The annual study by The UK’s Association of Leading Visitor Attractions shows a 7% increase in museum visits by the British in 2014, topped by The British Museum (6.7 million visitors) and National Gallery (6.4 million). The news comes in the middle of an election season in which many have called for an end to austerity measures affecting British arts institutions. (more…)
MoMA has acquired the iconic Jasper Johns’s work Painted Bronze, a work that has sat in the Philadelphia Museum of Art for three decades, and which was purchased recently by collectors Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis. Kravis, who serves as MoMA’s Board President, gifted the work shortly after purchase directly from the artist’s personal collection. “It’s not easy to convince someone who’s kept something for himself for more than 50 years,” says dealer Matthew Marks. “It’s a big deal for him, emotionally. And one can imagine all the people over all the years who have asked, all the institutions, all the collectors who have been told no, since I was a kid.”
The Met has announced a major redesign plan, with David Chipperfield Architects developing a new design for the museum’s southwest wing, housing its modern and contemporary collections. “The project will run concurrent with the Met’s installations in the Marcel Breuer-designed building that formerly housed the Whitney,” says current director Thomas P. Campbell, “allowing us to regenerate our permanent spaces in the Met’s main building while maintaining a vibrant program for modern and contemporary art just blocks away.” (more…)
This fall MOCA in Los Angeles will play home to the traveling exhibition focusing on the work of Matthew Barney, as well as a screening of the artist’s most recent film River of Fundament, marking the only time the show will take place on U.S. soil. “I thought it should be seen in America,” says MOCA head Philippe Vergne. (more…)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has named Daniel Weiss, the current head of Haverford College in Pennsylvania, as its new president and COO. “The Met is a place that strives in everything it does to set a world standard, including its administration,” Weiss said of the opportunity. (more…)
Lynda Benglis is interviewed this week in The Art Newspaper, as she opens an exhibition of works spanning her career at the Hepworth Wakefield. “I’m excited because it’s a huge amount of works, 50 in all, and the works are educating me,” she says. “They remind me of the baby steps that I first took and that you can’t just jump into ideas, you have to slowly develop them.” (more…)
Francesco Vezzoli, Teatro Romano, all images courtesy MoMA PS1
On view at MoMA PS1 in New York is an exhibition of 5 new works by Francesco Vezzoli – ancient Roman busts painted in the manner in which they were probably originally decorated. Entitled Teatro Romano,” the exhibition, which saw delays after a church Vezzoli had intended to export to the country was blocked by customs, will continue through March 9th, 2015.
Allora & Calzadilla, Raptor’s Rapture (2012) all images courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art
On view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is an exhibition of recent work by Puerto Rico-based artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Entitled Intervals, the projects on display allude to the notion of the interval: “the time between events, the measure between two points in space, or the range between musical notes.”
The Guardian traces the controversy surrounding Constantin Brancusi’s The Wisdom of the Earth, a sculpture that has long sat at the forefront of the Romanian consciousness as a national treasure, but which is currently being put up for sale by its owners. “The truth is that it is an iconic sculpture for Romanians; it’s an iconic image that is present in all the books about our national identity. The state used it a lot in its cultural propaganda and transformed it into an icon of the Romanian soul,” says Alexandru Baldea, managing partner of auction house Artmark, which is selling the piece. (more…)
Rothschild heiress Bettina Burr and her family, holders of a sizable collection of artworks once looted by the Nazi’s during WWII, have donated a sizable portion of her works to the MFA Boston. “I always felt in the back of mind that the thing I would love the most would be if these pieces came here,” says Burr, currently vice president of the museum board of trustees. “I think my mother felt that it would be a homecoming for these pieces.” (more…)
On Kawara, July 16th, 1969 (1969), via Art Observed
Taking On Kawara’s work at face value, one could imagine that the artist had been preparing for years for a career retrospective. His near-endless stream of date paintings, accounting records for every book he read or person he met, and his series of postcards and maps are a record of the artist’s daily experience as he lived it, leaving behind a steady stream of locations, times and movements from each day of his life. (more…)
Smithsonian outpost The Freer Gallery of Art in New York will close next January for renovations, a major project that will add additional lighting and updated technological capabilities for the museum. “Some of it will be very subtle, but we are trying to take it back to the way it opened in 1923,” says Katie Ziglar, director of external affairs. (more…)
A Jeff Koons exhibition planned to open this year at the Louvre has been canceled after a reported “lack of funding,” according to Artforum. The exhibition had been previously reported to consist of a number of the artist’s balloon animal sculptures. (more…)
The Tate Modern is will launch a two day “dance marathon” this May, inviting a range of modern dance performers to exhibit and teach within the museum space. “The whole feel of it over the 48 hours will be about this constant transformation,” says curator Catherine Wood. “It will be partly a presentation of focused works of choreography and then a spreading of more pop-up things, through the collection gallery and the public spaces.” (more…)
An article in The Art Newspaper this week examines the strategies and impacts of museum’s undertaking collection and implementation strategies for video games and computer programs, as well as utilizing game platforms and structures to encourage engagement. “It’s an innovative way to get the public interested in collections, especially audiences that wouldn’t normally engage with them,” says Stella Wisdom, the British Library’s digital curator. “There’s a lot of potential for creative industries to work with cultural institutions and vice versa. We’re just at the start of a journey.” (more…)
The Louvre Abu Dhabi has purchased an iconic portrait of George Washington, executed by portrait artist Gilbert Stuart from Los Angeles’s Armand Hammer Foundation. The work will hang in a gallery featuring work exploring the notion of prominent individuality, alongside the Jacques-Louis David ’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps. (more…)
A 1986 Ellsworth Kelly design for a free-standing building has been acquired by the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, and will be constructed on the museum grounds this spring. The building has some ties to the contemplative, spiritual air of the Rothko Chapel, as well as Matisse’s design for the Chapelle du Rosaire. “I think people need some kind of spiritual thing because, as you can see, there are spots around the world that are blowing up and we don’t want that,” the artist says. “No one wants that.” (more…)
Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Walter Liedtke was one of the victims of this week’s tragic MTA North crash outside of Valhalla, NY, the New York Times reports. “He had a wonderful way with words and engaged people through those unexpected approaches in language,” says Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., curator of Northern Baroque paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. “He had strong opinions about things, and he was not shy about expressing those opinions.” (more…)
Berlinde de Bruyckere, 028 (2007), all images courtesy S.M.A.K and © Mirjam Devriendt
Currently on view at S.M.A.K. in Ghent, Belgium is the first mid-career presentation of the ouevre of Berlinde De Bruyckere (1964, Ghent) and the first solo exhibition of her work in Belgium since 2002. Entitled Sculptures & Drawings. 2000-2014, the exhibition is an interwoven series of associations of form and content, presented through the mediums of painting, drawing, and installation art.
The New York Times takes a look at the collection of modern masterpieces soon to go on view at Paris’s Fondation Louis Vuitton. The exhibition has been in the works for several years but was downplayed when the museum first opened its doors last year, and will feature a number of landmark works, including Edvard Munch’s The Scream on loan from Oslo, as well as Matisse’s The Dance, which has not been seen in Paris in 15 years. “The foundation indeed aims to be contemporary,” artistic director Suzanne Pagé said. “But it doesn’t want to ignore the history of art, as it is seen in these major works of the 20th century, which continue to be a vital reference for artists today.” (more…)
Employees at The National Gallery in London have planned a five day strike in response to the museum’s privatization of their positions, which union general secretary Mark Serwotka claims “risks damaging the worldwide reputation of what is one of the U.K.’s greatest cultural assets.” (more…)
Pointing to concerns over security, the Victoria and Albert Museum has attempted to withhold information on its ownership of a devotional image of Muhammad following the terrorist attacks in Paris earlier this month. “Unfortunately we were incorrect to say there were no works depicting the prophet Muhammad in the V&A’s collection,” said spokeswoman Olivia Colling. “As the museum is a high-profile public building already on a severe security alert, our security team made the decision that it was best to remove the image from our online database (it remains within the collection).” (more…)
The Guardian looks at the current labor struggles at London’s National Gallery, as the museum transfers staff management over to a private company, leaving little in terms of real job protection. “I came to work at the National Gallery, but I could be transferred to a supermarket car park,” says one assistant. (more…)