Sotheby’s New York to offer Property from The Estate of Giancarlo Baroni early next year

NEW YORK, NY.- Sotheby’s announced the sale of Property from the Estate of Giancarlo Baroni, renowned Old Master connoisseur, collector and dealer, in a series of auctions to be held early next year in New York beginning with a dedicated evening and day sale on 29 and 30 January, respectively. The collection is being consigned by his children. Highlights of the prominent collection range from 15th century gold ground paintings to works by artists including El Greco, Gian Paolo Panini, Giambattista Tiepolo, [...]

Milwaukee Art Museum announces Lisa J. Sutcliffe as new Curator of Photography

MILWAUKEE, WIS.- The Milwaukee Art Museum announced the appointment of Lisa J. Sutcliffe as the new Curator of Photography. Sutcliffe will join the Museum in January 2013 from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where she has served as assistant curator in the Department of Photography since 2007. Lisa Sutcliffe has a wide-ranging curatorial record from her time at SFMoMA. Most recently, she organized the SFMOMA presentation of Naoya Hatakeyama: Natural Stories in association with the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. [...]

New technology resurrects ancient Chinese cave at Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery

WASHINGTON, DC.- Visitors to the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery will be able step into a heated tent in the adjacent Moongate Garden and be transported to a Chinese Buddhist cave, where murals will come alive with musicians, dancers and flying Bodhisattvas. “Pure Land: Inside the Mogao Grottoes at Dunhuang,” on view Dec. 1–Dec. 9, is an immersive 3-D experience of one of the world’s ancient art treasures and a technological application never before seen in the United States. The Buddhist cave temples [...]

Mandala for Crusoe: New works by Francesco Clemente at Blain/Southern in London

LONDON.- Blain|Southern announced an exhibition of new works by Francesco Clemente, Mandala for Crusoe, the artist’s first London show in seven years. This recent series brings together 14 paintings which continue Clemente’s singular pictorial language, gathering together myriad cultural references and merging timeless symbols, iconic imagery and philosophies. Inspired by the symbolism of the originally Buddhist and Hindu Mandala, this form, combined with allusions to more classical and mythological tropes, becomes apertinent description of the world as a whole, now and throughout [...]

Toledo Museum of Art acquires sculpture by noted Spanish artist Jaume Plensa

TOLEDO, OH.- The Toledo Museum of Art has acquired Spiegel, a monumental, two-part stainless steel sculpture by the acclaimed Spanish sculptor Jaume (juh-MAY) Plensa. Its acquisition was made possible by a generous local donor who wishes to remain anonymous. Showcased last year in an exhibition of the artist’s work at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Bretton, Wakefield, UK, the work is being installed in the Georgia and David K. Welles Sculpture Garden which surrounds the Museum. Composed of two figures, each [...]

Sotheby’s London November 2012 Russian Art Sales Series concludes realising $33 million

LONDON.- Sotheby’s London November 2012 Russian Art Sales Series concluded on Tuesday, realising the within pre-sale expectations total of £20,553,775/$32,959,940 (est. £16,972,400-£24,363,000). This sum brings Sotheby’s 2012 global total for auctions of Russian Art to $63,828,414, reconfirming Sotheby’s dominance as global leader in the market for Russian Art, for the tenth consecutive year. “In a year in which Sotheby’s has exceeded the $1 billion benchmark for Russian Art sold by the company in the past 10 years through auction sales, we are [...]

“The thousand and one nights” exhibition casts a spell at the Arab World Institute in Paris

PARIS (AFP).- Full of flying carpets, genies, love and battle, a Paris show that opened Tuesday lifts the curtain on “One Thousand and One Nights”, exploring the roots of the folk tales and their powerful influence in the West. Through some 350 manuscripts, artworks, artefacts and film clips, the show at the Arab World Institute traces the tales’ journey from their origin in Indian and Persian folkore, to their translation into Arabic in the eighth century. And it highlights how the [...]

Exhibition of major new works by Antony Gormley opens at White Cube Bermondsey

LONDON.- White Cube Bermondsey presents ‘Model’, an exhibition of major new works by Antony Gormley. Challenging the physical possibilities of the gallery space, this ambitious exhibition investigates our experience of architecture through the body and of the body through architecture. Made in direct response to the space of the South Galleries is the vast, new work Model (2012), which is also the title of the exhibition. Fabricated from 100 tonnes of weathering sheet steel, the work is both sculpture and building, human [...]

“Comparing Paths to Modernism: 1910-1950″ opens at D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc. in New York

NEW YORK, NY.- This exhibition is organized around the theme of how American artists took different paths to create modern art between 1910 and 1950. The gallery compares the artists who continued to evolve Impressionism in the Teens and Twenties with the artists influenced by new European styles promoted by Alfred Stieglitz and exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show in New York. The exhibition then considers the diverse styles of the 1930s and 1940s when Realist painters looked to past styles [...]

Exhibition of new paintings by Carroll Dunham opens at Gladstone Gallery in New York

NEW YORK, NY.- Gladstone Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by Carroll Dunham. Featuring nine works that draw on the motifs of nude bathers and pastoral landscapes familiar from Dunham’s earlier paintings, the exhibition highlights the artist’s continuing interest in these themes. Expanding upon the visual language that characterized his previous works, Dunham demonstrates a shift in his formal decision making, adhering less strictly to the subject’s formal vocabulary and iconography, and instead allowing each work to evolve as a singular [...]

Auction house Ketterer Kunst in Munich to sell rare oil painting by artist Zao Wou-Ki

MUNICH.- “28.3.71” is one of the rare oil paintings by the Peking artist Zao Wou-Ki to be sold in Germany. On 8 Dec. 2012, it will come up at auction, for an estimated price of € 300,000 – € 400,000, at the renowned auction house Ketterer Kunst in Munich. “I am delighted to have the opportunity to auction this impressive work, for unlike any other artist, Zao Wou-Ki is able to masterfully combine oriental calligraphy with the European Informel. With apparent effortlessness, he [...]

Over 470 artworks pledged to collections campaign deepen museum’s photography holdings

SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced today promised gifts of 473 photographs from three separate collectors, adding significant new depth to the museum’s holdings in 20th-century American and Japanese photography. A pledge of twenty-six photographs by Diane Arbus from San Francisco collector and gallerist Jeffrey Fraenkel doubles SFMOMA’s holdings of work by the artist and continues the museum’s dedication to collecting artists in depth. Two additional gifts—one from an anonymous donor, the other from the Kurenboh Collection [...]

Ownership of Henry Moore sculpture called into question

LONDON.- Tower Hamlets’ ownership of the bronze sculpture, Draped Seated Woman by Henry Moore, was called into question last night following new research into the details of the transfer of ownership of the work from the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1985. The sculpture was created by Henry Moore in 1957 and acquired in 1962 by the London County Council for the new Stifford housing estate at Stepney Green. When the GLC was abolished in 1985, ownership was thought to have [...]

Seminal Jackson Pollock painting “Sea Change” being restored at the Seattle Art Museum

SEATTLE, WA.- Seattle Art Museum has received funding for the conservation of Jackson Pollock’s Sea Change (1947) through the Bank of America Art Conservation Project. The Art Conservation Project is a unique global program that provides grants to nonprofit museums throughout the world to conserve historically or culturally significant works of art that are in danger of degeneration, including works that have been designated as national treasures. Sea Change is a cornerstone work in SAM’s modern collection and a significant painting in [...]

Annual sale of Israeli & International Art at Sotheby’s New York announced for December

NEW YORK, NY.- Sotheby’s annual sale of Israeli & International Art in New York on 19 December 2012 features a wide ranging selection of classic and contemporary Israeli art spanning over 100 years. The auction will be led by a group of works by celebrated artist Reuven Rubin, including the magnificent landscape of Jerusalem Seen from Mt. Scopus from 1927 (est. $300/500,000*). The sale will also feature a series of drawings by famed Polish artist and writer Bruno Schulz, and an important [...]