Displaying items by tag: ellsworth kelly

Nan Rosenthal, a curator who helped bring the 20th century to the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, died on Sunday at her home in Manhattan. She was 76.

The cause was heart failure, her sister-in-law Wendy Mackenzie said.

Over three decades, Ms. Rosenthal organized exhibitions and oversaw the acquisition of contemporary art, first at the National Gallery, which she joined in 1985, and afterward at the Met, with which she was associated from 1993 until her retirement in 2008.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. will receive 30 photographs from Robert E. Meyerhoff, a longtime supporter of the museum, and his partner, Rheda Becker. The gift includes photographs by a number of German artists including Andreas Gursky and Bernd and Hilla Becker as well as works by Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, and Hiroshi Sugimoto.

The gift will substantially improve the National Gallery of Art’s photography collection, which contains few works by prominent living artists. The museum began assembling its photography collection in 1949 when Georgia O’Keeffe donated 1,720 photographs made by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, to the institution. The National Gallery of Art did not establish a separate photography department until 1990.

In 1987, Meyerhoff and his late wife, Jane, agreed to donate their entire art collection to the National Gallery of Art. The gift included works by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, and Brice Marden and was displayed at the museum in 1996 and again in 2010. This recent gift will go on view when the museum’s East Building reopens in the fall of 2016 after a renovation and expansion.    

Malcolm Rogers, the Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), announced to the museum’s board of trustees that he will retire as soon as a successor is hired to fill the position. Rogers has been with the MFA for nearly 20 years and spearheaded the museum’s various expansions and renovations and oversaw a number of acclaimed exhibitions. Rogers said, “My 20 years have been such an invigorating time at the MFA, as we worked to reinforce the Museum’s position as a vital community resource and transform it into a global destination for arts and culture. I would like to thank the Museum’s Board of Trustees, staff, members and volunteers, as well as the millions of people from Boston and around the world who consider the MFA a special part of their lives and have visited during my two decades here.”

Since his appointment in 1994, Rogers has grown the MFA’s comprehensive collection, enhanced arts education programs, and beautified the museum’s campus. In 2008, Rogers reopened the MFA’s historic Fenway entrance, which had been closed for nearly 30 years. In 2010, the new Art of the Americas Wing opened at the museum -- a milestone achievement for Rogers, the MFA and Boston. Rogers spearheaded a campaign that raised $504 million, of which $345 million funded new galleries and conservation labs. In 2011, a wing of the museum was renovated and reopened as the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, which features 10 new galleries, classrooms, and a variety of public spaces. Currently, gallery renovations are underway in the MFA’s George D. and Margo Behrakis Wing for Art of the Ancient World. Works acquired during Rogers’ tenure include Edgar Degas' “Duchessa di Montejasi with Her Daughters, Elena and Camilla,” Piet Mondrian’s “Composition with Blue, Yellow, and Red,” and Ellsworth Kelly’s “Blue Green Yellow Orange Red.”

The MFA will celebrate Rogers’ 20th anniversary this fall with a series of events including lectures, community programs, and a gala, which will be held on September 6.

Keith L. Sachs, the former chief executive of Saxco International, a packaging distribution company, and his wife, Katherine, have been longtime supporters of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The institution announced this week that it will receive 97 works from the couple’s collection of contemporary paintings, sculptures and drawings. The gift, which is estimated to be worth nearly $70 million, includes works by Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly and Gerhard Richter.

In honor of the Sachs’ generous donation, the museum will name its modern and contemporary art galleries the Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Galleries. An exhibition of the collection is slated for the summer of 2016. 

Ursinus College in Collegeville, PA has received a gift of over 1,300 works of art from the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation. The collection, which includes works by Andy Warhol, Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, James Whistler, John Sloan and Ellsworth Kelly, will be presented in the exhibition A to Z: Highlighting the Berman Collection. The show will run from October 20, 2013 through January 2014 at the college’s Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art.

The gift, which includes paintings, sculptures, prints and works on paper, was made by Nancy Berman, president of the Berman Foundation, in honor of her late parents Philip and Muriel. The couple founded the art museum, which is regarded as one of the finest small college art museums in the country, in 1989. The Berman Museum of Art houses over 4,000 works of art and welcomes more than 30,000 visitors each year.

Nancy Berman released a statement saying, “My parents believed that exposing students to art would help lay a foundation for a life of creativity, enjoyment and curiosity… no matter what discipline they studied. They found a willing and responsive partner in Ursinus College when they came together nearly 25 years ago to create an art museum on the campus of my dad’s alma mater. With this gift, the Berman now has a permanent collection that can be exhibited, loaned out to other institutions and used for research by the students and the faculty. I can think of no better way to honor my parents’ remarkable legacy.”

Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1933), a pioneer of American abstract art, will receive a National Medal of Arts from President Obama July 10, 2013 at the White House. The National Medal is the highest honor given to artists and art patrons by the U.S. government.

Kelly, a painter, sculptor and printmaker, began developing his unique approach to minimalism, color field painting and hard-edge painting in the 1950s. By the end of the decade, he had established himself as an important figure in the art world and three of his pieces were selected for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s seminal exhibition Young America 1957. Since setting himself apart from his peers thanks to his innovative style, Kelly has been lauded for his ability to pull abstract form, contour and color contrast from perceived reality.

Kelly, who turned 90 this year, is currently the subject of the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly: Chatham Series, which is on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York through September 8, 2013.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is celebrating Ellsworth Kelly’s (b. 1932) 90^th birthday by reuniting his Chatham Series for the first time in 40 years. The series of paintings were the first works Kelly made after leaving New York City for upstate New York in 1970. Ellsworth Kelly: Chatham Series will be on view at MoMA through September 8, 2013.

All of the 14 paintings in the Chatham Series are made out of two joined canvases, which come together to create an inverted “L” shape. All of the works vary in color and proportion and were made intuitively by the artist. For the final paintings in the series, Kelly used pieces of colored paper to determine the right hues and ratios for the finished works. The Chatham series was first exhibited in 1972 at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Following the show, the works were split up until their reunion at MoMA.

Kelly, who was already an established artist when he created the Chatham Series, is best known for his hard-edge and color field paintings, which are defined by an overarching minimalist aesthetic. Kelly aimed to erase any trace of the artist’s hand, making what he described as “anonymous” art.

A monumental mural by Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923), an American painter and sculptor often associated with color field painting and the Minimalist movement has found a temporary home at the Barnes Foundation just outside of Philadelphia.

The Barnes, an educational art institution, is currently hosting the exhibition Sculpture on the Wall, which includes Kelly’s Sculpture for a Large Wall. Created between 1956 and 1957, the work was commissioned for the Philadelphia Transportation Building and it was the first public abstract sculpture in Philadelphia. The work was removed from the Transportation Building after it closed in 1993 and was later acquired by Ronald S. Lauder, the former chairman of the Museum of Modern Art. Lauder and his wife promptly donated the work to MoMA where it has only been exhibited twice.

Sculpture for a Large Wall, which measures over 65 feet long and 11 feet high, is accompanied by four other works from later in Kelly’s career including the geometric Red Curve (1986) and the minimalist Two Curves (2012). The sculptures will be on view at the Barnes Foundation through September 2, 2013.  

Ellsworth Kelly: Colored Paper Images is currently on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. through December 1, 2013. Kelly (b. 1923), a painter, printmaker, and sculptor, is best known for his hard-edge and Color Field paintings as well as for his involvement in the minimalist movement.

The exhibition at the National Gallery features a series of paper-pulp works that were first unveiled in 1977. The 23 works, which are drawn from the museum’s collection, feature erratic edges and irregular textures, a departure from Kelly’s previous works, which are comprised of sharp angles and precise curves. Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art said, “Kelly has long been recognized for his mastery of form and color, but even to those who know his work well, these Colored Paper Images will come as a revelation.”

A pioneering force in postwar abstraction, Kelly created his colored paper images by placing molds on single sheets of paper and filling them with colored and pressed paper pulp. Once the pulp settled, the molds were removed and the sheet along with the colored pulp was run through a printing press, fusing the damp paper layers together. Multiple impressions were made of each image.

The National Gallery of Art has a longstanding relationship with Kelly, which began in 1975 when the institution acquired its first work by the artist. The Gallery now owns over 200 pieces by Kelly including paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints.

After a monumental postwar and contemporary auction that totaled $386 million this past spring, Christie’s expects an even bigger sale this November. Taking place November 14–15 in New York, the auction house estimates that the Post-War and Contemporary Art Sale could garner more than $441 million.

The 74-lot evening auction includes Andy Warhol’s Statue of Liberty canvas expected to bring in around $35 million and one of his silkscreens of Marlon Brando estimated at $15-$20 million. Other major draws include Jeff Koons’ balloon tulips for $25 million, a Rothko painting for $15-$20 million, and works by market darlings Alexander Calder, Gerhard Richter, Franz Kline, Ellsworth Kelly, and Jasper Johns. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (1981) is expected to set records for the artist with an estimate of $20 million.

Christie’s has already brought in $928 million in contemporary art sales this year.