Imagining Home: Selections from the Heinz Architectural Center

PITTSBURGH, PA.- Home is a word dense with personal and social meaning, and one that conjures images of everything from a stately mansion, to an apartment building, to a child’s treetop refuge. More than simply a house, a home is at once the focus of domestic aspirations and the outward expression of them, however modest or grand. Tracy Myers, curator of the Heinz Architectural Center at Carnegie Museum of Art, realized that the Center is home to a remarkably rich [...]

The Ambivalence of the Concrete by Gerhard Rühm at MUMOK

VIENNA.- Gerhard Rühm (b. 1930 in Vienna) has throughout his career developed his work in numerous different media, venturing out into many different fields and dimensions. Beginning with music — he was educated to be a pianist — passing through poetry to visual arts and performative works, his oeuvre has grown to encompass an exceptionally broad spectrum. To celebrate the 80th birthday of this multifaceted artist, the MUMOK presents a selection of his works spanning his entire career up to [...]

Centre national de l’audiovisuel Explores the Subject of Tourism

LUXEMBOURG.- I was here questions and presents different approaches to the subject of tourism, from a photographic heritage, which seems to be innocuous, anonymous, forgotten and often of average quality – from the technical point of view. Tourism and photography have always maintained a close relationship – one is growing parallel to the democratization of the other. Photography appears to be an indispensable means for tourists to own their subject, to fully possess the experience of a landscape, of a [...]

Three Key Projects by Susan Meiselas to be Featured at the Hood Museum

HANOVER, NH.- Best known for her work covering political upheavals in Central America in the 1970s and 1980s, Susan Meiselas has always experimented with photojournalism in radical and challenging ways. Grappling with questions about her relationship to her subjects, the use and circulation of her images in the media, and the relationship of images to history and memory, she has become a leading voice in the debate over the function and practice of contemporary documentary photography. From April 10 through [...]

Tamy Ben-Tor & Miki Carmi’s Disembodied Archetypes at Zach Feuer Gallery

NEW YORK, NY.- Zach Feuer Gallery, in conjunction with Stefan Stux Gallery and Salon 94, present Disembodied Archetypes, a two-person exhibition of new performances and videos by Tamy Ben-Tor and new paintings and photographs taken by Miki Carmi. All of the works in this exhibition are bound by a series of photographs and texts that embody the dialectic of the archetypical and the concrete. The artists state: “Disembodied archetypes deals with the performance of the poet as a monotonous daily [...]

Jakob Kolding’s Stakes is High Opens at Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam

AMSTERDAM.- The exhibition ‘Stakes is High’ by Jakob Kolding is in part the result of a residency by the Danish artist in Amsterdam’s Zuidas quarter, the new financial center of the Netherlands. He is the third artist in this residency project, which has been organised by the SMBA for the past three years in cooperation with the Research Group of Art & Public Space at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Virtual Museum Zuidas. The idealistic background and social implications [...]

45-Carat Art Nouveau Dazzler the Centerpiece of Austin Auction’s Sale

AUSTIN, TX.- A superb circa-1900 gold necklace laden with 45 carats of fine Australian fire opals, diamonds and freshwater pearls – said to have been the property of legendary interior designer Elsie de Wolfe – leads an exceptional lineup of fine and decorative art and furniture to be sold April 18 at Austin Auction Gallery. The crown jewel of the company’s 430-lot Important Spring Estates Auction was purchased by the consignor in 1976, at an antiques show in Hillsborough, California. [...]

London Original Print Fair Announces Highlights and Exhibitor List

LONDON.- From new etchings by Peter Blake and Damien Hirst to rare works by Picasso and Rembrandt, the London Original Print Fair celebrates 25 years with talks, a print trail through Burlington Arcade and a loan exhibition from the British Museum Print Collection This April sixty-seven leading UK and international exhibitors will be brought together for the 25th anniversary of The London Original Print Fair, making it not only the longest-running print fair in the world but also the longest-running [...]

“Alice Neel: Painted Truths Debuts” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

HOUSTON, TX.- Sixty-eight paintings by Alice Neel, the indomitable 20th-century portrait painter who captured the character of her time and the gamut of New York life over seven decades, are on view in “Alice Neel: Painted Truths” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Committed to portraiture throughout her life, an era when the genre was considered practically obsolete, Neel captured both the physical likenesses and the psychological essences of her sitters in bold, sometimes searing paintings. Neel painted neighbors [...]

Wager Begun on Twitter Results in NOMA Winning a Masterpiece from Indianapolis

NEW ORLEANS. LA.- The New Orleans Saints weren’t the only winners on Superbowl Sunday. E. John Bullard, NOMA’s Montine McDaniel Freeman Director, won an online betting match with Maxwell L. Anderson, the Melvin & Bren Simon Director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA). The spoils? A three-month loan of The Fifth Plague of Egypt, 1800, a landscape by British artist J.M.W. Turner, which was unveiled on Thursday. “Dreams DO Come True!” Bullard said. “Both teams made their cities proud. [...]

Art in Hamburg in the 1920s Opens at Hamburger Kunsthalle

HAMBURG.- As part of the festival “Himmel auf Zeit” – die 20er Jahre in Hamburg (“A Temporary Heaven” – the 1920s in Hamburg), the Hamburger Kunsthalle is highlighting the diversity of the city’s art scene in the period after the First World War. In the years between the foundation of the Weimar Republic and the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship, Hamburg’s avant-garde art scene was dominated by four different movements: one was a style strongly oriented towards contemporary French painting, [...]

Picasso’s Themes and Variations Offers Unique View into Artist’s Creative Process

NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art presents Picasso: Themes and Variations, an exhibition exploring Pablo Picasso’s creative process through the medium of printmaking, from March 28 to August 30, 2010. It features approximately 100 works from the Museum’s superlative collection of the artist’s prints. The exhibition is organized by Deborah Wye, The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books, The Museum of Modern Art. Pablo Picasso’s insatiable curiosity and tireless urge to create art often [...]

Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden Opens Exhibition of Works by Stefan Müller

BADEN-BADEN.- Central to Stefan Müller’s (b. 1973) approach to his art are the engagement with painting and the question of what its formal significance may yet be for the present, after the problems raised by Conceptual Art and Minimal Art. Employing a minimalist approach, Müller explores the picture, often considering it finished at the earliest possible moment. Framing and stretching the canvas and leaving minimal traces that seem to be the products of accident are often enough to form a [...]

Mural Paintings at Castillo de Chapultepec Now on the Web

MEXICO CITY.- From the second half of 2010, the National Museum of History “Castillo de Chapultepec” will include in its web page an interactive guide to the most acknowledged murals that represent the Independence and Revolution struggles, painted in the precinct. The paintings are “Fusion de dos Culturas” (Merger of two Cultures) by Jorge Gonzalez Camarena; “Retablo de la Independencia” (Independence Tableau) by Juan O’ Gorman; “Revolucion contra la Dictadura Porfiriana” (Revolution against Porfirian Dictatorship) by David Alfaro Siqueiros, and [...]

Asia Week Sales Total $22.6 Million at Sotheby’s New York

NEW YORK, NY.- Sotheby’s Asia week sales concluded this week realizing the combined total of $22,574,864, well over pre sale expectations (combined est. $10.6/15 million). The top selling lot of the week was Two Mynas on a Rock, a 1692 masterpiece by Bada Shanren which sold for $3 million – many multiples of the pre-sale estimate and a new record for a Classical Chinese Painting sold at Sotheby’s in the US – in the Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of [...]