Record-Breaking Pablo Picasso Painting Goes on Show at Tate Modern in London

LONDON.- The most expensive painting to be sold at auction, Pablo Picasso’s “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” goes on public display in Britain for the first time Monday at the Tate Modern gallery in London. The 1932 work, which sold for $106.5 million at Christie’s in New York last year, has been lent to the Tate galleries from a private collection and will be on display in a new Pablo Picasso room in the Poetry and Dream section. “Nude, Green Leaves [...]

Google Offers Virtual Tours of 17 of the Top Museums Using Street View Technology

LONDON (REUTERS).- Google aims to bring the world’s great art galleries into the home with a new website that offers virtual tours using Street View technology, the ability to build private collections and ultra-high resolution images. While most big galleries have been busy making their works accessible online for years, experts told a launch at London’s Tate Britain gallery on Tuesday that Google’s site was looking to take the online art experience to a new level. “It could be the [...]

German Artist and Capitalist Realism Movement Founder Sigmar Polke Dies at Age 69

COLOGNE.- Artist Sigmar Polke’s gallery in London says the German painter has died at age 69. The Michael Werner Gallery said Friday that Polke died the day before in Cologne following an illness. Polke was a contemporary of Gerhard Richter, with whom he launched the capitalist realism movement in 1963 as a response to pop art. This prompted some to describe Polke as the anti-pop pop artist. “In his anarchic paintings photographs and films Sigmar Polke established a language that [...]

Tate Modern is 10: Tate Reaches Across the World with Works Acquired

NEW YORK, NY.- Tate Modern is extending its reach across the world by expanding its Collection to areas outside Europe and North America, including the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa. The recent acquisitions include thirteen contemporary works of art by artists from the Middle East and North Africa region. The works are by ten artists from Algeria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran and Egypt. None of these artists has been represented in the Collection before and the acquisitions will significantly [...]

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 [...]

New Prize Created by Victor Pinchuk Honors Artists Age 35 and UnderNew Prize Created by Victor Pinchuk Honors Artists Age 35 and Under

NEW YORK, NY.- A new prize recognizing artists age 35 and under would provide the winner with $100,000 and help from mentors like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, the prize’s creator announced Tuesday. The Future Generation Art Prize is the creation of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, whose namesake is a Ukrainian billionaire and art collector. Artists in the age group will apply online for the prize, which will be awarded every two years. A group of 100 art professionals from [...]

David Hockney’s Bigger Trees Near Warter Presented at Tate Britain

LONDON.- David Hockney gifted Bigger Trees near Warter 2007 to Tate in 2008. The oil painting, his largest ever, was made on fifty canvas panels and was executed outside, en plein air. Measuring 4.6 x 12.2 metres (15 x 40 feet), its subject is a typical Yorkshire landscape, west of Bridlington. The work was first exhibited in 2007 at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. David Hockney also presented Tate with two digital photographic renderings of the painting on paper sheets [...]

Penelope Curtis named new Tate Britain director

Penelope Curtis, curator of the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, has been appointed the new director of Tate Britain. Dr Curtis, 48, a specialist in sculpture and 20th-century British art, will succeed Stephen Deuchar, who has held the role for 11 years and is leaving to become director of the Art Fund. Dr Curtis will take up her appointment at Tate Britain next April. Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate galleries, said Dr Curtis had made an “outstanding contribution” [...]