One of New York’s Most Popular Fairs Returns in February

NEW YORK, NY.- Last year, enthusiasm for the unique Outsider Art Fair prevailed over the turn in the economy, a snowstorm, a change in dates, and a move to a new venue. “At every turn this fair has a new clarity,” wrote Roberta Smith of The New York Times, “the art rises to the occasion…” This February 5 – 7, 2010, thirty-eight dealers will gather again at the fair’s new home, 7 West 34th Street, to bring together the largest [...]

Disputed Da Vinci Portrait Sells for $1.5 Million at Sotheby’s

NEW YORK, NY.- A portrait once believed to have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci sold for more than $1.5 million in New York on Thursday, around treble the top price estimated ahead of the auction. Auction house Sotheby’s said another version of the portrait, “La Belle Ferronniere,” is in the Louvre in Paris and it is that painting that is now generally agreed to have been by da Vinci himself or one of his pupils, while the painting sold [...]

Getty Museum Acquires L’ Entrée au Jardin Turc by Louis Léopold Boilly

LOS ANGELES, CA.- The J. Paul Getty Museum announced the acquisition of L’Entrée au Jardin Turc (The Entrance to the Turkish Garden) by Louis Léopold Boilly, one of the few important paintings by the artist still in private hands. Crisply painted in glowing colors and teeming with anecdotal detail, Boilly’s picture transports viewers to the heart of Napoleonic Paris, outside the entrance to the city’s most celebrated café, the Jardin Turc. Located in the Marais at 28, boulevard du Temple, [...]

artnet Auctions Launches Special Sale of Modern and Contemporary Art

NEW YORK, NY.- artnet Auctions offers continuous online auctions of Modern and Contemporary art. From January 28 – February 9, artnet auctions will feature a special sale of Modern Art by renowned artists including Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. This special online auction will include over 50 works of art by 40 of the most influential modern artists of the 19th-20th centuries representing virtually every important Modern Art movement. Leading the sale is an exquisite bronze sculpture by [...]

Christie’s Old Masters & 19th Century Sales Series Achieve $40,858,500

NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s New York achieved a combined total of $40,858,500/£25,191,210/ €29,051,023 in two days of sales, including the two-part auction of Old Master & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings & Watercolors on Wednesday and a special private collection sale, A Cabinet of Curiosities: Selections from the Peter Tillou Collections on Thursday. The top lot of the sales, The entrance to the Turkish Garden Café by Louis Léopold Boilly (1761-1845) was acquired for the J. Paul Getty Museum. In announcing [...]

Group Exhibition “Shapeshifter” on View at Country Club

CINCINNATI, OH.- Country Club presents the group exhibition, Shapeshifter. Co-organized with Linda Schwartz, this exhibition features seven artists subtly manipulating concrete and abstract resources. These artists elevate mundane materials or employ traditional or simple processes to create objects that speak to a variety of complex issues. Beth Campbell’s (New York) organic suspended sculptures exist as 3-dimensional psychological maps, offering a physical “model” of an essentially internal process. Conversely, Chris Radtke (Louisville) uses her physical body as the starting point to [...]

Yvon Lambert Showing New Work by Austrian Artist Markus Schinwald

NEW YORK, NY.- Yvon Lambert presents an exhibition of new work by Austrian artist Markus Schinwald. This show will run concurrently with an exhibition by Koo Jeong-a. Both exhibitions open with a reception for the artists on Thursday, January 14, 2010 from 6-8 pm and will be on view until February 20, 2010. For his first solo exhibition at Yvon Lambert, Markus Schinwald has constructed, in reference to Frederick Kiesler, an installation of pillars and other architectural elements in the [...]

UNESCO’s Irina Bokova Calls for Ban in Trade in Haitian Artifacts

DAVOS.- The United Nations’ culture and education agency called Friday for a ban in the trade of Haitian artifacts to prevent the pillaging of cultural treasures in the aftermath of its devastating earthquake. The director-general of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the agency is launching a campaign to protect art collections in the Caribbean country’s damaged museums and historical sites “so that we don’t find these objects in Christie’s tomorrow.” The U.N. Education, [...]

Jack Becker Named New Joslyn Art Museum Executive Director

OMAHA, NE.- Jim Young, chairman of Joslyn Art Museum’s board of governors, announced today that Jack F. Becker, Ph.D., has accepted the position as executive director of Joslyn Art Museum. Dr. Becker, 46, comes to Joslyn from Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art in Nashville, Tennessee, where he has served as president and chief executive officer since 2005. He joined Cheekwood in 2002 as vice president/director of its art museum. Prior to that, Dr. Becker worked as curator of [...]

Düsseldorf’s Second Quadriennale to Feature a Series of High-Caliber Exhibits

DUSSELDORF.- Düsseldorf’s second Quadriennale, a series of high-caliber exhibits in nine of the city’s major art houses and galleries, is titled “Quadriennale 2010 – Presence of Art” and features contemporary art in and from Düsseldorf of the past 50 years. The series, which also explores the far-reaching influences the city’s art and artists had and have on the international art world and beyond, is scheduled to run from early September 2010 through January 2011. This year’s Quadriennale establishes Düsseldorf even [...]

First Museum-Based Overview of the Work of Ana Torfs at K21 in Dusseldorf

DUSSELDORF.- Representation and visualisation, reality and fiction form the cornerstones of Ana Torfs’ installations which consist of projected images (usually black and white slides) and texts. In precisely choreographed audiovisual constellations Torfs brings to life literary, historical and political material. In these projects the artist works with actors who embody their roles in a demonstratively matter-of-fact and functional way. Documents on Joan d’Arc, a famous one act play by the symbolist poet Maurice Maeterlinck but also testimonies from Rosa Luxemburg [...]

Miró/Dubuffet/Basquiat Exhibition Announced at Nassau County Museum

ROSLYN HARBOR, NY.- Nassau County Museum of Art (NCMA) will present works by Joan Miró, Jean Dubuffet and Jean-Michel Basquiat, shown together for the first time. The artists do not share generation nor culture, but they do share a confrontational antagonism to the traditional and academic, resulting in art that is raw, bold and forthright. Primal symbols characterize their work in personalized types of graffiti that exist in a timeless, unidentifiable space. In the work of these artists, signs and [...]

National Portrait Gallery Publishes New Book on Later Stuart Portraits 1685 – 1714

LONDON.- This important reference work is the latest in the series of thoroughly researched, impressively detailed catalogues raisonnés of the National Portrait Gallery‘s Collections. It catalogues the entire Collection of portraits in all media of those active in the period 1685 and 1714, and includes new research from the Gallery’s curators and art historian John Ingamells. This volume revises and updates David Piper’s Seventeenth-Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery (1963), and like its predecessors, forms a bedrock for research [...]

DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art Presents Exhibition by Eija-Liisa Ahtila

MONTREAL.- Internationally acclaimed Finnish filmmaker, photographer, and video artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila is known mainly for complex multi-screen narratives that reveal the fragile inner life of her protagonists, as well as the tenuous line separating fantasy from reality. Using the visual language of cinema, her work is presented as split-screen projections on multiple panels, which has the powerful effect of dramatising a psychological perception of space and time for the viewer. Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s film installations experiment with narrative storytelling, creating extraordinary [...]

New P.S. Contemporary Art Center 1 Website Invites Artists and Collectives to Virtually Exhibit their Works

LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center announces the launch of Studio Visit, a website that invites artists and collectives to virtually exhibit their works and invite viewers into their studio spaces. Continuing P.S.1’s tradition of presenting works by emerging artists, Studio Visit encourages the local and international artist community to participate in what will serve as an online artistic pool of information and a research tool for future exhibitions. The website officially launches February 1 on http://ps1.org/studio-visit/. Installation [...]