Displaying items by tag: public display

Two Francis Bacon self-portraits are going on public display for the first time after resurfacing in a private collection.

Descendants of the original collector have decided to sell the paintings, which are expected to fetch £15m each at auction.

Experts knew of the works’ existence, but had no idea who had bought them soon after they were completed about 40 years ago.

The paintings will go on show at Sotheby’s in London and New York before going under the hammer in July.

A self-portrait by Pablo Picasso that was created in 1901, and has not previously been exhibited in public before, will go on display in central London this week. The exhibition will include works by Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, and great British painter Francis Bacon. The self-portrait by Picasso depicts the Spanish artist and sculptor at the age of 30, looking directly at the viewer while painting by candlelight.

The "Self" exhibition runs until 13 December at the Ordovas gallery, and features a number of works either not seen in public before - or for a considerable amount of time; including Francis Bacon's self-portrait, which is one of the artist's first studies of a single head.

In accordance with a 10-year partnership with the city of Arras and the Nord Pas de Calais region, the Château of Versailles is to loan some of its artwork and artifacts to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Arras, Art Daily has reported.

Initiated by the regional council, the partnership aims to disperse Versailles’ vast cultural heritage for public display in other parts of France.

More than 40 paintings, drawings and birthday cards by Frank Auerbach, all of them owned by his friend and admirer Lucian Freud, have gone on public display as a group before they are dispersed to collections around the UK.

In May it was announced that Freud's estate had offered the 15 oil paintings and 29 works on paper by Auerbach, one of Britain's greatest living artists, to the government in lieu of around £16m of inheritance tax.

Because the bequest is so large and valuable it is being split up with museums and galleries now bidding for different works and groupings of works. Before that happens all the works are being displayed together at Tate Britain.

Mark Rothko's painting Black on Maroon has gone back on public display at London's Tate Modern gallery, 18 months after it was vandalised with graffiti.

The 1958 painting was defaced by Wlodzimierz Umaniec in October 2012. He was sent to prison as a result but has now apologised for his actions.

The Tate's conservators have spent 18 months repairing the painting.

Conservator Rachel Barker said: "It's definitely better than I could have hoped at the beginning of the project."

A well-known folk art object, a whirligig is a wind-powered creation that spins and and swirls. Vollis Simpson (1919-2013), a North Carolina-based folk artist, was celebrated for his whirligigs, which he made from recycled heating and air conditioning systems and reflective materials. The unconventional artist, whose work was featured in museums, backyards, and the 1996 Olympics, passed away on Friday, May 31, 2013 at the age of 94.

Simpson’s hulking masterpieces, which he built near his machine shop in Lucama, NC, stand as high as 50 feet and weigh as much as 3 tons. Many of his whirligigs were on public display in town until a restoration effort was started. The process is about halfway complete and the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park is slated to open in November 2013 in Wilson, NC, about 10 miles from the artist’s home.

Known for their whimsical quality, Simpson’s whirligigs tell stories of a community and bygone eras. He built his first whirligig while he was overseas during World War II. Upon returning to the United States, Simpson farmed and worked as a mover before opening the machine shop that would become his whirligig studio. In the 1980s, Simpson kicked his whirligig making into high gear and spent 10 years building his captivating, large-scale creations.

Simpson’s works are part of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, MD and the American Folk Art Museum in New York City.

Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) Virgin and Child with Saint Anne currently resides in the Louvre’s illustrious collection in Paris. Last year, the painting was the highlight of an exhibition at the French institution, which included compositional sketches, preparatory drawings, and landscape studies as well as related works by other artists. The work even made an appearance at the Louvre’s outpost in Lens, an industrial town in northern France. Considered his final masterpiece, da Vinci worked on Virgin and Child with Saint Anne for years, ultimately leaving the painting unfinished at the time of his death in 1519.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles recently put a different version of the painting on view. The work, which appeared in the Louvre’s exhibition, was made in da Vinci’s workshop, but not by his hand. It will remain on view with the museum’s Italian Renaissance paintings indefinitely.

The painting was bequeathed to UCLA in 1939 by California real estate developer Willitts J. Hole. The work was transferred to the Hammer Museum in 1995 after the university took over management and operation of the institution. Sadly, Virgin Child with Saint Anne has spent decades in storage. In fact, it hasn’t been prominently displayed since the 1940s when it hung in the UCLA library. The reason the work has languished in storage for so long is that the Hammer Gallery requires that any work displayed in its historical art galleries be a part of founder Armand Hammer’s personal collection. Since Virgin and Child with Saint Anne was a gift, it doesn’t qualify.

The painting arrived at the Getty in 2010 prior to being shipped to Paris for the Louvre exhibition. Museum staff analyzed, cleaned, and repaired some varnish before shipping the painting to Europe. Now that Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is back at the Getty, museum officials are happy to have the work on public display.

Starting January 7, 2013, Antiques Roadshow will kick-off its 17^th season with three episodes filmed in Corpus Christi, Texas. While the series has a reputation for revealing hidden treasures to unassuming owners, the lost Diego Rivera painting that appears in the upcoming season is truly a rare find.

Earlier this year, Rue Ferguson inherited a painting bought by his great-grandparents in Mexico in 1920. He assumed it was worth some money, but when he took the piece to Antiques Roadshow during their stay in Corpus Christi, he was dumbfounded when he heard the painting was valued at $800,000 to $1 million.

Created by Rivera, one of the foremost Mexican painters of the 20^th century, in 1904 when he was only a teenager, El Albani spent decades out of the public eye. While it is recorded in Rivera’s personal archive, the artist’s family could never locate the painting as it was hanging in Ferguson’s great-grandparents home. For nearly 30 years after Ferguson’s parents inherited the painting, they believed it to be a fake and kept it in storage. It wasn’t until the early 1980s that Ferguson’s father discovered the painting to be authentic and took it to be restored. The family donated the work to the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX but Ferguson asked for the painting back when he learned it was no longer on public display.

After visiting Antiques Roadshow and learning just how important a work El Abani is, Ferguson decided to look for a museum that specializes in Rivera’s work and/or Latin American art to house the historic painting.