25 September 2007 | Modern, Museums
From the L.A. Times: [The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art keeps] the outlaw paintings in the basement, locked in the museum’s vault. Not just the Picassos — the Kandinskys, the Miros, the Warhols. The Monet, the Pissarro, the Toulouse-Lautrec, the Van Gogh. Possibly the best Jackson Pollock outside the U.S. Ruled by one of the [...]
6 June 2007 | Museums
The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden has created a digital facsimile of its Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. The copy resides in Second Life, which is a popular “3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.” More from the press release: … all 750 masterpieces in the exhibition are on display. The doors are open 24 hours [...]
Academic journals often fall comically behind in their publication schedule. For example, we recently received the latest issue of Présence Africaine, by no means the worst offender, dated “1er semestre 2005.” A good read all the same, this issue is devoted to “African Aesthetics and Philosophical Discourses.” Jean-Luc Aka-Evy contributes an article on “the resistance [...]
24 May 2007 | Americas, Museums
In the spring 2007 issue of Latino Studies, Karen Mary Davalos writes on “the meaning of Chicana art collections”: “private collectors fill the vacancy left by local and federal museums and establish a public repository of Chicana art and culture … [like] feminist activists who generate movements for social change … [enacting] a poetics of [...]
21 May 2007 | Americas, Conferences, Museums
Has anyone written about the phenomenon of art scholars and curators who also collect? According to Princeton University, John Wilmerding “revealed May 4 at a reception and dinner in honor of his retirement that he is the previously anonymous donor of a major gift of Pop art to the Princeton University Art Museum.” Also, “a [...]
12 April 2007 | Books, Museums
Is it possible to publish 300+ pages on a theme such as “Venice and the Islamic World: 828-1797″ without once footnoting Edward Said’s 1978 book Orientalism? Is it even possible for scholars, post-Said, to speak of “the Islamic world: 828-1797″? (Imagine a show titled “Baghdad and the Christian World.”) Apparently it is. This exhibition catalogue [...]
26 March 2007 | Museums
The latest issue of Revue de l’Art (n. 154) is devoted to “the presentation of the work of art.” Introducing the issue, Etienne Jollet writes: “One might imagine that [this question] has been well explored. It seems to us however that much remains to be done. First, because the question arises even before the arrival [...]
21 March 2007 | Modern, Museums
From The Virginian-Pilot: “‘It’s an understudied period,’ [curator Jeff Harrison] said, grinning because the Chrysler Museum of Art is able to exhibit what few Americans have seen: 19th century and early 20th century Spanish paintings. The show, which opened last week, contains about 65 works from the collection of New York City’s Hispanic Society of [...]
7 March 2007 | Americas, Museums
From the Chicago Tribune: “Asking who designed Louis Comfort Tiffany’s iconic lamps might seem the decorative art world’s equivalent to the schoolyard stumper, ‘Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?’ While Ulysses S. Grant is indeed buried in Grant’s tomb, fresh evidence reveals that Tiffany did not design most of the lavish leaded-glass lamps bearing his name, [...]
7 March 2007 | Museums
From the AP: “France’s storied Louvre museum, home to priceless art works like the Mona Lisa, said today it will open a new Louvre in this Persian Gulf boomtown, prompting outcries from some who accuse the museum of shilling France’s patrimony for $1.3 billion in oil money. The 30-year agreement, signed by French Culture Minister [...]
5 March 2007 | Journals, Museums
In reviewing the catalogue to “From Callot to Greuze: French Drawings from Weimar” in the Winter 2006 issue of Master Drawings, Alastair Laing writes that it has brought “to light previously unpublished sheets from the until now seriously underpublished Schlossmuseum” but that “I cannot close this review without saying something about the American edition of [...]
22 February 2007 | Modern, Museums
The controversial paintings that some attribute to Jackson Pollock have again been scheduled for exhibition, this time at the Boston College McMullen Museum of Art, in September of this year, according to the Boston Globe.
19 February 2007 | Americas, Conferences, Museums
Contributor Ross Finocchio reports: “When, during a morning panel on art collecting, a bad projector distorted the dimensions of the Giorgione ‘Nativity’ in Washington’s National Gallery, the audience immediately erupted in protest. As the IT staff scurried to fix the problem, speaker Roger Crum calmly quipped, ‘As you’ll learn, Kress believed in expansion but this [...]
16 February 2007 | Africa, Conferences, Contemporary, Museums, News
Just two of the five scheduled speakers showed for this panel! “Contemporary African Art: Moving Forward, Looking Back; Investigating the Currency of Contemporary African Art” nonetheless proved quite lively. Barbara Pollack in particular provided fireworks. A very rough and selective transcript of her talk: “I’m not an expert on Chinese art or African art. I [...]
15 February 2007 | Modern, Museums
From the BBC: “A painting by the French artist Paul Cezanne that was lost for more than 60 years is to go on show in Italy. The picture disappeared after its last exhibition in 1945, before being found recently in a private collection by art historian Francesca Bardazzi. It will be shown from 2 March [...]
13 February 2007 | Modern, Museums
“Richard Brettell, the highly respected art historian at the University of Texas, Dallas … realized in conversations with French colleagues that Monet’s roots in Normandy, the coastal region through which the River Seine flows west of Paris, had never been deeply explored in an exhibition … in a key head-slapping revelation, Brettell was reminded by [...]
9 February 2007 | Museums
A new exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts: “The Parrot in Art: From Dürer to Elizabeth Butterworth.” From the press release: “This groundbreaking exhibition explores how the parrot’s role in art has changed from the Renaissance to the present.” (via Art History Today)
31 January 2007 | Modern, Museums
Cassandra Albinson reviews the Géricault show that appeared at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon last summer: “Wall texts and labels in museum exhibitions, often written in bland and impersonal prose, tend to obscure the voice of the curator. The exhibition Géricault: La Folie d’un Monde provides a glorious exception to the rule. Bruno Chenique, [...]
23 January 2007 | Museums, Renaissance
From the Art Newspaper: “Spanish art historians have renamed one of Italy’s greatest painters. Specialists at the Prado have established that Tintoretto’s family name was Comin. This revelation will be presented at a major retrospective on Tintoretto (1519-94), which opens in Madrid on 29 January … the result of research following publication of an article [...]
14 January 2007 | Americas, Museums
In The New York Times, Michael Kimmelman recaps the recent controversy over Eakins’ Gross Clinic (and visits some other Eakins paintings). The painting was being lured away from Thomas Jefferson University not by the National Gallery alone, but by the National Gallery in collaboration with Alice L. Walton. Did the subsequent outcry result from a [...]
