London’s National Gallery crackdown on re-sale of Leonardo da Vinci exhibition tickets

LONDON (REUTERS).- London’s National Gallery said on Wednesday it would crack down on the re-sale of tickets to its blockbuster show of Leonardo da Vinci paintings which are being offered online at up to 300 pounds each ($470). The normal price of a ticket to “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan,” billed as the most complete collection of Leonardo’s few surviving paintings ever staged, is 16 pounds $25). “We are obviously very disappointed at the resale of these [...]

Sotheby’s sale of European Paintings in London brought a total of $9,820,347

LONDON.- Sotheby’s sale of European Paintings in London (including works by German, Austrian and Central European artists, The Scandinavian Sale, Spanish painting and The Greek Sale) brought a total of £6,264,175/€7,283,989. Commenting on the sale, Adrian Biddell, Senior Director and Head of the European Paintings Department, and Claude Piening, Senior Director, European Paintings Department said: The sale featured a number of especially attractive groups of works from different regional schools across Europe. Buyers both locally and internationally responded very positively to these [...]

Sotheby’s Paris announces sale of Impressionist & Modern Art to be held in December

PARIS.- The 73-lot sale of Impressionist & Modern Art to be held at Sotheby’s Paris on Thursday 8th December (6pm) will be highly selective, paying tribute to some of the 20th century’s most outstanding artists – including Ernst, Matta, Lam, Metzinger and Miró – and featuring numerous works which have a remarkable provenance or which are fresh to the market. Max Ernst After the recent Impressionist & Modern Art sales in New York, where his works were targeted by bidders from around the [...]

U.S. painter Alex Katz opens “Naked Beauty” exhibition at the Kestner Society in Hannover

HANNOVER.- The American painter Alex Katz (b. 1927 in Brooklyn, lives in New York) will be showing a series of life paintings covering the period from 1980s to the present day, juxtaposed with selected city views of New York in his show at the kestnergesellschaft. In this way, two extremes coincide in the exhibition »naked beauty«: the human body and architecture stand side by side and tell the story of the capacity of Katz’s painting to transform subjective impressions into universal symbols. [...]

Sotheby’s Old Master & British paintings sales to be highlighted by Jan Steen and Johann Zoffany

LONDON.- Sotheby’s London, 22nd November 2011, announces that the Old Master and British Paintings Evening and Day Sales on 7th and 8th December 2011 will offer a selection of important works of exceptional quality and rarity, many of which have remained in private collections for decades, including the masterpiece by Jan Steen Card Players in an Interior (est. £4.5-6 million). The sales, which comprise 237 lots, are estimated to fetch a combined total in excess of £21 million. Alex Bell, Sotheby’s Co-Chairman, [...]

Renoir’s Le Bouquet, 1910, brings $657,250 in Heritage Auctions fine art sale

DALLAS, TX.- Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Le Bouquet, 1910, brought $657,250 as the top lot inHeritage Auctions‘ American & European Signature® Art Auction, Nov. 8, at Heritage’s Design District Annex, 1518 Slocum Street. Le Bouquet came to Heritage from the family of renowned Texas artist Lucien Abrams, who acquired it from Renoir’s dealer, Durand-Ruel in New York during September 1933. Durand-Ruel originally obtained the painting from Renoir’s family. “This wonderful still life has been with the Abrams family for nearly 80 years and [...]

Gagosian Gallery exhibition introduces two new series of work by Richard Serra

PARIS.- Gagosian Gallery presents “Drawings,” an exhibition introducing two new series of work by Richard Serra, July and Rifts. This is his first major drawing exhibition in Paris since 1995. Richard Serra was born in San Francisco in 1938. His groundbreaking bodies of work in both sculpture and drawing have been celebrated with major retrospectives at The Museum of Modern Art, “Richard Serra Sculpture Forty Years,” (2007) and “Richard Serra/Sculpture,” (1986). “Richard Serra Drawings: Work Comes Out of Work” was presented at [...]

Friends of Nationalmuseum purchase a painting by Flemish artist Nicolas RégnierFriends of Nationalmuseum purchase a painting by Flemish artist Nicolas Régnier

STOCKHOLM.- A centenary appeal launched earlier this year to mark the 100th anniversary of the Friends of Nationalmuseum has raised a total of SEK 10.66 million. The donations have funded the purchase of a painting by Flemish artist Nicolas Régnier, which was handed over to Nationalmuseum at a gala evening on 21 November. The goal of the Friends of Nationalmuseum centenary appeal, launched earlier in 2011, was to make a significant gift to the museum before year-end. The appeal itself raised SEK 5.33 [...]

The Frick updates its historic enamels room cases and conserves a remarkable collection

NEW YORK, N.Y.- New York’s Frick Collection is home to one of the most important groups of Renaissance enamels in the world, ranking alongside those of the Musée du Louvre in Paris, The Wallace Collection and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The forty-two enamels in The Frick Collection were produced in the city of Limoges, in central France, from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth [...]

Quinn’s Fine Art auction spans Old Masters to Modern, with a premier of French paintings as its centerpiece

FALLS CHURCH, VA.- Some of Washington DC’s most elegant homes were the sources forQuinn’s Auction Galleries’ upcoming sale of international fine and decorative art, with an afternoon session dedicated to Asian art and antiquities. The Dec. 10 event includes 750 lots led by a selection of French paintings whose overall quality surpasses that of any seen in previous Quinn’s auctions. “We’re particularly excited about the French paintings in this sale, especially the oil-on-canvas harvest scene by Leon Augustin L’hermitte, which is expected [...]

Hôtel des Ventes Winter sales: 300 original photographs of the Russian imperial family

GENEVA.- On Monday 12th December, Geneva ’s Hôtel des ventes will once again spend an evening reliving the splendour of the Russian Tsars by auctioning without reserve prices over 300 original photographs, many of which signed, of the Russian Imperial family. Estimated at an approximate total of 30,000 Swiss francs, this ensemble comes directly from the private Swiss collection of Ferdinand Thormeyer, tutor for the Russian court. Discreetly guarded by the same family until the present day, these images of Emperor Alexander III, [...]

Important works by the father of Brit Pop-Art Richard Hamilton lead Bonhams print sale

LONDON.- Important works by the printmaker and Father of British Pop-Art, Richard Hamilton, who died earlier this year, lead Bonhams Print sale on 29 November in London. They include ‘Release’ his famous depiction of the arrest of Mick Jagger and art dealer, Robert Fraser, for possession of drugs at a notorious party at the country house of Bill Whyman. Jagger’s subsequent conviction provoked an outcry and an editorial in the Times under the heading, “Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?” questioning the [...]

Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh receives six architectural design awards

RALEIGH, N.C.- CAM Raleigh announces that it has received six architectural design awards since opening in April 2011. A partnership between the community and North Carolina State University’s (N.C. State) College of Design, to date CAM Raleigh has received a 2011 AIA Design Award (Merit), an AIA Tower Award, the 2011 Carraway Honor Award of Merit from Preservation North Carolina, the 2011 Sir Raleigh Walter Award for Community Appearance, and a Downtown Raleigh Alliance Imprint Award. Located in an early twentieth-century structure [...]

The Woodstock story told through paintings, photography, sculpture, and ceramics at D. Wigmore Fine Art

NEW YORK, N.Y.- D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc. announces its current exhibition, The Woodstock Story: Told Through Paintings, Photography, Sculpture, and Ceramics, on view through January 28. Woodstock, America’s second oldest and most successful art colony, began with the founding of the Arts and Crafts colony Byrdcliffe in 1902. Examples of White Pines pottery, photography, and furniture renderings from Byrdcliffe are on view. The Art Students League in New York City expanded the colony when it began to bring 200 students [...]

Miami Art Museum names Emily Mello Director of education & public programs

MIAMI, FL.- In preparation for its move to a new, expanded facility, Miami Art Museum, a leading modern and contemporary art museum located in Miami, FL, has named Emily Mello director of education and public programs. In this role, Mello will oversee MAM’s diverse educational programming that today reaches nearly 35,000 people, and will plan for the greatly expanded educational offerings that will be available when the Museum’s new facility in downtown Miami’s Museum Park opens to the public in 2013. Now [...]