Portland Museum of Art Breaks Attendance Record

PORTLAND< ME.- The Portland Museum of Art finished 2009 with the second-highest attendance in Museum history and the highest attendance in a decade. With 161,000 visitors, the Museum had an increase of 11,000 visitors over the previous year. The highest attendance record was set in 2000 with 188,000 visitors with the success of two exhibitions by legendary artists Ansel Adams and N. C. Wyeth. The Museum’s 2009 success was due to the extremely popular exhibition Backstage Pass: Rock & Roll [...]

International Art Fair for Contemporary Objects Returns to the Saatchi Gallery

LONDON.- The Crafts Council announced that COLLECT 2010, the leading international art fair for contemporary objects, will return to the Saatchi Gallery on London’s Kings Road from May 14 – 17, 2010. Now in its seventh year, COLLECT has established itself as the event to view and buy the best in contemporary craft. Over 10,000 visitors attended COLLECT 2009, with international private collectors and public institutions, including the V&A and the National Museums of Scotland, making significant acquisitions. Jacqueline Ryan, [...]

Toledo Museum Acquires First Italian Baroque Painting in 26 Years

TOLEDO, OH.-Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) has been trying to fill for more than 50 years. A work by Bolognese master Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, commonly known as Guercino (“the squinter”), has been a long-sought-after addition to the TMA collection. Guercino’s vibrant “Lot and His Daughters” (about 1651-1652) was acquired by the Museum in October of 2009. The large painting (176 x 231 cm / 69 ¼ x 90 7/8 inches) will be unveiled to Museum members and the general public [...]

Guggenheim Creates Cabinet and Appoints Ari Wiseman as Deputy Director

NEW YORK, NY.- Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum, today announced the creation of an Executive Cabinet and the appointment of Ari Wiseman as a Deputy Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, a newly created position. “The enormous vitality of the Guggenheim, here in New York and around the world, is inspiring. Our impressive program of exhibitions, education, conservation research, and performing arts, as well as the ambitious plan for a new museum in Abu Dhabi, [...]

Boris Johnson Starts Enabling Works for New Tate Modern Building

LONDON.- Yesterday the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, started the enabling works on the new development of Tate Modern. The Mayor launched the start of preparatory building works on the new Tate Modern development in the oil tanks of the former power station from which the new building will rise. Work will now start on the oil tanks, two of which will be retained as raw spaces for art and performance. Initial works that also start today include the installation [...]

High to Host Collectors’ Evening Where New Works will be Chosen

ATLANTA, GA.- The High Museum of Art will host its first ever Collectors’ Evening on Saturday, January 30th. The event, created to build and improve the Museum’s permanent collection, invites guests to take an active role in choosing the next work of art to join the collection. During the evening, each of the High’s seven curators will present a work of art as a potential new acquisition for their collection. Guests will then cast their votes and the High will [...]

Report Says Smithsonian Museums Saw Jump in Visits Last Year

WASHINGTON, DC.- Visitor counts at the Smithsonian Institution’s museums have rebounded to more than 30 million visits in 2009 for the first time since a slump following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A draft report the museum complex released Tuesday shows visits to the Smithsonian’s 18 museums, galleries and the National Zoo increased about 19.4 percent in 2009, up from about 25.15 million visits in 2008. Costumed historic characters walk in the lobby outside of the flag gallery at [...]

Fresno Metropolitan Museum Closes its Doors and Says Goodbye

FRESNO, CA.- A Museum is an exercise in hope. The impact that the arts play in the lives of the people that they touch and the experiences and memories that they create are life-long. Museums change people and communities over generations. While we may never know what caused the creative spark in a child during a museum visit we can see the fire of innovation, change and growth in our community that it ignited. Your support has helped to keep [...]

Everson Museum of Art Makes Major Financial Impact on the Local Community

SYRACUSE, NY.- The Everson Museum of Art made a significant impact on the Syracuse community with world-class Impressionist art exhibit Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales. The reach of the exhibit stretched beyond the museum and into downtown and regional businesses, restaurants, schools, and arts and cultural organizations, making it a true economic success to the greater Syracuse community. Since Oct. 9, 2009, more than 60,050 visitors flocked to the Everson Museum of Art, where [...]

Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Awarded $600,000 Grant

NEW YORK, NY.- Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum has received a $600,000 grant from The Rockefeller Foundation to develop its groundbreaking 2007 “Design for the Other 90%” exhibition into an ongoing series that will continue to focus on design solutions that address 90 percent of the world’s population not traditionally serviced by the professional design community. In fall 2011, Cooper-Hewitt will present the first in a series of exhibitions examining the complex issues arising from the unprecedented rate of population growth [...]

Newly-Acquired Rousseau Subject of January 14 Gallery Talk

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA.- Join Richard Rand, senior curator and curator of paintings and sculpture at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, for a look at the newly-acquired painting Farm in the Landes (House of the Garde) by Pierre Étienne Théodore Rousseau. The acquisition of this major nineteenth-century landscape painting brings to the public one of the greatest Barbizon School paintings, which until now has been held in private collections and has not been widely exhibited since 1946. This Looking at [...]

MoMA to Present Global Lens 2010, the Seventh Annual Touring Exhibition

NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art, in collaboration with the Global Film Initiative (GFI), presents Global Lens 2010, the seventh annual touring film exhibition conceived to encourage filmmaking in countries with developing film communities, in the Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters at MoMA from January 14 through 29, 2010. The selection of eight programs, each from a different country, includes films developed with seed money from GFI, and represents a concise survey of contemporary filmmaking from areas where [...]

Van Abbemuseum Rounds Off a Successful Year in 2009

EINDHOVEN.- The Van Abbemuseum has rounded off a successful year in 2009. Director Charles Esche is satisfied: “2009 was a very good year for the museum. I was pleased with the reactions to our major solo exhibitions especially Sanja Iveković and Deimantas Narkevičius which showed our commitment to bringing the best international work to Eindhoven from the current artistic generation. We toured these exhibitions elsewhere in Europe and also took our 2008 group show Heartland back to the United States [...]

Toledo Museum of Art Launches Redesigned Website

TOLEDO, OH.- The Toledo Museum of Art has launched a redesigned and expanded website: www.toledomuseum.org The new, easier-to-use site provides immediate ways to explore TMA’s current and upcoming exhibitions, its programs and events, and detailed information about the Museum and its world-renowned collection. “More and more people are turning to the Internet as a primary source of news and information,” said Kelly Fritz Garrow, director of communications. “It’s essential for the Museum to have an active and vibrant online presence.” [...]

Fred Tomaselli Painting Purchased by Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

RICHMOND, VA.- Two contemporary works, a painting by Fred Tomaselli and a photograph by William Wiley, have been added to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts collection. The Tomaselli painting, “Woodpecker,” is a 2008 work in acrylic, gouache, photo collage, and resin on wood panel measuring 6 by 6 feet. “’Woodpecker’ belongs to a series of magnificent birds that Tomaselli painted as surrogates for humans,” says John Ravenal, VMFA’s Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. [...]