Displaying items by tag: medieval art

The Art Institute of Chicago announced that Gloria Groom has been named the chair of the museum’s European Painting and Sculpture department. She will now oversee the museum’s collection of Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, early 19th-century, Impressionist, and Post-Impressionist art.

Groom, who is also currently the Art Institute’s David and Mary Winton Green Curator, is known best for her work related to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and has written about the work of Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that Barbara Drake Boehm will be the Paul and Jill Ruddock Senior Curator at the museum’s medieval-art annex, the Cloisters, where she is currently a curator. In this newly created position, Boehm will oversee plans for budgeting, museum strategy, and the collections, while still serving as a curator for shows at the Cloisters.

In the past, Boehm has worked on shows about enamels made in Limoges between the 12th and 14th centuries, Jeanne d’Évreux’s prayer book, and art made in Prague during the 14th and 15th centuries.

A new exhibition at the Cloisters in Manhattan, "Treasures and Talismans: Rings From the Griffin Collection," put together by C. Griffith Mann, curator of the Department of Medieval Art and the Cloisters, explores the subtle meanings behind beloved pieces of jewelry.

A number of ancient and medieval rings, on long-term loan to the museum, are shown in a wider historical and cultural context in the exhibition. Displayed alongside the jewels is a curated selection of paintings and sculptures borrowed from the museum's Greek and Roman Art, European Paintings, and Robert Lehman Collection.

Recent additions of artwork representing medieval Europe, the Ancient Americas, 20th-century photography, and contemporary art further enhance the Cleveland Museum of Art’s permanent collection. World-renowned for its quality and breadth, the collection represents almost 45,000 objects and 6,000 years of achievement in the arts.

The latest acquisitions include a Virgin and Child, a rare 13th-century wooden sculpture from the Mosan region of Europe; a Standing Female Figure, a clay figure representative of the Classic Veracruz period on Mexico’s Gulf Coast; and Just the two of us, one of contemporary artist Julia Wachtel’s first paintings to employ cartoons. The museum also announced the addition of eight photographs by Ansel Adams, a gift from Frances P. Taft, a longtime museum supporter and trustee.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is now open seven days a week for the first time in over 40 years. The schedule shift occurred on Monday July 1, 2013 following the official announcement, which was made by the Met’s director and CEO, Thomas Campbell, on March 28. Opening hours will also be moved from 9:30AM to 10AM.

The goal of the increased hours of operation is to make the museum more accessible to patrons. A record 6.28 million people visited the Met last year and museum officials hope to maintain the institution’s ongoing success.

The changes also apply to the Cloisters, the Met’s museum of medieval art and architecture located in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan.  

Built in the 1930s in northern Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park on land donated by John D. Rockefeller Jr., The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a sight to be seen. Assembled from architectural elements dating from the 12^th through 15^th century, The Cloisters, which includes landscaped gardens, features a collection of nearly 3,000 works of art from medieval Europe.

Besides an impressive collection and scenic gardens, The Cloisters boasts a picturesque view of the Palisades, a line of steep cliffs that run along the lower Hudson River. Rockefeller’s grandson, Larry, is teaming up with the Met, to preserve the vista, which risks being obscured by LG Electronics’ new corporate headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

The plans for the new LG location have the building stretching upward 143 feet, standing several stories above the tree line almost directly across the Hudson River from the Cloisters. Rockefeller, who has met with LG officials to discuss altering the building’s plans, is not alone in his concerns. A number of environmental groups have also filed lawsuits asking the company to reduce the new headquarters’ height. The Met has also written letters pleading with LG as well as a judge handling one of the environmental cases.  

Designed by architecture giant HOK, LG will begin construction on 27 acres this year. The project is expected to conclude by 2016.