Displaying items by tag: minneapolis institute of art

Not many works merit an entire gallery to themselves.

That’s an honor the Norton Museum of Art has bestowed on Vincent van Gogh’s The Poplars at Saint-Remy, the only occupant of a gallery on the third floor of the Nessel Wing.

The work, property of The Cleveland Museum of Art, is one of two major paintings on loan from other institutions in exchange for loans of important paintings from the Norton’s collection. The other is Edgar Degas’ Portrait of Mlle. Hortense Valpincon, which belongs to the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

The Van Gogh irises that brighten refrigerator magnets and wrap around coffee mugs are sweet. But they don’t compare to the real deal, unveiled Friday morning at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Vincent van Gogh’s 1890 “Irises, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence” is the third and final “mystery masterpiece” that the museum has presented as part of its centennial celebration. One of the Dutch artist’s most famous and appealing pictures, “Irises” is a big, exuberant bouquet — 3 feet tall and about 2 feet wide — of blue-violet blossoms and spiky green leaves in a gold vase by a sunny yellow wall.

She lived much of her life in New York City luxury, but Mary Griggs Burke never forgot her Minnesota roots.

Museums around the world courted her, hoping she would bequeath to them her legendary collection of Japanese art, but it was to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts that she left the bulk of it: 700 pieces of rare Japanese and Korean art, spanning 5,000 years, along with a $12.5 million endowment.

The bequest from Burke, announced Monday, catapults the Minneapolis museum’s Japanese collection into the top tier of U.S. museums.

The Dallas Museum of Art today announced the debut of the first Friends membership pilot program at The Grace Museum in Abilene, Texas. Grace Friends offers free membership to all visitors and is modeled on the DMA free membership platform, which since its launch in January 2013 has welcomed more than 62,000 new Friends members. The introduction of the membership model in Abilene represents the first stage of a broader national expansion supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Other participating museums considering aspects of the Friends platform include the Denver Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Along with the launch of the program, The Grace Museum has also announced reduced general admission to support visitor participation.

Mary Griggs Burke, who built the most comprehensive collection of Japanese art outside of Japan, passed away on December 8, 2012 at her home in Manhattan. She was 96.

Burke’s collection, which she amassed over fifty years, featured thousands of artifacts including paintings, prints, sculpture, textiles, lacquerware, ceramics, and calligraphy. Worth tens of millions of dollars, her meticulously assembled collection spans five millenniums and includes early pieces from around 3000 B.C. to works of the 19^th century A.D.

Burke was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1916, where she grew up in a Victorian mansion adorned with 18^th century French objets d’art as well as a few important Japanese artifacts. After earning a bachelor’s degree in 1938 from Sarah Lawrence College and a master’s in clinical psychology from Columbia, Burke traveled to Japan in 1954. Japanese-influenced Bauhaus architect, Walter Gropius, who was designing a house for Burke, suggested the visit. Burke immediately fell in love with Japan and its art and returned to the country dozens of times throughout her life.

Burke began avidly collecting Japanese art in 1963. Her holdings eventually grew so vast that they required their own residence. Burke purchased the apartment adjacent to her own on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to house her collection; she also employed a curatorial staff and encouraged students and scholars to visit. In 2006, Burke announced that after her death her collection would be divided between the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Burke served on the boards of many institutions, including the Met. At the time of her death she was an emeritus trustee of the museum.       

Andy Warhol once said, “Good business is the best art.”  And while he wasn’t referring to art museums per se, he might as well have been. These days, museums across the country are fighting to stay in the black—and now some of them are asking folks to pay more in property taxes to make up the shortfall.

Last Tuesday, voters in three Michigan suburbs agreed to a raise their property taxes to save the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), which has struggled mightily with its finances for the past decade. Unlike most major metropolitan museums, the DIA operates without a significant endowment and receives no financial support from the city of Detroit or the state of Michigan.

Voters approved what’s known as a millage tax, a fee assessed on the value of your home. The more your property is worth, the higher your tax. In this case, the DIA levy costs approximately $15 for every $150,000 of a home’s fair market value, and will raise around $23 million a year from Oakland, Macomb, and Wayne counties (the last of which includes Detroit).