, Martin Dieterle, puts it—Corot “has the distinction of being the most frequently forged painter in history.”
Just how many Corots were actually painted by Corot? Dieterle, 77, has been pondering this question for decades. In his office in a modest town house on a tree-lined cobblestone passage in central Paris, he has been working with his stepdaughter, Claire Lebeau, to update a computer databank they have been compiling for two decades that catalogues all Corot’s paintings as well as every known copy or fake they have ever come across.
Dieterle is a fifth-generation Corot expert: Jules Dieterle, his great-great-grandfather, was one of the painter’s most intimate associates. His great-grandfather, Charles Dieterle, spent a decade in Corot’s atelier as a student and factotum; Charles’s wife, Marie Dieterle, a successful landscape and cattle painter, was also the artist’s close friend. Martin’s grandfather, Jean Dieterle, annotated the catalogue raisonné of Corot’s work, and his father, Pierre, was also a renowned Corot scholar.
Today, Dieterle and Lebeau receive requests from all over the world to examine and authenticate artworks—more than l00 in the first six weeks of 2012. They have already classified more than half of those works as fakes, while some 20 “maybes” are still under consideration. In general, they say, about 80 percent or more of the works they examine are not original Corots.
Corot (1796–1875) was extremely prolific: he produced some 3,000 paintings and roughly the same number of drawings, Dieterle says. Even today, real Corots still come to light “in someone’s attic or basement, at a flea market or estate sale.”
Dieterle and Lebeau deliberate and debate the qualities of each work submitted to them, often bringing in other specialists. The decision to validate a work, Dieterle says, rests on three elements. First is “a sense of responsibility” to the artist. Next is an evaluation of the . . . .
By Laurie Hurwitz ARTNews
A family steeped in Corot uses connoisseurship and instinct to distinguish the real paintings from copies and fakes
Back in 1953, ARTnews reported on the French saying that “Corot painted 2,000 canvases, 5,000 of which are in America.” While this is an obvious exaggeration, it is well known that—as the world’s leading Corot scholar, Martin Dieterle, puts it—Corot “has the distinction of being the most frequently forged painter in history.”
Just how many Corots were actually painted by Corot? Dieterle, 77, has been pondering this question for decades. In his office in a modest town house on a tree-lined cobblestone passage in central Paris, he has been working with his stepdaughter, Claire Lebeau, to update a computer databank they have been compiling for two decades that catalogues all Corot’s paintings as well as every known copy or fake they have ever come across.
Dieterle is a fifth-generation Corot expert: Jules Dieterle, his great-great-grandfather, was one of the painter’s most intimate associates. His great-grandfather, Charles Dieterle, spent a decade in Corot’s atelier as a student and factotum; Charles’s wife, Marie Dieterle, a successful landscape and cattle painter, was also the artist’s close friend. Martin’s grandfather, Jean Dieterle, annotated the catalogue raisonné of Corot’s work, and his father, Pierre, was also a renowned Corot scholar.
Today, Dieterle and Lebeau receive requests from all over the world to examine and authenticate artworks—more than l00 in the first six weeks of 2012. They have already classified more than half of those works as fakes, while some 20 “maybes” are still under consideration. In general, they say, about 80 percent or more of the works they examine are not original Corots.
Corot (1796–1875) was extremely prolific: he produced some 3,000 paintings and roughly the same number of drawings, Dieterle says. Even today, real Corots still come to light “in someone’s attic or basement, at a flea market or estate sale.”
Dieterle and Lebeau deliberate and debate the qualities of each work submitted to them, often bringing in other specialists. The decision to validate a work, Dieterle says, rests on three elements. First is “a sense of responsibility” to the artist. Next is an evaluation of the . . . .
Burn, 1964, by Bridget Riley. Photograph: Karsten Schubert/The Courtauld Gallery
Bridget Riley review – pounding psychedelic art that will make you see the world differently
Britain’s most revolutionary painter joins the dots between Georges Seurat’s pointillist paintings and her own utopian explosions of joy in an exhibition of pure genius
By JONATHAN JONES The Guardian
Looking from Bridget Riley’s mind-boggling 1960s paintings to Georges Seurat’s calm river scene in The Bridge at Courbevoie, painted in 1886-7, is not only thought-provoking but puts your eyes to the test. After looking at her pounding psychedelic art, I could barely see the Seurat. I had to let my eyes readjust before I could properly make out its misfits and fishermen on the banks of the Seine, let alone appreciate the play of tiny dots that creates its pointillist shimmer.
Riley is the most revolutionary British painter of modern times. Her paintings don’t merely hang on the wall: they warp and pulsate, sucking your imagination into unreal worlds of impossible depth and hallucinatory colour. What was she on when she came up with her dangerous vision?
Burn, 1964, by Bridget Riley. Photograph: Karsten Schubert/The Courtauld Gallery It turns out she was simply looking at a painting by Seurat, the postimpressionist who created a new way of seeing the world as a field of coloured dots. The Courtauld Gallery owns The Bridge at Courbevoie, one of Seurat’s still, silent masterpieces, and in 1959 the young Riley set out to make a copy of it. It still hangs in her studio, which shows how crucial Seurat, who died in 1891 in his early 30s, has remained to her thinking about art. Riley has also called her copy – which she has lent to this fascinating little exhibition – a “tool”, revealing what her and Seurat have in common: they both practice art as an optical science.
AdvertisementThis intense exhibition – just one room hung with stunning art – is an antidote to all the loose talk these days about contemporary art interacting with the “masters”. From shows of Rubens or Botticelli that are top-loaded with contemporary art to the Frieze Masters art fair, the art world likes to claim continuity and connection between old and new. All too often, such claims are insubstantial. But Riley really did forge her optical style by studying Seurat, so this is a genuine encounter between old and new . . . .
Britain’s most revolutionary painter joins the dots between Georges Seurat’s pointillist paintings and her own utopian explosions of joy in an exhibition of pure genius
By JONATHAN JONES The Guardian
Looking from Bridget Riley’s mind-boggling 1960s paintings to Georges Seurat’s calm river scene in The Bridge at Courbevoie, painted in 1886-7, is not only thought-provoking but puts your eyes to the test. After looking at her pounding psychedelic art, I could barely see the Seurat. I had to let my eyes readjust before I could properly make out its misfits and fishermen on the banks of the Seine, let alone appreciate the play of tiny dots that creates its pointillist shimmer.
Riley is the most revolutionary British painter of modern times. Her paintings don’t merely hang on the wall: they warp and pulsate, sucking your imagination into unreal worlds of impossible depth and hallucinatory colour. What was she on when she came up with her dangerous vision?
Burn, 1964, by Bridget Riley. Photograph: Karsten Schubert/The Courtauld Gallery It turns out she was simply looking at a painting by Seurat, the postimpressionist who created a new way of seeing the world as a field of coloured dots. The Courtauld Gallery owns The Bridge at Courbevoie, one of Seurat’s still, silent masterpieces, and in 1959 the young Riley set out to make a copy of it. It still hangs in her studio, which shows how crucial Seurat, who died in 1891 in his early 30s, has remained to her thinking about art. Riley has also called her copy – which she has lent to this fascinating little exhibition – a “tool”, revealing what her and Seurat have in common: they both practice art as an optical science.
AdvertisementThis intense exhibition – just one room hung with stunning art – is an antidote to all the loose talk these days about contemporary art interacting with the “masters”. From shows of Rubens or Botticelli that are top-loaded with contemporary art to the Frieze Masters art fair, the art world likes to claim continuity and connection between old and new. All too often, such claims are insubstantial. But Riley really did forge her optical style by studying Seurat, so this is a genuine encounter between old and new . . . .
“Woman With Hat,” made of painted sheet metal in the early 1960s, is in “Picasso Sculpture” at the Museum of Modern Art.
Review: Picasso, Completely Himself in 3 Dimensions
By ROBERTA SMITH NYTimes
Many exhibitions are good, some are great and a very few are tantamount to works of art in their own right — for their clarity, lyricism and accumulative wisdom.
The Museum of Modern Art’s staggering “Picasso Sculpture” is in the third category. Large, ambitious and unavoidably, dizzyingly peripatetic, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event. It sustains its vision through a ring of 11 grand spaces on the museum’s fourth floor, tracing the serial genre-bending forays into three dimensions wrought by this 20th-century titan of painting. Each bout lasted a few years and was different from the one before, and each has been given its own gallery, more or less.
With one stunning exception — the voluptuous saturnine Marie-Thérèse Walter — the women in Picasso’s life don’t herald stylistic changes in the round as they tend to on canvas. In sculpture, the materials become the muses.
The show, which opens on Monday (September 14, 2015–February 7, 2016), is the latest in a string of landmark Pablo Picasso exhibitions for which the Modern has been justly famous since 1939. It is full of loans that perhaps only this museum has the clout to secure, including about 50 pieces from its collaborator, the Musée Picasso in Paris. The approximately 140 sculptures here were made between 1902 and 1964; encompass at least 10 media — among them wood, plaster, sheet metal, clay, beach-smoothed pebbles — and, in assemblage, all manner of found objects great and small. The galleries are dotted with works never before exhibited in New York, and reunite related efforts not seen together since they were in Picasso’s studio.
The show’s two grandest, most thrilling reunions are the gathering in its second gallery of all six “Glass of Absinthe” sculptures of 1914, those tiny weirdly Keatonesque charmers of painted bronze that can suggest drunken faces and profiles; and in its fourth, the five monumental tumescent heads in white plaster of Marie-Thérèse, more than have ever been shown together, at least in the United States. Seen from the vantage point of the absinthe glasses, the first Marie-Thérèse bust looms in the distance, as if at the end of a garden . . . .
By ROBERTA SMITH NYTimes
Many exhibitions are good, some are great and a very few are tantamount to works of art in their own right — for their clarity, lyricism and accumulative wisdom.
The Museum of Modern Art’s staggering “Picasso Sculpture” is in the third category. Large, ambitious and unavoidably, dizzyingly peripatetic, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event. It sustains its vision through a ring of 11 grand spaces on the museum’s fourth floor, tracing the serial genre-bending forays into three dimensions wrought by this 20th-century titan of painting. Each bout lasted a few years and was different from the one before, and each has been given its own gallery, more or less.
With one stunning exception — the voluptuous saturnine Marie-Thérèse Walter — the women in Picasso’s life don’t herald stylistic changes in the round as they tend to on canvas. In sculpture, the materials become the muses.
The show, which opens on Monday (September 14, 2015–February 7, 2016), is the latest in a string of landmark Pablo Picasso exhibitions for which the Modern has been justly famous since 1939. It is full of loans that perhaps only this museum has the clout to secure, including about 50 pieces from its collaborator, the Musée Picasso in Paris. The approximately 140 sculptures here were made between 1902 and 1964; encompass at least 10 media — among them wood, plaster, sheet metal, clay, beach-smoothed pebbles — and, in assemblage, all manner of found objects great and small. The galleries are dotted with works never before exhibited in New York, and reunite related efforts not seen together since they were in Picasso’s studio.
The show’s two grandest, most thrilling reunions are the gathering in its second gallery of all six “Glass of Absinthe” sculptures of 1914, those tiny weirdly Keatonesque charmers of painted bronze that can suggest drunken faces and profiles; and in its fourth, the five monumental tumescent heads in white plaster of Marie-Thérèse, more than have ever been shown together, at least in the United States. Seen from the vantage point of the absinthe glasses, the first Marie-Thérèse bust looms in the distance, as if at the end of a garden . . . .
Blurring the Museum-Gallery Divide
By HILARIE M. SHEETS NYTimes
Ever since Mark Rosenthal left his job as head of 20th-century art at the National Gallery in Washington to become an independent curator, museums around the country have sought his talents. Now art galleries are trying to hire him, too — but not just for his scholarship.
“There was a big expectation,” Mr. Rosenthal said, “that I could deliver works for sale.”
Recently one gallery approached him to organize a show of a major artist he had worked with before. Mr. Rosenthal said he felt pressured to talk collectors into selling prized work so the gallery could broker the deal — something nonprofit museums do not do. Preferring to choose pieces for an exhibition purely by quality, he declined the gallery’s overture. “There’s a belief that museum curators or directors have more entree to certain collectors than the dealer does, because of past associations,” Mr. Rosenthal said.
What were hard and fast boundaries between commercial galleries and museums a decade ago no longer exist. Top galleries eager to woo blue-chip artists, collectors and a more diverse public are increasingly turning to big-name museum professionals to mount exhibitions of depth that would look at home at the Met or the Museum of Modern Art. But in some cases that scholarship may be in the service of business . . . .
By HILARIE M. SHEETS NYTimes
Ever since Mark Rosenthal left his job as head of 20th-century art at the National Gallery in Washington to become an independent curator, museums around the country have sought his talents. Now art galleries are trying to hire him, too — but not just for his scholarship.
“There was a big expectation,” Mr. Rosenthal said, “that I could deliver works for sale.”
Recently one gallery approached him to organize a show of a major artist he had worked with before. Mr. Rosenthal said he felt pressured to talk collectors into selling prized work so the gallery could broker the deal — something nonprofit museums do not do. Preferring to choose pieces for an exhibition purely by quality, he declined the gallery’s overture. “There’s a belief that museum curators or directors have more entree to certain collectors than the dealer does, because of past associations,” Mr. Rosenthal said.
What were hard and fast boundaries between commercial galleries and museums a decade ago no longer exist. Top galleries eager to woo blue-chip artists, collectors and a more diverse public are increasingly turning to big-name museum professionals to mount exhibitions of depth that would look at home at the Met or the Museum of Modern Art. But in some cases that scholarship may be in the service of business . . . .
Van Gogh’s “Rain-Auvers” (1890), with its slashing diagonal lines, was finished just days before his death.
Review: ‘Van Gogh and Nature,’ Exploring the Outside World in High Relief
By HOLLAND COTTER NYTimes
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Someday, museums will run out of themes for packaging van Gogh exhibitions, and that’s fine. He’s one of those artists you just want to spend time with, no pretext needed, because he’s some kind of instant soul mate, startling, difficult, vulnerable, always willing to make so much of himself available to you.
Still, a theme, even a broad one, can be useful in directing us to aspects of an artist’s life and work we might not otherwise zero in on. Such is the case with “Van Gogh and Nature,” which opens on Sunday at the Clark Art Institute here and qualifies as one of the summer’s choice art attractions . . .
. . “Nature is very, very beautiful here,” van Gogh wrote to his younger brother Theo in the summer of 1890, a few weeks before he took his own life. He was referring to the landscape of olive groves and grain fields surrounding the town of Auvers-sur-Oise northwest of Paris, where he had moved, after a hospitalization, to be closer to family. He had written almost identical words in other letters, from other places, over the years. Natural beauty was the first thing he noticed wherever he went.
Photo Van Gogh’s “Rain-Auvers” (1890), with its slashing diagonal lines, was finished just days before his death. Credit National Museum of Wales; Stewart Cairns for The New York Times He grew up with it. His father was a Dutch Reformed minister in southern Holland. The parish was rural: farmland, marshland, forest. The parsonage came with a sizable garden. In a memoir published in 1910, one of van Gogh’s sisters remembered him as a child avidly collecting insect specimens, studying plants, keeping track of birds. As a young adult apprenticed to an art dealer in London, he sent letters home about springtime in the city, describing not the people he encountered, or the architecture, but the flowers — “lilacs and hawthorns and laburnums” — he found in parks. To Theo, already destined to become a dealer, he wrote, “Painters understand nature and teach us to see” . . . .
By HOLLAND COTTER NYTimes
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Someday, museums will run out of themes for packaging van Gogh exhibitions, and that’s fine. He’s one of those artists you just want to spend time with, no pretext needed, because he’s some kind of instant soul mate, startling, difficult, vulnerable, always willing to make so much of himself available to you.
Still, a theme, even a broad one, can be useful in directing us to aspects of an artist’s life and work we might not otherwise zero in on. Such is the case with “Van Gogh and Nature,” which opens on Sunday at the Clark Art Institute here and qualifies as one of the summer’s choice art attractions . . .
. . “Nature is very, very beautiful here,” van Gogh wrote to his younger brother Theo in the summer of 1890, a few weeks before he took his own life. He was referring to the landscape of olive groves and grain fields surrounding the town of Auvers-sur-Oise northwest of Paris, where he had moved, after a hospitalization, to be closer to family. He had written almost identical words in other letters, from other places, over the years. Natural beauty was the first thing he noticed wherever he went.
Photo Van Gogh’s “Rain-Auvers” (1890), with its slashing diagonal lines, was finished just days before his death. Credit National Museum of Wales; Stewart Cairns for The New York Times He grew up with it. His father was a Dutch Reformed minister in southern Holland. The parish was rural: farmland, marshland, forest. The parsonage came with a sizable garden. In a memoir published in 1910, one of van Gogh’s sisters remembered him as a child avidly collecting insect specimens, studying plants, keeping track of birds. As a young adult apprenticed to an art dealer in London, he sent letters home about springtime in the city, describing not the people he encountered, or the architecture, but the flowers — “lilacs and hawthorns and laburnums” — he found in parks. To Theo, already destined to become a dealer, he wrote, “Painters understand nature and teach us to see” . . . .
Hermann Zapf, 96, Dies; Designer Whose Letters Are Found Everywhere
By BRUCE WEBER NYTimes
Hermann Zapf, whose calling in life — “to create beautiful letters,” as one of his students put it — found expression in lush, steady-handed calligraphy and in subtly inventive typefaces that have brought words to readers on paper, on signposts, on monuments and on computer screens for more than half a century, died on Thursday at his home in Darmstadt, Germany. He was 96.
Jerry Kelly, a leading American typographer, calligrapher and type designer who was a friend and former student of Mr. Zapf, confirmed the death.
In the world of type design — an exacting, arcane craft that is underappreciated for its impact on how people communicate and receive communication — Mr. Zapf (pronounced DZAHFF) was a giant. Prolific and versatile, he created around 200 typefaces in numerous alphabets, including Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic and Cherokee, spanning the eras of metal typesetting, phototypesetting and digital typesetting. His typefaces include:
Palatino, his breakthrough font, a much-copied classical Roman design adapted for the 20th century. It is available on Microsoft Word and from Linotype and other sources and is being used by Abercrombie & Fitch for its corporate logo . . . .
By BRUCE WEBER NYTimes
Hermann Zapf, whose calling in life — “to create beautiful letters,” as one of his students put it — found expression in lush, steady-handed calligraphy and in subtly inventive typefaces that have brought words to readers on paper, on signposts, on monuments and on computer screens for more than half a century, died on Thursday at his home in Darmstadt, Germany. He was 96.
Jerry Kelly, a leading American typographer, calligrapher and type designer who was a friend and former student of Mr. Zapf, confirmed the death.
In the world of type design — an exacting, arcane craft that is underappreciated for its impact on how people communicate and receive communication — Mr. Zapf (pronounced DZAHFF) was a giant. Prolific and versatile, he created around 200 typefaces in numerous alphabets, including Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic and Cherokee, spanning the eras of metal typesetting, phototypesetting and digital typesetting. His typefaces include:
Palatino, his breakthrough font, a much-copied classical Roman design adapted for the 20th century. It is available on Microsoft Word and from Linotype and other sources and is being used by Abercrombie & Fitch for its corporate logo . . . .
Stanford University's Cantor Arts Center acquires an early Edward Hopper painting "New York Corner," 1913
By Robin Wander Stanford News
L.A. Cicero Connie Wolf, director of the Cantor, and Alexander Nemerov, professor of art history, view New York Corner (Corner Saloon), 1913, by Edward Hopper.
The Cantor Arts Center has announced the major new acquisition of a painting by Edward Hopper, New York Corner (Corner Saloon), 1913. One of Hopper's early paintings, the oil on canvas was created when Hopper was just 31 and still struggling to establish himself, but it heralds the artist's influential career and prominence as one of America's great realist painters. When it was first exhibited in New York shortly after it was completed, the critics praised it as a "perfect visualization of a New York atmosphere" and for its "completeness of expression."
Alexander Nemerov, the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University and the incoming chair of the Department of Art & Art History, said of the painting, "This great picture that we now have in our collection gets singled out as a key – perhaps even a first – painting he made in his representative style, the style that would make him famous and so influential. It is remarkable that here on campus we now have this painting that started it all."
Edward Hopper is one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century. He was born in Nyack, New York, in 1882 and died in Manhattan in 1967. His powerful and iconic images of cityscapes, landscapes, seascapes and solitary figures speak to the rugged individualism of American culture in both its beauty and isolation. His impact on the imagination of generations of artists, filmmakers and writers remains strong.
American artist Richard Diebenkorn studied Hopper's work when he was a student at Stanford and his reflection on that time in his life is captured by Jane Livingston in her essay for the catalog The Art of Richard Diebenkorn. "I embraced Hopper completely … It was his use of light and shade and the atmosphere … kind of drenched, saturated with mood, and its kind of austerity … It was the kind of work that just seemed made for me. I looked at it and it was mine," Diebenkorn said . . . .
By Robin Wander Stanford News
L.A. Cicero Connie Wolf, director of the Cantor, and Alexander Nemerov, professor of art history, view New York Corner (Corner Saloon), 1913, by Edward Hopper.
The Cantor Arts Center has announced the major new acquisition of a painting by Edward Hopper, New York Corner (Corner Saloon), 1913. One of Hopper's early paintings, the oil on canvas was created when Hopper was just 31 and still struggling to establish himself, but it heralds the artist's influential career and prominence as one of America's great realist painters. When it was first exhibited in New York shortly after it was completed, the critics praised it as a "perfect visualization of a New York atmosphere" and for its "completeness of expression."
Alexander Nemerov, the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University and the incoming chair of the Department of Art & Art History, said of the painting, "This great picture that we now have in our collection gets singled out as a key – perhaps even a first – painting he made in his representative style, the style that would make him famous and so influential. It is remarkable that here on campus we now have this painting that started it all."
Edward Hopper is one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century. He was born in Nyack, New York, in 1882 and died in Manhattan in 1967. His powerful and iconic images of cityscapes, landscapes, seascapes and solitary figures speak to the rugged individualism of American culture in both its beauty and isolation. His impact on the imagination of generations of artists, filmmakers and writers remains strong.
American artist Richard Diebenkorn studied Hopper's work when he was a student at Stanford and his reflection on that time in his life is captured by Jane Livingston in her essay for the catalog The Art of Richard Diebenkorn. "I embraced Hopper completely … It was his use of light and shade and the atmosphere … kind of drenched, saturated with mood, and its kind of austerity … It was the kind of work that just seemed made for me. I looked at it and it was mine," Diebenkorn said . . . .
Frida Kahlo around 1950. The Mexican artist, who died in 1954, is the subject of renewed interest in books and exhibitions.
Frida Kahlo Is Having a Moment
By GUY TREBAY NYTimes
She was a genius before she was a refrigerator magnet, an ace manipulator of society and media nearly a century before social media came into existence. Born in 1907, dead at 47, Frida Kahlo achieved celebrity even in her brief lifetime that extended far beyond Mexico’s borders, although nothing like the cult status that would eventually make her the mother of the selfie, her indelible image recognizable everywhere.
Yet, despite the many biographies, documentaries and biopics, there remains much to learn about this often misunderstood artist . . . .
By GUY TREBAY NYTimes
She was a genius before she was a refrigerator magnet, an ace manipulator of society and media nearly a century before social media came into existence. Born in 1907, dead at 47, Frida Kahlo achieved celebrity even in her brief lifetime that extended far beyond Mexico’s borders, although nothing like the cult status that would eventually make her the mother of the selfie, her indelible image recognizable everywhere.
Yet, despite the many biographies, documentaries and biopics, there remains much to learn about this often misunderstood artist . . . .
A series of 60 paintings by Jacob Lawrence captures the journeys of millions of African-Americans who left the Jim Crow South in search of better lives elsewhere.
Painting The 'Epic Drama' Of The Great Migration: The Work Of Jacob Lawrence
By Hansi Lo Wang NPR
There's no historical marker outside Jacob Lawrence's childhood home in New York City's Harlem neighborhood.
But Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, has an idea of what it might say: "Here lived one of the 20th century's most influential visual artists, a man named Jacob Lawrence, who was a child of southern migrants."
The son of a cook from South Carolina and a domestic worker from Virginia, Lawrence was born in Atlantic City in 1917, but it was his years in Harlem that shaped some of his most iconic work . . . .
By Hansi Lo Wang NPR
There's no historical marker outside Jacob Lawrence's childhood home in New York City's Harlem neighborhood.
But Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, has an idea of what it might say: "Here lived one of the 20th century's most influential visual artists, a man named Jacob Lawrence, who was a child of southern migrants."
The son of a cook from South Carolina and a domestic worker from Virginia, Lawrence was born in Atlantic City in 1917, but it was his years in Harlem that shaped some of his most iconic work . . . .
Venice Biennale Represents Rebalancing in the Art World
By Colleen Barry Associated Press
A Nigerian art critic and museum director is the first African to curate the Biennale contemporary art fair that opens Saturday for its seven-month run, while female artists are representing more countries than ever in national pavilions — trends seen as an informal rebalancing in the art world.
There's Joan Jonas for the United States, Fiona Hall for Australia, Irina Nakhova for Russia, Sarah Lucas for Great Britain, Chiharu Shiota for Japan, Pamela Rosenkranz for Switzerland and Camille Norment for Norway. And those women are all from the more established Biennale participants in the Giardini, around one-third of the 89 national pavilions.
The prominence of women in the national pavilions — which along with the main show curated by Okwui Enwezor comprise the 56th International Art Exhibition — may be coincidence. Still, the force of the female numbers is gaining notice as somehow tapping into a zeitgeist and challenging the notion of the art world as being male dominated.
"I think it is wonderful so many women are representing countries this year. I think it is great," Jonas said, sitting outside the U.S. pavilion — where she had just been approached by a woman who thanked her for giving hope to female artists.
Jonas started her artistic career as a sculptor in the 1960s before moving into performance art and becoming an early adapter to video in the 1970s . . . .
By Colleen Barry Associated Press
A Nigerian art critic and museum director is the first African to curate the Biennale contemporary art fair that opens Saturday for its seven-month run, while female artists are representing more countries than ever in national pavilions — trends seen as an informal rebalancing in the art world.
There's Joan Jonas for the United States, Fiona Hall for Australia, Irina Nakhova for Russia, Sarah Lucas for Great Britain, Chiharu Shiota for Japan, Pamela Rosenkranz for Switzerland and Camille Norment for Norway. And those women are all from the more established Biennale participants in the Giardini, around one-third of the 89 national pavilions.
The prominence of women in the national pavilions — which along with the main show curated by Okwui Enwezor comprise the 56th International Art Exhibition — may be coincidence. Still, the force of the female numbers is gaining notice as somehow tapping into a zeitgeist and challenging the notion of the art world as being male dominated.
"I think it is wonderful so many women are representing countries this year. I think it is great," Jonas said, sitting outside the U.S. pavilion — where she had just been approached by a woman who thanked her for giving hope to female artists.
Jonas started her artistic career as a sculptor in the 1960s before moving into performance art and becoming an early adapter to video in the 1970s . . . .
Why aren’t American museums doing more to return Nazi-looted art?
By Elizabeth Campbell Karlsgodt Fortune
In museums across the US there are works of art with provenance gaps from the Nazi era, signaling a need for ongoing research of rightful ownership.
Helen Mirren’s latest film, Woman in Gold, tells a true story of an arts battle. Mirren stars as Maria Altmann, a naturalized US citizen who sues the Austrian government to recover a glittering, golden portrait of her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, painted by Viennese art nouveau master Gustav Klimt and looted from her family’s home by the Nazis.
Justice prevails through pressure imposed by US courts: the portrait of Adele finds a welcoming new home in America.
While Woman in Gold is a feel-good, triumphant tale for American audiences, it’s important to note that the country’s own art museums still have work to do to ensure justice for Holocaust victims. The story of this one painting doesn’t mitigate the fact that at least 100,000 works of art confiscated by the Nazis haven’t been returned to rightful owners.
In museums across the US there are paintings, sculptures and other works of art with provenance gaps from the Nazi era, signaling a need for ongoing research into rightful ownership . . . .
By Elizabeth Campbell Karlsgodt Fortune
In museums across the US there are works of art with provenance gaps from the Nazi era, signaling a need for ongoing research of rightful ownership.
Helen Mirren’s latest film, Woman in Gold, tells a true story of an arts battle. Mirren stars as Maria Altmann, a naturalized US citizen who sues the Austrian government to recover a glittering, golden portrait of her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, painted by Viennese art nouveau master Gustav Klimt and looted from her family’s home by the Nazis.
Justice prevails through pressure imposed by US courts: the portrait of Adele finds a welcoming new home in America.
While Woman in Gold is a feel-good, triumphant tale for American audiences, it’s important to note that the country’s own art museums still have work to do to ensure justice for Holocaust victims. The story of this one painting doesn’t mitigate the fact that at least 100,000 works of art confiscated by the Nazis haven’t been returned to rightful owners.
In museums across the US there are paintings, sculptures and other works of art with provenance gaps from the Nazi era, signaling a need for ongoing research into rightful ownership . . . .
Renzo Piano's vision for the new Whitney has been carefully thought out; it creates a stunning, functional space to display contemporary artwork.
The Whitney Museum, Soon to Open Its New Home, Searches for American Identity
By Carol Vogel NYTimes
When the Whitney Museum of American Art opens its new building in Manhattan’s meatpacking district on May 1, it’s the big things everyone will notice first: the sweeping views west to the Hudson River; the romantic silhouettes of Manhattan’s wooden water towers; the four outdoor terraces for presenting sculptures, performances and movie screenings; and the tiered profile of its steel-paneled facade, intentionally reminiscent of the Whitney’s Modernist, granite-clad Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue, which had been the museum’s home since 1966.
Its new digs, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, also offer commodious interior spaces: 50,000 square feet of galleries, unencumbered by structural columns, and huge elevators that are themselves immersive environments, the work of the artist Richard Artschwager.
“The game changer is the space,” said Donna De Salvo, the Whitney’s chief curator, standing in one of the raw galleries on a recent wintry afternoon as workmen were erecting walls for the opening show . . . . .
. . . . “When we were making the selections, we knew the entire collection would be online,” Ms. Miller said, where “the public could see everything, which meant selections for the handbook could be slightly more adventurous. And in some cases we made a slightly bold call, like including a poster created by the Guerrilla Girls that is a comment on the percentage of women in the 1987 Biennial.”
Rather than just have one image on the cover, the handbook is a mosaic of work by artists including Asco, Hopper, Ms. Kusama, Alice Neel, Jack Goldstein and Peter Hujar. Like the new Whitney itself, Ms. Miller said, it is intended to be a reflection of “the melting pot of what American is and what art making is today.”
By Carol Vogel NYTimes
When the Whitney Museum of American Art opens its new building in Manhattan’s meatpacking district on May 1, it’s the big things everyone will notice first: the sweeping views west to the Hudson River; the romantic silhouettes of Manhattan’s wooden water towers; the four outdoor terraces for presenting sculptures, performances and movie screenings; and the tiered profile of its steel-paneled facade, intentionally reminiscent of the Whitney’s Modernist, granite-clad Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue, which had been the museum’s home since 1966.
Its new digs, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, also offer commodious interior spaces: 50,000 square feet of galleries, unencumbered by structural columns, and huge elevators that are themselves immersive environments, the work of the artist Richard Artschwager.
“The game changer is the space,” said Donna De Salvo, the Whitney’s chief curator, standing in one of the raw galleries on a recent wintry afternoon as workmen were erecting walls for the opening show . . . . .
. . . . “When we were making the selections, we knew the entire collection would be online,” Ms. Miller said, where “the public could see everything, which meant selections for the handbook could be slightly more adventurous. And in some cases we made a slightly bold call, like including a poster created by the Guerrilla Girls that is a comment on the percentage of women in the 1987 Biennial.”
Rather than just have one image on the cover, the handbook is a mosaic of work by artists including Asco, Hopper, Ms. Kusama, Alice Neel, Jack Goldstein and Peter Hujar. Like the new Whitney itself, Ms. Miller said, it is intended to be a reflection of “the melting pot of what American is and what art making is today.”
Paul Gauguin's "When will you Marry?"
Investing in art: A study in red and black
The global art market is booming, but treacherous
The Economist
Prettier than a share certificate IT MAY be modern art going under the hammer at one of Christie’s auction halls in London, but most of the prospective purchasers look downright antique: tweed jackets and threadbare twinsets abound. No matter: when it comes to the big pieces of the day, the serious cash comes in via the internet or phones manned by sleek women with bright lipstick and thick-rimmed glasses. A painting that once belonged to Noël Coward causes a bidding war between telephone buyers. It was expected to go for no more than £20,000 ($30,000), but ends up selling for £250,000. Helpful displays throughout the room convert the sum into roubles and Hong Kong dollars. “I just come to watch the spectacle,” says a middle-aged man. “Prices are mad!” . . . .
The global art market is booming, but treacherous
The Economist
Prettier than a share certificate IT MAY be modern art going under the hammer at one of Christie’s auction halls in London, but most of the prospective purchasers look downright antique: tweed jackets and threadbare twinsets abound. No matter: when it comes to the big pieces of the day, the serious cash comes in via the internet or phones manned by sleek women with bright lipstick and thick-rimmed glasses. A painting that once belonged to Noël Coward causes a bidding war between telephone buyers. It was expected to go for no more than £20,000 ($30,000), but ends up selling for £250,000. Helpful displays throughout the room convert the sum into roubles and Hong Kong dollars. “I just come to watch the spectacle,” says a middle-aged man. “Prices are mad!” . . . .
George Washington U. Opens New Museum in Big Boost for Arts
By Brett Zongker Associated Press
A new museum is opening this weekend in downtown Washington showcasing a wide variety of art, history and culture through ancient textiles and a significant collection of maps and documents on the history of the nation's capital.
George Washington University is opening the $33 million complex Saturday on its downtown campus where two museums will share one facility. The six-story complex becomes the new home for Washington's 90-year-old Textile Museum and its collection of artifacts, along with a new museum about the capital city's history.
The opening comes just months after George Washington University also acquired one of the nation's oldest art museums, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and its art school, demonstrating a major commitment to build a much larger profile as a school for the arts . . . .
By Brett Zongker Associated Press
A new museum is opening this weekend in downtown Washington showcasing a wide variety of art, history and culture through ancient textiles and a significant collection of maps and documents on the history of the nation's capital.
George Washington University is opening the $33 million complex Saturday on its downtown campus where two museums will share one facility. The six-story complex becomes the new home for Washington's 90-year-old Textile Museum and its collection of artifacts, along with a new museum about the capital city's history.
The opening comes just months after George Washington University also acquired one of the nation's oldest art museums, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and its art school, demonstrating a major commitment to build a much larger profile as a school for the arts . . . .
To build Techstyle Haus, students from Rhode Island School of Design teamed with Brown engineering majors as well as students from the University of Applied Sciences Erfurt, Germany.
Putting Art in STEM
By Henry Fountain NYTimes
Engineering and art were not always completely separate disciplines. Take Leonardo da Vinci, who seamlessly combined the two.
“Five hundred years ago, you couldn’t really tell the difference between artists and engineers,” said James Michael Leake, director of engineering graphics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. But education has become balkanized and the field of engineering, in particular, more specialized, complex and math- and computer-oriented. Today’s engineering majors have little room for other pursuits.
“Learning how to think like an engineer is very powerful,” said Domenico Grasso, provost at the University of Delaware. “But other disciplines also have very powerful approaches to thinking.” Mr. Grasso has long been a proponent of holistic engineering, the idea that through cross-disciplinary learning students will be better able to understand, and design for, the human condition . . . .
By Henry Fountain NYTimes
Engineering and art were not always completely separate disciplines. Take Leonardo da Vinci, who seamlessly combined the two.
“Five hundred years ago, you couldn’t really tell the difference between artists and engineers,” said James Michael Leake, director of engineering graphics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. But education has become balkanized and the field of engineering, in particular, more specialized, complex and math- and computer-oriented. Today’s engineering majors have little room for other pursuits.
“Learning how to think like an engineer is very powerful,” said Domenico Grasso, provost at the University of Delaware. “But other disciplines also have very powerful approaches to thinking.” Mr. Grasso has long been a proponent of holistic engineering, the idea that through cross-disciplinary learning students will be better able to understand, and design for, the human condition . . . .
“Eagle and Pine Tree” by Kano Tan’yu.
Japan’s Kano art dynasty showcased in Philadelphia
By Sebastian Smee The Boston Globe
PHILADELPHIA — No Japanese school of painting was more ambitious, more accomplished, and more durable than the Kano school, which dominated Japanese art from the late 15th century to the mid-19th. Indeed, in Japanese art history, Kano and canon are virtually synonymous. A new show called “Ink and Gold: Art of the Kano” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is devoted to those four centuries of achievement. It’s a splendid show, probably the greatest exhibition of Japanese art anywhere in the world this year, and the finest ever devoted to Kano painters. It’s full of (mostly) large-scale art that is stamped with a sense of its own authority, and yet still surprisingly fresh.
Of course, in the West, modern art made the idea of any kind of aesthetic canon seem boring. After Manet, it seems, art couldn’t be interesting unless it was seen to be flogging canonical (substitute “official,” or “academic”) art to death.
This modern bias was so strong that it compromised not only the reputations of Europe’s own canonical artists — people like Raphael and Poussin — but also the reception of non-Western art. Discovering the art of Japan . . . .
By Sebastian Smee The Boston Globe
PHILADELPHIA — No Japanese school of painting was more ambitious, more accomplished, and more durable than the Kano school, which dominated Japanese art from the late 15th century to the mid-19th. Indeed, in Japanese art history, Kano and canon are virtually synonymous. A new show called “Ink and Gold: Art of the Kano” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is devoted to those four centuries of achievement. It’s a splendid show, probably the greatest exhibition of Japanese art anywhere in the world this year, and the finest ever devoted to Kano painters. It’s full of (mostly) large-scale art that is stamped with a sense of its own authority, and yet still surprisingly fresh.
Of course, in the West, modern art made the idea of any kind of aesthetic canon seem boring. After Manet, it seems, art couldn’t be interesting unless it was seen to be flogging canonical (substitute “official,” or “academic”) art to death.
This modern bias was so strong that it compromised not only the reputations of Europe’s own canonical artists — people like Raphael and Poussin — but also the reception of non-Western art. Discovering the art of Japan . . . .
A gift box for El Producto cigars from 1952 by the graphic designer Paul Rand. Credit Paul Rand, Museum of the City of New York, Steven Heller
Review: ‘Everything Is Design’ Showcases Paul Rand, Master of Brand Identity
By Ken Johnson NYTimes
You may not know the name Paul Rand (1914-1996), the immensely influential 20th-century advertising art director, illustrator and graphic designer, but it’s a safe bet you’re familiar with some of his works. After shaking up American advertising and book cover design in the 1940s and ’50s, he created the logos for UPS, IBM, Westinghouse and other American corporations, symbols that remain ubiquitously familiar today. His admirers called him “the Picasso of graphic design”; the Museum of Modern Art named him one of the 10 best art directors of all time.
Mr. Rand didn’t invent branding, but he did it as well as anyone ever has or is likely to, a point driven home in an entertaining and enlightening way in “Everything Is Design: The Work of Paul Rand” at the Museum of the City of New York . . . .
By Ken Johnson NYTimes
You may not know the name Paul Rand (1914-1996), the immensely influential 20th-century advertising art director, illustrator and graphic designer, but it’s a safe bet you’re familiar with some of his works. After shaking up American advertising and book cover design in the 1940s and ’50s, he created the logos for UPS, IBM, Westinghouse and other American corporations, symbols that remain ubiquitously familiar today. His admirers called him “the Picasso of graphic design”; the Museum of Modern Art named him one of the 10 best art directors of all time.
Mr. Rand didn’t invent branding, but he did it as well as anyone ever has or is likely to, a point driven home in an entertaining and enlightening way in “Everything Is Design: The Work of Paul Rand” at the Museum of the City of New York . . . .
Picasso’s La Coiffeuse was registered missing from a storeroom at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 2001. Photograph: AP/US Department of Justice
Happy Christmas! Stolen Picasso posted to New York by FedEx
The 1911 painting La Coiffeuse (The Hairdresser), worth at least $2.5m, was found by US customs officers in a parcel marked Joyeux Noël
It appeared to be a mundane parcel like scores of others lovingly posted across the ocean in the run-up to the holiday season: a package labelled “art craft/toy” with a value put at $37 (£24) and the message “Happy Christmas”. But when US customs officers examined the contents, they found a stolen Picasso painting worth at least $2.5m, which had been lost for 14 years. The 1911 Cubist masterwork, La Coiffeuse (The Hairdresser), had been registered missing from the storeroom at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2001.
The package arrived in Newark from Belgium just before Christmas last year. Sent via FedEx, it was marked Joyeux Noël (Happy Christmas). Picasso’s small oil on canvas, measuring 33cm by 46cm, was hidden inside.
The package first arrived at a climate-controlled warehouse in Long Island City on 17 December. The next day, it was moved on to Port Newark and was seized. The sender was marked as someone named “Robert” with an address in Belgium, according to the New York Times . . .
The 1911 painting La Coiffeuse (The Hairdresser), worth at least $2.5m, was found by US customs officers in a parcel marked Joyeux Noël
It appeared to be a mundane parcel like scores of others lovingly posted across the ocean in the run-up to the holiday season: a package labelled “art craft/toy” with a value put at $37 (£24) and the message “Happy Christmas”. But when US customs officers examined the contents, they found a stolen Picasso painting worth at least $2.5m, which had been lost for 14 years. The 1911 Cubist masterwork, La Coiffeuse (The Hairdresser), had been registered missing from the storeroom at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2001.
The package arrived in Newark from Belgium just before Christmas last year. Sent via FedEx, it was marked Joyeux Noël (Happy Christmas). Picasso’s small oil on canvas, measuring 33cm by 46cm, was hidden inside.
The package first arrived at a climate-controlled warehouse in Long Island City on 17 December. The next day, it was moved on to Port Newark and was seized. The sender was marked as someone named “Robert” with an address in Belgium, according to the New York Times . . .
Put arts at the heart of Britain
By Bob and Roberta Smith The Guardian
The findings of the Warwick commission report, published this week, that arts and culture are being “systematically removed” from the UK education system, should not be interpreted by the creative community as simply reinforcing the views they already held. Rather, the report points out two huge problems with how governments and society perceive the arts . . .
. . I recently attended a presentation in parliament by a group called the Digital School House. It was explained that because computer coding is like understanding coordinates that map space, being able to draw, visualise space, and do maths, are all essential skills.
By still thinking in terms of the 20th-century paradigm described by CP Snow as “two cultures” (science and the humanities), we misunderstand the times we are living in. The 20th century saw the development of a visual culture, modernism, within which technological innovation could thrive. In the 21st century we are living through as huge a revolution. Therefore we need to reimagine the role art plays in society and begin to capitalise on the possibilities. If we designed a Bauhaus-style initiative now, we would put computing at its heart. That’s what we must do if we are to compete against China, which is building schools of art and design while we are closing them down . . .
Walter Liedtke, left, discussing Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid” with Princess Máxima and Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2009. Credit Craig Ruttle/Associated Press
Walter Liedtke, Curator at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dies at 69
By RANDY KENNEDY NYTimes
Walter Liedtke, who served for 35 years as a curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was a renowned scholar on Vermeer and the Delft School, died on Tuesday, one of six victims of the crash of a Metro-North commuter train in Valhalla, N.Y. He was 69. His death was confirmed by the Met’s director, Thomas P. Campbell, who said in an interview that “he was one of our most esteemed curators and one of the most distinguished scholars of Dutch and Flemish painting in the world.”
Mr. Liedtke, who lived in Bedford Hills, N.Y., and was raised in New Jersey, intended to be a teacher, and after earning his master’s degree at Brown and a doctorate at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, he spent four years on the faculty at Ohio State. But in 1979 he received a Mellon Fellowship to study at the Metropolitan Museum, and he never left it . . . .
By RANDY KENNEDY NYTimes
Walter Liedtke, who served for 35 years as a curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was a renowned scholar on Vermeer and the Delft School, died on Tuesday, one of six victims of the crash of a Metro-North commuter train in Valhalla, N.Y. He was 69. His death was confirmed by the Met’s director, Thomas P. Campbell, who said in an interview that “he was one of our most esteemed curators and one of the most distinguished scholars of Dutch and Flemish painting in the world.”
Mr. Liedtke, who lived in Bedford Hills, N.Y., and was raised in New Jersey, intended to be a teacher, and after earning his master’s degree at Brown and a doctorate at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, he spent four years on the faculty at Ohio State. But in 1979 he received a Mellon Fellowship to study at the Metropolitan Museum, and he never left it . . . .
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The Art of Slowing Down in a Museum
by Stephanie Rosenbloom NYTimes Ah, the Louvre. It’s sublime, it’s historic, it’s … overwhelming. Upon entering any vast art museum — the Hermitage, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art — the typical traveler grabs a map and spends the next two hours darting from one masterpiece to the next, battling crowds, exhaustion and hunger (yet never failing to take selfies with boldface names like Mona Lisa). What if we slowed down? What if we spent time with the painting that draws us in instead of the painting we think we’re supposed to see? Most people want to enjoy a museum, not conquer it. Yet the average visitor spends 15 to 30 seconds in front of a work of art, according to museum researchers . . . . |
Fighting for a snapshot of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. Some psychologists suggest that taking a slower, more contemplative approach at museums could make visitors more likely to connect with the art. Credit Guia Besana for The New York Times
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From left, Met Director Thomas P. Campbell and conservators Michael Morris, Carolyn Riccardelli and Lawrence Becker prepare to reattach Adam’s head to the torso. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art Unveils 15th-Century Statue Restored After It Shattered
By Jessica Dawson Wall Street Journal
It was one of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s greatest embarrassments: On a Sunday evening in 2002, the pedestal housing Adam, a 15th-century marble statue, gave way, sending the 770-pound nude crashing to the ground.
“It’s the worst thing that can happen in a museum,” said Luke Syson, the Met’s head curator of European sculpture and decorative arts.
At the time of triage, conservators feared that the figure, made by the Italian sculptor Tullio Lombardo, was shattered beyond restoration.
Proving the naysayers wrong, on Tuesday the museum unveiled the restored Adam to the public, the result of an unprecedented 12-year conservation effort. The statue, complete with supple muscles and gently rolling six-pack, now presides over a chapel-like gallery all his own . . .
By Jessica Dawson Wall Street Journal
It was one of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s greatest embarrassments: On a Sunday evening in 2002, the pedestal housing Adam, a 15th-century marble statue, gave way, sending the 770-pound nude crashing to the ground.
“It’s the worst thing that can happen in a museum,” said Luke Syson, the Met’s head curator of European sculpture and decorative arts.
At the time of triage, conservators feared that the figure, made by the Italian sculptor Tullio Lombardo, was shattered beyond restoration.
Proving the naysayers wrong, on Tuesday the museum unveiled the restored Adam to the public, the result of an unprecedented 12-year conservation effort. The statue, complete with supple muscles and gently rolling six-pack, now presides over a chapel-like gallery all his own . . .
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Scientists identify world's oldest rock art
by Traci Watson USA TODAY Sometime during the last Ice Age, an unknown human placed his or her outstretched hand on the wall of an Indonesian cave and carefully sprayed a reddish mineral powder atop it. The result was a perfect hand stencil that scientists have now identified as the oldest rock art in the world. The hand stencil dates to at least 39,900 years ago, and nearby animal figures are . . The oldest Sulawesi hand stencil dates to at least 39,900 years old, making it the oldest in the world. One Sulawesi babirusa is least 35,400 years old, putting it in the running for the oldest depicted object. France's Chauvet cave is adorned with animals dated to roughly 35,000 years ago, but the dating technique used at Chauvet yields a maximum age, not a minimum . . . . |
$40 Million to Help Build Audiences in the Arts
by Felicia R. Lee NYTimes
Most arts organizations these days are seeking ways to fill seats and to expand their audiences. On Wednesday, the Wallace Foundation will announce a $40 million effort to help performing arts organizations around the country do so.
The six-year initiative will provide funding for up to 24 nonprofit organizations — multidisciplinary presenters or those in other nonvisual arts forms, such as opera, theater, music and dance. Over four years, the chosen organizations will design projects to build audiences through a variety of ways, including new programs as well as nontraditional venues . . . .
Giving Meaning to 'Art'
by Stephen Heyman NYTimes
The psychologist George E. Newman of the Yale School of Management studies how people use "quasi-magical thinking" to intuitively determine the value of certain objects. By analyzing celebrity auctions of John F. Kennedy or Marilyn Monroe's personal effects, he has show that the price of a piece of memorabilia is connected to how often it was thought to be used or touched by a famous person - as if there's a kind of real-world value placed on a celebrity's "essence."
Recently, Mr. Newman has switched his attention to the art world. In his latest paper, published last month in the journal Topics in Cognitive Science and co-authored by Daniel M. Bartels and Rosanna K. Smith, he staged a pair of experiments that show how flimsy or essential the term "art" can be.
Mr. Newman asked a group of Yale undergraduates to . . . .
by Stephen Heyman NYTimes
The psychologist George E. Newman of the Yale School of Management studies how people use "quasi-magical thinking" to intuitively determine the value of certain objects. By analyzing celebrity auctions of John F. Kennedy or Marilyn Monroe's personal effects, he has show that the price of a piece of memorabilia is connected to how often it was thought to be used or touched by a famous person - as if there's a kind of real-world value placed on a celebrity's "essence."
Recently, Mr. Newman has switched his attention to the art world. In his latest paper, published last month in the journal Topics in Cognitive Science and co-authored by Daniel M. Bartels and Rosanna K. Smith, he staged a pair of experiments that show how flimsy or essential the term "art" can be.
Mr. Newman asked a group of Yale undergraduates to . . . .
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Among the Ancient Stones, Magic as Potent as Ever
by Edward Rothstein NYTimes Wiltshire Downs, England -- Standing at the center of the Stone Circle of Stonehenge in the moments before dawn, lulled by low-hanging rain clouds, I am, for a while, unable to understand why so many pilgrimages have been made here. Sure, the setting is attractively pastoral, with gently rolling fields and dark patches of trees on distant . . . . |
Monet’s 1875 ‘‘La Seine à Argenteuil,’’ sold at Sotheby’s last week for £8.5 million
Wary Art Collectors Find Gems
in the Past
By SCOTT REYBURN NYTimes
LONDON — The art world is becoming a tale of two markets: contemporary — and the rest. Works made in the last 50 years, or days, now dominate the auction and gallery scene, making the jaw-dropping prices paid for a Monet, van Gogh and Picasso back in the 1980s seem like ancient history.
Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips’s postwar and contemporary art auctions in New York in May raised an unprecedented $1.6 billion, dwarfing the $611 million that the two main houses achieved from their preceding sales of Impressionist and modern works. In 2013, for the first time in recent memory . . . .
in the Past
By SCOTT REYBURN NYTimes
LONDON — The art world is becoming a tale of two markets: contemporary — and the rest. Works made in the last 50 years, or days, now dominate the auction and gallery scene, making the jaw-dropping prices paid for a Monet, van Gogh and Picasso back in the 1980s seem like ancient history.
Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips’s postwar and contemporary art auctions in New York in May raised an unprecedented $1.6 billion, dwarfing the $611 million that the two main houses achieved from their preceding sales of Impressionist and modern works. In 2013, for the first time in recent memory . . . .
Detail of a gels-on-glass work by Spencer Finch
For Your Birthday, We Got You the Sun
Spencer Finch’s ‘Certain Slant of Light’
By ROBERTA SMITH NYTimes
With permanent works installed on the High Line and at the newly opened National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Spencer Finch is now pursing his interest in the passage of light and time across the all-but-transparent atrium of the Morgan Library & Museum.
On Friday, he will unveil “A Certain Slant of Light,” a site-specific piece that will consist of 365 squares of color. Most will be pieces of film nearly three feet square applied to the atrium’s glass walls. A handful will be somewhat larger panes of glass strung from its ceiling. Their varying tints will be . . . .
Spencer Finch’s ‘Certain Slant of Light’
By ROBERTA SMITH NYTimes
With permanent works installed on the High Line and at the newly opened National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Spencer Finch is now pursing his interest in the passage of light and time across the all-but-transparent atrium of the Morgan Library & Museum.
On Friday, he will unveil “A Certain Slant of Light,” a site-specific piece that will consist of 365 squares of color. Most will be pieces of film nearly three feet square applied to the atrium’s glass walls. A handful will be somewhat larger panes of glass strung from its ceiling. Their varying tints will be . . . .
On a personal note, when I met Maxine Greene at Teachers College I knew I'd found a spiritual mentor. She spoke so precisely and passionately about things I knew in my soul - but hadn't yet been able to codify. I encourage you to read about her here. If you feel inspired too, find one of her books to read. I welcome your thoughts, your thinking, about 'her thinking'. -Ms. Shipley
Maxine Greene, 96, Dies; Education Theorist Saw Arts as Essential
By BRUCE WEBER NYTimes
. . Dr. Greene was a prolific writer and lecturer on topics in education like multiculturalism and the power of imagination, and she was often cited as an intellectual descendant of the progressive thinker John Dewey.
An opponent of stringent academic standards as measured by testing and other classroom accountability theories, she extolled the virtues of the Thoreauvian concept she called “wide-awakeness,” though she was undeterred by the pessimism of Thoreau, who asserted that “the millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life.”
Dr. Greene believed that creative thinking and robust imagining were the keys not just to an individual’s lifelong learning but to the flourishing of a democratic society. She espoused the view that students could be taught and encouraged to engage the world not just as it is but as it might otherwise be . . . .
Maxine Greene, 96, Dies; Education Theorist Saw Arts as Essential
By BRUCE WEBER NYTimes
. . Dr. Greene was a prolific writer and lecturer on topics in education like multiculturalism and the power of imagination, and she was often cited as an intellectual descendant of the progressive thinker John Dewey.
An opponent of stringent academic standards as measured by testing and other classroom accountability theories, she extolled the virtues of the Thoreauvian concept she called “wide-awakeness,” though she was undeterred by the pessimism of Thoreau, who asserted that “the millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life.”
Dr. Greene believed that creative thinking and robust imagining were the keys not just to an individual’s lifelong learning but to the flourishing of a democratic society. She espoused the view that students could be taught and encouraged to engage the world not just as it is but as it might otherwise be . . . .
Greene was regarded by many as the spiritual heir to John Dewey.
Maxine Greene, TC's Great Philosopher, Dies at 96
Teachers College News
Maxine Greene, the philosopher, author and professor emerita who was perhaps the most iconic and influential living figure associated with Teachers College, passed away yesterday at the age of 96. Described by The New York Times as “one of the most important education philosophers of the past 50 years” and “an idol to thousands of educators,” Greene was regarded by many as the spiritual heir to John Dewey. Her work remains a touchstone for generations of TC faculty, alumni and students, as well as for scholars and artists around the world.
“Maxine’s brilliant vision of art as a means to awaken each of us to how we respond to the world will endure as her greatest legacy. She will be tremendously missed and deeply mourned.” . . . .
Teachers College News
Maxine Greene, the philosopher, author and professor emerita who was perhaps the most iconic and influential living figure associated with Teachers College, passed away yesterday at the age of 96. Described by The New York Times as “one of the most important education philosophers of the past 50 years” and “an idol to thousands of educators,” Greene was regarded by many as the spiritual heir to John Dewey. Her work remains a touchstone for generations of TC faculty, alumni and students, as well as for scholars and artists around the world.
“Maxine’s brilliant vision of art as a means to awaken each of us to how we respond to the world will endure as her greatest legacy. She will be tremendously missed and deeply mourned.” . . . .
A retrospective of the work of the Minimalist sculptor Carl Andre is on view at Dia in Beacon, N.Y.
A Stonehenge for the Modern Age
Carl Andre’s Epic Sculptures, United at Dia:Beacon
By HOLLAND COTTER NYTimes
BEACON. N.Y. — Minimalism was the late 20th century’s great hope for a heroic American art on the Abstract Expressionism model. Even after an upstart movement, Conceptualism — “idea art” — wafted in and blew old notions of “heroic” and “art” to bits, tradition-minded art lovers stayed loyal, and still do, to the Minimalist paradigm of greatness: abstract work that’s commanding in scale, cleanly made and destined for . . . .
Carl Andre’s Epic Sculptures, United at Dia:Beacon
By HOLLAND COTTER NYTimes
BEACON. N.Y. — Minimalism was the late 20th century’s great hope for a heroic American art on the Abstract Expressionism model. Even after an upstart movement, Conceptualism — “idea art” — wafted in and blew old notions of “heroic” and “art” to bits, tradition-minded art lovers stayed loyal, and still do, to the Minimalist paradigm of greatness: abstract work that’s commanding in scale, cleanly made and destined for . . . .
John Frederick Peto’s “Still Life with Cake, Lemon, Strawberries and Glass,” from 1890
Gleeful Museums Unpack a Bequest
Rarities From Mellon Collection Reach New Homes
By CAROL VOGEL NYTimes
The final group of paintings, drawings and sculptures bequeathed to museums by Paul Mellon before his death in 1999 have at last begun to arrive. Hidden away for decades, many are rarities that had never been seen by curators.
The group includes more than 200 works — examples by such artists as van Gogh, Degas, Gauguin, Monet and Seurat — that were only recently removed from the walls of the Mellons’ many homes, where they were enjoyed by his widow, Rachel Lambert Mellon, who died in March at 103.
Rarities From Mellon Collection Reach New Homes
By CAROL VOGEL NYTimes
The final group of paintings, drawings and sculptures bequeathed to museums by Paul Mellon before his death in 1999 have at last begun to arrive. Hidden away for decades, many are rarities that had never been seen by curators.
The group includes more than 200 works — examples by such artists as van Gogh, Degas, Gauguin, Monet and Seurat — that were only recently removed from the walls of the Mellons’ many homes, where they were enjoyed by his widow, Rachel Lambert Mellon, who died in March at 103.
“Popeye,” a six-and-a-half-foot-tall sculpture by Jeff Koons (2009-11), was bought by the casino owner Steve Wynn for $28.1 million
After Two Christie’s Auctions Top Expectations, Pace of Sales Slows at Sotheby’s
By CAROL VOGEL NYTimes
After two consecutive nights of sky’s-the-limit bidding, Sotheby’s sale of contemporary art started out on a high, but quickly fell back to earth, with picky buyers passing up paintings and sculptures by major figures like Rothko, de Kooning and Takashi Murakami.
It has been a tough time for Sotheby’s. On the cusp of the spring auction season, Sotheby’s and Daniel S. Loeb, the activist hedge fund manager, declared a truce in one of the most bitter corporate fights in recent . . . .
By CAROL VOGEL NYTimes
After two consecutive nights of sky’s-the-limit bidding, Sotheby’s sale of contemporary art started out on a high, but quickly fell back to earth, with picky buyers passing up paintings and sculptures by major figures like Rothko, de Kooning and Takashi Murakami.
It has been a tough time for Sotheby’s. On the cusp of the spring auction season, Sotheby’s and Daniel S. Loeb, the activist hedge fund manager, declared a truce in one of the most bitter corporate fights in recent . . . .
'Trepante, versão 1,' a 1965 piece by Lygia Clark
Hands-On Art at the MoMA
By Jessica Dawson Wall Street Journal
"Please touch" is an uncommon phrase in art museums, especially at a tourist magnet like the Museum of Modern Art, where gesturing too close to "The Starry Night" will provoke a stern warning from a uniformed guard.
But starting Saturday, when MoMA opens " Lygia Clark : The Abandonment of Art, 1948–1988," visitors will be invited—encouraged, even—to engage in tactile interaction with replicas of objects by the late Brazilian artist, whose life's work was tempting the masses to touch the goods.
By Jessica Dawson Wall Street Journal
"Please touch" is an uncommon phrase in art museums, especially at a tourist magnet like the Museum of Modern Art, where gesturing too close to "The Starry Night" will provoke a stern warning from a uniformed guard.
But starting Saturday, when MoMA opens " Lygia Clark : The Abandonment of Art, 1948–1988," visitors will be invited—encouraged, even—to engage in tactile interaction with replicas of objects by the late Brazilian artist, whose life's work was tempting the masses to touch the goods.
Cornelius Gurlitt in Munich in November
Cornelius Gurlitt, Scrutinized Son of Nazi-Era Art Dealer, Dies at 81
By MELISSA EDDY and ALISON SMALE NYTimes
BERLIN — Cornelius Gurlitt, the German recluse who captured the art world’s attention last fall after it was revealed that he had kept hidden for decades a collection of 19th- and 20th-century European masterworks amassed by his father under the Nazis in his Munich apartment, died on Tuesday at his home in Munich. He was 81. His spokesman, Stephan Holzinger, confirmed the death. Mr. Gurlitt died without known heirs, leaving behind a tangle of questions about what will become of the art, some of it in . . . .
By MELISSA EDDY and ALISON SMALE NYTimes
BERLIN — Cornelius Gurlitt, the German recluse who captured the art world’s attention last fall after it was revealed that he had kept hidden for decades a collection of 19th- and 20th-century European masterworks amassed by his father under the Nazis in his Munich apartment, died on Tuesday at his home in Munich. He was 81. His spokesman, Stephan Holzinger, confirmed the death. Mr. Gurlitt died without known heirs, leaving behind a tangle of questions about what will become of the art, some of it in . . . .
Art & Design NYTimes
Art Listings for May 2-8
Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art. A searchable guide to these and many other art shows is at nytimes.com/events.
Art Listings for May 2-8
Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art. A searchable guide to these and many other art shows is at nytimes.com/events.
10 Art Terms That Don't Mean What You Think They Mean
by Katherine Brooks The Huffington Post
When talking about art, there are more than a few vocabulary words that -- let's face it -- we use to sound smart. Call them highfalutin and grandiloquent (see what we did there?), terms like "postmodernism" and "assemblage" are tossed about like badges of honor or passwords to an exclusive club. And, in our efforts to belong to the realm of snobby critics and hyper-conceptual artists, we end up misusing words that have very real, definitive meanings.
So, in an effort to dispel any vocab rumors and equip our readers with a handy pocket guide to art jargon, we're playing "Define That Term!" here on HuffPost Arts and Culture. Behold, 10 terms and expressions that don't mean what you think they mean . . . .
by Katherine Brooks The Huffington Post
When talking about art, there are more than a few vocabulary words that -- let's face it -- we use to sound smart. Call them highfalutin and grandiloquent (see what we did there?), terms like "postmodernism" and "assemblage" are tossed about like badges of honor or passwords to an exclusive club. And, in our efforts to belong to the realm of snobby critics and hyper-conceptual artists, we end up misusing words that have very real, definitive meanings.
So, in an effort to dispel any vocab rumors and equip our readers with a handy pocket guide to art jargon, we're playing "Define That Term!" here on HuffPost Arts and Culture. Behold, 10 terms and expressions that don't mean what you think they mean . . . .
JC de Castelbajac sweater (€350) and skirt (€900) with Henri Matisse's 'The Sheaf' (1953)
The Fine Art of Spring
Fashion Designers channel their artistic muses this spring
By Susanne Madsen The Wall Street Journal
. . While there's a surge of art-fashion crossovers this season, designers have long dipped their pens in the inkwell of artists. In the 1930s, Elsa Schiaparelli collaborated with Salvador Dalí on a number of pieces, including a lobster-print gown worn by Wallis Simpson in the June 1937 issue of U.S. Vogue, and Yves Saint Laurent famously used the block lines of a Piet Mondrian painting to structure a 1965 shift dress. More recently, Louis Vuitton's . . . .
Fashion Designers channel their artistic muses this spring
By Susanne Madsen The Wall Street Journal
. . While there's a surge of art-fashion crossovers this season, designers have long dipped their pens in the inkwell of artists. In the 1930s, Elsa Schiaparelli collaborated with Salvador Dalí on a number of pieces, including a lobster-print gown worn by Wallis Simpson in the June 1937 issue of U.S. Vogue, and Yves Saint Laurent famously used the block lines of a Piet Mondrian painting to structure a 1965 shift dress. More recently, Louis Vuitton's . . . .
Carrie Mae Weems, now at Guggenheim Museum
In Carrie Mae Weems’s photographs, revelation and resistance
By Philip Kennicott Washington Post
Late last month, the National Gallery of Art announced the acquisition of its first work by artist Carrie Mae Weems, a photograph of three African American girls lying on the grass with flowers in their hair. One of them gives the camera a slightly suspicious, perhaps even defiant glance, as if to defy a centuries-long history of being objectified by art and photography.
The National Gallery isn’t exactly renowned in the art world for its collection of work by women, or by African-Americans, so it was a pleasant surprise to learn that the MacArthur-genius grant laureate Weems finally had a place . . . .
By Philip Kennicott Washington Post
Late last month, the National Gallery of Art announced the acquisition of its first work by artist Carrie Mae Weems, a photograph of three African American girls lying on the grass with flowers in their hair. One of them gives the camera a slightly suspicious, perhaps even defiant glance, as if to defy a centuries-long history of being objectified by art and photography.
The National Gallery isn’t exactly renowned in the art world for its collection of work by women, or by African-Americans, so it was a pleasant surprise to learn that the MacArthur-genius grant laureate Weems finally had a place . . . .
'Ceyx and Alcyone' (1768) on view at Yale University
Art Review: Richard Wilson's Influence on Landscape Painters
By Tom L. Freudenheim Wall Street Journal
The luxuriant exhibition "Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting," now on view at the Yale Center for British Art, is especially satisfying for its focus on verdant landscapes by an artist too often ignored. But the show—with 32 paintings and 32 drawings by Wilson, and 81 works by his predecessors, contemporaries, pupils and followers—is also an adventure . . . .
By Tom L. Freudenheim Wall Street Journal
The luxuriant exhibition "Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting," now on view at the Yale Center for British Art, is especially satisfying for its focus on verdant landscapes by an artist too often ignored. But the show—with 32 paintings and 32 drawings by Wilson, and 81 works by his predecessors, contemporaries, pupils and followers—is also an adventure . . . .
Rob Fischer's "Good Weather (glass house)", in Chelsea
Boldly Go A Gallery Guide By the Art Critics of The New York Times
By Roberta Smith NYTimes
ACCORDING to the thermometer as well as the calendar, it’s finally spring, a great time for that urban sport known as gallery-hopping. The options in New York City have never been richer — in some neighborhoods . . . .
By Roberta Smith NYTimes
ACCORDING to the thermometer as well as the calendar, it’s finally spring, a great time for that urban sport known as gallery-hopping. The options in New York City have never been richer — in some neighborhoods . . . .
"Positive Moving Planes IV", 1965
Mon Levinson, 88, Op Art Sculptor, Dies
By Roberta Smith NYTimes
Mon Levinson, a prominent Op Art sculptor who used plexiglass and other nontraditional materials in creating work that actively affects the viewer's perception, died on March 25 in Manhattan. He was 88. His wife, Joan Gruzon, confirmed his death.
In his use of plexiglass — primarily clear, but sometimes milky white or black — whiteboard or other materials, Mr. Levinson merged sculpture with aspects of painting. But while many artists at the time, including the more austere Minimalists, often relied on outside fabricators, Mr. Levinson made his meticulous free-standing structures and wall pieces . . . .
By Roberta Smith NYTimes
Mon Levinson, a prominent Op Art sculptor who used plexiglass and other nontraditional materials in creating work that actively affects the viewer's perception, died on March 25 in Manhattan. He was 88. His wife, Joan Gruzon, confirmed his death.
In his use of plexiglass — primarily clear, but sometimes milky white or black — whiteboard or other materials, Mr. Levinson merged sculpture with aspects of painting. But while many artists at the time, including the more austere Minimalists, often relied on outside fabricators, Mr. Levinson made his meticulous free-standing structures and wall pieces . . . .
Two soft sculptures by Sterling Ruby
Just a Shot Away: Sterling Ruby’s soft sculptures offer a flaccid take on soft power
By Baynard Woods Baltimore City Paper
Sterling Ruby has been anointed. Roberta Smith of The New York Times said that Ruby may be the most interesting artist to have emerged this century, and Smith’s revered husband, New York magazine’s Jerry Saltz, deemed his ceramics the best part of this year’s Whitney Biennial . . . .
By Baynard Woods Baltimore City Paper
Sterling Ruby has been anointed. Roberta Smith of The New York Times said that Ruby may be the most interesting artist to have emerged this century, and Smith’s revered husband, New York magazine’s Jerry Saltz, deemed his ceramics the best part of this year’s Whitney Biennial . . . .
German Man to Return Nazi-Looted Art
By Melissa Eddy NYTimes
BERLIN — Cornelius Gurlitt, the octogenarian hoarder of art plundered by the Nazis, will return paintings in the trove his family kept secret for decades to their original Jewish owners or those owners’ descendants, starting with a well-known Matisse, his lawyers said on Wednesday.
Mr. Gurlitt’s lawyers are in talks to return “Seated Woman/Woman Sitting in Armchair” to the descendants of Paul Rosenberg, a French art dealer whose family recognized the work . . .
By Melissa Eddy NYTimes
BERLIN — Cornelius Gurlitt, the octogenarian hoarder of art plundered by the Nazis, will return paintings in the trove his family kept secret for decades to their original Jewish owners or those owners’ descendants, starting with a well-known Matisse, his lawyers said on Wednesday.
Mr. Gurlitt’s lawyers are in talks to return “Seated Woman/Woman Sitting in Armchair” to the descendants of Paul Rosenberg, a French art dealer whose family recognized the work . . .
"Two Marquesans" oil transfer drawing, 1902
"GAUGUIN METAMORPHOSES" at MoMA
By Roberta Smith NYTimes
. . . An even larger lesson for all artists of the 20th century and beyond is that art making itself is a process of exploration that accommodates, even welcomes, chance and accident, irresolution and ugliness, in which the medium is a large part of the message.
Arts and Education
By Agnes Gund Huffington Post - The BLOG
At PS 46 in Harlem, the corridors, the classrooms and the courtyard are full of collages and prints and drawings, posters and paintings, murals and sculptures. Art is everywhere. I am visiting the school to see its own artist, Robin Holder, at work with the children of PS 46 and their teachers. Robin is with the students three days a week -- leaving her own space to be in their space, challenging them to create, to imagine, to learn through art-making. I love visiting this school . . . .
By Agnes Gund Huffington Post - The BLOG
At PS 46 in Harlem, the corridors, the classrooms and the courtyard are full of collages and prints and drawings, posters and paintings, murals and sculptures. Art is everywhere. I am visiting the school to see its own artist, Robin Holder, at work with the children of PS 46 and their teachers. Robin is with the students three days a week -- leaving her own space to be in their space, challenging them to create, to imagine, to learn through art-making. I love visiting this school . . . .
untitled Mark Rothko painting
The Gavel Drops at Sotheby's
By Andrew Rice New York Magazine
The auction house is under attack by hedge-fund activist Daniel Loeb, who wants it to start making lots more money, in part by refusing to kowtow to rich folks like him.
Tobias Meyer sold this untitled Rothko at Sotheby’s in 2010 for $31.4 million. It belonged to the collector David Martinez, who had bought it for $19 million from Texas socialite Marguerite Hoffman, whose husband had purchased it in 1998 for just $2.8 million . . . .
By Andrew Rice New York Magazine
The auction house is under attack by hedge-fund activist Daniel Loeb, who wants it to start making lots more money, in part by refusing to kowtow to rich folks like him.
Tobias Meyer sold this untitled Rothko at Sotheby’s in 2010 for $31.4 million. It belonged to the collector David Martinez, who had bought it for $19 million from Texas socialite Marguerite Hoffman, whose husband had purchased it in 1998 for just $2.8 million . . . .
New York Artists Live on "Human Hamster Wheel"
By ULA ILNYTZKY, The Associated Press
Ever feel like you're on a big hamster wheel and you can't get off?
Ward Shelley and Alex Schweder know that feeling all too well. The two performance artists are spending 10 days living, eating and sleeping on a giant hamster wheel to make a larger point: We all have to work together to get through the daily grind . . . .
By ULA ILNYTZKY, The Associated Press
Ever feel like you're on a big hamster wheel and you can't get off?
Ward Shelley and Alex Schweder know that feeling all too well. The two performance artists are spending 10 days living, eating and sleeping on a giant hamster wheel to make a larger point: We all have to work together to get through the daily grind . . . .
Many high schools get an F in art education
By Yoav Goden New York Post
Many city high schoolers aren’t meeting the state’s bare-bones requirement that they get two semesters of art instruction, a new audit found.
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said as many as two-thirds of students sampled by his office had something awry with their art courses — including uncertified teachers, no syllabus, or no proof that they fulfilled the required 108 hours . . . .
By Yoav Goden New York Post
Many city high schoolers aren’t meeting the state’s bare-bones requirement that they get two semesters of art instruction, a new audit found.
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said as many as two-thirds of students sampled by his office had something awry with their art courses — including uncertified teachers, no syllabus, or no proof that they fulfilled the required 108 hours . . . .
Thomas DiNapoli says two-thirds of city schoolkids receive low-quality arts education
By Ben Chapman and Glenn Blain New York Daily News
According to an audit by state Controller Thomas DiNapoli, many city schoolkids do not receive the required amount of hours of instruction or are taught by non-certified teachers in the arts . . . .
By Ben Chapman and Glenn Blain New York Daily News
According to an audit by state Controller Thomas DiNapoli, many city schoolkids do not receive the required amount of hours of instruction or are taught by non-certified teachers in the arts . . . .
Banksy Brooklyn Art Goes to Auction: Wall From Red Hook Building Could Fetch Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars
By Carmel Melouney The Wall Street Journal
A portion of a wall from Brooklyn has been shipped to Miami and could fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction Tuesday—all thanks to a graffiti artist whose identity has never been verified . . . .
By Carmel Melouney The Wall Street Journal
A portion of a wall from Brooklyn has been shipped to Miami and could fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction Tuesday—all thanks to a graffiti artist whose identity has never been verified . . . .
Museum & Gallery Listings for Feb. 14-20
from the ART & DESIGN Listings of the NYTimes
Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art. A searchable guide to these and many other art shows is at nytimes.com/events.
from the ART & DESIGN Listings of the NYTimes
Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art. A searchable guide to these and many other art shows is at nytimes.com/events.
One concept for an arts center
London Director to Draft Arts Vision for Ground Zero
by Robin Pogrebin NYTimes
Executives developing a performing arts center at ground zero have hired a temporary . . .
by Robin Pogrebin NYTimes
Executives developing a performing arts center at ground zero have hired a temporary . . .
Gerhard Richter's "Wand"
London Auction Houses See High Prices for Contemporary Art
By Carol Vogel NYTimes
LONDON - Last week Sotheby's and Christie's proved that Impressionist and modern art hasn't lost its luster, with a still life by Juan Gris fetching $56.7 million and a dreamy cityscape by Pissarro bringing $32 million.
Now the auction houses here are focusing on contemporary art with back-to-back sales of paintings, sculptures and drawings in blue-chip names as well as some examples from today's young rising stars . . . .
By Carol Vogel NYTimes
LONDON - Last week Sotheby's and Christie's proved that Impressionist and modern art hasn't lost its luster, with a still life by Juan Gris fetching $56.7 million and a dreamy cityscape by Pissarro bringing $32 million.
Now the auction houses here are focusing on contemporary art with back-to-back sales of paintings, sculptures and drawings in blue-chip names as well as some examples from today's young rising stars . . . .
Nazi art trove yields more hidden works, this time in Austria
By David Ng, LATimes
The home of art collector Cornelius Gurlitt's residence in Salzburg, Austria, where a second trove of art believed to have been seized or improperly acquired by the Nazis during World War II was found. (Barbara Gindl / EPA / February 11, 2014) . . . .
By David Ng, LATimes
The home of art collector Cornelius Gurlitt's residence in Salzburg, Austria, where a second trove of art believed to have been seized or improperly acquired by the Nazis during World War II was found. (Barbara Gindl / EPA / February 11, 2014) . . . .
Elliot Eisner, Stanford University
Stanford Professor Elliot Eisner, Champion of Arts Education, Dies
by Brooke Donald Stanford News
Eisner argued that curriculum that included music, dance and art was essential in developing critical thinking skills in children.
Elliot Eisner, a leading scholar of arts education who presented a rich and powerful alternative vision to the devastating cuts made to the arts in U.S. school in recent decades . . . .
by Brooke Donald Stanford News
Eisner argued that curriculum that included music, dance and art was essential in developing critical thinking skills in children.
Elliot Eisner, a leading scholar of arts education who presented a rich and powerful alternative vision to the devastating cuts made to the arts in U.S. school in recent decades . . . .
“Green Wheat Fields, Auvers,” 1890 Oil on canvas.
National Gallery to Display Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Final Gasp,’ Not Seen Publicly Since 1966
By Katherine Boyle The Washington Post
Christmas came early at the National Gallery of Art, which has just received Vincent van Gogh's "Green Wheat Fields, Auvers" from the estate of museum benefactor Paul Mellon. The painting will go on display . . . .
By Katherine Boyle The Washington Post
Christmas came early at the National Gallery of Art, which has just received Vincent van Gogh's "Green Wheat Fields, Auvers" from the estate of museum benefactor Paul Mellon. The painting will go on display . . . .