Displaying items by tag: Guggenheim Museum

Thomas Krens, who once directed the Guggenheim Museum in New York and its overseas satellites, on Saturday joined with the former Massachusetts governors William Weld and Michael Dukakis to announce an ambitious plan to establish a “cultural corridor” between North Adams and Williamstown, Mass.

The project, intended to draw more visitors to the northern Berkshires and to help the economy of North Adams in particular, would include a new contemporary art museum, the renovation of a 1938 movie palace and the building of what Mr. Krens calls a museum for “extreme model railroading and contemporary architecture,” all in or near North Adams.

Protestors shut down New York's Guggenheim Museum in protest over what they call the museum's inaction in ensuring decent conditions for workers in Abu Dhabi, where the museum is planning to open a new museum, according to reports at Artinfo, which broke the news, and the "New York Times."

The occupiers unfurled a giant red banner reading “Meet Workers' Demands Now! May Day 2015."

The Guggenheim museum will remain in Bilbao for the foreseeable future. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation announced yesterday that it was renewing the agreement is has with the Basque museum until 2034. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has welcomed almost 17 million visitors and staged over 140 exhibitions since it opened in 1997; and has had much success over the 17 years that is has engaged with the public. In fact the museum success quickly triggered the redevelopment of the formerly decrepit port area of Bilbao and bolstered tourism in the entire Basque Country.

The regeneration of the area and the economic evolution of the country was coined the “Guggenheim effect" soon after to describe this museum-led process.

The iconic poppy at Marimekko blossomed to gigantic proportions and the prospect of a new Guggenheim museum summoned top architects to the Finnish capital last week. The 10-day Helsinki Design Week, which takes place every September, turns the entire city into a showcase for new ideas and Scandinavian interior style.

This year, the city hosted over 150 official events and another 100 fringe ones. Teurastamo, formerly a slaughterhouse, was the newest venue where young Finnish designers had the chance to show off their work.

The Guggenheim Museum presents Kandinsky Before Abstraction, 1901–1911 in the museum’s Kandinsky Gallery on Annex Level 3. The exhibition features an intimate presentation of sixteen early paintings and woodcuts by Vasily Kandinsky (b. 1866, Moscow; d. 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France), highlighting pictorial themes that preceded the artist’s known nonobjective style.

This exhibition is organized by Tracey Bashkoff, Senior Curator, Collections and Exhibitions, and Megan Fontanella, Associate Curator, Collections and Provenance.

Kandinsky launched his artistic career in 1895, abandoning a legal profession to become the art director of a printing firm in Moscow. One year later Kandinsky left for Munich, where he formed associations with the city’s leading avant-garde groups, realized his talent for working with three classic printmaking techniques (etching, lithography, and woodcut), and began to evolve as an artist and theoretician.

For the second year in a row, Dior will sponsor the Guggenheim International Gala.

The annual benefit is a two-night event that is scheduled to take place on Nov. 5 and 6 in New York City. This year, the event, which is often referred to as GIG, will honor Carrie Mae Weems, whose retrospective was on view at the Guggenheim last spring, as well as Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker of the German artist group Zero and Beijing-based contemporary artist Wang Jianwei, WWD reported. Zero's work will be featured in "Zero: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s-60s" from Oct. 10 to Jan. 7, and Jianwei will be the focus of the exhibition "Wang Jianwei: Time Temple," which will be on view from Oct. 31 to Feb. 16.

Frank Gehry has been bestowed with Spain’s prestigious Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts. The Canadian-American architect was chosen as the award’s 34th laureate “for the relevance and impact of his creations in numerous countries, via which he has defined and furthered architecture in the past half century.”

“His buildings are characterized by a virtuoso play of complex shapes, the use of unusual materials, such as titanium, and their technological innovation, which has also had an impact on other arts,” stated the jury.  “An example of this open, playful and organic style of architecture is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which, in addition to its architectural and aesthetic excellence, has had an enormous economic, social and urban impact on its surroundings as a whole.”

Gifts from three families affiliated with the Princeton University Art Museum have established the John Wilmerding Curatorship of American Art. The endowed curatorship honors John Wilmerding, an esteemed scholar, curator, collector and Professor of American Art, Emeritus at Princeton University. Karl Kusserow, the museum’s current curator of American art, has been named the inaugural Wilmerding curator.

An anonymous donor with long-standing ties to Princeton made the first gift towards the curatorship. The Sherrerd family, who previously established two funds in support of scholarship and programming in American art at Princeton, and the Anschutz family, which includes one of Wilmerding’s former students, made additional contributions.

Wilmerding, who assumed emeritus status in 2007 and retired from Princeton last spring, has been reappointed by President Obama to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House. He is a trustee of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Wyeth Foundation of American Art. Kusserow, who joined the Princeton University Art Museum in 2005, previously held positions at the Yale University Art Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has organized numerous important exhibitions and his articles and reviews have appeared in American Art, Drawing, Folk Art and The Journal of American History.

James Steward, director of the Princeton University Art Museum, said, “This endowed curatorship not only honors one of the most eminent and versatile scholars of our time, and one of the Museum’s greatest friends, John Wilmerding, but also recognizes the Princeton University Art Museum’s excellence in American art and visual culture. The very first work of art to enter Princeton’s collection in the 1750s was, in fact, an American painting. With this endowment, our work in American art can go forward with confidence and assure Princeton’s leadership in the field of American studies.”

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN presents Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties, the largest exhibition to date to focus on the American sculptor’s early works. The exhibition brings together nearly 300 pieces spanning Oldenburg’s formative years and is divided by body of work including The Streets, which features a graffiti-inspired installation focused on the underbelly of urban life; The Store, which includes Oldenburg’s celebrated sculptures of food and everyday objects; and The Home, which is devoted to sculptures of large-scale domestic objects.

The Sixties was previously on view at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Many of the key works, including Shoestring Potatoes Spilling from a Bag (1966), Upside Down City (1962) and Geometric Mouse—Scale A (1969/1971) are from the Walker’s own collection. Sketches, snapshots, home movies and slide projections that give visitors a glimpse into the mind, heart and creative process of the profoundly unique artist accompany the show.

Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties will be on view at the Walker Art Center through January 12, 2014.

A painting by renowned Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) will be the highlight of Masterpiece London, which takes place at the Royal Hospital Chelsea from June 27 through July 3, 2013. Now in its fourth year, the show presents the finest art, antiques, and design from across the globe.

While works ranging from furniture, jewelry, and books to classic cars, watches, and whiskey will be offered, there is one particular artwork generating tons of pre-show buzz. Geoffrey Diner, a Washington, D.C.-based art dealer, will present Roy Lichtenstein’s Puzzle Portrait (1978), which has not been seen in public in 30 years and has never appeared at auction. Similar paintings are part of the Guggenheim Museum’s and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collections in New York. Puzzle Portrait is expected to garner around $10 million.    

Diner has revealed little about the painting’s provenance other than the fact that it was sold in 1984 to “a prominent American collection.” Diner purchased the painting privately last year and the change of ownership still has not been registered in the Lichtenstein Foundation archives. The identity of the previous owners will be revealed to the buyer upon acquisition of the painting. The future buyer will also be given the personal correspondence between them and the artist from the original transaction.