Art Knowledge News - Keeping You in Touch with the World of Art...

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• The CaixaForum in Barcelona Welcomes Our Editor ~ A Cultural Gem In Spain
• Reynolda House Museum Only Venue to Host "American Impressions"
• Newark Museum Unveils a Commissioned Installation by Yinka Shonibare MBE
• Art Gallery of South Australia to Show Comprehensive Study of Italian Printmaking
• Pushkin Museum Loans Painting by Bronzino to the Old Masters Gallery in Dresden
• New Museum Presents C.L.U.E. (Color Location Ultimate Experience)
• Lyman Allyn Art Museum opens 50 Years of Collecting Contemporary Art
• The National Gallery of Denmark opens "Nature Strikes Back"
• The Work of Devorah Sperber at the Brooklyn Museum
• Palazzo Strozzi to Show Masterpieces of Trompe-l'oeil from Antiquity to the Present
• Photographer Susan Silas Retraces A Holocaust Death March ~ 'Helmbrechts Walk'
• Centre Pompidou Paris Announces Five Week Festival of Artistic Encounters
• Focus on Andrea Mantegna: 'Mark the Evangelist' opens at the Stadel Museum
• Eli Wilner & Company Celebrates 25th Anniversary & Completion of Over 10,000 Framing Projects
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The CaixaForum in Barcelona Welcomes Our Editor ~ A Cultural Gem In Spain Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:44 PM PST One of Spain's top tourist attractions, the CaixaForum has a fascinating history. Inaugurated in February 2002, CaixaForum is the Barcelona headquarters of "La Caixa" Foundation, a social and cultural foundation created by "La Caixa" savings bank. The "La Caixa" Foundation is a non-profit institution, created at the beginning of the 1980s to supervise the bank's charitable works (which had been part of their philosophy since being established at the start of the twentieth century). The foundation is active in a wide range of cultural areas, including providing public libraries, organizing music festivals, the provision of social services and medical research. However, it is for its museums that it is best known. As well as 2 large science museums (in Barcelona and Madrid), the foundation has art museums and exhibition spaces in Madrid, Mallorca, Palma, Lleida, Tarragona and Barcelona, under the "CaixaForum" banner. The Foundation started collecting contemporary art in 1985 and since then it has accumulated over 950 works. CaixaForum Barcelona is based in a former textile factory in Barcelona that serves both as the foundation's headquarters and also as the main art exhibition space. Commissioned by the industrialist Casimir Casaramona i Puigcercós as a textile factory, this art-nouveau style building was designed by the famous Barcelona architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch and opened in 1911. A triumph of modern, enlightened working conditions and stunning architecture, the building immediately became a design icon for the city, winning local design awards and with many locals refusing to believe that behind the fabulous exterior, it hid a mundane textile factory. The bare brickwork is topped by Catalan vaults resting on cast-iron columns and enclosing light-filled, spacious workshops. By necessity, a long and low building, the architect broke its silhouette with battlements and two slender towers. Unfortunately, it only survived as a factory for a few years before becoming first a warehouse and then stables and garages for the National Police Force. "La Caixa" acquired the building in 1963, and in 1992 it was decided to return this building to the people of Barcelona, and the country as a whole, while giving it a new function with social, cultural and educational aims, it thus became the CaixaForum. Local and international architects, including the RIBA gold medal winning Japanese architect, Arata Isozaki, who designed the main entrance (a sculpted structure in the form of metal trees covered by panes of glass) and visitors' reception area in the Centre, contributed to the refurbishment and extension work. The building now provides 3,600 m2 of exhibition space (in 5 exhibition galleries), a 350-seat auditorium, a kids' art workshop, café-restaurant and gallery shop. It has become one of Barcelona's most dynamic, active and lively cultural centers. From the entrance, escalators and the lift run from Isozaki's sculpture down to the open-air English courtyard below, which gives onto the foyer. This part of the building also houses the "Secret garden", a minimalist, intimate, closed-off area that allows the visitor to clear their mind before encountering more of the artworks. Visit the museum's website at: http://obrasocial.lacaixa.es/nuestroscentros/caixaforumbarcelona/caixaforumbarcelona_es.html The permanent exhibition features works from the "La Caixa" Foundation collection. Starting from a small collection of Catalan art (the first purchases were group of works by the Catalan movements "Dau al Set" and "El Paso"), the foundation now contains a selection of works which show Catalan art in context through broader Spanish and international works. Amongst over 150 Spanish artists featured in the collection are Miquel Barceló, Juan Navarro Baldeweg, Txomin Badiola, Cristina Iglesias, Pello Irazu, Albert Rafols Casamada, Susana Solano, Juan Muñoz, Ana Laura Alaéz and Rogelio López Cuenca. These sit alongside international works from Joseph Beuys, Manuel Sáez, Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Saul LeWitt, Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, James Turell, Richard Long, Mario Merz, Jannis Kounellis and Giovanni Anselmo. In 2010, the "La Caixa" foundation came to an agreement with the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) to share funding and artworks. This will allow shared use by both institutions of a joint collection containing approximately 4,450 works worth about 160 million euros as well as subsequent new acquisitions. The first fruits of this agreement will be exhibitions starting later in 2011 that bring artists works from both collections together. In addition to the permanent collection works on display, exhibited under the title "Once an Art Nouveau factory", the CaixaForum have three temporary exhibitions. Until 20 February, the "Roads to Arabia" exhibition features fascinating archaeological finds from Saudi Arabia that illustrate the country's long history as a crossroads on international trade routes. "Human, All Too Human", which also ends on 20 February 2011 features Spanish Art of the 1950 and 1960s. Inspired by Friedrich Nietzche's book of the same title, the exhibition looks at the work of Spanish artists influenced, directly or indirectly, by Nietzche's confrontation with the German romantic ideal. The exhibition consists of a selection of works from that period from the museum's own collection by Antonio Saura, Manuel Millares, Antoni Clavé, José Guerrero and Equipo Crónica. Alongside their own works, the exhibition also includes a series of paintings by Picasso, Dalí and Tàpies, from other collections, accompanied by a selection of period films by Joaquim Jordà, Juan Antonio Nieves Conde and Frédéric Roussif, among others. Until 17 April 2011, "Building the Revolution: Russian Art and Architecture 1915-1935" highlights Soviet avant-garde works from the 1920s and 1930s. This was a period highlighted by the radical proposals of architects like Konstantin Melnikov and Moisei Ginsburg, and visual artists of the constructivist movement including, Liubov Popova, Vladimir Tatlin, Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitzky and Gustav klucis. The exhibition consists of about 250 paintings, archival photographs of buildings constructed between 1920 and 1930, from the State Museum of Architecture in Moscow Schusev, drawings, paintings and models from the Costakis Collection of the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki and a selection color photographs by British photographer Richard Pare taken between 1992 and 2010 and showing architecture of the period in its current forms. If, like me, you really enjoy a well done art exhibition presentation, and really enjoy interesting architecture that was transformed into a visionary cultural center . . .then check out the CaixaForum, you'll get to enjoy both. ANNOUNCEMENT: Our Editor has been invited to visit Museums and cultural sites worldwide, and they are featured on our Home Page (center). Because of the Editor's travel we will be posting many interesting articles from our archives, some of the BEST Articles and Art Images that appeared in your magazine during the past six plus (6+) years . . and we are publishing current art news articles on the left hand side under RECENT NEWS .. Enjoy

Reynolda House Museum Only Venue to Host "American Impressions" Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:43 PM PST   WINSTON-SALEM, NC - Reynolda House Museum of American Art will host "American Impressions: Selections from the National Academy Museum"  The exhibition features 32 masterworks of American Impressionism from the National Academy Museum in New York complemented by four masterworks from the Reynolda House collection. On view February 28 through June 28, 2009. Reynolda House is the only venue outside of the National Academy Museum to host the exhibition, which is organized by the National Academy Museum, New York.

Newark Museum Unveils a Commissioned Installation by Yinka Shonibare MBE Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:42 PM PST NEWARK, NJ.- The Newark Museum, located in Newark, New Jersey, has commissioned a major site-specific installation by the internationally acclaimed artist Yinka Shonibare MBE to commemorate the Museum's Centennial. One of Shonibare's most ambitious works to date, Party Time: Re-imagine America is set in the mahogany-paneled dining room of the Ballantine House, the 1885 mansion and National Historic Landmark that is part of the Newark Museum campus, where it will be on view through January 3, 2010. Concurrent to the Newark Museum commission, The Brooklyn Museum presents the first major survey of the work of Yinka Shonibare MBE on view through September 20, 2009.

Art Gallery of South Australia to Show Comprehensive Study of Italian Printmaking Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:40 PM PST ADELAIDE, AU - Some of the masterpieces of Italian printmaking go on rare display in the Art Gallery of South Australia's new exhibition, A beautiful line. The exhibition, which is the most comprehensive study of Italian printmaking undertaken at the Gallery in over 25 years, includes 135 prints dating from the mid-fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, by masters such as Andrea Mantegna, Titian, Tiepolo, Canaletto, and Piranesi. A beautiful line: Italian prints from Mantegna to Piranesi is showing only at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide, daily from 20 August until 31 October 2010.

Pushkin Museum Loans Painting by Bronzino to the Old Masters Gallery in Dresden Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:39 PM PST DRESDEN.- The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts has loaned the painting The Holy Family with the Infant (Madonna Stroganoff) to the Old Masters Gallery in Dresden for a period of three months. Bronzino painted this masterpiece in 1545 and the loan is part of an exchange that has taken a painting by Andrea Mantegna to Moscow. Agnolo di Cosimo (1503 – 1572), usually known as Il Bronzino, or Agnolo Bronzino was an Italian Mannerist painter from Florence. The origin of his nickname, Bronzino is unknown, but could derive from his dark complexion, or from that he gave many of his portrait subjects.

New Museum Presents C.L.U.E. (Color Location Ultimate Experience) Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:38 PM PST   NEW YORK, NY - This fall, the New Museum on the Bowery presents "C.L.U.E. (color location ultimate experience), Part 1, 2007," a special project coinciding with major surveys of work by painters Mary Heilmann and Elizabeth Peyton. A collaboration between artist A.L. Steiner and movement artists' robbinschilds (Layla Childs and Sonya Robbins), "C.L.U.E." morphs and changes to accommodate the spaces it temporarily occupies. In its rebirth at the New Museum, it takes the form of site-specific performance, multi-channel video and video projection, created specifically for the museum's unique gallery located on its interior staircase between the fourth and third floor galleries.

Lyman Allyn Art Museum opens 50 Years of Collecting Contemporary Art Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:37 PM PST   New London, CT - Lyman Allyn Art Museum announces a new exhibition, Fifty Years of Collecting Contemporary Art at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, opening to the public on March 15 and on view through August 17, 2008. Contemporary art poses such questions as - where does the past stop and the present begin?  Where does the local artist meet with and become a colleague of internationally recognized artists? These are questions that will be posed and discussed at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum's galleries this spring.

The National Gallery of Denmark opens "Nature Strikes Back" Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:35 PM PST COPENHAGEN.- Throughout history, mankind has perceived nature differently at different times. During the Middle Ages, nature was mostly regarded as evil and mankind was prey to its whims, which only God could protect us from. This understanding was replaced by a more positive view of nature in the Renaissance, where man begins to regard nature as a useful resource that can be controlled. This way of thinking became increasingly striking in modern times. Nature came to be regarded as inexhaustible and something to be mastered and completely subjected to human needs.

The Work of Devorah Sperber at the Brooklyn Museum Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:34 PM PST Brooklyn, NY - New York artist Devorah Sperber exhibits five of her multi-colored thread-spool installations and two recent works composed of thousands of colored crystals at The Brooklyn Museum.  Included in this exhibition are full-scale recreations of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, as well as Picasso's portrait Gertrude Stein and van Eyck's Man in a Red Turban.  Using spools of thread, Sperber creates a pixilated, three-dimensional, inverted image of a masterpiece, which appears as a colorful abstract to the naked eye.

Palazzo Strozzi to Show Masterpieces of Trompe-l'oeil from Antiquity to the Present Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:32 PM PST FLORENCE, ITALY - Trompe-l'œil is distinguished not just by its realism – after all, still life, perspective painting and photography can all claim to be realistic – but by its wit. In the best trompe-l'œil the artist deliberately sets out to trick you, and then lets you know you have been tricked. The exhibition Art & Illusions celebrates the charm, irony and sometimes irreverence of trompe-l'œil, from antiquity to the present day. This is epitomised by the very first work that the visitor will encounter, Pere Borrell del Caso's painting of a young boy escaping from the rigid confines of a gilded frame.

Photographer Susan Silas Retraces A Holocaust Death March ~ 'Helmbrechts Walk' Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:31 PM PST New York, NY - Susan Silas' work Helmbrechts Walk, 1998-2003 , is a memorial testament to the forced march of 580 female Jewish prisoners at the end of the Second World War. The march began on April 13th 1945 in order to evacuate Helmbrechts, a small satellite unit of the Flossenbürg concentration camp before American troops arrived. Silas' work acts as a visual representation of the 225 miles that the prisoners were forced to walk from the camp in Germany into occupied Czechoslovakia. On view at the Hebrew Union College Museum through 30 June.

Centre Pompidou Paris Announces Five Week Festival of Artistic Encounters Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:29 PM PST PARIS.- From October 21st until November 23rd 2009, the Centre Pompidou's new festival invites a wide-ranging audience to discover today's creation in all its shapes and colours. A time of excitement. The festival offers five weeks of daily programmes: exhibitions, shows, conferences, screenings, living paintings, concerts and performances punctuate the programme of this continuous laboratory. A time of artistic encounters. The festival offers the Centre Pompidou's crossdisciplinary identity to contemporary creators in order to help them in their quest to break down barriers.

Focus on Andrea Mantegna: 'Mark the Evangelist' opens at the Stadel Museum Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:28 PM PST Frankfurt, Germany - The Städel Museum presents Focus on Andrea Mantegna: Mark the Evangelist, c. 1450 (Inv. No. 1046), on view through September 6, 2009. In spite of the signature inscribed in the cartellino near the picture's lower margin, the attribution of the Städel's half-length figure of Saint Mark the Evangelist framed by a stone window, dating from 1450, had long been cast into doubt. It was only after the work had been cleansed and restored in the 1990s that the high quality of the painting on canvas was re-exposed.

Eli Wilner & Company Celebrates 25th Anniversary & Completion of Over 10,000 Framing Projects Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:27 PM PST   NEW YORK CITY - Founded in 1983, Eli Wilner & Company is celebrating 25 years in business. The gallery, indeed the study, connoisseurship and collecting of American frames, have come a long way from the early days when the business began in a fifth floor walk up and period frames were still being discarded by museums and galleries alike. Since that time, Eli Wilner & Company has worked to promote the study and appreciation of period frames as valuable historical objects as well as works of art in their own right. Gradually frames have risen to the forefront of interest in the art world and museum curators and private collectors alike are far more aware than ever before of the transforming influence that a frame provides to an artwork.

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 05 Feb 2011 08:26 PM PST This is a new feature for the subscribers and visitors to Art Knowledge News (AKN), that will enable you to see "thumbnail descriptions" of the last ninety (90) articles and art images that we published. This will allow you to visit any article that you may have missed ; or re-visit any article or image of particular interest. Every day the article "thumbnail images" will change. For you to see the entire last ninety images just click : here . When opened that also will allow you to change the language from English to anyone of 54 other languages, by clicking your language choice on the upper left corner of our Home Page.  You can share any article we publish with the eleven (11) social websites we offer like Twitter, Flicker, Linkedin, Facebook, etc. by one click on the image shown at the end of each opened article.  Last, but not least, you can email or print any entire article by using an icon visible to the right side of an article's headline.

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