Former Guggenheim Bilbao Finance Chief Sentenced for Thefts

MADRID— After admitting to stealing more than €486,000 ($775,000) from the Guggenheim Bilbao museum, Roberto Caersolo, the museum’s former finance director, has been sentenced by a Spanish court in Madrid to 32 months in prison. Officials at the museum fired Caersolo last year after an internal audit discovered the missing sums of money. In a letter to museum director Juan Ignacio Vidarte after his firing, the one-time finance chief revealed his theft, writing, “Since I could no longer live with [...]

Solo Exhibition for Navid Nuur at Kunsthalle Fridericianum

KASSEL.- Navid Nuur (born in Teheran in 1976) refers to his works as ‘interimodules’ and not sculptures or installations. In his view, the latter are too immobile and rigid to form the desired spatial and temporal link with their environment and the viewer. For the same reason, Nuur rejects the term ‘site specific’, which is often applied to his work. Instead, he choses the term ‘interimodules’ composed of the words ‘interim’ and ‘module’ to describe the envisaged intermediate area. With [...]

First Major Survey of the Work of American Artist Zoe Leonard at MUMOK

VIENNA.- “Photographs” is the first major survey of the work of American artist Zoe Leonard. In addition to early works from the 1980s and 1990s, the MUMOK exhibition will include “Analogue”, a series of 412 photographs produced between 1998 and 2009 in which Leonard investigates the changes in the urban landscape and economy resulting from a rapidly advancing globalization. Born in 1961 in Liberty, New York, Leonard is counted among the most outstanding figures in the art world today; in [...]

Walk-In Sculpture, Tekrar Level Four, by David M. Abir, at PULSE Miami

MIAMI, FL.- David M. Abir sculpts light and sound in large-scale, self contained environments, creating work that oscillates between the physical and the spiritual. Entering one of his sculptures is cathartic – there is no end or beginning, just now. Tekrar Level Four, on view at PULSE Miami from December 3 through 6, 2009, is a walk-in sculpture where collaged classical music and defused light combine to generate a timeless, visceral response. Tekrar is a Farsi word meaning repetition – [...]

Rhode Island Museums Consider Relocating Sarcophagus

PROVIDENCE, RI (AP).- Gina Borromeo is well-versed in ancient artifacts, but one recent question from a museum curator caught her off-guard: “Do you want a sarcophagus?” And not just any sarcophagus. This was a white coffin with marble dating as far back as the 2nd century that depicted followers of the Greek wine god Dionysus. It was brought back from Europe by a wealthy Rhode Island couple who donated it to the Museum of Natural History and Planetarium in 1904. [...]

Elms Lesters Painting Rooms to Show New Prints by Jose Parla

LONDON.- Elms Lesters Painting Rooms presents a series of exclusive limited edition prints by stellar international artist Jose Parla. The new print releases, in editions of 100, will be on show at the gallery from Saturday December 5th to Saturday December 12th. The series is produced by Elms Lesters Painting Rooms and printed at the renowned Mat Sant Studios in London , combining the highest quality giclee process with over-layering of Parla’s trademark, free-flowing calligraphic markings using multiple hand printed [...]

Russian Art Week Sales Expected to Reach $81 Million for Auction Houses in London

LONDON (REUTERS.- Auction houses are banking on a recovery at next week’s series of big Russian art sales in London, at which they expect to show that the market dominated by new money is through the worst of the recession. With most at stake are Sotheby’s and Russian specialist MacDougall’s, who together offer works worth between 27 and 39 million pounds ($45-64 million). Christie’s the world’s largest auction house, has pre-sale estimates of 6.5-9.3 million pounds. The figures are sharply [...]

Bozar Presents an Extensive Multidisciplinary Mexico Festival

BRUSSELS.- What better way to start the spring than by marking the bicentenary of Mexico’s independence and the centenary of its revolution? Behind the clichés of the Aztec god Quetzalcóatl, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and revolutionaries in sombreros, you can discover, over three months, a rich and complex nation, constantly reinventing its “Mexicanness”. Could Mexico, shaped over two centuries by the creative explosion of an incredible cross-fertilisation, be the archetype of the nation of the future? Find out at five [...]

Van Ham to Auction Numerous Works by Established Photographers

COLOGNE.- On the occasion of the anniversary sale, VAN HAM presents numerous works of established photographers such as Werner Mantz, Albert Renger-Patzsch and August Sander as well as interesting contemporary photo art, such as Beate Gütschow with a fascinating nature depiction, Petra Wunderlich with an urban motif and furthermore Gudrun Kemsa and Thomas Struth. Beate Gütschow’s landscapes impressively spread out in front of the beholder, though the title “LS#4″ gives no idea about that. This work from 1999, published in [...]

“A” is for Aivazovsky as Bonhams Russian Sale Boasts a Cyrillic Who’s Who

LONDON.- On 30th November at Bonhams New Bond Street will host the sale of Russian Art, featuring the eminent names of both Aivazovsky and Fabergé. The first painting by Aivazovsky, whose career spanned almost the entire 19th century, is named “The Morning Catch”. It is signed in Cyrillic and dated ’1870′ (lower right) and further signed in Latin and dated ’1870′ (lower left). The exceptional seascape oil painting is expected to fetch between £150,000 and £250,000 for the much sought-after [...]

Durban Segnini Gallery Presents Works by Venezuelan Artist Milton Becerra

MIAMI, FL.- Milton Becerra has an original, distinctive and personal language, having a truly surprising power of renewal and revival: consistent with his artistic conviction, his own manner of assuming artistic creation. The works gathered in this exhibition share this exceptional condition. Reference to myths of Wayúu ethnicity, the elements of natural landscape and the manifestation of a geometric rationalism coexist in them without conflict, articulated under the principles of harmony and proportion. Milton Becerra is probably the most fruitful [...]

Catch Only West Coast Presentation of Luc Tuymans at SFMOMA

SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The first U.S. retrospective of the work of Belgian contemporary artist Luc Tuymans—and the most comprehensive presentation of his work to date—will be on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) from February 6 through May 2, 2010, in its only West Coast presentation. Jointly organized by SFMOMA and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Luc Tuymans features approximately 75 key paintings from 1978 to the present and reunites works from important series as [...]

Iconic Ansel Adams Print Going Up for Auction at Swann Auction Galleries

NEW YORK, NY (AP).- An early print of an iconic Ansel Adams photograph is going up for auction in New York City for an estimated $350,000 to $450,000. The Dec. 8 sale of 1948′s “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico” is at Swann Auction Galleries. The print is signed and inscribed to Valentino Sarra, a friend of Adams’ and a poster designer for the old Works Progress Administration. It shows a nighttime moon over a cloud-fringed mountain range with a graveyard in [...]

Museum Rethinks its Collection and Presents the Museum of the 21st-Century

EINDHOVEN.- From 28 November 2009 the Van Abbemuseum will present ‘Play Van Abbe’. ‘Play Van Abbe’ is the result of a long process of rethinking the collection over the part three years. For the next 18 months, this multifaceted program will take the collection and use it to suggest answers to the questions outlined above. It consists of exhibitions, projects, performances, lectures, discussions, and new techniques for mediating the public’s reactions to art and its contexts. With the social and [...]

Major Picasso Exhibition Featuring Unique Paintings at Heather James Fine Art

PALM DESERT, CA.- Heather James Fine Art in Palm Desert, CA, has established itself among U.S. and international art collectors as one of the nation’s premier galleries with shows by Monet, Rauschenberg and diverse, up-and-coming young artists. Today it announces a world-class Picasso exhibition that will survey the master’s paintings, drawings and sculptures from several of his major periods, including Cubism, and will highlight an important private collection of 80 pieces of Picasso’s ceramics. These works will appeal to a [...]