1800 Tequila Essential Artists Edition

A slug of tequila has always offered a certain measure of support to artists toiling in obscurity. However, that point has rarely been made as literally as by Proximo Spirits, which has been giving emerging artists a platform through the Essential Artists editions series for its best-selling 1800 Tequila. 1800 Tequila has asked 12 artists to adorn its bottle with their art The 1800 bottle’s design has always been functional — the stopper doubles as a shot glass — but [...]

$5 Million Reward for Recovery Rembrandt’s “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee”

Boston, MA—When two men dressed as Boston police officers made off with 13 works of art valued at $500 million from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, it was an art theft of unusual and shocking scale. Now the Federal Bureau of Investigations has announced it will mount a similarly ambitious effort to retrieve the paintings, offering a $5 million reward for their recovery in a billboard campaign along Interstates 93 and 495 in Massachusetts. The signs, which are [...]

The Tradition of Male Homoerotic Art at Central Connecticut State University

Hartford, Connecticut – A new exhibit at a university gallery in New Britain brings to mind that the subject of male eroticism was once a police-busting taboo in America. On April 7, 1990, uniformed city and county lawmen entered the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati to halt the opening of the touring photography exhibit, ” Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment,” charging the museum and its director with presenting obscene works. Things went more smoothly at the show in Hartford six [...]

Installation of Spiders Weaving Stars by Tomas Saraceno in Italy

CAMOGLI.- In the installation by Tomas Saraceno at the latest Venice Biennial, Galaxies Forming along Filaments, like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider’s Web, thousands of strands filled the room, forming an enormous web with bubble-vessels clustered inside. At Fondazione Pier Luigi e Natalina Remotti in Camogli, with the installation From Camogli to San Felipe, spiders weaving stars… curated by Francesca Pasini, Tomas Saraceno offers another view of the strategy of the spider and its capacity to cross enormous [...]

New York City’s Newest Art Space Opens With Rauzier ‘Hyperphotos’ Exhibition

NEW YORK, NY.- A unique exhibition of Hyperphotos by the leading French artist Jean-Francois Rauzier is to open the Goldman Projects Space, New York City’s newest dedicated art space. Mounted by Goldman Projects in partnership with the London based art dealer Waterhouse & Dodd, the show will run from 7th to 29th May at the new Goldman Projects Space in Manhattan’s The Soho Building at 104, Greene Street. The exhibition brings together, for the only time this year, 20 Hyperphotos [...]

SFMOMA to Offer a Fresh Look at Seminal 1975 Photography Exhibition

SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, on view from July 17 to October 3, 2010. Comprised of close to 150 photographs, it is a restaging of a historically significant exhibition held in 1975 at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. This reprisal brings together the work of all ten photographers included in the original New Topographics: Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, [...]

New Works on Paper by Marine Hugonnier Inaugurate Max Wigram Gallery

LONDON.- Max Wigram Gallery presents a solo show of new works on paper by Marine Hugonnier. The opening of the exhibition marks the inauguration of the gallery’s new premises at 106 New Bond Street. Marine Hugonnier’s work is about the nature of images and the history, culture and politics that are associated with them. As Christian Rattemeyer writes in her recently published JRP Ringier monograph: “Marine Hugonnier has persistently investigated the role of the image, its abilities and its limitations. [...]

Johann Sebastian Bach Archive Center in Leipzig Reopens After Two Years of Renovation

LEIPZIG.- Date a Bach manuscript yourself! Arrange the instrumental parts of a Bach hymn to your taste and experience the sound of Baroque instruments! The new Bach Museum offers its visitors many opportunities to become actively involved. The life and works of Johann Sebastian Bach and his family are presented in an interactive multi-media exhibition. One of the highlights of the new museum is the treasure chamber, which holds original Bach manuscripts and other precious objects. Among the special exhibits, [...]

Major 20th-Century Works Enter Cantor Arts Center Collection

STANFORD, CA.- Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University announces the addition of major works to its collection. Two of the acquisitions are purchases of sculpture by artists Isamu Noguchi and Magdalena Abakanowicz. The third acquisition is the donation of screenprints of Mao Tse-Tung by Andy Warhol. The sculptures by Noguchi and Abakanowicz enhance a collection of 20th-century sculpture that already includes works displayed at the museum and throughout campus by artists such as Joan Miró, George Segal, Jacques Lipchitz, Gaston [...]

Mark S. Siegel Elected to Succeed Louise Bryson as Chair of Getty Board

LOS ANGELES, CA.- The J. Paul Getty Trust announced today that Mark S. Siegel has been elected to serve as Chair of the Board of Trustees effective July 1, 2010. He will succeed Louise Bryson who has served as the Board’s Chair since 2006. Siegel joined the Board in November 2005, and currently serves as Chair of the Investment Committee and is a member of both the Governance and Compensation committees. He also is a member of the Getty Museum’s [...]

Photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe Donated to Italian Museums

NEW YORK, NY.- Three important photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) have been donated by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the permanent collections of the renowned Florentine state museums, the Galleria dell’Accademia and the Galleria degli Uffizi. A ceremony was held today in the city to mark the historic occasion. Robert Mapplethorpe, “Von Hackendahl”, (1985). Gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (40.6 x 50.8 cm). ©The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation Mapplethorpe’s “Von Hackendahl” (1985), a study of a male positioned like [...]

Design and the Art of Reduction at the Vitra Design Museum

WEIL AM RHEIN.- Do financially difficult conditions automatically lead to more economical and longer-lasting products? In this current discussion, both, the Darwinist model of the “survival of the fittest” as well as design icons from past crisis-ridden eras are presented as arguments. Upon closer inspection of the theme, however, these comparisons tend to fall short. Throughout the ups and downs of the economy, modern design – and especially industrial design – has always endeavored toward efficiency and a reduction of [...]

PAFA’s Board of Trustees Approves Design Concepts for Lenfest Plaza

PHILADELPHIA, PA.- At the most recent meeting of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts‘ (PAFA) Board of Trustees, conceptual designs for the development of Lenfest Plaza were approved. David Rubin, Partner at landscape architectural firm OLIN, was contracted to design the plaza and presented his concepts to PAFA’s Board earlier this month. Open to the public twenty-four hours a day, PAFA’s Lenfest Plaza is a pedestrian court that will offer outdoor seating and host an upscale restaurant that will [...]

Romanesque Sculptures by Tacita Dean at Museo Reina Sofia

MADRID.- The monumental cycle of Romanesque sculptures in the cloister at Santo Domingo de Silos has long attracted visitors, including generations of artists. When Tacita Dean made her first visit there, many features in this historic complex engaged her attention, not least the Gregorian service of Vespers with which the monks end the day. Some months later, she returned in order to study more closely doodles and graffiti on and around the cloister’s colonnade, marks that she imagined might have [...]

Claremont Rug Company to Exhibit “Awe-Inspiring” Collection

OAKLAND, CA.- Jan David Winitz, founder and president of Claremont Rug Company, today announced an exhibition of an “awe-inspiring private collection” of investment level antique 19th century Oriental rugs from a European family which had assembled the carpets over more than a century. Purchased from the family’s French matron, the collection had been primarily displayed over the past century in four principal residences on three continents: • The family’s ancestral property, a chateau in the countryside outside Paris • An [...]