Displaying items by tag: european

A little-known Dutch collection of Indian chintzes, newly acquired by the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., is revealing centuries of changing habits in fabric exporting, collecting and tailoring.

The museum paid an undisclosed price for about 170 textiles, including bedspreads, caps, jackets and robes, dating to the early 1700s. The designs combine European folk patterns and botanical motifs typical of Mughal landscape paintings.

The Frick Collection in New York is currently hosting the exhibition Precision and Splendor: Clocks and Watches at the Frick Collection. The museum, one of the finest small art institutions in the U.S., is known for its illustrious collection of Old Master paintings, furniture and European timepieces.

Most of the Frick’s clocks and watches were acquired through a bequest from the New York collector Winthrop Kellogg Edey in 1999. Due to limited space in the museum’s permanent gallery, the Frick has only been able to exhibit part of Edey’s collection, which is comprised of 38 watches and clocks dating from the Renaissance to the 19^th century. Precision and Splendor, which includes 14 watches and 11 clocks from Edey’s gift, allows patrons a rare, in-depth glimpse of the impressive collection.

In addition to a masterwork by Pierre de Fobis and significant timepieces by George Smith, Henry Arlaud, Julien Le Roy and Antoine-Louis Breguet, Precision and Splendor includes five clocks on loan from the established collector Horace Wood Brock. The works, which were created in 18^th century France, have never been on view in New York City.

Precision and Splendor will be on view at the Frick Collection through February 2, 2014.

Boston-based collector, Dorothy Braude Edinburg, has gifted nearly 1,000 works of art to the Art Institute of Chicago, making it one of the most significant donations in the museum’s history. The gift includes approximately 800 works on paper – primarily European prints and drawings from Old Mast to modern – and 150 works of Asian art. The donation will complement the considerable long-term loans and prior gifts made by Edinburg including works by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954).

The most recent gift, along with Edinburg’s previous donations, is part of the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection, which honors Edinburg’s parents. Highlights include nearly 50 extremely rare Japanese volumes, many of which are from the Edo period, a sorely unrepresented period in American museum collections; Chinese celadons from the 12^th and 13^th centuries; and prints and drawings by Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Claude Monet (1840-1926), Edvard Munch (1863-1944) and James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), among many others.

Edinburg said, “I have never thought of my collection as a personal endeavor. I have always believed that it should ultimately enter a major museum and serve a broad public…I have seen the Art Institute as the eventual home for my entire collection for many years, and I am thrilled to taking another step forward with this gift in honor of my parents.”        

A Grand Tour: Trade Winds of Influence
16th Annual Charleston Art & Antiques Forum
March 13–17, 2013
Old Courtroom, 23 Chalmers Street, Charleston, S.C.
For information visit www.CharlestonAntiquesForum.org or call 800.926.2520

The forum will bring together an impressive group of speakers from the US and Europe who will demonstrate the influence of the Grand Tours of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries on the architecture, furniture, silver, art, and gardens of Americans and Europeans alike. Dame Rosalind Savill, Director Emeritus of the Wallace Collection, London, England, will deliver the keynote address, focusing on her experience with French decorative arts. The mission of the Charleston Art & Antiques  Forum is to present the best fine and decorative arts scholarship, and to benefit arts education and preservation. Sponsors of the 2013 Forum are Charlton Hall Auctions, PDI, and the Florence Museum.

10th Annual Charleston Antiques Show
March 22–24, 2013; preview March 21
Memminger Auditorium, 56 Beaufain Street, Charleston, S.C.
66th Annual Spring Festival of Houses and Gardens
March 21–April 20, 2013
For information visit www.historiccharleston.org or call 843.723.1623

Inspired by the rich historical, architectural, and cultural heritage of Charleston, the 10th annual Charleston Antiques Show is a premier destination for collectors and enthusiasts who enjoy seeing and learning about incorporating antiques into modern-day décor. Attendees will find English, European, and American period furnishings, decorative arts, and fine art, architectural elements, garden furniture, vintage jewelry, and silver. In addition to attending the show, visitors can sign up for special events such as a luncheon lecture with the award-winning classical architect Gil Schafer, behind-the-scenes tours with experts, and study tours. While in Charleston, enjoy walking tours through the city’s historic district showcasing Charleston’s distinctive architecture, history, and gardens during the 66th Annual Festival of Houses and Gardens and experience the intimate charm and elegance found within private gardens and historic homes.

The Art Institute of Chicago is sending almost 100 European modern art masterpieces to the Kimbell Art Museum in For Worth, Texas. Part of a four-month traveling exhibition, the show at the Kimbell is slated to open on October 6, 2013 and run through February 16, 2014.

Renowned for its collection of modern European art, the Art Institute of Chicago will loan its works to the Kimbell while their own galleries undergo renovations. The Kimbell is the only museum to host the Art Institute’s traveling exhibition.

The show will include sculptures and paintings by Juan Gris (1887-1927), Georges Braque (1882-1963), Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), Paul Klee (1879-1940), Joan Miró (1893-1983), and Marc Chagall (1887-1985). Two major highlights of the show are Henri Matisse’s (1869-1954) Bathers by a River (1909-10) and Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Old Guitarist (1903).

The Kimbell hosted an exhibition of Impressionist works from the Art Institute of Chicago back in 2008. The show was one of the best regarded in the Kimbell’s history.

100 years after the seminal Armory Show in New York City, The Heckscher Museum of Art presents Modernizing America: Artists of the Armory Show. On view through April 14, 2013, the exhibition features works from the museum’s permanent collection and explores the show that changed the country’s perception of modern art.

Organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, the Armory Show, officially titled the International Exhibition of Modern Art, took place at the 69^th Regiment Armory and introduced radical works of art to the public; a far cry from the realistic art they were accustomed to. Artists, critics, and patrons were presented with European works that boasted avant-garde sensibilities and spanned genres like Futurism, Cubism, and Fauvism. The show transformed the landscape of modern art and inspired an unmatched growth and progression in American art.

Works on view include paintings by Marguerite Zorach (1877-1968) and Arthur B. Carles (1882-1952); works on paper by Joseph Stella (1877-1946), Oscar Bluemner (1867-1938), and Charles Sheeler (1883-1965); and sculptures by artists such as Walter Kuhn (1877-1949).

The Heckscher Museum of Art was founded in 1920 by August Heckscher in Huntington, New York. The museum boasts over 2,000 works and focuses mainly on American landscape paintings as well as American and European modernism and photography.

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.

The Dr. Susan Weber Gallery is now open at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Designed by the Scottish firm NORD architecture, the gallery houses the museum’s expansive furniture collection that was once relegated to occasional displays and temporary exhibitions.

The museum’s collection spans more than five centuries and features over 200 pieces of British and European furniture as well as guest pieces from America and Asia. The V & A’s holdings are varied and include classic works by historic names like Thomas Chippendale and George Bullock as well as modern and contemporary pieces. Special attention is paid to the process of furniture making and the gallery’s display emphasizes the materials and techniques responsible for each masterpiece. The vast collection allows patrons to see how such things as joinery, turning, carving, veneering, marquetry, and upholstery have changed over the years.

Highlights on view include a 17^th-century scagliola table, Patrick Jouin’s “One Shot” folding stool, which is the earliest example of contemporary digitial manufacturing, a painted Tyrolean cupboard from 1776, and a 15^th-century desk-cupboard made from oak that was sources from 1,500 miles away. The new gallery also features touch-screen interfaces, short films that explain fundamental techniques, and audio commentary by furniture-makers and historians.

The gallery was funded by and named after Dr. Susan Weber, a graduate of London’s Royal College of Art. Since 1991, Weber has served as the founder and director of Bard College’s Graduate Center for studies in the decorative arts, design, and culture in upstate New York.

For the second time in two years, Paris' musee du Louvre, Atlanta's High Museum of Art, Bentonville, Arkanas' Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Chicago's Terra Foundation will join forces to promote American art history education. The collaboration, which launched last year, was conceived in 2007 after the High's exhibition Louvre Atlanta, the product of a collection-sharing agreement with the French institution.

This installation of the four-year collaboration will focus on American genre painting of the 19th century, specifically how artists associated with the movement depicted day-to-day life at a time when America was still coming into its own. The exhibition, titled American Encounters: Genre Painting and Everyday Life, will open at the Louvre on January 17, 2013 and travel to the Crystal Bridges Museum in May and then to the High Museum in September. Featured paintings include Arthur Fitzwilliam Tate's The Life of a Hunter: A Tight Fix (1856) from Crystal Bridges, Eastman Johnson's Negro Life at the South (circa 1870) from the High Museum, and George Caleb Bingham's The Jolly Flatboatmen (1877-78) from the Terra Foundation. The Louvre's contributions, a painting by the Dutch artist Jan Steen and one by Englishman William Mulready, will explore the European influence on American genre painting.

Last year's inaugural exhibition focused on American landscape painting and featured works by Asher B. Durand and Thomas Cole. It is currently wrapping up its run at the High Museum ending January 6, 2013.

Xavier Salomon, a curator in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s European paintings department, announced that the institution has acquired The Penitent Saint Peter by Jusepe de Ribera. The early work by the 17^th-century painter is the first Spanish painting purchased by the museum in over 40 years. One of the Met’s most esteemed artworks, Diego Velazquez’s portrait, Juan de Pareja (1650), had been the most recent Spanish acquisition.

The painting by Ribera is a full-length portrait of St. Peter from 1612-13, when the artist was in his early 20s. Up until about 10 years ago when the Italian scholar Gianni Papi realized that a group of paintings once attributed to an anonymous artist were in fact Ribera’s, none of the artist’s early works were known. Juan de Pareja wasn’t identified as a Ribera painting until last year.

Purchased from Madrid dealers Coll & Cortes, this is the second work by Ribera in the Met’s permanent collection. Officials declined to say what they paid for the painting, but experts value the work at around $1.3 million. The other Ribera painting in the museum’s collection is a late work from 1648, four years before the artist’s death, titled The Holy Family with Saints Anne and Catherine of Alexandria.