Displaying items by tag: drawings

On Sunday, November 18, the Baltimore Museum of Art will unveil a major renovation to the contemporary wing that was built in 1994. The space has been under construction since January 2011 and is part of a $24.5 million overhaul that included a new roof, lighting, gallery paint and flooring as well as other structural changes to the Contemporary Galleries. The overarching goal was to modernize the wing, making the entire viewing experience more inviting and fulfilling for patrons.

John Russell Pope, the architect that created the Jefferson Memorial, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Archives, built the Baltimore Museum’s main building in the 1920s. While the Pope building is a structural masterpiece, the Contemporary wing has been regarded as an eyesore for years. Architect Michael Craft oversaw the recent renovation and has done as much as possible to ease the transition from the Pope building into the Contemporary wing.

The Baltimore Museum of Art’s Contemporary collection includes more than 100 objects including paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, and moving image works. At the wing’s unveiling, works by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Olafur Eliasson will be on view.

Uzbekistan seems an unlikely venue for a rare Pablo Picasso exhibition, but Tashkent’s State Arts Museum currently has 12 “forgotten” ceramics by the artist on view. The works were first exhibited in Tashkent in the 1960s and have remained in storage since then. While it is not clear why the pieces have remained out of sight for so long, some suggest that they may have been forgotten.

Uzbekistan is known for its own pottery and ceramics industry and is well known for its art collection as it has long been used by wealthy Russians to house valuable artworks, many of which were taken there during World War II for safe keeping.

The French painter and close friend of Picasso, Fernand Leger, and his wife, Nadya, originally owned the 12 ceramic pieces. When Leger died in 1955, Nadya decided to donate the works to museums in the former Soviet Union.

While most people associate Picasso with his paintings and drawings, he produced more than 2,000 ceramic pieces between 1947 and 1948.

After twenty-two years, Nicholas Capasso will be leaving his post at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA. Capasso, who is currently the deCordova’s deputy director for Curatorial Affairs, has been named the new director of the Fitchburg Art Museum and will start his latest venture on December 3.

During his time at the deCordova, Capasso has overseen a permanent collection that included 3,500 objects, changing gallery exhibitions, and an outdoor sculpture park. He helped to bring recognition to the institution and to reposition it as an important contemporary museum.

While Capasso specializes in contemporary art, he is eager to work with the Fitchburg Art Museum’s collection that spans more than 5,000 years and includes American and European paintings, prints, drawings, ceramics, decorative arts, and Greek, Roman, Asian, and pre-Columbian antiquities. The Museum’s collection, which is housed between twelve galleries, includes works by William Zorach, John Singleton Copley, Joseph Stella, Edward Hopper, Charles Burchfield, Charles Sheeler, Walker Evans, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

Capasso will take over the role of director from the soon-to-be-retired Peter Timms who has held the position since 1973.

Taking over two galleries at New York City’s Morgan Library & Museum, Dürer to de Kooning: 100 Master Drawings from Munich, spans the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. The show includes rarely seem works by old masters such as Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Raphael, and Rubens as well as nineteenth century sheets by van Gogh and contemporary works by Pablo Picasso, David Hockney, and Georg Baselitz. The drawings, which are on loan from the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich, have never before been on view in the United States.

Comprised of a complex of buildings on Madison Avenue, the Morgan began as the private library of the financier Pierpont Morgan. In 1924, eleven years after Pierpont’s death his son, J.P. Morgan, Jr., turned the library into a public institution.

100 Masters will be on view through January 6, 2013.

Sotheby’s hosted a number of sales in Hong Kong this past week. On October 7^th, the Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian paintings sale achieved $15.5 million, soaring past the pre-sale estimate of $5.8 million. The sale achieved the highest auction total for this category and the painting Fortune and Longevity by Lee Man Fong, an Indonesian modern master, set a record for any Southeast Asian painting when it sold for $4.4 million. The final price for the painting was almost three times the pre-sale estimate.

The Contemporary Asian Art sale totaled $15.1 million and Tiananmen No. 1 by Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter, Zhang Xiaogang, was the top lot at $2.69 million. Liu Wei’s Revolutionary Family Series – Invitation to Dinner was the second highest sale at $2.24 million, a world record price at auction for the Beijing-based artist who works in various mediums including video, installation, drawings, sculpture, and painting.

The 20^th Century Chinese Art sale brought in $24.6 million and sold 90% by lot. Works from Europe, the United States, and around Asian sold well and many were above their pre-sale estimates. The top lot was Potted Chrysanthemums by the Chinese modern art pioneer, Sanyu, which sold for $3.99 million.

The following day, the Fine Chinese Paintings sale totaled $53.2 million, the highest of the four art auctions. Offering many works from private collections, the total sale was more than double the pre-sale estimate and sold 97.2% by lot. The two top lots at the auction, Zhang Daqian’s Swiss Peaks; Calligraphy in Xingshu and Fu Baoshi’s Lady at the Pavillion, both sold for $2,974,278.

Last year China beat out the United States as the world’s largest art and antiques market and the autumn sales reflect that power swap. There was a bit of controversy when a 60-year-old Taiwanese Buddhist sister demanded that a $1.65 million sale be halted at the Fine Chinese Paintings auction. Sotheby’s canceled the sale of a painting by Zhang Daqian after Lu Chieh-chien requested a court hearing to prevent bidding on Riding in the Autumn Countryside (1950) which she claims was the property of her family and had been consigned without consent.

Six years ago wholesale powerhouse, Costco, stopped selling fine art amid allegations that two Picasso drawings sold on their online store were fakes. The company recently decided to give the venture another go adding “Fine Art” as a category in their “Home & Décor” section. Nestled between “Bathroom,” “Bedding,” and “Kitchen & Dining,” the foray into the art market seems to be going well. In the past two weeks or so, 8 out of the 10 have sold including a framed screen print by Andy Warhol for $1,450 and a framed lithograph by Henri Matisse for $1,000.

The works are supplied by Greg Moors, an art dealer based in San Francisco who provided Costco with art when they first launched the department in 2003. Driven by the notion of financially accessible art, Moors dismissed the peculiarity of a discount warehouse store selling fine art. In fact, this practice is not exclusive to Costco. Between 1962 and 1971, Sears sold over 50,000 works by such artists as Picasso, Rembrandt, Chagall, and Whistler as part of the Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art. Customers could even buy works on layaway.

Although he did not supply the store with the questionable Picassos, Moors is very careful about what is available via Costco. Most of the works are unsigned to avoid questions about the signatures’ authenticity. He is also attempting to sell the works of more living artists and is avoiding artists who are known to have a proliferation of fakes circulating in the art market.

While sales totaled $3,486,127 million at Sotheby’s American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture auction on September 28^th in New York, 35% of lots went unsold. Sotheby’s did slightly better than Christie’s in the American Art arena, but both sales are a testament to the lackluster performance of mid-season auctions.

“Sotheby’s did put a few more important paintings in the sale,” said Debra Force of Debra Force Fine Art, Inc. “The question is whether the clientele is there to buy it.” It appears that the clientele interested in purchasing Rockwells were at least in attendance. Is He Coming? (1919), a quintessential Norman Rockwell painting of a young boy and his dog peering up the chimney on what appears to be Christmas Eve, brought in $602,500. The final price was $300,000 more than than the paintings high estimate ($200,000–$300,000).

Sotheby’s sale featured more than 200 paintings, drawings, and sculptures and included property from two noteworthy private collections belonging to Margie and Robert E. Petersen and Susan Kahn Rosenkranz and Richard Rosenkranz. Highlights included works by Rockwell Kent, Marsden Harley, Grandma Moses, and Ben Shahn with Kent and Moses taking two of the top five lots. Moses’ On the Banks of the Hudson reached the third highest price of the sale at $92,500 but still brought in considerably less than its high estimate of $120,000. Rockwell Kent’s Adirondack Farm, Summer sold for $86,5000 (estimate: $25,000–$35,000), the fourth highest sale of the auction.

While the highlights of the auction could have made more money in a more important sale, the quality is there. "Maybe more important collectors need to get used to looking at these mid-season sales," says Force. 

As of yesterday, a Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) painting that was stolen during an armed robbery at a Houston home last September has been named one of the FBI’s top ten unsolved art crimes. A private insurance company has offered a $50,000 reward for any helpful information leading to the work’s recovery.

The painting, Madeleine Leaning on Her Hair, was completed by the pioneering Impressionist in 1918 and has an estimated value of $1 million. The painting has also been added to the Art Loss Registry, the National Stolen Art File, and Interpol’s Works of Art System. Interpol, an international police organization, encourages cooperation between law enforcement agencies in different countries. By taking these measures, the thief will most likely be unsuccessful if he/she attempts to take the painting to a knowledgeable dealer or gallery or tries to sell it at auction as most members of the art world regularly check these databases.

The other top unsolved art crimes on the FBI’s list include the notorious Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist in which four Rembrandts, five Degas drawings, and one Vermeer (among other works) were stolen. Also on the list is the theft of two Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney commissioned Maxfield Parrish paintings from a Hollywood gallery, the 2002 van Gogh Museum robbery in which two paintings valued at $3 million, and the 1969 theft of a $20 million Caravaggio from Italy’s Oratory of San Lorenzo.

The archives of Frank Lloyd Wright, widely regarded as one of the greatest architects of modern times, will move to New York City to become part of the permanent collections of Columbia University and the Museum of Modern Art, the institutions announced on Tuesday.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation said its decision to work with MoMA and Columbia would ensure the archives, including more than 23,000 of Wright's architectural drawings, are properly conserved and seen more widely by scholars and the public.

"This is all part of our cultural heritage," said Sean Malone, the foundation's CEO. The foundation has spent the past two years deciding how to conserve the archives, he said.