The Museo de Arte de Ponce Presents Its Most Important Recent Acquisition: The Battle of Treviño

PONCE, PR.- With the unveiling of The Battle of Treviño, by Puerto Rican painter Francisco Oller y Cestero (1833–1917), theMuseo de Arte de Ponce celebrates the acquisition of a nineteenth-century masterpiece that has never before been exhibited publicly — a painting whose very existence, in fact, was unsuspected until just a few years ago. The work was part of a private collection that had been in the hands of a single family in Spain for over 130 years. “We are celebrating the [...]

National Maritime Museum in London Opens New £35 Million Sammy Ofer Wing

LONDON.- This July the National Maritime Museum opens the Sammy Ofer Wing, a transformative £35m capital project which sets a new strategic direction for the Museum. Opening 14 July 2011, the £35m wing is the largest development in the National Maritime Museum’s history and a catalyst for the organisation to change completely the way it presents its galleries, exhibitions and events. This major new project has been made possible through a generous donation of £20m from international shipping magnate and philanthropist Sammy Ofer [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Galeri Manâ: A New Contemporary Art Space in Istanbul Opens with Idea-Driven Show

ISTANBUL.- The inaugural exhibition, Nereden Nereye, a Turkish phrase that translates “From Where to Where,” includes sixteen works by eleven artists, and explores the function of images and the nature of representation. Nereden Nereye features paintings, drawings, photographs and video works by Murat Akagundüz, John Baldessari, Lewis Baltz, Mel Bochner, Diana Al-Hadid, Tamar Halpern, Sol LeWitt, Albert Oehlen, Robin Rhode, Charles Sandison and Nasan Tur. The exhibition runs through July 23, 2011. Curated by Suzanne Egeran, NEREDEN NEREYE features paintings, drawings, [...]

Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery Acquires 17th Century Painting with Local Connections

PLYMOUTH.- A 17th century painting that was part of one of the most important collections of historical portraits in England has been acquired by Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery for the city’s permanent collections. The ‘Portrait of Johann Friederich, the Elector of Saxony and the Reformers’ was purchased thanks to funding support from the Art Fund (£5,344) and the V&A/MLA Purchase Grant Fund (£6,120). The painting is a copy of an original 16th century work and shows the leaders of the Protestant Reformation – [...]

Florence Griswold Museum Hosts Renowned Collection of American Landscapes

OLD LYME, CONN.- Through September 18, the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme hosts an exhibition of over 40 American landscape paintings from the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York. American Landscapes: Treasures from the Parrish Art Museum traces the evolution of American art from its roots in an emerging national landscape tradition to the liberating influences of European modernism. Some of the artists represented include William Merritt Chase, William Stanley Haseltine, Theodore Robinson, John Henry Twachtman, John Marin, John Sloan, Ernest [...]

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to Retain Ownership of Eglon van der Neer Painting

BOSTON, MA.- Research conducted by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), about the provenance, or history of ownership, of its painting Portrait of a Man and Woman in an Interior (1665–67) by Dutch artist Eglon van der Neer (1634–1703), has led to an agreement with the estate of German art dealer Walter Westfeld (1889–1945), enabling the MFA to retain ownership of the work. The Museum decided to reach a financial settlement for the painting with the estate after reviewing recent [...]

BBC Uploads 63,000 Paintings Online as It Launches Your Paintings; Aims for 200,000 Works

LONDON.- The BBC in partnership with the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) announced the launch of Your Paintings, a project to create a complete catalogue of every oil painting in the national collection, on a dedicated website. In all, the national collection amounts to some 200,000 works, held in 3,000 galleries, museums, libraries and public institutions all over the country, making it probably one of the largest and most diverse collections of paintings in the world. The first phase of Your Paintings [...]

Despite Several Setbacks, Dutch National Museum Renovation in Full Swing; to Reopen in 2013

AMSTERDAM (AP).- Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” and other famed works by Dutch masters will return to their permanent home by 2013, as a radical decade-long renovation of the national Rijksmuseum nears completion. A sneak preview Wednesday showed the 19th-century museum both modernized and closer to its original plan. Its red-brick exterior, reminiscent of a fairy-tale castle, remains intact. Inside, maze-like corridors have been scrapped in favor of large spaces and high ceilings, with a central “gallery of honor” restored to its initial [...]

The Guggenheim Acquires Three Seminal Works by Artist, Philosopher, and Poet Lee Ufan.

NEW YORK, NY.- The Guggenheim Museum recently acquired three seminal works by artist, philosopher, and poet Lee Ufan. The two sculptures and one painting come into the collection on the eve of this summer’s retrospective Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity and are generous gifts of Lisson Gallery, London; Kukje Gallery, Seoul; Blum & Poe, Los Angeles; and The Pace Gallery, New York, in honor of the artist. Active in Korea, Japan, and France since the 1960s, Lee’s creation of a visual, conceptual, [...]

Getty Museum Celebrates Italian Anniversary by Showcasing Objects in Its Collection

LOS ANGELES, CA.- Highlighting Italy’s rich cultural heritage, the J. Paul Getty Museum is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Italian unification with the Italian Showcase, a presentation of objects from its permanent collection that draws visitors’ attention to the many fine examples of Italian art on view at both the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Museum joins other U.S. cultural institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Art Institute of Chicago and [...]

Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center Gives Two 19th-Century Paintings to the Crocker Art Museum

STANFORD, CA.- The Cantor Arts Center has deaccessioned two 19th-century American paintings from its collection: Charles Christian Nahl’s Saturday Night in the Mines, 1856, and Crossing the Plains,1856. Both works are oil on canvas. Ownership of the paintings has been transferred to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California. The Association of Art Museum Directors defines deaccessioning as “the process by which a work of art or other object . . . wholly or in part, is permanently removed from a [...]

New Sensor Network by IBM Protecting Art at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art

NEW YORK, NY (AP).- It will take a good eye to spot them, but dozens of tiny, very modern works of art have been installed near the 15th-century unicorn tapestries and other medieval masterpieces at a New York City museum. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is announcing Thursday that a network of wireless environmental sensors designed to prevent damage to the collection is being tested at its Cloisters branch. The IBM sensors — each housed with a radio and a microcontroller [...]

ArtSway’s New Forest Pavilion at the 54th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia

VENICE.- ArtSway, the innovative contemporary art gallery based in England’s New Forest, in collaboration with the Arts University College at Bournemouth, presents the fourth iteration of ArtSway’s New Forest Pavilion. Featuring a number of new commissions, each artist explores, in different approaches, ideas relating to nationhood, ecology and landscape as seen within a modern global context. Gayle Chong Kwan, Tait Tower (The Obsidian Isle series), 2011. C-type photographic print, 183 cm x 132 cm. Courtesy of: Gayle Chong Kwan & [...]