British, Dutch and Flemish Masters to Lead Sotheby’s 2010 Summer Sale

LONDON.- Sotheby’s summer Evening Sale of Old Master and British Paintings in London will take place on Wednesday, July 7, 2010 and taking centre stage will be J.M.W. Turner’s breathtaking masterpiece Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino. The sale will further comprise: a strong selection of works by Dutch and Flemish 17th century artists including members of the Brueghel dynasty, Frans Hals and Jan Lievens; a rare painting by the British artist James Ward; and little-known and newly-discovered works by the [...]

One of the Fathers of Modern Chinese Art, Wu Guanzhong, Dies at 90

BEIJING (AP).- Wu Guanzhong, known as one of the fathers of modern Chinese art for combining western and Chinese elements in black and white oil paintings, has died. He was 90. He died in Beijing on Friday. “He was an inspiration for many Chinese artists, even to this day and one of the most important forces in modern Chinese art,” Tan Ping, vice president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, said in an interview with the Associated [...]

Owston Collection Sale by Bonhams Raises AUS$13.1 Million

LONDON.- International fine art auction house Bonhams completed the sale of the Owston Collection (June 25 & 26) in Sydney, Australia, with a total of AUS$13.1 million. The two-day sale held in Sydney’s Overseas Passenger Terminal attracted 1,400 people registered to bid. Australian bidders purchased over 80% of the collection, with overseas bidders buying the rest. Highlights of the sale included: • A rare set of twelve George III collector’s cabinets in which the great British naturalist Sir Joseph Banks [...]

Discover the Most Intriguing Stories Behind Paintings in the National Gallery

LONDON.- The first major exhibition of its kind, Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries celebrates the remarkable collaboration of scientists, conservators and art historians at the National Gallery. The National Gallery’s Scientific Department was founded in 1934 and has become a world leader in the study of the materials and techniques of Western European paintings. Today, the department works ever more closely with curators and conservators to investigate the physical characteristics of works in the collection and to protect paintings [...]

Getty Museum Explores the Tradition of Socially Concerned Reportage

LOS ANGELES, CA.- In the decades following World War II, an independently minded and critically engaged form of photography began to gather momentum. Situated between journalism and art, its practitioners created extended photographic essays that delved deeply into topics of social concern and presented distinct personal visions of the world. On view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center, June 29 – November 14, 2010, Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography since the Sixties looks in depth at projects by [...]

Being Singular Plural: Moving Images from India at Deutsche Guggenheim

BERLIN.- Being Singular Plural: Moving Images from India is oriented toward co-producing new work, facilitating research, and assembling a community of practitioners. A resolutely heterogeneous and ultimately unresolved exhibition, it attempts to avoid some of the pitfalls of surveying contemporary production in a given region. The exhibition brings together a number of moving-image works by a select group of media practitioners who currently live in India and who are working in film or video rather than “new media.” These images [...]

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Auction Realises $62 Million-Within Pre-Sale Expectations

LONDON.- This evening, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction realised the solid total of £41,091,800 ($61,806,176/€50,111,626) – within pre-sale expectations (est: £38,330,000- 52,830,000). This represents the third highest total for a Summer Sale of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s London and is a 60% increase on the equivalent sale last year. The sale established sell-through rates of 83% by lot and 87.3% by value, and saw 45.4% of the sold lots achieve prices in excess of their pre-sale high estimates. Commenting on [...]

Tate Britain Presents Duveens Commission 2010 by Fiona Banner

LONDON.- Tate Britain today unveils its new Duveens Commission, Harrier and Jaguar, by Fiona Banner. Banner’s largest work to date, Harrier and Jaguar brings the highly-charged physicality of two real fighter jets, both previously in active military service, into the unexpected setting of the neoclassical Duveen Galleries. Harrier and Jaguar has been specially devised for the Tate Britain Duveens Commission 2010, supported by Sotheby’s. In the South Duveens, a Sea Harrier jet is suspended vertically, its bulk spanning floor to [...]

MoMA Announces Exhibition of Design and the Modern Kitchen

NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art presents Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen, an exhibition that examines the kitchen and its continual redesign as a barometer of changing ideologies and technologies, and explores the twentieth-century transformation of the kitchen as a space of huge symbolic and practical significance. On view from September 15, 2010, through March 14, 2011, its centerpiece is MoMA’s recent acquisition of an unusually complete example of the iconic “Frankfurt Kitchen.” Designed in 1926–27 [...]

Master Drawings from a Distinguished Collection to Be Offered at Sotheby’s

LONDON.- Sales of important private collections have always been the lifeblood of the art market, returning long-hidden material into circulation and also serving as a fascinating permanent record of the taste and eye of an individual collector. In the Old Master field at least, such sales are rather less frequent now than in previous generations, so they are ever more eagerly awaited by private and institutional buyers alike. Formerly owned, in many cases, by leading collectors of the 18th and [...]

SMU Names New Distinguished Endowed Chair in Art History

DALLAS, TX.- Following an international search, the Department of Art History at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts today announced the appointment of Dr. Roberto Tejada as the new Distinguished Endowed Chair in Art History, effective August 1. The new endowed senior position was made possible by a generous anonymous gift of $2 million, intended to help launch a new Ph.D. program in art history at SMU in the fall of 2011. It will be the first art history Ph.D. [...]

Rock Paintings at La Pintada Archaeological Zone Catalogued

MEXICO CITY.- More than 2,000 rock paintings distributed in a natural canyon part of La Pintada Archaeological Zone, in Sonora, are being digitalized by experts from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). Designs reveal the world vision of ancient groups that dwelled this area 1,200 years ago, as well as at the colonization process. It has been calculated that more than 2,500 graphics are found in the area, from which 70 per cent have already been registered, with [...]

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to be Open 365 Days a Year

RICHMOND, VA.- In keeping with its goal to be accessible to all visitors, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) announces plans to be open 365 days a year. In addition, VMFA is expanding its evening hours. Starting in July, the museum will be open until 9 p.m. on Fridays, in addition to Thursday evenings. “We have been wildly successful since our grand opening in May, and the museum has been enthusiastically received by the community and national visitors,” says [...]

Three Works by Bill Viola on Display at the Museo Picasso Málaga

MALAGA.- “The Self is an ocean without a shore. Gazing upon it has no beginning or end, in this world and the next. ”. These words by the Andalusian mystic Ibn Arabi (1165-1240) served as Bill Viola’s inspiration for his work Ocean without a Shore, which he presented at the Venice Biennale in 2007, and which was the origin for his series Transfigurations. The three works on display at the Museo Picasso Málaga are part of this series. As the [...]

Exhibition at Ambika P3 Offers Behind-the-Scenes Insights into How Buildings are Made

LONDON.- Land Architecture People is a major exhibition which offers behind-the-scenes insights into how buildings are made – from the mysterious rules and conditions of land ownership through to the symbiotic relationship between architect and client. Conceived by award-winning architects Pierre d’Avoine and Andrew Houlton and anthropologist Clare Melhuish, the show dispels some of the mystique around the architectural design process. Land Architecture People opens in the vast subterranean gallery Ambika P3 in central London on 25 June and runs [...]