6.2 million domestic and international visitors made their way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art during this past fiscal year, making it the third year in a row that the museum’s attendance  has exceeded six million visitors. This number is comprised of visitors to both the Met as well as the Cloisters in Upper Manhattan, which attracted 350,00 visitors of its own, a marked 50% increase from the previous year. These high numbers are due in part to the Museum’s recent decision to open seven days a week as well as to popular exhibitions such as PUNK: Chaos to Couture and Balthus: Cats and Girls-Paintings and Provocations.  (more…)

Beginning July 1st, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be open to the public 7 days a week.  The changes also apply to The Cloisters museum in northern Manhattan, and are the result of a decision to make the spaces “accessible whenever visitors have the urge to experience this great museum.”  Says Museum Director Thomas Campbell. (more…)

Image: Warhol’s Cow Wallpaper and Silver Pillows, The New York Times

“Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years” is a group show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that juxtaposes fifty Warhol works with one hundred of those by his peers and successors. The show attempts to capture the scope and breadth of Warhol’s impact on contemporary art history. Presented 25 years after his death at the age of 58 in 1987, the exhibition showcases the works of both artists who have risen to fame after Warhol’s death as well that of his contemporaries. Some of the artists included are Maurizio Cattelan, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Robert Gober, Takashi Murakami, Cindy Sherman, Ed Ruscha, Alex Katz, Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter.

(more…)

Installation view of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Caro on the Roof”, 2011. All images via The Metropolitan Museum

Currently on view at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art is “Caro on the Roof”, an installation featuring selected works of renowned British sculptor, Anthony Caro (b.1924). The installation culls together five large scale steel sculptures spanning the artist’s sixty year career, and will be open until October 30th, 2011. The Met’s roof has in the past shown work by Jeff Koons and Doug and Mike Starn, whose popular Big Bambú installation is currently showing at the Venice Biennale.

More text and images after the jump…

(more…)

The NYTimes on the relationship between the Met Museum and its new acquisition of the Marcel Breuer building, home to the Whitney Museum of Art [AO Newslink]

(more…)

Francis Bacon, “Portrait of Henrietta Moraes” (1969). All pictures courtesy of Helly Nahmad Gallery.

New York’s Helly Nahmad Gallery is currently showing the first comparative assembly of works by the painters Chaim Soutine and Francis Bacon. Connections between Soutine, whom de Kooning famously called his “favorite artist,” and Bacon, the subject of two Tate Modern retrospectives in his lifetime and one in 2008, have never before been examined by an exhibition at a museum or gallery. SOUTINE/BACON closes on June 18.

Chaim Soutine, “Autoportrait” (1918).

More images and text after the jump…

(more…)

Untitled by Richard Diebenkorn, 1950. All images via Artnet unless otherwise noted.

Currently on view at Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York, is an exhibition titled “Richard Diebenkorn: Paintings and Works on Paper 1949-1955″. Organized in cooperation with the Estate of Richard Diebenkorn, this exhibition features thirty-six works on paper  of this well-known American artist, whose early work is associated with Abstract Expressionism.

More text and images after the jump….
(more…)

–>
No. 30 by Mark Rothko on display at The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture. All images via The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture unless otherwise noted

On April 23, a first major retrospective of the American artist Mark Rothko (born Marcus Rothkowitz in Dvinsk, Russia,September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970) opened at The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow, Russia. Thirteen works of his later period on display at the Garage come from the collection of New York financier Erza Merkin. The exhibition was organized in collaboration with Pace Wildenstein Gallery, NY.

More text and images after the jump… (more…)

Joseph with Jacob and His Brothers, ca. 1546–48 all images via The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Running through April 18 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a show dedicated to the Italian Renaissance painter, Agnolo Bronzino.  Although best known for his paintings, Drawings of Bronzino, pulls together all 61 known or attributed drawings by this artist. In addition to the unprecedented gathering of the artist’s drawings in one location, this show represents the first solo exhibition of Bronzino’s works. The exhibition features loans, rarely put on public view, from institutions such as Galleria degli Uffizi, Musée du Louvre, British Museum, Royal Library of Windsor Castle, Ashmolean Museum, Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden, and Staatliche Museen Berlin, as well as private collections. Drawings of Bronzino was organized by the Metropolitan in conjunction with Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi and the Polo Museale Fiorentino, Florence.

Philippe de Montebello interviews Carmen Bambach, curator of Italian Drawings in the Department of Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about “The Drawings of Bronzino.” Via THIRTEEN

More text, images and related links after the jump…..
(more…)