Displaying items by tag: Modern Art

A former longtime Jasper Johns assistant was ordered Thursday to spend 18 months behind bars after admitting he stole artworks from the pop artist's Connecticut studio and arranged for them to be sold by a Manhattan gallery for nearly $10 million.

James Meyer, 53, of Salisbury, Connecticut, was also ordered to pay $13 million in restitution and to forfeit $3.9 million.

U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken said he believed Meyer was genuinely remorseful and was primarily a "kind, caring, thoughtful" man who committed a serious offense, selling unauthorized artworks on at least three occasions from 2006 to 2011, pocketing more than $4 million.

The current Museum of Modern Art exhibition "One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series and Other Visions of the Great Movement North" expands uptown, beyond the Museum’s galleries, with the launch of a self-guided walking tour that explores the Harlem that nurtured Lawrence as a young artist in the 1930s. Featuring commentary from cultural leaders working there today, this audio tour puts Harlem’s past and present in dialogue. It is available beginning today at MoMA.org/harlemwalkingtour.

The tour introduces audiences to people and places that helped to shape Lawrence’s perspective as an artist, and visits artworks related to the exhibition that can only be seen at their locations in Harlem, such as Aaron Douglas’s landmark mural cycle at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and his mural at the YMCA on 135th Street; and Charles Alston’s recently restored murals at the Harlem Hospital Center.

The collection of the highly regarded sculptor and philanthropist Lolo Sarnoff will be presented over several several sales in New York and London throughout the spring. The selection of work on offer  spans important Impressionist & Modern Art, follows Sotheby’s legendary six-day, 700 lot auction in 1978 of the collection of Lolo Sarnoff’s step-father, Robert von Hirsch. Works by artists such as Picasso, Chagall and Renoir are expected to sell for above the estimates. 

Warren Weitman, Chairman of Sotheby’s Americas, commented: “It is a great privilege for Sotheby’s to present works from this extraordinary collection."

Judged by visitor and exhibitor figures—56,000 visitors and 200 galleries from 23 countries this year—Art Cologne, whose 2015 edition closed on April 19, is not quite in the top ten fairs internationally. But as a regional event with a strong focus on Germany’s vibrant art scene and the German, Benelux and eastern European market, it has established itself as an essential stop-off on the art fair circuit for many collectors and dealers. “We need to be here,” said Alex Reding of the Luxembourg gallery Nosbaum Reding.

It was the Roaring Twenties. Women bobbed their hair and hiked their skirts, and an estimated 100,000 speakeasies flourished in New York City in the face of Prohibition. Yet there was an oasis of calm: Frederick Law Olmsted’s Central Park. Overlooking the leafy landscape on the Upper East Side, the private homes of the privileged rose with the stock market and multiplied into elegant neighborhoods. In 1926, a small residence hotel with a Beaux-Arts façade opened at 20 East 76th Street and seamlessly blended into the neighborhood. The Surrey was luxurious and discreet; qualities movie actresses Claudette Colbert and Bette Davis and other celebrities appreciated. Later, John F. Kennedy made the popular residence his home in the city.

But by the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Surrey had lost its luster, until new owners launched a $60 million, 14-month-long renovation. Debuted in 2009, the aura of the 17-story, 190-room hotel‘s historic past remains intact, but interior designer Lauren Rottet has added a contemporary flair, helped along by the installation of thirty-one original works by international artists...

Continue reading this article about the Surrey Hotel, which was reinvigorated by the leading interior designer Lauren Rottet, on InCollect.com.

Boston architect and Cleveland native Graham Gund, a 1963 graduate of Kenyon College, and his wife, Ann, have donated 80 modern and contemporary works of art to Gund's alma mater.

Many of the works are already displayed on the campus, the college said in a story published Wednesday in its official Kenyon News.

The college described the works, by masters including Pablo Picasso, Frank Stella, Kiki Smith, Paul Manship, Dale Chihuly and Christo and Jeanne-Claude, as comprising "a multimillion dollar value."

Jackson Pollock, the master of Abstract Expressionism, reached an endgame with his groundbreaking drip paintings in 1950, and then experimented with a new technique, akin to drawing, of pouring thinned black enamel onto unprimed cotton duck.

“The power of Pollock’s allover drip paintings from 1947 to 1950 is so all-commanding that they’ve forced a blind spot in our ability to look at other aspects of the artist’s genius,” said Gavin Delahunty, senior curator of contemporary art at the Dallas Museum of Art. He began researching Pollock’s “black pourings,” made from 1951 to 1953, after conversations with artists including Wade Guyton, Jacqueline Humphries and Julie Mehretu, who discussed their influence.

Today, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its plans for the opening of The Met Breuer, the building formerly housing the Whitney Museum. With the Whitney's move into their brand new building at the edge of the High Line and opening this May, the Met has finally publicized its plans for its takeover of the old museum site. With an opening planned for March 10, 2016, the Met's contemporary and modern art department will feature multiple exhibitions and programs at the Breuer Building.

A boxy, drab concrete building, the Madison Avenue structure was designed by Hungarian Marcel Breuer and built in 1966 specifically to house the collection that Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney left behind.

There's always a battle going on somewhere between Sotheby's and Christie's for some piece of the art cake. But to get a sense of the biggest confrontation on the calendar, London is the place to be next weekend when the two auction houses exhibit highlights from their forthcoming New York sales of Impressionist, Modern (Monet to late Picasso) and Contemporary art (Rothko to today).

The most significant exhibit without a doubt is Picasso's eye-popping "Les Femmes d'Alger," 1955, based on a painting by Delacroix, that has a whopping $US140 million ($183 million) estimate from Christie's.

Sotheby's New York announced it will offer the collection of Chicago philanthropist Jerome H. Stone over a series of auctions this spring. Stone assembled the collection over the course of the 1950s and '60s with the help of his wife Evelyn. It consists of blue chip works by artists such as Fernand Leger, Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti, Juan Gris, and Marc Chagall, that together are expected to bring in more than $40 million.

Stone, who built his family business, Stone Container Corporation, into a national multi-billion dollar corporation, and later founded the International Alzheimer's Association, often bought from leading dealers including Pierre Matisse and Sidney Janis.