International carriers, Caution! please

I am about to relate a tale, a tale that revolves around the life of an artist, and a huge multinational transport giant. In the first instance, the artist who resides in Spain arranged with his representing gallery in the USA to take part in an exhibition of his work, the date for the exhibition Vernissage was to be 28th May, 2010 running until August 15th. The artist now had a plan, and a space in a gallery to show his [...]

Love, Death, the Terrifying and Beautiful World of Otto Dix in Montreal

MONTREAL.- From September 24, 2010, to January 2, 2011, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts will be presenting ROUGE CABARET: The Terrifying and Beautiful World of Otto Dix, the first North American exhibition devoted to Otto Dix (1891-1969), one of the twentieth century’s most important German painters. A keen observer of the world, which he viewed as “terrifying and beautiful,” Otto Dix leaves no one indifferent. Some 220 works, including about forty rare and fragile paintings, many of them painted [...]

SFMOMA Announces New Body of Work by R.H. Quaytman

SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- From October 22, 2010, through January 16, 2011, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present the exhibition New Work: R. H. Quaytman. Organized by Apsara DiQuinzio, SFMOMA assistant curator of painting and sculpture, the exhibition features a new series of paintings commissioned by the museum and made specifically for the exhibition at SFMOMA, the artist’s second solo museum exhibition and the first presentation on the West Coast. Modest in scale, Quaytman’s paintings on beveled [...]

Contemporary Jewish Museum to Show Rarely Seen Old Master Paintings

SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Contemporary Jewish Museum presents an exhibition of rarely seen Old Master paintings entitled Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker. Reclaimed reveals the extraordinary legacy of Jacques Goudstikker, a preeminent art dealer in Amsterdam, whose vast collection of masterpieces fell victim, and was almost lost forever, to the Nazi practice of looting cultural properties during World War II. In 2006, after years of working with a team of art historians and legal experts, Goudstikker’s family [...]

Norton Simon Museum to Present Raphael’s The Small Cowper Madonna

PASADENA, CA.- The Norton Simon Museum announced the rare loan of Raphael’s The Small Cowper Madonna, c. 1505, from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. One of about 12 works by Raphael in U.S. collections, this painting of the Madonna and Child was executed early in the artist’s career, during the four years he spent in Florence (1504–08). This extraordinary loan is part of an exchange program between the National Gallery of Art and the Norton Simon foundations, [...]

Astonishing Prices for Redpaths on Opening Day of Bonhams Scottish Sale

LONDON.- Bonhams Annual Scottish Sale got off to a flying start today taking over £1.25m during a morning of picture sales. Anne Redpath’s beautiful 1937 painting, ‘Still Life with Michaelmas Daises’ sold for an astonishing £134,000 well over the pre-sale estimate of £30,000- 50,000 and “Cagnes” by the same artist sold for £114,000 against an estimate of £60,000 – 80,000. George Leslie Hunter’s vibrantly coloured ‘Still Life’ made £144,000 and one of Samuel John Peploe’s iconic paintings of Iona sold [...]

Metropolitan Museum Announces Pablo Picasso Exhibition Drew 700,000 Visitors in 17 Weeks

NEW YORK, NY.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that the landmark exhibition Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art drew 703,256 visitors during its 17-week presentation at the Museum ending Sunday—making it the most highly attended show since 2001. On view from April 19 through August 15, 2010, Picasso became the seventh most highly attended exhibition at the Metropolitan since the Museum first began tracking exhibition attendance nearly 50 years ago. It was the first exhibition to focus [...]

National Gallery of Australia Unveils Monumental James Turrell ‘Skyspace’

CANBERRA.- The National Gallery of Australia today unveiled a major new acquisition for the national art collection, Within without, a monumental ‘Skyspace’ installation by renowned American artist James Turrell. The only work of its kind in Australia, the partly subterranean installation creates an immersive viewing experience that uses space, shape and light to affect the perception of the sky. Ron Radford AM, Director of the National Gallery of Australia said, “We are thrilled to open this astonishing work, Within without [...]

Dusseldorf’s Quadriennale 2010 to Present Exhibition by Joseph Beuys

DUSSELDORF.- Joseph Beuys was one of the most internationally innovative and influential artists of the 20th century. As the initiator of momentous new artistic forms of expression, he had a lasting and immediate effect on countless artists. Joseph Beuys: Parallel Processes will be taking place almost 20 years after Armin Zweite’s widely acclaimed show Joseph Beuys – Natur, Materie, Form (= Nature, Matter, Form). The new exhibition curated by Marion Ackermann and Isabelle Malz, is intended as an examination of [...]

Newly Acquired Works from the Walker Collection Featured in Exhibition

MINNEAPOLIS, MN.- An empty wooden box, a clear plastic cup, a pair of balloons, a spray of paint, a bed of moss, a moment in time. Exploring the poetic and conceptual promise of minimal gestures and simple materials, the Walker Art Center exhibition A Shot in the Dark, opened on Thursday, features works that transcend their humble means as they evoke other places, times, and states of mind. Consisting entirely of recent Walker acquisitions and rarely seen works from the [...]

Jazz Scene Photographer Herman Leonard Dies at 87 in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES (AP).- Jazz scene photographer Herman Leonard, famous for his smoky, backlighted black-and-white photos of such greats as Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra, has died. He was 87. Leonard, who moved to Los Angeles after Hurricane Katrina flooded his New Orleans home and destroyed thousands of his prints, died Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, family spokeswoman Geraldine Baum said on his website. The cause of death wasn’t disclosed. Leonard was considered [...]

Florence and State Spar Over Michelangelo’s Masterpiece ‘David’

ROME (AP).- Florence’s mayor is defending his city’s ownership of Michelangelo’s marble masterpiece “David” after the Culture Ministry reportedly asserted that the treasure belongs to the central government in Rome. The Renaissance-style feud broke out over the weekend with reports that Rome was laying claim to the sculpture, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy. Michelangelo completed the 4.34-meter (14 foot)-high nude statue in Florence in 1504, and its home has been the city’s Galleria dell’Accademia for more [...]

Bob Dylan to Exhibit at the National Gallery of Denmark

COPENHAGEN.- Bob Dylan has been a prolific painter and draughtsman since the 1960s. The multi-talented artist has, however, long kept this lesser-known aspect of his work to himself; only over the course of the last three years has he appeared in public as a painter, exhibiting watercolours and drawings. The National Gallery of Denmark’s major autumn exhibition sees Bob Dylan presenting large-scale paintings for the first time ever: The Brazil Series, which consists of all-new, never-before-seen works. Images arising out [...]

Frank Auerbach Painting Emerges After 30 Years in Private Hands

LONDON.- An important and large painting Looking Towards Mornington Crescent Station (1972 -74) by the highly acclaimed artist Frank Auerbach will be sold by Bonhams in the 20th Century British Art auction at New Bond Street on November 17th 2010. The painting, which has never appeared at auction before and hasn’t been since in public since the late 1970s, is estimated to sell for £800,000 – £1,200,000. In June Bonhams achieved the highest ever price at auction for a small [...]

Richard Deacon at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Strasbourg

STRASBOURG.- Born in Wales in 1949, Richard Deacon is internationally recognized as one of contemporary sculpture’s most influential figures. He quickly emerged as an exceptional fabricator of forms, the creator of an artistic universe fluidly embracing the living. The Missing Part exhibition, designed in close collaboration with the artist, is a retrospective of 40 years of his work shown here for the first time as an assemblage of approximately forty sculptures and some 120 drawings, engravings and photographs. Appearing on [...]