President Barack Obama Salutes Eduardo Souto de Moura: Winner of Top Architecture Prize

WASHINGTON (AP).- President Barack Obama praised the winner of a top architecture prize Thursday for embodying a style that is, in his words, as “effortless as it is beautiful.” Obama lauded Eduardo Souto de Moura of Portugal at an awards ceremony where de Moura was receiving the 2011 Pritzker Architecture Prize. The esteemed prize is often referred to as the Nobel Prize for architecture. De Moura has won acclaim for his careful use of natural materials and unexpected dashes of [...]

Expanded Galleries of African Art and Indian Art of the Americas Open at the Art Institute

CHICAGO, IL.- The Art Institute of Chicago opens its expanded galleries of African art and Indian art of the Americas today, June 3, 2011. Following an extensive four-year planning, construction, and reinstallation project, the combined 7,500 square foot gallery spaces–located in the Art Institute’s lower Morton Wing (G136 and G137) –have now been freshly conceived and completely renovated to accommodate more than 550 objects on display. For the first time in the museum’s history, the majority of the Art Institute’s [...]

Statue Leaves Italy for the First Time Since 1816 for Exhibition at the National Gallery of Art

WASHINGTON (AP).- One of the best preserved sculptures from Roman antiquity, the “Capitoline Venus,” has left Italy for the first time in nearly 200 years for a special display at the National Gallery of Art. The installation goes on public view Saturday through early September, the museum announced Thursday. The full-scale female nude statue has only left Rome one other time: when it was seized by Napoleon and taken to France in 1797. It was returned to Rome’s Capitoline Museum [...]