Displaying items by tag: historians

Connoisseurs of Vermont antiques have long sought to dispel notions that the furniture is rustic, and that the makers were eccentrics living on the edges of the wilderness. In the last few decades, historians and collectors have unearthed evidence that the state’s early woodworkers, even those farming in remote spots, kept up with trends in design, materials and tools. An exhibition surveying these sophisticated pieces, “Rich and Tasty: Vermont Furniture to 1850,” opens on July 25 at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont.

The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History will be inaugurated on October 29 with a gathering of prominent art historians and museum leadership from around the world. The Institute has been founded through a $17 million gift from longtime patron of the arts Edith O’Donnell to the University of Texas at Dallas, and will be one of the preeminent centers for art history research and training in the U.S., alongside the J. Paul Getty Museum; the Clark Art Institute; the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU; and the National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts.

Through its partnership with the Dallas Museum of Art, the Institute will be the first degree-granting program in the U.S. that incorporates both an institute and a museum, and is the first such program that is a collaboration between a public university and a public museum.

The renowned Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York purchased a collection of 4,000-year-old Egyptian artifacts found a century ago by a British explorer, averting a plan to auction the antiquities that had drawn criticism from historians.

The Treasure of Harageh collection consists of 37 items such as flasks, vases and jewelry inlaid with lapis lazuli, a rare mineral. Discovered by famed British archaeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the relics date to roughly 1900 B.C., excavated from a tomb near the city of Fayum. Portions of the excavated antiquities were given in 1914 to donors in St. Louis who helped underwrite the dig.

The Museum of Arts and Design in New York has appointed Dr. Glenn Adamson as the new Nanette L. Laitman Director. Adamson, who previously worked at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, will succeed Holly Hotchner, who stepped down at the end of April. Adamson will assume his role at the Museum of Arts and Design on October 15, 2013.

Adamson helmed the V&A’s Research Department, which oversees, evaluates and supports the development of museum projects. In this role, Adamson helped bring major exhibitions to fruition, managed partnerships with other institutions and led academic fundraising. He also contributed to the museum’s publications, educational programs, media outreach and commercial activities. Before joining the V&A in 2005, Adamson served as Curator for the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which collects and promotes research within the field of decorative arts.  

An advocate for the reconsideration of craft as an inescapable cultural force rather than an unassuming art classification, Adamson has had a profound effect on makers as well as craft historians and theorists. He has published a number of books on the subject and is founding co-editor of the academic, peer-reviewed Journal of Modern Craft.

Adamson said, “I am honored to have been selected to serve as the next director of MAD…I look forward to building on the museum’s recent successes and to working with the museum’s visionary board and senior leadership to enhance and extend MAD’s potential.”

Back in December 2012, officials at the New York Public Library (NYPL) received considerable opposition after releasing a number of important details pertaining to the institution’s $300 million renovation. The part of the project that prompted the most backlash involved clearing out the century-old back portion of the library, which is housed in a landmark building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Over three million volumes were to be relocated to a storage space under Bryant Park as well as another facility in Princeton, NJ.

In July 2013, a group of historians and preservationists filed a lawsuit again the library, asking NYPL officials and the project’s architect, Norman Foster, to reconsider their plan. The group also filed an application to have the library’s iconic Rose Main Reading Room landmarked in order to protect the book stacks, which support the room’s structural integrity.

While the lawsuit has not yet gone to court, the NYPL’s president, Anthony Marx, and Foster have responded to the plaintiffs, insisting that a revised plan, which will be released this fall, includes a new circulating library under the Rose Main Reading Room. Marx and Foster also announced that the new design will incorporate the book stacks as “a prominent feature.”

Germany’s Staatsgalerie Stuttgart museum returned a 15^th century Renaissance painting stolen by Nazis during World War II to the estate of a Jewish art dealer. The museum acquired Virgin and Child, which is attributed to the Master of Flémalle (1375-1444) who is identified by historians as Robert Campin, in 1948.

The painting once belonged to Max Stern (1904-1987) who lost over 400 paintings to the Nazi regime during a forced sale in 1937. After Jews were banned from selling art in Nazi-occupied Europe, Stern shuttered his Dusseldorf gallery and escaped to London in December of the same year. Before settling in Montreal, Stern sold even more paintings, including Virgin and Child, in order to buy a German exit visa for his mother. Stern went on to purchase the Dominion Gallery of Fine Arts and established himself as one of Canada’s most important art dealers and collectors.

Upon his death in 1987, Stern donated a portion of his estate to Concordia and McGill Universities in Montreal as well as the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. For the past ten years Concordia has been working to recover the hundreds of paintings Stern lost at the hands of the Nazis. The initiative, known as the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, has facilitated the return of 9 works originally belonging to Stern; Virgin and Child is the 10^th and the only work to be returned from a German museum thus far.

A ceremony was held on Tuesday, March 5, 2013 at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin to celebrate the painting’s return.  

Following the lead of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and PBS, Google will launch a series of monthly digital “Art Talks.” The project aims to bring gallery and museum collections to life through virtual hangouts with curators, museums directors, historians, and educators from the world’s most distinguished cultural institutions. The talks will explore various arts-related topics including the curating process, popular themes throughout art history, art education, and the significance of specific masterpieces and artists.

The first Art Talks hangout will take place at 8PM on March 6, 2013 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Deborah Howes, the museum’s Director of Digital Learning, will join a panel of artists and students to discuss the process of teaching art online.

Upcoming Art Talks include Caroline Campbell and Arnika Schmidt from London’s National Gallery discussing depictions of the female nude throughout art history (March 20, 2013) and a panel discussion of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s (1525-1569) Tower of Babel featuring Peter Parshall, curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (April 2013). Additional talks are planned for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico.

The talks will be posted on the Google Art Project‘s YouTube channel after they air.