Displaying items by tag: Museum

City boosters in this Nordic capital dream of a Guggenheim museum of Finnish wood rising near the Baltic Sea and one day drawing millions of tourists and cruise passengers. But the huge costs of the proposed development are stirring a backlash here against an institution that is ordinarily accustomed to eager suitors.

The proposal for the city of Helsinki to team up with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York to build a museum here is splitting politicians into camps of pro-business supporters seeking the wealth and attention that comes with an international brand, and Social Democrats and other left-of-center party members who are skeptical about shouldering the costs of a 130 million euro ($177 million) development deal.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park was on Wednesday named UK museum of the year, winning the £100,000 Art Fund prize with judges praising it as a "truly outstanding museum with a bold artistic vision."

The museum near Wakefield, spread out among 200 hectares (500 acres) of parkland, had modest beginnings, founded by Peter Murray in 1977 when he was principal lecturer in art history at Bretton Hall College and had the idea of putting some sculpture in the grounds. Today Murray is executive director of an organization which is one of the world's most important open air museums, with 160 staff and 220 volunteers.

The Pérez Art Museum Miami wants a $2.5 million boost in government support, with taxpayers set to cover a third of the museum’s budget next year.

Housed in a new $130 million waterfront headquarters built largely with government money, PAMM’s celebrated debut late last year also tripled the non-profit’s annual operating expenses, to $14 million from $5 million. Private dollars have not kept pace with the higher costs, leaving a gap that PAMM wants Miami-Dade to help close with a 60 percent increase in the museum’s operating subsidy from hotel taxes, according to interviews and budget documents.

A world-class art museum tucked among the hills of Western Massachusetts: That’s the ambitious goal of the new Clark Institute.

To give it its full proper name, it’s the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. The Clark has been around since 1955, but you’d have to say it’s being truly reborn in 2014.

The new Clark has been so radically revamped and enlarged that it feels like an entirely new place. It has grown by almost 100,000 square feet of space, and most of its old space has been or is being renovated. Once isolated and inward-looking, the Clark now reaches out like a new guest at the party to become an integral part of the great landscape of the Berkshires. After 14 years of planning, designing, and building, it’s set for its grand reopening on July 4.

"A Helsinki Guggenheim,” says Petra Havu of the Association of Finnish Artists, “is not a project for taxpayers’ money.”

Trustees of the National Gallery of Art have elected New York City investor and philanthropist Frederick W. Beinecke as the museum's president.

The gallery announced Friday that Beinecke (BUY-nek-ee) will move into the lead role July 19. He succeeds Washington philanthropist Victoria Sant, who has been president since 2003. Sant will remain on the board until July 2015.

Is the Whitney set to supplant MoMA as New York’s go-to modern art museum? The institution will begin moving into its new Renzo Piano building later this year, with the Meatpacking District location opening to the public about one year from now. It’s hard to say how exactly the new building and location will change the dynamic among New York’s top tier of art museums, but a look at the numbers makes it clear that the Whitney’s move is literally and symbolically huge, and will put it in more direct competition with the Museum of Modern Art.

The Whitney’s Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue is much smaller than most people realize. At just 85,000 square feet, it is markedly smaller, for instance, than the new 100,000-square-foot Hauser Wirth & Schimmel gallery in Los Angeles—which, to be fair, is an exceptionally huge gallery.

London’s National Gallery has quietly transformed its display policy to show far fewer of its paintings. Contrary to the widespread belief that it is among the few very large museums anywhere in the world that shows nearly all its collection, in fact nearly half of its works are off view.

Neil MacGregor, while serving as director of the gallery, wrote in his introduction to the 1995 “Complete Illustrated Catalogue” that “every one of its 2,000 or so paintings is on public view”. The majority were installed in the main galleries, along with a dense display in a lower level gallery, known as Room A. By 2012, there were just over 1,000 paintings in the main galleries and 700 in Room A, representing 72% of the collection.

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, one of three museums being built on the windswept Saadiyat Island in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, has been a quieter presence than the two other institutions there. The Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, which is scheduled to open next year, and the Zayed National Museum, created by the British architect Norman Foster and to be completed in two years, have each had exhibitions at Manarat Al Saadiyat, the island’s exhibition and visitor center, offering previews of their institutions. Now it is the Guggenheim’s turn.

Joining a trend toward major expansions, the Frick Collection, known for its intimate, jewel-box galleries, will announce on Tuesday plans for a new six-story wing that will increase its exhibition space, open private upstairs rooms, and offer views of Central Park from a new roof garden on East 70th Street.

With its proposal, the Frick joins a roster of museums across the country that are enlarging, a sign perhaps of increased competition for the cultural spotlight, as well as a rebound in fund-raising since the dark days of the economic downturn.