Displaying items by tag: Art World

The nearly completed Broad museum in downtown Los Angeles resembles a giant, milky honeycomb, so it was appropriate that on Sunday the place buzzed with activity.

Curious artists, journalists and art world figures streamed through the airy, light-filled space for a one-day sneak peek inside the museum, which is not scheduled to open until Sept. 20. A freight elevator, still lined with plywood, deposited arrivals onto the museum's top floor, a 35,000-square-foot space not yet broken up by partition walls.

A sound installation by Swedish artist BJ Nilsen hummed and hissed, echoing under the soaring ceiling as shards of light leaked through 318 skylights, glimmering against bare concrete and unfinished wood.

After just one edition in Paris, the New York institution Outsider Art Fair (OAF) already feels at home in France—and it's no surprise. Paris, home turf of art brut father Jean Dubuffet, is natural territory for the genre. These days outsider art is supported year-round by galleries and institutions like the Halle Saint Pierre and such foundations as Bruno Decharme's abcd (art brut connaissance & diffusion) and Antoine de Galbert's La Maison Rouge. The art world's current frenzy of interest in the genre─epitomized by Massimiliano Gioni's "Encyclopedic Palace" exhibition at the 2013 Venice Biennale─doesn't hurt either. No wonder OAF is settling in so well.

With the stroke of Gov. Deval Patrick’s pen a few weeks ago, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art got the go-ahead to realize the nearly 30-year-old dream of transforming a 19^th century, 26-building, 16-acre factory complex into a destination arts center that would also help revive the economy of North Adams, Mass.

As the art world knows, the road has been a bit bumpy and, along the way, the vision has changed. But Mass MoCA has hit something of a groove of late, giving state officials the confidence to allocate $25.4 million from state coffers for the expansion. Now, under director Joe Thompson — who’s been there for 29 years, from the beginning — it will reclaim almost all of the 600,000 square feet campus. Massachusetts taxpayers’ money will pay for the necessary infrastructure improvements, for fitting out the parts of the factory complex that are not currently in use, to make them ready for more art.

Marking the end of an era at the powerhouse art-fair organization Art Basel, Annette Schönholzer steps down this month to pursue other projects. As show manager of the first, now legendary, Art Basel Miami Beach in 2002, and later co-director with Marc Spiegler of all three Art Basel fairs worldwide, she oversaw the tremendous growth of the art-fair phenomenon and a far-reaching shake-up of power in the art world.

Her departure follows the surprising move in July by a key official of Art Basel, Magnus Renfrew, who served as director of its Hong Kong fair, to Bonhams auction house.  As Schönholzer had also been involved some months back in the establishment of Art Basel’s presence in China, the dual departures are seen complicating that newly minted expansion.

All sorts of paths can lead to an art career—and a nation-wide media frenzy never hurts. Francesca Grillo hit the headlines last year, when she was accused, alongside her sister Elisabetta, of defrauding über-collector Charles Saatchi and his former wife Nigella Lawson of £685,000 ($1,140,500) with company credit cards. The sisters were found not guilty in December 2013.

One might have thought that Francesca had seen enough of the art world at the Saatchi-Lawson residence to want to start afresh somewhere else. Quite the opposite. She has teamed up with another former Saatchi employee, Sharrine Scholtz, to launch a gallery-without-walls, Laissez Faire Art.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new initiative in New York City this month, proposing a municipal identification card that could be available to all city inhabitants next year. The card would be beneficial to New Yorkers who don't have a driver's license or other form of official ID. In particular, undocumented individuals.

Well, according to The New York Times, another subset of the population may find the municipal IDs appealing: the art world. The Times reports that the card may come with free membership and discounted tickets to cultural institutions in NYC, namely the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Lincoln Center and other well known culture havens.

On November 4, 2013, Christie’s will auction works from the private collection of the prominent art dealer Jan Kruiger. The sale, which will take place five year’s after Kruiger’s death, is expected to garner over $160 million. A consequent sale of works on paper and sculpture will likely bring around $15 million.

The sale at Christie’s will present a mere fraction of Kruiger’s personal collection. The remainder has either been sold privately or resides with his family. Highlights from the upcoming auction include Wassily Kandinsky’s landscape Herbstlandschaft, which carries an estimate of $6 million to $8 million, and Pablo Picasso’s sheet-iron sculpture Tete (Head), which is expected to fetch $25 million to $35 million.

While Christie’s and Sotheby’s were in close competition to helm the sale, Christie’s allegedly offered a more profitable financial package to Kruiger’s heirs, giving them a more significant percentage of the buyer’s premium.

Kruiger opened the Jan Kruiger Gallery of New York, which specialized in 19^th century, 20^th century and contemporary art, in 1967. It remained a fixture of the art world for decades.

49 paintings from the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, TN are now on view at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, NE. Renoir to Chagall: Paris and the Allure of Color focuses on Paris’ emergence as the hub of the art world during the 19^th century and its role in shaping the Impressionist movement in France.

Between 1853 and 1870, under the command of Napoleon III, Paris was transformed from a quaint city to one of grandeur. Narrow streets and crowded houses were demolished in favor of striking boulevards, lush public gardens, and modern buildings. While the population and prosperity of the city soared, artists flocked to Paris to be inspired and thrive, ultimately defining the city’s modern era. Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Alfred Sisley (1839-1899), Claude Monet (1840-1926), Pierre Auguste Renoir (1885-1952), and Edgar Degas (1834-1917) all nurtured their artistic visions in Paris during this period. In 1874, the artists held an independent exhibition, which led to their classification by critics as Impressionists. The plein air technique and unblended painterly style of Impressionism eventually influenced future generations of avant-garde artists include Neo-Impressionists, Fauves and Cubists.

The museum’s founders, Hugo and Margaret Dixon, formed the institution’s magnificent collection of French paintings themselves. John Reward, a leading scholar of Impressionism, advised the couple. Renoir to Chagall offers the finest works from their holdings and is on view at the Joselyn Art Museum through September 1, 2013. Admission to the museum and exhibition is free.

Andrew Wyeth’s ‘Ides of March:’ The Making of a Masterpiece is currently on view at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, PA. The exhibition is part of a five-year sequence of events that will culminate in 2017 with a centennial celebration of the realist painter Andew Wyeth (1917-2009), including a major retrospective of the artist’s work. A native of Chadds Ford, Wyeth was a prominent force in the art world during the mid-20^th century.

The privately owned Ides of March (1974), which is rarely exhibited, will be presented alongside more than 30 of Wyeth’s preliminary studies for the tempera painting. The exhibition offers viewers a rare glimpse into Wyeth’s painstaking approach to composition and his renowned use of evocative imagery.

Organizers hope that The Making of a Masterpiece and the museum’s future events will introduce Wyeth as well as his family members to a new crop of art enthusiasts. Wyeth’s father, N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), was a celebrated American artist and illustrator and his son, Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946), is a well-known realist painter and heir to the Brandywine School of painters, which was created by his grandfather and father.

The Making of a Masterpiece will be on view at the Brandywine River Museum through May 19, 2013. Visitors of the museum can also take a tour of Wyeth’s studio now through November 19, 2013.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the largest art museum in the United States, can be difficult to navigate in a short period time. With over two million works in its collection, visitors to the Met usually spend a few minutes with an object before moving on to one of the many masterpieces that awaits them. In an effort to highlight some of the museum’s not-to-be-missed objects, Met officials have launched the web series, 82^nd & Fifth, aptly named after the museum’s Manhattan location.

The series presents 100 pieces from the Met’s vast collection in separate episodes. During each episode, a museum curator explains the work’s significance, not just to the art world and the museum, but also to them on a personal level.

The Met has already posted six 2-½ to 3-minute videos, which include interactive features, on the 82^nd & Fifth web page. Highlighted works include a room with furnishings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) between 1912 and 1915, a Renaissance relief sculpture by Antonio Rossellino (1427-circa 1478/1481), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s (1696-1770) massive painting The Triumph of Marius (1729), and an etching by Rembrandt (1606-1669) titled Christ Crucified Between Two Thieves: The Three Crosses (1653).

The Met will post two new videos on Wednesday morning of each week through December 25, 2013.