25 August 2006 | Modern, Museums
Manet who? Three nicely illustrated articles in La Tribune de l’Art demonstrate there was much more to the art of the French 19th century than a few rebel geniuses. Phillip Dennis Cate surveys (in English) “Sculpture by Carpeaux, Dalou and Carriès” at The Petit Palais, Thierry Cazaux “Pierre Loti: Phantoms of the Orient” at the [...]
24 August 2006 | Contemporary, Museums
Live from New York, it’s contemporary art. Fifty years’ worth comes to the Grimaldi Forum in Monte Carlo – 500 works by 200 artists, including film, photography and architecture. Laura Larcan in La Repubblica: “Creative euphoria, emancipation, liberty and dissolution. In other words, the belle epoque.” The Principality of Monaco offers an alphabetical guide. David [...]
21 August 2006 | Museums, Renaissance
In La Repubblica, Goffredo Silvestri has a long and detailed review of the Lorenzo Monaco from the Giottesque tradition to the Renaissance exhibition at the Florence Accademia. (English catalog and description.)
3 August 2006 | Museums
The Louvre presents a “bilingual online catalogue presents more than 1,700 works produced by United States artists that entered the national collections of France before 1940.”
2 August 2006 | Architecture, Museums
From the Architectural Record: “In June the Museum of Modern Art announced that Barry Bergdoll will succeed Terence Riley as Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design … His main focus will be the 20th century—and the 21st. In addition to what he calls ‘monographic shows,’ he expects to mount shows on ‘process,’ including, [...]
25 July 2006 | Museums
From The Art Newspaper: “The Singapore government has announced a new museum examining the relationship between science and art that will be part of a resort complex … [The Las Vegas] Sands Corporation are investing over $3.2 billion in the scheme designed by Boston-based architect Moshe Safdie … [Safdie] convened an advisory group that included [...]
18 July 2006 | Modern, Museums
Picasso has taken Madrid for the third time, writes Gérard Dupuy. In 1936, the Republican government made him honorary director of the Louvre; in 1981, Guernica settled there; and now he straddles the Prado and the Reina Sofia in the blockbuster exhibition Picasso: Tradition and Avant-Garde. Their rich holdings allow for poignant juxtapositions, such as [...]
12 July 2006 | Modern, Museums
In the land of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, the synaesthetic trailblazer of pure abstraction gets a thorough look at decades-long last. At the Tate Modern, Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction shows 74 works. Picking up ten years after the artist’s 1895 epiphany in front of a Monet haystack, the show climaxes around 1914, before [...]
29 June 2006 | Museums
From the Washington Times: “Spectacular artifacts from two lost cities of ancient Egypt, rescued from the sea after more than 1,300 years, have taken the breath away from more than 1 million visitors to the Martin-Gropius Building in Berlin. They have even ignited religious debate — nonviolent so far — in Egypt … Sheik Ali [...]
27 June 2006 | Museums
According to the Lincoln [Nebraska] Journal Star, in the newly reinstalled European galleries at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, “Paintings share wall space with clocks. Silverwork and sculptures are on pedestals strategically placed in the same room with the paintings. Complimentary works on paper are in the nearby hallway. All of the works in each [...]
22 June 2006 | Architecture, Museums
From the New York Times: “Ending seven months of speculation, the Museum of Modern Art is to announce its new chief curator of architecture and design today: he is Barry Bergdoll, chairman of Columbia University’s art history department, who will begin work in January … ‘I’ve always thought of myself as working on modern architecture,’ [...]
21 June 2006 | Ancient, Museums
An exhibition review from Richard Dorment in The Telegraph: “The Road to Byzantium: Luxury Arts of Antiquity is about the persistence of the classical tradition. Its thesis is simple: that classical art, which originated with the Greeks in the fifth and fourth centuries BC and is always said to have ended with the fall of [...]
19 June 2006 | Modern, Museums
Abattoirs, spittle, ancient medallions and big toes feature, as expected, in “Undercover Surrealism,” the Hayward Gallery’s tribute to Georges Bataille. Most reviewers note that the erstwhile publisher of Documents is now accorded the place of honor long reserved for Andre Breton. Read reviews by Bryan Appleyard, Laura Cumming (“fetishes, voodoo dolls, two-faced African gods, wax [...]
26 May 2006 | Museums, Renaissance
Perspective, sure, but other interests also occupied the early Quattrocento. The exhibition “Gentile da Fabriano and the Other Renaissance,” on view in Fabriano through July, explores Gentile’s courtly elegance, his luxurious use of gold and other materials, his portrait-physiognomical sensitivity, and his expert treatment of atmosphere. Works by other painters from the Marches provide context. [...]
The V&A’s summer show of modernism in design, organized by Christopher Wilk (PDF bio), looks back at the “new world” of 1914-1939. Dominic Bradbury credits the show with integrating such things as Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet costume designs, but finds that modernist architecture has been “treated rather shabbily.” Deyan Sudjic notes that Wilk unashamedly puts [...]
16 May 2006 | Museums
The Tate Modern is replacing its earlier thematic hang with a new one. The London Times’ Tim Teeman finds that it successfully balances “the popular and the esoteric.” “More than 40 per cent of the works have never have been seen before, while 20 per cent are newly acquired … Gone are the old themes [...]
15 May 2006 | Museums
With “Russian Avant-Gardes” in Madrid, “¡Rusia!” in Bilbao, and “Malèvitx” in Barcelona, Spain is the place to go right now for Russian art, writes Lothar Schmidt in his survey of the three exhibitions.
12 May 2006 | Museums
“The museum should effect a rupture with the street, the banal. The public looks to the museum for an alternative.” In an interview in Le Monde, Suzanne Pagé, director of the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, reflects on museums’ ever greater openness to society, their anti-amnesiac function, the “enterprise museum” (increasingly ambitious [...]
11 May 2006 | Museums
From an op-ed by Dore Ashton in the Brooklyn Rail: “…There is something a lot more serious going on and it is not at all those Trimalchian banquets in Miami, Basel, Venice and New York at the many bazaars called art fairs. Curators have powers to erode the confidence of serious viewers, as they are [...]
10 May 2006 | Contemporary, Museums
From the Korea Times: “The government of [South Korea's] Kyonggi Province and Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation kicked off the construction of the Nam June Paik Museum in Yong-in, south of Seoul, on Tuesday, aimed at commemorating the Korean-born late video artist Paik Nam-june … officially announcing the start of the 28.9 billion won ($31 million) project [...]
