Displaying items by tag: New York

Yale University Art Gallery will celebrate the completion of a multi-year, multi-million dollar renovation and expansion on December 12. The project cost $135 million and increased exhibition space by about one-third. The museum, which is located in New Haven, CT, now boasts nearly 70,000 square feet and includes a gallery devoted to African, Asian, and Pre-Columbian art that was designed by Louis Kahn in 1953, the Old Yale Art Gallery, which features ancient, European, and contemporary art, and the 1866 Street Hall. The project joined all three buildings to create one cohesive institution.

Besides the physical expansion, the Yale University Art Gallery has significantly increased its collection’s holdings. The museum acquired 1,100 new works including African terra-cotta figures, Greco-Roman coins, medals from the American Revolution, and marble portraits of Marcus Aurelius and Plato over 1,700 years old.

The expansion and renovation were designed and led by Duncan Hazard and Richard Olcott, partners in New York’s Ennead Architects. The project took 14 years to complete and outfitted the museum with new areas for exhibitions and object study and increased access to the Gallery’s comprehensive collections.

Subhash Kapoor, a once-established antiquities dealer in New York, has been the source of much controversy over the past few months. In July, authorities asked American museums to search their collections for any works obtained from Kapoor after it was revealed that he was in possession of looted antiquities. Allegedly, Kapoor has trafficked more than $100 million worth of stolen Indian artifacts and on December 5, authorities added to his list of thefts after a raid at the Port of Newark.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with Homeland Security Investigations teamed up with Indian authorities and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and seized more than $5 million worth of artifacts including a 14^th century statue of the Hindu deity, Parvati, and four bronze figures from India’s Tamil Nadu region. It is believed that all of the works were stolen from Indian temples. The The Parvati statue has been in the possession of six different dealers and is marred by a litany of false provenances despite being listed on an Interpol database of stolen artworks.

Kapoor ran the Art of the Past Gallery on Madison Avenue from 1974 until his arrest last July. He has donated and sold antiquities to many distinguished institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kapoor is currently facing criminal charges in India.

A division of the Italian police department that specializes in art thefts has located a 400-year-old copy of a lost Leonardo da Vinci fresco. Depicting the Battle of Anghiari, the masterpiece was never finished.

The copy, widely known as the Tavola Doria, once adorned a wall of Florence’s city hall, the Palazzo Vecchio, and illustrates a historic battle between Florence and Milan that took place in 1440. It is believed that da Vinci experimented with various fresco-painting techniques before he started work on the battle scene in 1503. Despite his efforts, the paints began to drip and da Vinci was never able to finish the fresco. Over the next few years, the piece deteriorated and the Italian painter, Giorgio Vasari, was commissioned to paint over what was left of the incomplete fresco.

Since the unfinished da Vinci painting no longer exists, copies of the lost artwork are extremely important to art historians and scholars. This particular copy, painted on a small wooden panel, was last seen in public 73 years ago at a Leonardo da Vinci exhibition held in Milan on the eve of World War II. After the exhibition, the work disappeared.

Experts have since determined that the panel was stolen from its owners in Naples and ended up in the hands of a Swiss art dealer. The work was sent to Germany for restoration in the 1960s, made a brief appearance in the 1970s at an art gallery in New York, and by the 1990s was the property of a wealthy Japanese art collector.

Finally back in Italy, the Tavola Doria will be on view at Florence’s Uffizi Gallery during 2013. The work will then spend four years in Japan as part of a loan agreement worked out with the Fuji Art Museum in Tokyo, where it was last exhibited.

The children of the New York art dealer, Ileana Sonnabend, have donated Robert Rauschenberg’s mixed media assemblage, Canyon (1959), to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. While the acquisition is a welcomed addition to MoMA’s existing Rauschenberg collection, the work wasn’t always so warmly regarded.

The Sonnabend heirs received Canyon after their mother’s death in 2007 and the work was soon at the center of a battle between MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the piece had been displayed intermittently since 2005. MoMA ramped up its efforts and promised to add Ms. Sonnabend’s name to the Founders Wall in the museum’s lobby. Officials also vowed to mount an entire show devoted to Canyon as well as Sonnabend, an important player in the modern art movement. While the Met made offers of their own, the Sonnabend family ultimately decided that MoMA was the right home for the work considering the expansive Rauschenberg collection already in the institution’s possession.

Sadly, this is not the first dramatic episode Canyon has been involved in. When the Sonnabend children inherited the work five years ago, appraisers valued the assemblage at $0. The presence of a stuffed bald eagle, a bird that is protected by federal laws, halted any possible sales of trades involving the work. The I.R.S., on the other hand, shrugged this off and claimed that Canyon was worth $65 million and demanded that Sonnabend’s family pay $29.2 million in taxes and another $11.7 million in penalties.

Eventually, a settlement was worked out and I.R.S. dropped all tax charges. In order for this to happen, the Sonnabends were required to donate Canyon to a museum where it could be put on public display. Canyon will be on view at MoMA beginning today, November 28.

The Dallas Museum of Art announced today that it will nullify its $10 general admission fee, effective January 21, 2013. The museum will also launch an online rewards program that could even make membership free.

In recent years, many institutions have reversed their decision to charge visitors and are now free to the public. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore, and the Detroit Institute of the Arts have all decided that free admission will help their institutions become more widely accessible, which, in turn, will keep visitor numbers up.

While it appears that the aforementioned museums have started a trend, many institutions in major tourist destinations are not so quick to jump on the free entry bandwagon. In New York, the Museum of Modern Art charges $25 and the Guggenheim Museum charges $22. San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, another major tourist attraction, charges $18. Other big-name museums that require visitors to pay are the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Carnegie Museum of Art.

The latest update to Google’s browser-based map service allows visitors to navigate museums across the world with their smartphones. While sprawling institutions made up of various wings and galleries can appear cumbersome, Google hopes to alleviate confusion by making virtual floor plans for dozens of museums and libraries in nine countries available to users.

The recent update includes interior views of shopping malls, airports, train stations, and convention centers, but the presence of museum layouts is particularly welcomed. While 30 museums in the United States are currently mapped out, museums that are not already included can upload their own floor plans if they wish to be included in the project.

Maps of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Art Institute in Chicago, the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, the British Museum in London, the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, and the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Japan are currently available.

Last month the Edward Hopper House Art Center, located in the artist’s childhood home in Nyack, New York, dedicated one of its rooms to the late Reverend Arthayer R. Sanborn. A friend of the Hopper family, Sanborn led the First Baptist Church down the street from the Center and had lent the institution many works by Hopper his personal collection before his death in 2007. Sanborn also maintained the Hopper house when it fell vacant in the late 1960s.

Gail Levin, an art historian and foremost expert on Hopper, has stepped forward to object to Sanborn’s seemingly harmless recognition. Levin sent an e-mail to various news organization raising questions about how Sanborn came into his collection that included paintings, watercolors, and drawings by Hopper. Sanborn, who had eventually put more than 100 of works from his collection up for sale, claimed that Hopper and his wife, Josephine, had given many of the works to him. Levin rebutted this and said that during a conversation with Sanborn in the 1970s, he complained that Hopper had given him nothing, despite the fact that he was caring for him and his aging wife. Sanborn also claimed that he had purchased a number of works from the estate of Josephine Hopper, but under Mrs. Hopper’s will, it states that all of Hopper’s works were to go to the Whitney Museum of Art.

Officials at the Hopper House Center addressed Levin’s claims and said that the dispute was not of major concern as Sanborn has been deceased for the past five years, making her case difficult to pursue. The Center also values the Reverend’s contributions and isn’t looking to sever any ties with the Sanborn family.

Two members of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York are suing the institution for deceiving the public by making patrons think that the suggested admission fees are mandatory. The historically free institution suggests entry fees of $25 for adults and less for seniors and students.

Theodore Grunewald and Patricia Nicholson files the suit in state court in Manhattan and said that the museum’s fee policy lacks transparency. They also argued that and that the museum fails to note that the fee is suggested on several of its websites and that it’s only in fine and barely legible print on signs near cash registers. A statute was put in place in 1893 declaring that the Met must remain free in order to continue receiving government funding.

Grunewald and Nicholson commissioned a survey of visitors to the museum and found that 85% of patrons believed they had to pay to gain entry.

Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary auction edged out Sotheby’s as the blockbuster sale of the week. Profits reached a walloping $412,253,100 on Wednesday night in New York and only six of the 73 lots went unsold. Beating the pre-sale estimate of $289,350,000-$411,800,000, the auction was the second highest grossing in Christie’s history. The record is currently held by the November 2006 Impressionist and Modern sale that brought $491.5 million. However, last night’s auction was the highest earning sale for the Post-War and Contemporary category to date.

During the course of the sale seven artist records were set and six works sold for over $20 million. Brett Gorvy, Chairman and International head of Post-War and Contemporary Art said, “We curated the sale around the rich variety of quality works and most coveted artists.” Works by these big name artists proceeded to sell for mind-bogglingly astronomical prices.

Andy Warhol’s iconic portrait of Marlon Brando, titled Marlon, (1966) sold for $23,714,500, Roy Lichtenstein’s interior Nude with Red Shirt (1995) brought $28,082,500, and Franz Kline’s seminal Abstract Expressionist painting, Untitled (1957) sold for a record $40,402,500. Other major sales included Warhol’s 3-D Statue of Liberty (1962) that went for $43,762,500, Mark Rothko’s Black Stripe (Orange, Gold and Black) that sold to a telephone bidder for $21,362,500, and Jeff Koons’ stainless steel Tulips (1995-2004) that brought $33,682,500, a new record for the artist. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (1981) was expected to bring in big numbers and did not disappoint at $26,402,500, but the piece stayed under its high estimate of $30 million.

Contemporary sales continue tonight at Phillips de Pury.

A printmaker and painter, there is a quiet, striking quality that pervades all of Will Barnet’s art. Best known for his portraits of women, children, animals, family members, and friends, Barnet passed away at his home in Manhattan on November 13. He has lived at the National Arts Club building on New York City’s Gramercy Park since 1982. Barnet was 101.

A native of Beverly, Massachusetts, Barnet studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and then, starting in 1931, at the Arts Students League in New York. It was here that Barnet studied briefly with the early Modernist painter Stuart Davis and became acquainted with Arshile Gorky, a major influence on Abstract Expressionism. Four years after joining the League, Barnet was named the official printer and went on to work for the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. He also made prints for well-known artists such as the Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco and the painter and cartoonist William Gropper.

Barnet started out as a Social Realist printmaker and had his first solo exhibition in 1935 at the Eighth Street Playhouse in Manhattan. Three years later, he had his first gallery show at the Hudson Walker Gallery. It was during this time that he married Mary Sinclair, a painter and fellow student. They had three sons.

In the 1940s Barnet was inspired by Modernist inclinations and his paintings became more colorful and fractured, depicting family scenes and young children. By the end of the decade Barnet moved towards complete abstraction after becoming involved with the Indian Space Painters, a group that created abstract paintings using forms from Native American art and modern European painting.

In the 1950s Barnet divorced Sinclair and remarried Elena Ciurlys with whom he had a daughter. It wasn’t until the 1960s that Barnet returned to representational painting, often using his wife and daughter as subjects. Barnet’s style had evolved and the portraits from this time are flatter and more exact. He also made a number of portraits of the architect Frederick Kiesler, the art critic Katherine Kuh, and the art collector Roy Neuberger during this time.

Barnet never stopped painting and continued to experiment and evolve stylistically, returning to abstraction in 2003. In 2010 he was the subject of the exhibition Will Barnet and the Art Students League at the Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery in Manhattan. He was awarded a National Medal of Arts in 2011, which he accepted from President Obama at a ceremony at the White House. The subject of many museum retrospectives, Will Barnet at 100, which took place at the National Academy Museum in 2011, was the last.

   Besides his work as an artist, Barnet was also an influential instructor. He taught graphic arts and composition at the Art Students League in 1936 and went on to teach painting at the school until 1980. Barnet also taught at Cooper Union from 1945 to 1978 and briefly at Yale, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and other schools.

Barnet is survived by his wife, three sons, one daughter, nine grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.