Displaying items by tag: oceanic art

A masterwork of Oceanic art has been added to the collection at the Toledo Museum of Art. Purchased at Christie’s in Paris on Dec. 3, 2015, the mask is one of four known distinguished examples from Saibai Island in the Torres Straits and has been heralded by scholars as the most notable. The Saibai Island Masks are among the rarest and most spectacular works of art created by the artists of the Torres Straits.

The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas has completed its Piano Pavilion, a glass, concrete and wood structure that has tripled the institution’s gallery space. The addition, which was designed by architect Renzo Piano, will also house classrooms, an expanded library, underground parking and an auditorium.

The new building sits 65 yards from the museum’s original structure which was created in 1972 by Louis Kahn, Piano’s mentor. The two structures are adjoined on the Piano Pavilion’s western side, seamlessly merging the new with the old. The Piano Pavilion will house the Kimbell Museum’s permanent collection, which includes European and American art and antiquities as well as Precolumbian and Oceanic art.

The Kimbell Art Museum, which is free to the public, will officially open its Piano Pavilion on November 27, 2013.   

The remarkable Barbier-Mueller Collection of Pre-Columbian Art will be up for sale at Sotheby’s Paris on March 22 and 23, 2013. Comprised of approximately 300 works from Mexico, Central America, and South America and worth around $26 million, the Barbier-Mueller collection is the most important grouping of its kind ever offered at auction.

Swiss collector Josef Mueller (1887-1977) started building his collection after acquiring major works by Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918) and Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) in Paris during the early 20^th century. Mueller went on to develop an affinity for important works of Pre-Columbian art. The collection was later honed and expanded to include African art, Oceanic art, and Cycladic art by Mueller’s daughter, Monique, and her husband, Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller.

The works offered at Sotheby’s span the historical cultures that dominated the period from 1200BC to 1500AC and include objects in wood and stone, ceramics, textiles, and ritual items. Highlights from the collection include a Chupicuaro ceramic statue from 500-100BC that is expected to sell for approximately $2.6 million; a Maya ceramic head that Mueller purchased from the film director John Huston estimated to bring $200,000-$325,000; and an Aztec stone figure of a water goddess from 1300-1500 expected to garner over $650,000.  

The Barbier-Mueller Collection of Pre-Columbian Art is on view at Sotheby’s until March 21, 2013.