| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Friday, October 20, 2023 |
| | | Restitution is moving quickly. The Pergamon Museum is taking it slow | |
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Andreas Scholl, the head of the Pergamon Museums antiquities collection, at the museum in Berlin, Sept. 20, 2023. The institution of the museum, as a product of the Enlightenment, is being questioned, said Scholl. (Lena Mucha/The New York Times)
by Thomas Rogers
BERLIN.- Even wrapped in plastic, the Pergamon Altar is a striking sight. A monumental structure with ornate friezes depicting a battle between giants and gods, it was sculpted in what is now Turkey in the 2nd century B.C. and is one of the most imposing known examples of antique art. Housed in Berlins Pergamon Museum for over a century, the altar has long been one of the main attractions in the German capital. That is, when visitors can see it. The altar has been inaccessible since 2014, amid construction work on the museums north wing. On Oct. 23, the rest of the museum one of the most visited in Germany will close for four years. Although the altar room and north wing are set to reopen in 2027, other parts of the building will not be accessible for a further decade. The project comes at a delicate time. In recent years, European institutions exhibiting archaeological objects from other parts of the world, such as the Pergamon Museum, and the British Museum, in Londo ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day The Design Museum today unveiled its major exhibition on skateboard design --- and revealed that Londonâs newest skate ramp has been built inside the exhibition gallery. Opening to the public on Friday, SKATEBOARD charts the history of board design over seven decades. But revealed for the first time today is that the show also includes a new, bespoke mini-ramp that exhibition visitors
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| 15th-century French painting depicts ancient stone tool now on view at Dartmouth | | Ronald Davis, Paintings from the 1960s through 2010 at David Richard Gallery | | Ann Philbin, transformational Director of the Hammer Museum, to retire in 2024 |
Close-up detail of the hand-axe like object in Jean Fouquet's "Ãtienne Chevalier with Saint Stephen," left panel of "The Melun Diptych" (circa 1455) by Jean Fouquet. Photo by Sailko, CC BY 3.0.
HANOVER, NH.- More than 500,000 years ago, our human ancestors used large, stone tools known as "Acheulean handaxes," to cut meat and wood, and dig for tubers. Often made from flint, these prehistoric oval and pear-shaped tools are flaked on both sides and have a pointed end. Handaxes have long been a source of fascination in our social and cultural history. Prior to the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, people thought that they were of natural origin and referred to them as "thunderstones shot from the clouds," according to texts, with the earliest records dating back to the mid-1500s. But researchers from Dartmouth and the University of Cambridge have identified that "The Melun Diptych" (circa 1455), painted by Jean Fouquet, depicts what is likely the earliest artistic representation of an Acheulean handaxe, demonstrating ... More | |
Ronald Davis, Jericho, 2002. Acrylics on expanded PVC plastic, 91 x 102 inches. Copyright © Ronald Davis, Courtesy David Richard Gallery. Photograph by Yao Zu Lu.
NEW YORK, NY.- David Richard Gallery is showing Ronald Davis, Paintings: 1960s through 2010, an exhibition surveying the optically stimulating and perceptually challenging paintings spanning six decades of the artists career that were produced in his California and New Mexico studios. Davis explored many new and unconventional painting supports and media throughout his career, including acrylic on canvas; molded polyester resin and fiberglass; acrylic and dry pigment on canvas; Cel-Vinyl acrylic copolymer and Nova Gel on Birch plywood; encaustic wax and pigment on birch plywood; and acrylics on expanded PVC plastic. This presentation includes 27 geometric, hard-edge, and color-based abstract paintings created from 1963 to 2010. They mostly have shaped perimeters with some rectangular canvases that in the aggregate map Daviss ... More | |
Director Ann Philbin, Transformational Director of the Hammer Museum. Photo by Mark Hanauer.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Marcy Carsey, Chair of the UCLA Hammer Museums Board of Directors, announced today that Director Ann Philbin will retire from the museum on November 1, 2024, after 25 years of leadership that made the Hammer into a landmark institution in Los Angeles and a leading museum of contemporary art for the nation and the world. Marcy Carsey said, When the history of the Hammer Museum is written, there will be a clear line drawnbefore Annie Philbin, and after Annie Philbin. Thanks to her vision, the Hammer is known today as a world-class museum, internationally renowned yet uniquely and indisputably at the heart of Los Angeles. She has guided a complete transformation of the museumits facilities, its collection, and its exhibitions and programs, which she has elevated in every waywhile redefining the relationship of art museums to their communities and their society. We are profoundly grateful for her leadership ... More |
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| Design Museum to open UK's first major exhibition charting design evolution of skateboards | | Modern & Contemporary African and Middle Eastern Art Auction on 25th October by Olympia Auctions | | Ukrainian artists respond to ongoing war in new exhibition at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art |
Installation view. © Felix Speller for the Design Museum.
LONDON.- The Design Museum unveiled its major exhibition on skateboard design and revealed that Londons newest skate ramp has been built inside the exhibition gallery. Opening to the public on Friday, SKATEBOARD charts the history of board design over seven decades. But revealed for the first time today is that the show also includes a new, bespoke mini-ramp that exhibition visitors are invited to skate on. Inspired by California skate heritage, the ramp is a 3.5ft mini ramp, with an 8ft extension. It has been designed specially for the Design Museum by exhibition curator Jonathan Olivares with Betongpark, one of Europes industry leaders in skatepark design and construction. Exhibition ticket holders who have some prior experience of skateboarding (and who must be able to drop in) are invited to book a free slot to be able to skate on the ramp as part of their visit. There will b ... More | |
Robino Ntila, Tanzanian, 1953 - 2020, Hugging. Acrylic on canvas, signed and dated in English R. NTILA / 13 lower right; 100 x 80 cm; 39 1/3 x 31 1/4 in.
LONDON.- The Modern & Contemporary African and Middle Eastern Art Auction by Olympia Auctions takes place on 25th October and includes works by artists from all over Africa and the Middle East, including Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Ghana, South Africa and Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria. Many works are fresh to the market and the majority are from private collections. Estimates range from £200 - £20,000. Collectors and art enthusiasts will be drawn to the rich and vibrant narratives depicted in these works, and their artistic innovation. Numerous pieces celebrate cultural heritage as well as exploring identity and post-colonialisation. The auction will also include pictures from the collection of the late Dr Mohammed Said Farsi, a philanthropist and well-known supporter of the ... More | |
Halyna Andrusenko, Protected 12, Pencil and watercolor on paper. A4 , 2023.
CHICAGO, IL.- The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art is has on view Dont Close Your Eyes, a collection of work by 26 artists responding to the war in Ukraine. How do artists depict war? It is one thing to photograph the scene before you, but another to sift through information at a distance. The brutal irrationality of violence, and destruction. How does one convey the massacre in Bucha through a drawing that impacts the audience? What forms, colors, images does the artist use? Some of the artists represented in this room, such as Inga Levi, have been documentarians of the daily events that come with war. Inga, who worked on/created comic books, adapted the specialized style to her depictions of the war, as her complex, layered compositions evoke curiosity in the viewer. Halyna Andrusenko has turned to a meditative depiction of monuments ... More |
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| Showcasing the power of women in Renaissance Italy | | Making connections with the unseen | | Barnes & Noble sets itself free |
Strong Women in Renaissance Italy exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. September 9, 2023 to January 7, 2024. Lois B. and Michael K. Torf Gallery. Photo© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
by Tanya Mohn
NEW YORK, NY.- Platform shoes. Lush fabrics. Prolific selfies. They sound like things you might see on a lifestyle influencers Instagram feed, but they are actually among the 14th- to 17th-century items shown in Strong Women in Renaissance Italy, an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The 100 artworks on view include fashion accessories, textiles, paintings, sculpture, ceramics, illustrated books and prints all worn, made, used, inspired, influenced, commissioned or collected by women. Almost all of these objects show womens strength and power, said Marietta Cambareri, the museums curator of European sculpture and Judaica who organized the show, which is on view through Jan. 7. The show tries to dig out the objects that tell the stories that people havent thought about before to create a broader picture of womens experience in Renaissance Italy. A bronze bust of Egyptian queen Cleopatra shows her as thoughtful, elegan ... More | |
Vivian Trakinski, the American Museum of Natural Historys director of science visualization, demonstrates what it is like to be within the Invisible Worlds visual experience in New York on Sept. 20, 2023. (Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times)
by Alina Tugend
NEW YORK, NY.- Six years. Thousands of hours of data research. Dozens of interviews with scientists. Sixty-two audio speakers. Sixteen projectors. The result: a 12-minute loop, 360-degree visual experience that takes place in a 23-foot-tall oval space with canted walls. The goal of Invisible Worlds, a permanent part of the American Museum of Natural Historys Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation, which opened in May, is to immerse visitors in the nature that is often hidden from the human eye. Visitors find themselves under the sea, as jellyfish, krill and plankton rise balletically upward; surrounded by the swooping of migrating, tweeting birds; underground among tree roots and fungi exchanging water and nutrients; and submersed in colorful strands of nerve cells. Invisible Worlds, like all the New York museums displays and exhibits, aims to inspire awe, answer and ... More | |
James Daunt, the Barnes & Noble chief executive, in London in July 2019. Booksellers are about as uncommercial a breed of people as its possible to come across, said Daunt. (Suzie Howell/The New York Times)
by Maureen OConnor
NEW YORK, NY.- The green carpet is gone. Dark wood shelves are no longer in favor. At many Barnes & Noble stores, the green-striped wallpaper and hunter-green walls have been scraped away and painted over in sandy shades of white and pink as the nations biggest brick-and-mortar bookseller pursues, in fits and starts, a back-to-basics, books-first strategy. Other stores will have a different look. The design of a new location in the New York City borough of Brooklyn reveals the polished concrete floors from its past life as a Barneys New York. A Barnes & Noble recently opened in California with cerulean walls, and an experiment in robins egg blue is in the works for some East Coast locations. Any design agency would have a heart attack if they could see what were doing, said James Daunt, the Barnes & Noble CEO. We dont have any architect doing our design at any stage. Theres no interior ... More |
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| In this exhibition, gender meets climate activism. It's a lot | | The true uniform of Los Angeles, according to Angelenos | | Review: Laurie Anderson gets back to having a good time |
In an undated image provided by Jemima Yong/Barbican Art Gallery, an installation view of Re/Sisters: A Lens on Gender and Ecology at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. (Jemima Yong/Barbican Art Gallery via The New York Times)
by Emily LaBarge
LONDON.- We wont play nature to your culture, declares a 1983 work by American artist Barbara Kruger, known for her biting pairings of text and image. The phrase runs across a black-and-white close-up of a womans face as she lies in the grass, her hair merging with the ground, a slender leaf placed over each of her eyes, as if reductive binaries whether theyre between nature and culture, female and male, the body and the mind render us blind. Forty years ago, this piece gave its title to a solo exhibition of Krugers work at Londons Institute of Contemporary Arts. This fall, across town, it opens Re/Sisters: A Lens on Gender and Ecology at the Barbican Art Gallery, which runs through Jan. 14, 2024. This sprawling survey of 250 works by almost 50 women and gender nonconforming artists from the 1960s to today is presented under the ... More | |
Conductor Gustavo Dudamel at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, on Dec. 7, 2018. (Vincent Tullo/The New York Times)
by Frank Rojas
NEW YORK, NY.- In the mythology of the West, Los Angeles is equal parts grit and glamour. The reality isnt far off: Impossibly pink bougainvillea blooms feet away from gray highways choked with round-the-clock traffic. Look to your left at a stoplight and you may see a bored Uber driver, tooling around for fares, or a young starlet going incognito with sunglasses leaving her local coffee shop. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a city that is, among many other things, a showbiz town, LA is defined by its imagery: the Hollywood sign, palm trees and beaches, of course, but also lowriders, Art Deco buildings and street vendors. For Angelenos themselves, those visuals can take the form of ones personal aesthetic. Fred Segal shirt, or Lakers jersey? Gleaming Nike Cortezes, or worn-out flip-flops? Ahead of LA Fashion Week, which runs from Wednesday through Sunday, The New York Times asked West Coasters for their ideas of the quintessential Los Angeles uniform. ... More | |
Laurie Anderson onstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where she put on a set called Let X = X, in New York, Oct. 17, 2023. With the jazz combo Sexmob, this enduring avant-gardist revisited vintage and recent songs with a grooving spirit. (Rachel Papo/The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- Laurie Anderson sounds like shes ready to have fun again. That much was clear after the first minute or so of her thrilling multimedia show Tuesday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. This one-night-only, 100-minute set, titled Let X = X, featured new arrangements of several 1980s-era Anderson songs. It also featured a fun backing band in the jazz combo Sexmob, reliable purveyors of a good time. Hasnt Anderson earned a romping concert? So far in this century, she has kept her eye on grave matters. She mourned a changing, vulnerable New York City after Hurricane Sandy in Landfall, with the Kronos Quartet. She has likewise mourned the death of her longtime partner, Lou Reed, across multiple projects including in her graceful, meditative film Heart of a Dog. And she detailed human rights violations in Habeas Corpus, a 2015 collaboration with a former ... More |
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William Monk on "West of Nowhere"
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The passion of Adèle Haenel, an artist of fierce political conviction
CHATHAM, NY.- Adèle Haenel bristled when asked what drew her to radical art and politics. The term radical is used as a way to discredit protest discourse, said Haenel, an actress who is best known in the United States for the 2019 art-house hit Portrait of a Lady on Fire. That was also one of the last feature films she worked on. Since then, she has opted to dramatically alter the course of her life and career. Over the past few years, Haenel, 34, has become one of the most visible and committed faces of the #MeToo movement in France. In May, she wrote an open letter published in the influential French culture weekly Télérama to explain her absence from movie screens: I decided to politicize my retirement from cinema to denounce the general complacency of the profession toward sexual aggressors and more generally the ... More
Don't call these clothes minimalist. Or quiet luxury for that matter
NEW YORK, NY.- Quiet luxury, oh God, Isabel Wilkinson Schor, the designer of Attersee, said with a small sigh. I dont consider us a part of that trend at all. Its been around for a very long time, and its equated with minimalism. I dont see what we are doing as minimalism. Attersee, which Wilkinson Schor founded in 2021, is known for the kinds of high-quality, strokeable fabrics associated with the trend. The clothes are classic in that they are not meant to easily go out of style but do have quirks: a knit tube wrap as an alternative to a cardigan, a print of figure drawings, a plissé silk cape dress and caftans for summer and winter. The impetus for the line was simply to find everyday clothes that were comfortable and beautiful, not the kind of thing that would be worn only to a big event once a year. There are oversize collarless shirts in a silk- ... More
Berkshire Museum announces next phase of renovations
PITTSFIELD, MA.- The Berkshire Museum announces the details of the next and final phase of its continued renovation project. In what will be the final phase of its three-part renovation, Berkshire Museum will update the entirety of the first floor, including the gallery spaces, lobby, museum shop, and aquarium. Working with Architect and Designer Yo Hakomori of Studio Hau, based in Los Angeles, California, Bradley Architects Inc., based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and Development and Construction company Skanska, the Museum gave notice to members in an event held on Friday, October 6, that it is nearing the completion of the design development stage for the project and plans to begin construction sometime in mid-2024. The reimagined first floor will pay homage to the museum's past while infusing beloved permanent exhibitions ... More
Almine Rech presents The Echo of Picasso in New York
NEW YORK, NY.- In honor of the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picassos death (April 8, 1973), Almine Rech will offer The Echo of Picasso, a wide- ranging group exhibition curated by Eric Troncy, spanning across its two locations in the city, opening November 8, 2023. The exhibition offers two perspectives: one that revisits a time in history wherein Picasso's contemporaries sought to challenge his work, and a second in which living artists today echo the Spanish artists oeuvre. As Michael Fitzgerald* described, "instead of being a potential adversary in life, in death, Picasso became a voluminous encyclopedia of ideas and images for artists. 50 years since Picasso's death, the contemporary works on view still echo the formal, technical, and conceptual inventions of one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. The exhibition ... More
Exhibition of new wall-based textile works by Paolo Arao currently on view at Morgan Lehman Gallery
NEW YORK, NY.- Morgan Lehman is presenting Loom Songs, an exhibition of new wall-based textile works by Paolo Arao. This marks Araos second solo exhibition with the gallery. Paolo Arao comes from a background in music. As a classically trained concert pianist, he originally pursued a degree in music performance and composition before pivoting to a visual arts undergraduate program, ultimately earning his degree in painting and printmaking. Music has remained a steady influence in shaping his aesthetic thinking in the studio. To produce these latest works, the artist works on a floor loom, which in many ways resembles an upright piano. Both devices are creative instruments that serve as natural extensions of the human body. Using the loom, Arao weaves colored cotton threads to produce polychromatic patterns in ... More
Alligator alert! Public art piece by Alexander Klingspor pays tribute to NYC at Union Square
NEW YORK, NY.- An urban myth came to life in Union Square Park today with the unveiling of public art installation, NYC Legend. The bronze sculpture by Swedish artist Alexander Klingspor, in collaboration with Mollbrinks Gallery, features a life-sized alligator on the back of a manhole cover lid, drawing on the century-old myth of sewer alligators inhabiting the underbelly of New York City. The installation will be on display from October 2023 to June 2024. Originating a century ago, the legend suggests that New Yorkers once abandoned baby alligatorsimported as pets from Louisiana and Floridain the sewers when they became too large to manage. Over time, this story has evolved into tales of subterranean monsters, capturing the citys imagination. Inspired by the resilience of both alligators and New Yorkers, "NYC Legend" merges ... More
'Keioui Keijaun Thomas: Magma & Pearls' opens at MOCA Tucson
TUCSON, AZ.- MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) Tucson presents Magma & Pearls: Oceans Rise and Fall Like Meteorites, the first solo museum exhibition by artist and performer Keioui Keijaun Thomas presenting a large-scale sculptural installation commissioned by MOCA with video, performance, and community-generated programming. The exhibition builds on over a decade of the artists work exploring the affective and material conditions of Black and trans identity and expands on her ongoing practice of world-building to create spaces of safety, joy, and healing. The artist will transform MOCAs Great Hall into a post-apocalyptic geography to imagine new ways to relate to the American landscape centering interdependent systems of care for all living beings. For her major new installation, Thomas builds an immersive landscape ... More
Expansive exhibition of works by Joaquim Tenreiro opens at Carpenters Workshop Gallery
PARIS.- Carpenters Workshop Gallery presents Joaquim Tenreiro: Masterworks, one of the most expansive exhibitions to date of the work of renowned Brazilian artist Joaquim Tenreiro, curated by Maria Cecilia Loschiavo Dos Santos. Tenreiros practice traversed art, sculpture, design and architecture, and this exhibition comprises a collection of his most notable pieces created over the full span of his career, demonstrating the clear evolution of a master craftsman. At the heart of Joaquim Tenreiros art lies his profound understanding of the inherent properties of wood. As early as the 1940s, he was among the first to utilise Brazils abundant varieties of hardwood, and his intuitive knowledge of a material previously unseen in the creative world served as the cornerstone of his radical new designs. As evidenced in this exhibition, ... More
The Cleveland Museum of Art acquires British masterpiece and highly important watercolors
CLEVELAND, OH.- Recent acquisitions by the Cleveland Museum of Art continue to add to the quality of the collection and to expand its depth and breadth. Visitors will soon be able to view a masterpiece by Johann Zoffany and important watercolors by Eugène Delacroix and Emma Amos. The Dutton Family in the Drawing Room of Sherborne Park, Gloucestershire, is a masterpiece by Johann Zoffany, exemplifying the quintessentially English genre of which he was the most accomplished practitionerââthe conversation piece. The Dutton family was painted around 1772, at the height of Zoffanyâs career. The painting is in extraordinary condition, extensively published, has been a cornerstone of groundbreaking exhibitions, and twice achieved the record price for the artist at auction. The CMAâs British paintings collection is distinguished primarily by great landscapes, individual portraits, and miniatures but has lacked that linchpin genre, the conv ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Gabriele Münter
TARWUK
Awol Erizku
Leo Villareal
Flashback On a day like today, Dutch painter Aelbert Cuyp was born October 20, 1620. Aelbert Jacobsz Cuyp (October 20, 1620 - November 15, 1691) was one of the leading Dutch landscape painters of the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century. The most famous of a family of painters, the pupil of his father Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp (1594â1651/52), he is especially known for his large views of the Dutch countryside in early morning or late afternoon light. In this image: The Negro Page circa 1652, oil on canvas; Royal Collection.
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