Displaying items by tag: statue of liberty

A new interactive museum honoring liberty and mass immigration will be the the first building constructed on Liberty island in decades. The $70m project design plans were unveiled Thursday morning. Designer Diane von Furstenberg, chair of the fundraising campaign raising money for the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, said, “Lady Liberty is a symbol of everything America’s about: freedom, hope, possibility and resilience.” The museum will be designed by architecture firm FXFOWLE.

The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York has lent two paintings by Edward Hopper to the White House. ‘Cobb’s Barns, South Truro’ and ‘Burly Cobb’s House, South Truro’, both oil on canvas works painted between 1930 and 1933 in Cape Cod, are currently on view in the Oval Office.

The paintings from the Whitney, which holds the world’s largest archive of Hopper’s works, were created while Hopper and his wife were renting a summer cottage in South Truro. From the home, Hopper executed a series of drawings and paintings of the buildings on his landlord’s farm, capturing the structures from various angles and at different times of the day. Both of the paintings from the Whitney capture Hopper’s masterful use of light and the quiet stillness that pervades much of his work.  

The two Hopper paintings will join Rembrandt Peale’s ‘George Washington,’ George Henry Story’s ‘Abraham Lincoln,’ Thomas Moran’s ‘The Three Tetons,’ Childe Hassam’s ‘The Avenue in the Rain,’ and Norman Rockwell’s ‘Statue of Liberty,’ all of which belong to the permanent White House collection.

Eugène Delacroix’s (1798-1863) celebrated painting Liberty Leading the People was defaced while on view at the Louvre’s satellite location in Lens, which opened in the former mining town in northern France in December 2012. French police have a detained the woman accused of scrawling a graffiti tag along the bottom of the work.

Delacroix, a leader of the Romantic school in French painting, painted Liberty Leading the People to celebrate the July revolution of 1830, which brought down France’s Charles X. The work was featured on the country’s 100-franc banknote before the Euro was adopted and is rumored to have inspired New York’s Statue of Liberty.

Just before the museum closed for the day on Thursday, February 7, 2013, a 28-year-old woman scribbled in 12 inch writing what officials believe to be a reference to a 9/11 conspiracy theory. Officials believe that the work can be easily cleaned, but a restoration expert from the Louvre was being sent to Lens to perform a thorough examination. Museum officials have not yet decided if the painting will need to be removed.    

Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary auction edged out Sotheby’s as the blockbuster sale of the week. Profits reached a walloping $412,253,100 on Wednesday night in New York and only six of the 73 lots went unsold. Beating the pre-sale estimate of $289,350,000-$411,800,000, the auction was the second highest grossing in Christie’s history. The record is currently held by the November 2006 Impressionist and Modern sale that brought $491.5 million. However, last night’s auction was the highest earning sale for the Post-War and Contemporary category to date.

During the course of the sale seven artist records were set and six works sold for over $20 million. Brett Gorvy, Chairman and International head of Post-War and Contemporary Art said, “We curated the sale around the rich variety of quality works and most coveted artists.” Works by these big name artists proceeded to sell for mind-bogglingly astronomical prices.

Andy Warhol’s iconic portrait of Marlon Brando, titled Marlon, (1966) sold for $23,714,500, Roy Lichtenstein’s interior Nude with Red Shirt (1995) brought $28,082,500, and Franz Kline’s seminal Abstract Expressionist painting, Untitled (1957) sold for a record $40,402,500. Other major sales included Warhol’s 3-D Statue of Liberty (1962) that went for $43,762,500, Mark Rothko’s Black Stripe (Orange, Gold and Black) that sold to a telephone bidder for $21,362,500, and Jeff Koons’ stainless steel Tulips (1995-2004) that brought $33,682,500, a new record for the artist. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (1981) was expected to bring in big numbers and did not disappoint at $26,402,500, but the piece stayed under its high estimate of $30 million.

Contemporary sales continue tonight at Phillips de Pury.

After a monumental postwar and contemporary auction that totaled $386 million this past spring, Christie’s expects an even bigger sale this November. Taking place November 14–15 in New York, the auction house estimates that the Post-War and Contemporary Art Sale could garner more than $441 million.

The 74-lot evening auction includes Andy Warhol’s Statue of Liberty canvas expected to bring in around $35 million and one of his silkscreens of Marlon Brando estimated at $15-$20 million. Other major draws include Jeff Koons’ balloon tulips for $25 million, a Rothko painting for $15-$20 million, and works by market darlings Alexander Calder, Gerhard Richter, Franz Kline, Ellsworth Kelly, and Jasper Johns. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (1981) is expected to set records for the artist with an estimate of $20 million.

Christie’s has already brought in $928 million in contemporary art sales this year.