Displaying items by tag: collections

Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels auction on December 9 achieved $44.2 million, buoyed by results for stones and jewels from prominent collections, such as those of Helen Hay Whitney, Estée Lauder, Evelyn H. Lauder, the Grand Duchess Vladimir of Russia, and Marlene Dietrich.

The top lot was a platinum-topped gold and diamond necklace that was presented to Helen Hay, an American writer, socialite, and philanthropist, on the occasion of her marriage to Payne Whitney in 1902. Featuring four diamonds weighing 27.48, 15.53, 13.08 and 8.91 carats, the necklace sold for $3.2 million. Total sales from the seven jewels of the estate of Helen Hay Whitney were $4.8 million.

The Harvard Art Museums at 32 Quincy St. announced the launch of their redesigned and expanded website. The website, www.harvardartmuseums.org, provides an enhanced digital platform, increasing access to the museums’ collections of approximately 250,000 objects.

Works from the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, comprising the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger and Arthur M. Sackler Museums, feature prominently throughout the site, and each of the approximately 250,000 objects also has an individual page with details about its exhibition history, provenance and conservation. Object images are a key component; users can examine works using the site’s improved scrolling and zoom functionality. In many cases, multiple photos are available of the same object at various stages in its history, offering insight into conservation and condition over time.

The High Museum of Art announced today that Michael E. Shapiro, the Museum’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr. Director since 2000, will leave the position next year, after 15 years as director. Shapiro has been part of the High’s leadership team for two decades, during which he oversaw unprecedented growth of the Museum’s collections, endowment, and audiences, as well as the completion of a 177,000-square-foot, three-building expansion. Shapiro’s last day as director will be July 31, 2015.

“It has been a privilege to be at the helm of the High for the past 15 years, and to help shape the vision and future of Atlanta’s art museum,” said Shapiro.

Douglas Hyland, who has led the New Britain Museum of American Art through two major expansions, tripled its collections and more than doubled its endowment, will retire as the museum's director after its new addition is complete next fall.

Hyland, 65, announced his decision Wednesday at a meeting of the museum's board of trustees.

"Everything I envisioned for this museum has been accomplished," Hyland said. "The collections have grown, the attendance is at 100,000. This is the best year of our history."

A total of 23 libraries and museums across the UK will be able to add to their core collections with a £5m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

The financial boost will enable the institutions to "go shopping" for new artifacts over a five-year period.

Among the projects to benefit from the cash is one to develop a collection on Polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.

These days, success for museums often means expansion—whether it is with new buildings or international satellites. The Louvre’s new director, Jean-Luc Martinez, has another idea. Having taken over the museum in April 2013, he wants to refocus on the core of the institution: its collections and permanent displays. And to do so, he’s ready to launch a behemoth refurbishing initiative, which in his own admission could “take decades.”

After 12 years characterized by the aggressive development policy of Martinez’ predecessor Henri Loyrette—who oversaw the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s €1 billion deal—the new director’s position feels particularly radical.

Christopher Bedford, director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, has announced two major grants, both for $100,000, from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Warhol Foundation grant will support the exhibition “Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood,” opening in September 2015. The Mellon Foundation grant will support three years of programming triggered by the hiring of a Curator of Academic Projects, an innovative position specifically designed to integrate the Rose’s collections and programs into teaching and learning at the university, according to Brandeis.

This is the first time that the Rose Art Museum has received a grant from either foundation.

Museums that were loaned works by the bankrupt art advisory firm belonging to imprisoned art advisor Helge Achenbach may keep the works in their collections as long as existent contracts are honored, Monopol reports.

The announcement was made by the preliminary administrator Marc D’Avoine on Monday. He declined to divulge the number of works currently on loan to or which specific works were involved.

More than 40 paintings, drawings and birthday cards by Frank Auerbach, all of them owned by his friend and admirer Lucian Freud, have gone on public display as a group before they are dispersed to collections around the UK.

In May it was announced that Freud's estate had offered the 15 oil paintings and 29 works on paper by Auerbach, one of Britain's greatest living artists, to the government in lieu of around £16m of inheritance tax.

Because the bequest is so large and valuable it is being split up with museums and galleries now bidding for different works and groupings of works. Before that happens all the works are being displayed together at Tate Britain.

Like vodka and fun-house mirrors and trips to Japan, the Internet can make you feel bigger than you are.

It persuades vitamin D-starved shut-ins to try their hand as webcam stars. It tempts the rude to imagine their impertinence catching global fire through that perfectly worded comment. It seduces the artisanal cheese maker with visions of a worldwide market beyond the alley boutique.

And it can make even the oldest-school art museum wonder: Could our collection reach the villages of China and the universities of Peru and perhaps a prison or two? Could it touch those who have no chance of entering our physical doors? Could it spread to the whole world?