Displaying items by tag: denver art museum

Yet another ancient statue looted in the 1970s from a single remote temple in the jungles of Cambodia has turned up in the United States, this time at Christie’s, which is voluntarily paying to return it to its homeland.

Christie’s sold the statue, a 10th-century sandstone depiction of a mythological figure known as Pandava, to an anonymous collector in 2009, but bought it back earlier this year after officials determined that the sculpture had been looted.

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are currently hosting the exhibition “Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George” at the de Young Museum. The show, which was organized by the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, New York in association with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the first exhibition to explore Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of Lake George.

Between 1918 and 1934, O’Keeffe would spend months at her husband Alfred Stieglitz’s family estate slightly north of Lake George Village in New York’s Adirondack Park. During this highly productive period, O’Keeffe created over 200 paintings depicting the bucolic, wooded setting, which differ greatly from her well-known renderings of the sparse Southwestern landscape.

“Modern Nature” features 53 works from public and private collections and includes botanical compositions of flowers and vegetables as well as still lifes and paintings of the trees that grew on the 36-acre estate. The exhibition also includes paintings of weathered barns and other structures as well as panoramic landscapes. Works have been loaned from a number of celebrated public institutions including the Seattle Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Walker Art Center.

Colin B. Bailey, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, said, “It is especially gratifying to host this pioneering and scholarly exhibition of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Lake George‒period works, as the artist’s ‘Petunias’ (1925), featured in the exhibition, is a highlight of our renowned collection of modernist works by artists associated with the Stieglitz circle.”

The de Young Museum is the only west coast venue for the exhibition. “Modern Nature” will remain on view through May 11, 2014.

The Denver Art Museum announced on Monday, January 13 that it has received 22 Impressionist masterpieces by artists including Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Edouard Manet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It is the museum’s most significant gift  of paintings to date.

The donation comes from the collection of Frederic C. Hamilton, an oil and gas magnate who has been the museum’s chief benefactor for decades. In addition to European paintings, the gift includes works by American Impressionists such as Childe Hassam and William Merritt Chase.

The paintings, which elevate the Denver Art Museum’s collection of Impressionism into one of the finest in the American west, will go on view in the Frederic C. Hamilton Building, which opened in 2006. Hamilton led the fundraising effort for the $110 million expansion project that gave the museum an additional 146,000 square feet of gallery space.

The Denver Art Museum and the Clyfford Still Museum will present Picasso to Pollock: Modern Masterworks from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery from March 2, 2014 through June 8, 2014. The sprawling exhibition will bring together approximately 50 works by more than 40 significant artists from the late 19^th century to the present. The show is drawn from the holdings of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, which boasts one of the finest collections of 20^th century art in the country.

Modern Masterworks will present works by Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. The exhibition charts the evolution of modern art, starting with post-Impressionism and moving on to a number of groundbreaking movements such as Cubism, Surrealism, Pop Art and Minimalism. A large portion of Modern Masterworks is comprised of works by mid-century American artists such as Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell.

A related exhibition, 1959, will be on view at the Clyfford Still Museum from February 14, 2014 through June 15, 2014. The show re-creates Still’s seminal exhibition held at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in 1959. Still, one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism was a contemporary of Pollock, de Kooning, Motherwell and Rothko.

Christoph Heinrich, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the Denver Art Museum, said, “Not only are most of the iconic artists of the time represented, but the works themselves are masterpieces from each artist.”

The Denver Art Museum has received a significant gift from local collector Henry Roath who has pledged to donate approximately 50 artworks by masters of the American West including Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran and Frederic Remington to the museum’s Petrie Institute of Western American Art. Roath’s collection, which is considered one of finest private collections of western American art in the country, focuses on art of the American southwest, especially works from members of the Taos Society of Artists. Roath has also donated $500,000 to the museum in an effort to establish a fund for future acquisitions.

The works that make up Roath’s gift range in date from 1877 to 1972 and include oil paintings, watercolors and bronze sculptures. Highlights include Thomas Moran’s Snowy Range, an 1896 landscape painting of the Grand Tetons, and two casts of Frederic Remington’s seminal sculpture Bronco Buster. The Roath collection is currently on loan to the museum and will remain on view in two of the institution’s western American art galleries.

Roath said, “I want the collection to be accessible to the public. The Denver Art Museum has made a strong commitment to art of the region and has a bold program. I’m excited for visitors and the public to be able to experience the masters of the American West firsthand.”

In 2000, the Denver Art Museum received a painting titled Venice: The Molo from the Bacino di S. Marco from the foundation of a deceased local collector. Covered in grime, the work was attributed to a student of the Italian 18^th century painter Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697-1768), better known as Canaletto, and placed in storage.

In 2007, Timothy Standring, the museum’s curator of painting and sculpture, noticed the canvas while doing routine inventory. Standring saw past the layers of discoloration to the masterful brushstrokes and detailed figures that lay beneath the grime. Intrigued, Standring embarked on a Canaletto-based research project that eventually brought him to London to meet with Charles Beddington, a renowned expert on the artist. After their meeting, during which Standring presented a photograph of the painting, Beddington agreed to visit the Denver Art Museum to examine the painting in person.

In January 2012, Beddington arrived in the United States and identified the work as an authentic Canaletto; he also dated the painting 1724, meaning it is one of the artist’s earliest undocumented works. The museum soon received a grant from the European Fine Art Fair Restoration Fund to restore the painting, a job that was delegated to James Squires, the institution’s associate conservator of paintings. Over 100 hours of restoration later, Squire’s uncovered the masterpiece that was there along. The painting, which features a brightly colored Venetian scene, is currently on view at the Denver Art Museum.

On view at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey through January 20, 2013, Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land focuses on Georgia O’Keeffe’s (1887-1986) life from 1929 to 1953. During this time, O’Keeffe lived in New Mexico and found herself enthralled by her surroundings as well as the Native American and Hispano cultures of the region.

While O’Keeffe’s early career as one of the first American abstract painters and her relationship with American photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) have been examined at length, O’Keeffe’s time in New Mexico has been less studied. The exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum features over 30 paintings and works on paper depicting New Mexico’s local architecture and landscape. From 1931 to 1945, O’Keeffe created numerous drawings, watercolors, and paintings of Kachina dolls (or Katsinam), which are carved representations of Hopi spirit beings. The exhibition includes 15 of these works, which are presented alongside actual Kachina dolls.

The Montclair Museum of Art will compliment Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico with a small presentation of three O’Keeffe works from a private collection including two oil paintings, Black Petunia and White Morning Glory 1 and Inside Clam Shell, and one pastel on paper, titled Pink Camellia.

The exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum was organized by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico and will travel to the Denver Art Museum (February 10-April 28, 2013), the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (May 17-September 8, 2013), and the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona (September 27, 2013-January 12, 2014) after its run in New Jersey.

When Timothy J. Standring, curator of painting and sculpture at the Denver Art Museum, suggested an exhibition of Vincent van Gogh’s work, it was quite a risk, mainly because the museum doesn’t own a single work by van Gogh. In addition, the Denver Art Museum’s strength lies in American Indian, pre-Columbian, and Spanish Colonial Art – not ideal holdings when attempting to swap works with European painting departments.

On October 21, six years after the thought first popped into Standring’s head, Becoming van Gogh will open to the public at the Denver Museum. The show will be comprised of 68 paintings and drawings by van Gogh and about another 20 works by artists he studied under.

A true labor of love, Standring traveled to 39 cities in Europe, at least 30 in North America, and another two in South America to do research, meet with scholars, view works, and negotiate with owners. Co-curated by Louis van Tilborgh, the exhibition evolved as the duo delved deeper into their research. Inspired by James Shapiro’s A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599, Standring wanted to capture the period when van Gogh became van Gogh. At first he thought a show of 30 oils and drawings done between 1887 and 1888 would be sufficient, but as his research progressed, Standring decided to explore van Gogh’s work from 1886–1888, the artist’s years in Paris.

Standring proceeded to make a checklist of all the works he wished to acquire. He made connections with curators at other museums, phoned friends and collectors. As he continued, the need for more works became apparent. Standring wanted to include early works from van Gogh’s time in the Netherlands and his later years in Provence. After countless phone calls, letters, negotiations, meetings, and planning, the exhibition came to fruition. Becoming van Gogh will be on view through January 20, 2013.