George T. M. Shackelford Appointed Senior Deputy Director of the Kimbell Art Museum

FORT WORTH, TX.- The Kimbell Art Museum announced today that George T. M. Shackelford will join the staff as senior deputy director in early 2012. “I’m thrilled to welcome George to the Kimbell,” commented Eric M. Lee, the Museum’s director. “He is one of the most brilliant and talented curators in the field today. As the Kimbell expands with its Renzo Piano building project, George will play a crucial role in shaping the Museum’s future.” In response to accepting the position, Shackelford remarked, [...]

Japan Art Association Announces 2011 Praemium Imperiale Laureates in London

LONDON.- The 2011 winners of the prestigious Praemium Imperiale arts awards, announced today by the Japan Art Association in the ballroom of Claridge’s Hotel in London, include Academy and Tony Award-winning actress Dame Judi Dench, New Media artist Bill Viola and former music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Seiji Ozawa. Carrying prizes of 15 million yen (approximately $182,000) each, the awards recognize lifetime achievement in the arts in categories not covered by the Nobel Prizes. The Japan Art Association also named The Royal Court [...]

Independent Curator Fabrice Stroun Appointed as New Director of Kunsthalle Bern

BERNE, SWITZERLAND.- The board of Kunsthalle Bern announces the appointment of Fabrice Stroun (born 1969) effective from January 1st 2012. Over the last 15 years Fabrice Stroun has been working as an independent curator based in Geneva. Welcoming his appointment, Wolf von Weiler, President of the Board of Kunsthalle Bern, said: “I am delighted to announce Fabrice Stroun as the new Director of Kunsthalle Bern. The appointment reflects the board’s commitment to further strengthening the reputation of Kunsthalle Bern as one of Switzerland’s [...]

American Modernist Charles Demuth in the City of Lights on View at the Demuth Museum

LANCASTER, PA.- The Demuth Museum’s new exhibition, “Demuth in the City of Lights,” is now on view through August 28, 2011. This exhibition brings together many of Charles Demuth’s works from his travels to Paris in the early twentieth century. American Modernist painter Charles Demuth (1883-1935) soaked up all Paris had to offer by visiting galleries, attending live performances, discussing ideas with fellow artists including Marsden Hartley and Marcel Duchamp, and drinking up the night-life. Upon returning home to Lancaster, Pennsylvania he [...]

National Museum of Art in Wales Features Six Impressive New Contemporary Art Galleries

WALES.- Wales has many fascinating stories to tell through the work of the artists and collectors from, or inspired by, Wales. A number of these stories are told in the new £6.5m National Museum of Art, which opened to the public on Saturday 9 July 2011. Did you know that Welsh landscape painter Thomas Jones’s major historical work The Bard is based on Thomas Gray’s tale of Edward I’s massacre of the Welsh bards? Wales has Gwendoline and Margaret Davies to thank [...]

Man Held in Picasso Painting Theft at San Francisco Art Gallery to Plead Not Guilty

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (AP).- The attorney for a New Jersey man accused of snatching a Picasso drawing off the wall of a San Francisco art gallery says his client will plead not guilty. Mark Lugo appeared in court Monday for the first time since his arrest last week on suspicion of stealing the 1965 sketch, which was on sale at the Weinstein Gallery for more than $200,000. San Francisco police chief Greg Suhr, left, speaks at a news conference as a Picasso drawing [...]

Libya’s Rebel Street Artists Take Aim at Moammar Gadhafi with Caricatures on Walls

BENGHAZI, LIBYA (AP).- Moammar Gadhafi is loved in Libya’s rebel capital — as a subject for street artists to mock. Caricatures of the Libyan leader dot walls and buildings across Benghazi in renderings that range from crude sketches to elaborate satire such as Gadhafi being knocked around by a rebel-flagged boot or depicted with a Nazi swastika. Before Libya’s uprising, even a hint of dissent risked a crushing response from Gadhafi’s security forces. Now, it’s open season on Gadhafi in rebel-held [...]

Andy Warhol Museum Releases The Warhol: D.I.Y. Pop App for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

PITTSBURGH, PA.- The Andy Warhol Museum announces the release of its new Warhol D.I.Y. Pop app to the App Store. The Warhol D.I.Y. Pop app allows the user to learn about Warhol’s silkscreen process and create a digital silkscreen print, by utilizing the built-in camera or a photo from the device’s library as source material. The user employs Warhol’s famed process step by step to create a personal work of art. The hands-on process includes cropping, exposing, painting, and even pulling the virtual [...]

New Museum to Present First New York Survey of Works by Carsten Holler

NEW YORK, NY.- This autumn, the New Museum will present the first New York survey exhibition of the work of the artist Carsten Höller (b. 1961, Brussels, lives and works Stockholm). Over the past twenty years, Höller has created a world that is equal parts laboratory and fun house, exploring such themes as safety, childhood, love, happiness, transportation, and the future. Höller left his early career as a scientist in 1994 to devote himself exclusively to art making, and his work is often [...]

London National Gallery Says It will Show Lost Leonardo

NEW YORK (AP).- An oil painting recently authenticated as the work of Leonardo da Vinci will be on display at the National Gallery in the fall as part of a larger exhibition on the Renaissance artist, the London museum said Monday. “Salvator Mundi,” which dates to around 1500, depicts a half-length figure of Christ with one hand raised in blessing and the other holding an orb. The National Gallery said in a statement Monday that the work was shown to its [...]

Exhibition of German Expressionist Max Pechstein’s Work on View at the Ahlen Art Museum

AHLEN.- Max Pechstein (1881-1955) is one of the pioneers of German Expressionism. The retrospective presents more than 130 paintings, drawings, prints, and works of applied arts by the “Expressionist by passion”. In addition to important masterpieces by notable German and European museums and collections the show also displays less known aspects of Max Pechstein’s art, for example the earliest painting dating from 1894, some of the rare works of applied arts, privately owned graphic that has never or seldom been on [...]

International Center of Photography Celebrates Elliott Erwitt’s Career with Exhibition

NEW YORK, NY.- An eyewitness to history and a dreamer with a camera, Elliott Erwitt has made some of the most memorable photographs of the twentieth century. A substantial retrospective exhibition of his work, Elliott Erwitt: Personal Best, is on view at the International Center of Photography through August 28, 2011. The exhibition includes more than 100 of Erwitt’s favorite images, a selection of his documentary films produced over the past sixty years, as well as some previously unseen and unpublished prints from [...]

Norman Rockwell Museum Presents Local Artist Sol Schwartz: Drawing in the Dark

STOCKBRIDGE, MA,.- The Berkshires of Western Massachusetts has become world-renowned for its inspiring landscape and cultural attractions, including such performing arts centers as Tanglewood, Shakespeare & Company, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, and Barrington Stage Company. Look around the audience of any of these venues this summer, and you might spot Sol Schwartz, a local artist who documents the creative action onstage through his own pencil, pen and brushstroke. A new exhibition looks at the artist’s vibrant, spontaneous drawings, that have [...]

First International Exhibitions Announced for National Museum of Scotland in 2012

EDINBURGH.- Ancient Egyptians and a Russian Empress come to Scotland in 2012 as the first attractions in the redeveloped National Museum of Scotland’s new exhibition space. The first major new shows scheduled will be Fascinating Mummies from the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden , the Netherlands and Catherine the Great, a new exhibition co-developed by the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg , Russia and National Museums Scotland . The transformed Museum will open on 29 July following a major £46.4 [...]

Thornton Dial to Show Latest Work in Exclusive Exhibition at Bill Lowe Gallery

ATLANTA, GA.- Thornton Dial is widely regarded as the most important artist ever to arise from the Deep South and is ranked among the most significant in the world today. With a retrospective currently showing at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and recent reviews in Time Magazine, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Dial is arguably one of the most important African-American artists of the 20th century. Fueled by this chorus of critical acclaim, Bill Lowe presents Thornton Dial’s latest [...]