10 January 2007 | Medieval, Museums
From Columbia Magazine: “[James] Beck’s challenge to the authenticity of the Metropolitan Duccio has been laid out in the appendix of his book, Connoisseurship in Crisis: From Duccio to Raphael, to be published by European Press Academic Publishing this fall … ‘It’s a delicate matter, all this crap,’ says Beck, 76. ‘The politics of culture. [...]
5 January 2007 | Museums
More from The New York Times on French museums lending their collections: “Questions are being raised about plans to create a satellite of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and to establish an outpost of the Georges Pompidou Center in Shanghai. Critics have accused President Jacques Chirac of using [...]
22 December 2006 | Americas, Museums
From the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Mayor Street announced that Thomas Eakins’ masterpiece The Gross Clinic would remain in Philadelphia. The local fund-raising effort to buy the painting has received more than 2,000 contributions from more than 30 states, sources at the Philadelphia Museum of Art said.”
22 December 2006 | Museums
Didier Rykner of La Tribune de l’Art has written in to notify us of a petition drive that he is organizing to protest the dispersal of French collections to venues around the world. This page has more on the matter. Excerpts: “Le Monde … published a text, ‘Museums Are Not For Sale,’ signed by Françoise [...]
18 December 2006 | Museums
From a review by Hashim Al-Tawil of “Out of Iraq: Artists’ Meditations on Their Homeland,” a show now at the National Arab American Museum (NAAM) in Dearborn: “The decision to host this show raises serious and troubling questions about the capabilities and/or intentions of those responsible at the museum. There was an obvious lack of [...]
15 December 2006 | Museums
From the Art Newspaper: “The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York has established its first permanent curatorial position for Latin American art and also set up a committee to raise funds for Latin American acquisitions. Luís Perez-Oramas, who currently serves as adjunct curator of drawings at MoMA, has assumed the position of the [...]
30 November 2006 | Americas, Museums
From the Philadelphia Inquirer: “The campaign to raise $68 million and retain Thomas Eakins’ monumental painting The Gross Clinic in Philadelphia has reached about one-third of its goal, officials said yesterday, with the number of donations now running into the hundreds. With just under four weeks left to raise the remainder, Anne d’Harnoncourt, director and [...]
27 November 2006 | Americas, Modern, Museums
From the Houston Chronicle: “Emily Ballew Neff, curator of American painting and sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is shaking up the art world with her new exhibit, The Modern West. In it, she shows that the American West influenced artists not usually considered Western — a group that includes, most controversially, Jackson [...]
25 October 2006 | Modern, Museums
“Ten years ago, when I spoke of a Girodet exhibition project, everyone confused him with Géricault,” said Sylvaine Bellenger, who organized “Girodet, Romantic Rebel.” Last week, the survey was in Montreal for the last stop on its tour. Today, the bizarrerie for which David’s student was once penalized now works in his favor. The Montreal [...]
23 October 2006 | Museums, Renaissance
Titian’s portraits of the powerful are up at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris (catalog from Skira). Titien, le pouvoir en face is “a magnificent introduction” to Titian’s work, in spite of its odd title, writes Gérard-Georges Lemaire. In one picture, Charles Quint, “no beauty,” is “literally sublimated by Titian.” Lemaire also praises the je-ne-sais-quoi [...]
19 October 2006 | Books, Modern, Museums
Goya’s Caprichos are currently on view in Milan’s Galleria Bellinzona (through Oct. 28). Three hundred copies of the 80-part series of etchings and aquatints were printed in February 1799. At CAA Reviews, Tara Zanardi recently reviewed Andrew Schulz’s book, Goya’s Caprichos: Aesthetics, Perception, and the Body. She credits Schulz with showing the significance of the [...]
12 October 2006 | Museums
From Artnet: “The Museum of Modern Art has established a new curatorial department, Media, and has named Klaus Biesenbach as its head, making him chief curator of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and chief curator of the Department of Media. Longtime MoMA video curator Barbara London is associate curator of the new department. MoMA’s film department, [...]
5 October 2006 | Museums
The up-and-coming Max Hollein, now director of the august Städel in Frankfurt, recently discussed his efforts to accommodate today’s broad museum-going public. His institution now offers seven different audio tours: a guide to the highlights, a children’s tour, and tours focused on religious, technical and cultural-history topics. He also dismisses the idea that a modern-art [...]
4 October 2006 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Museums
From the AP: “The Baroque-era painter Annibale Carracci – underpaid during his lifetime and under-appreciated for centuries after his death – is enjoying a posthumous renaissance in his native Italy. What is described as his first solo show opened [recently] at Bologna’s Civic Archaeological Museum. Entitled simply ‘Annibale Carracci,’ the show works to dispel the [...]
4 October 2006 | Modern, Museums
Alfred Barr’s torpedo (illustration here) continues to make waves. El Pais asks Serge Guilbaut for thoughts on MoMA’s future, in the wake of William Rubin’s death. He calls for democracy, debate, and dialogue. Also in El Pais, Ángela Molina reviews “Doppler Effect,” the 48-room permanent installation at the Tate Modern directed by Vicente Todolí, within [...]
3 October 2006 | Modern, Museums
Arno Breker, the sculptor known for having been highly honored by Hitler, is the subject of a recent, controversial solo exhibition, the first such. An interview with curator Rudolf Conrades is in Die Welt. Conrades had the idea upon learning that Breker was also esteemed by Jean Cocteau, who commissioned his gravestone from Breker. The [...]
29 September 2006 | Museums, Renaissance
Giambologna, a star of Viennese collections, gets a thorough look-in at the Bargello (“Giambologna: Gods and Heroes”) and the Kunsthistorisches Museum (“Giambologna: Triumph of the Body”; see Markus Mittringer, Der Standard). In the catalog, Claudia Kryza-Gersch argues that you can reduce Italian Renaissance sculpture to three names: Donatello, Michelangelo, and Giambologna.
28 September 2006 | Books, Contemporary, Museums
Over 100 artists have incorporated Disney imagery into their work. Why? Holly Crawford considers several possible motivations in her new book, “Attached to the Mouse: Disney and Contemporary Art” (she was kind enough to send us a complimentary copy), which aims to be “the first art history analyzing use of Disney imagery.” Among them: Disney [...]
28 September 2006 | Museums, Renaissance
In La Stampa, Marco Vallora weighs in on the Gentile show in Fabriano (previously discussed here).
28 September 2006 | Museums
From the Turkish Daily News: “British art historian and curator David Elliot has been appointed director of the Istanbul Modern Art Museum, museum officials announced on Thursday, and will take over the post in January 2007, reported the Anatolia news agency … Elliot, who is among the founders of the Tokyo Mori Art Museum, was [...]
