Displaying items by tag: art museums

The city of Sacramento and the Kings have agreed to commission world-renowned artist Jeff Koons to create a sculpture for outside the new downtown arena.

In what is the largest budget for a public art installation in the region’s history, the Kings, the city and three team owners will pay $8 million for the art. Another $1.5 million from the Kings and local philanthropist and artist Marcy Friedman will commission work from local artists to be displayed at the arena.

Koons’ sculpture will be the fifth in his “Coloring Book” collection, a series of towering stainless steel sculptures that have been displayed in some of the most prominent art museums in the world.

Many of the biggest museums around Southern California will offer free general admission to the public for one day only on Saturday, Jan. 31, as part of the 10th annual "Museums Free-For-All" program.

Among the participating museums this year will be the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the California Science Center and the Skirball Cultural Center. The full list of participating institutions, below, comprises 25 individual venues, including some museums that already offer free admission on a daily basis.

The Art Newspaper’s annual survey of art museums named the Louvre in Paris the most visited institution in the world for 2012. Attendance skyrocketed to 9.7 million, meaning one million more people visited the museum than in 2011.The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was the world’s second most-visited institution.

The list of most-visited museums did not change significantly from 2011 and the Louvre has claimed the top spot since 2007. British museums fared exceptionally well in 2012 with some help from the London summer Olympics, which brought crowds of visitors to the city. The Tate Modern saw attendance jump from 4.8 million to 5.3 million thanks to a highly anticipated Damien Hirst (b. 1965) retrospective, which helped the museum move from the fifth to the fourth most visited institution in the world.

While rocket fire is a normal occurrence in southern Israel, the recent attacks on Tel Aviv, the country’s northern capital city, has art museums in the area taking extra precautions. The walls of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art have been stripped and nearly 200 works, including approximately 100 works by relatives of the Renaissance master Pieter Brueghel the Elder, were moved to a rocket-proof safe late last week.

While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has continued to escalate, other museums are following suit. The curator of the Ashdod Art Museum in southern Israel has taken down 15 works by the leading Contemporary Israeli artist, Tsibi Geva, and placed them in a vault deep underground. The structure is designed to withstand both rocket fire and biological weapons. It was the first time the Ashdod Museum has taken down any art amid attacks since opening in 2003.

While air strikes are creeping up from the southern Israel’s traditional rocket range to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, some institutions are holding out on stashing their works. The Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, which specializes in Near Eastern antiquities and other art, has left its treasures in place. The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which houses some of the country’s most prized antiquities and cultural artifacts has also continued to operate as usual.

The last time the Tel Aviv Museum of Art took down works during a conflict was in 1991 when Iraqi scud missiles pounded the city during the Gulf War.