Rabu, 02 Mei 2012

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

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


The Danforth Museum Shows the "Boston Ten and Beyond"

Posted: 01 May 2012 10:05 PM PDT

artwork: Two untitled works by the Boston Ten Collaborative (Morgan Bulkeley & Phillip Knoll), 2006-2008 - Ink of paper - Each 7" x 10" Collection of the Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA. On view in "Boston Ten and Beyond" until May 20th.

Framingham, Massachusetts.- The Danforth Museum is pleased to present "Boston Ten and Beyond", on view at the museum through May 20th. The exhibition consists of over 30 collaborative pieces selected from work recently acquired by the Museum. This past January twenty-four individual artists donated a total of 113 works, created together as part of a group project.  This donation represents the single largest collection of work gifted to the Museum to date—and perhaps the most unique. This show represents collaboration between 24 artists, each working in their own way to create works that blend individual styles.


Some works walk the line between the real and surreal, some display interest in the graphic novel or pop realism, some embrace the painterly brushwork of neo-expressionism.  The resulting work is compelling and forceful—a sum of many creative parts. Contributing artists include Miroslav Antic, Gerry Bergstein, Gail Boyajian, Morgan Bulkeley, Mark Cooper, Todd McKie, Ann Neely, Scott Prior and numerous others.

artwork: Two untitled works by the Boston Ten Collaborative (Morgan Bulkeley, Jessica Hess, Phillip Knoll, Todd McKie, Ian Ramsey & Miroslav Antic), 2006-2008 Ink on paper - Each 7" x 10" - Collection of the Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA. On view in "Boston Ten and Beyond" until May 20th.

Collaboration began in 2006, following an opening for a show for a group calling themselves the Boston Ten at the Lascano Gallery in Great Barrington, MA.  Artist and curator Morgan Bulkeley described hosting an after show party at his house during which "A bunch of us sat on our front porch on Mount Washington drinking wine and beer, reveling in seeing each other after all these years. Most of us had studios together in Boston in the 70's and 80's and this reunion reignited our collective creativity. Mark Cooper had brought paper and paints which we started working on and passing around the crowd for additions. We all agreed; that day was close to what heaven must be like."  This magical afternoon was reminiscent of those enjoyed by Surrealist poets in 1920's Paris when "exquisite corpse" parlor games were all the rage. When Bulkeley experienced a medical condition that interrupted his usual method of working, he again called upon the process to connect with friends—accessing the creative unconscious of a group that had grown beyond its original circle. "In the summer of 2007 my glaucoma made it impossible to work on large paintings, but I could see close up and I started doing some 7"x10" beginnings, which I handed, or sent, to the Boston Ten group and other friends. The first results were a splendid surprise; and several of those involved began new pieces to send around the group. The project had such a life of its own that I would run to the mailbox to see if anything had arrived." A selection of these drawings was shown in 2008 at the Ferrin Gallery in Pittsfield, MA, and work on the project continued through January, 2012 when the group decided to gift the entire collection to the Danforth Museum. The Museum is now organizing a future exhibition of all drawings, alongside work by participating artists. An exhibition catalog to archive the collection is planned.

artwork: Boston Ten Collaborative (Morgan Bulkeley and Jessica Hess) - "Untitiled" 2006-08,  Ink on paper - 10" x 7" - Collection of the Danforth Museum On view in "Boston Ten and Beyond" until May 20th.

Established as a grass roots organization in 1975 by a committed group of citizens, the Danforth Museum of Art has grown to become a vital cultural resource. Located in Framingham, Massachusetts, 30 miles west of Boston, the Museum provides visitors with entertaining and educational experiences in the visual arts. The Danforth educates the public through its collection of American art, changing exhibits of contemporary artists, classes and workshops in the Museum School, and a variety of community outreach programs. Focusing on American art from 18th century to present day, the Danforth Museum of Art is dedicated to showing the very best examples of contemporary art by both emerging and established artists, as well as an exploration of the School of Boston Expressionism. Their compelling exhibitions and permanent collection of over 3,500 works of art offer countless opportunities for all ages to explore a range of media and artistic forms of expression. Among the highlights of the collection, which specializes in 19th and 20th century American art, are such well-known artists as Gilbert Stuart, James McNeill Whistler, Charles Sprague Pearce, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Albert Bierstadt, Yves Tanguy, Karl Knaths, Thomas Hart Benton and Faith Ringgold. The museum's mission strongly supports education, the 400 yearly studio art courses offered in the Museum School, family workshops and artist lectures offer Museum members and visitors numerous opportunities to learn and create. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.danforthmuseum.org

Museo Arte Reina Sofía explores 'The Invention of the 20th Century'

Posted: 01 May 2012 10:03 PM PDT

artwork: Salvador Dali - The Endless Enigma, 1938 - Oil on canvas - Collection Museo Nacional, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia

Madrid, Spain - The art critic and historian Carl Einstein was one of the most important and multifaceted personalities of the 20th-century artistic avant-garde. His books, articles and essays were fundamental pieces for the critical study of the avant-garde movements; in them he introduced the West to African art and ratified Cubism as a movement in its own right. His intellectual oeuvre, rediscovered in recent decades, is now paid tribute at the MNCARS. This is the first international exhibition to offer a visual description of the work of Einstein, a key figure in visual arts as well as literature, theatre, film and political action.

Art in Hamburg in the 1920s and Onward at Hamburger Kunsthalle

Posted: 01 May 2012 10:00 PM PDT

artwork: Karl Kluth (1898-1972) - "Küste in Nordschleswig", 1931. - Oil on canvas, 75 x 100 cm. - © Nachlass Karl Kluth © Hamburger Kunsthalle / bpk. Photo: Elke Walford.

HAMBURG.- As part of the festival "Himmel auf Zeit" – die 20er Jahre in Hamburg ("A Temporary Heaven" – the 1920s in Hamburg), the Hamburger Kunsthalle is highlighting the diversity of the city's art scene in the period after the First World War. In the years between the foundation of the Weimar Republic and the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship, Hamburg's avant-garde art scene was dominated by four different movements: one was a style strongly oriented towards contemporary French painting, while another reflected emerging expressionist tendencies; this in turn gave way to Magic Realism and – from the second half of the 1920s onwards – there was also a distinct move from objective depiction towards abstract pictorial forms.

Carroll Dunham exhibits at Skarstedt Gallery

Posted: 01 May 2012 09:56 PM PDT

 

New York City - Bigger names have come and gone, but few careers in painting have been more consistently interesting over the last 25 years than Carroll Dunham's. Mr. Dunham, who is 58 and lives in New York, is known for his cartoonish paintings of blockheaded men with penis-shaped, bullet-firing noses, who star in hectic stories of sexual conflict and global warfare. Driven equally by rage, anxiety and hilarity, his paintings deliver an uncommonly potent combination of formal punch, narrative intrigue and metaphorical resonance.

The Belvedere Museum Presents Austrian Avant-Garde Artist Curt Stenvert

Posted: 01 May 2012 09:54 PM PDT

artwork: Curt Stenvert - "Young Widow", 1971 - Collage - 25 x 25 cm. - Courtesy of Galerie remixx, Graz. © VBK Vienna. On view at the Belvedere, Vienna in "Curt Stenvert: NEODADAPOP" until January 15th 2012.

Vienna.- The Belvedere is proud to present " Curt Stenvert : NEODADAPOP", on view at the museum's Orangerie through January 15th 2012. The Austrian avant-gardist Curt Stenvert (1920–1992), who was born as Kurt Steinwendner, made his first appearance as a painter, before he gained international recognition with his films and, starting in 1962, with his object art. "NEODADAPOP" is the first show to present the artist's complete oeuvre. During his studies under Albert Paris Gütersloh and Fritz Wotruba at the Vienna Academy , Stenvert primarily dealt with the themes of movement and perspective, which found their expression in sculptures made of aluminium and acrylic glass. His "Violinist in Four Phases of Movement" (1947) earned the founder member of the legendary Art Club admiration from renowned colleagues, including Marc Adrians: "Standing in front of it, one was simply astounded that it was possible to dissolve a sculpture into movement."


Schirn Kunsthalle to host A Major Retrospective of The Hungarian Artist László Moholy-Nagy

Posted: 01 May 2012 09:51 PM PDT

artwork: László Moholy-Nagy - Composition A 19, 1927 - Oil on canvas, 80 x 96 cm. - Private Collection, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

FRANKFURT.- The Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) became known in Germany through his formative work as a teacher at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau from 1923 to 1928. His pioneering theories on art as a testing ground for new forms of expression and their application to all areas of modern life are still influential today. Comprising roughly 170 works – paintings, photographs and photograms, sculptures and films, as well as stage set designs and typographical projects - the retrospective encompasses all phases of his oeuvre. On the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the foundation of the Bauhaus, it will thus offer a survey of the wide range of Moholy-Nagy's creative output to the public for the first time since the last major exhibition of his work in Kassel in 1991. On exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle from 8 October through 7 February, 2010.

artwork: László Moholy-Nagy Untitled (orange grid),c. 1943, pencil on paper, 8" x 11" No other teacher at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, nor nearly any other artist of the 1920s in Germany, an epoch so rich in utopian designs, developed such a wide range of ideas and activities as Moholy-Nagy. His work bears evidence to the fact that he considered painting and film, photography and sculpture, stage set design, drawing, and the photogram to be of equal importance. Whether in his early work at the Bauhaus or in his late work in the USA, he continually fell back upon these means of expression. Using them alternately, he varied them and took them up again as parts of a universal concept whose pivot is to be seen in the alert, curious, and unrestrained experimental mind of the "multimedia" artist himself. Long before the word "media designer" was invented and people began to talk about professional "marketing," Moholy-Nagy worked in these fields, too – as a guiding intellectual force concerned with new technical facilities, design and educational instruments. "All design areas of life are closely interlinked," he wrote about 1925. Despite his motto expressing "the unity of art and technology," Moholy-Nagy was no uncritical admirer of the machine age, but rather a humanist who was open-minded about technology. His fundamental attitude as an artist may be summed up as aimed at improving the quality of life, avoiding specialization, and employing science and technology for the enrichment and heightening of human experience.

artwork: László Moholy-Nagy "Landschaft mit Häusern", 1919 ["Landscape with Houses"] Oil on canvas - Private collectionMoholy-Nagy's aesthetically and conceptually radical approach already becomes apparent in the classical arts, in painting and sculpture. His so-called Telephone Pictures, which he dictated to somebody by telephone, exemplify this dimension: using a special graph paper and a color chart, he worked out the composition and colors of the pictures and had them executed according to his telephonic instructions by the employees of a sign factory. He also pursued new paths with his famous Light-Space Modulator of 1930, describing his gesamtkunstwerk composed of color, light, and movement as an "apparatus for the demonstration of the effects of light and movement."

It was equally new territory he conquered in the fields of photography and film: with his cameraless photography, his photograms, and his abstract films such as Light Play Black, White, Gray from 1930, Moholy-Nagy is still regarded as one of the most important twentieth-century photographers. Presenting his The Room of Our Time, the Schirn offers a concise abstract of the artist's work. The sketches for this environment, which assembles all his theories, date back as far as 1930 and will be realized in the Schirn on the occasion of the Bauhaus anniversary in 2009 for the first time. This theory and presentation space will confront the visitor with Moholy-Nagy's innovations in the new media, in exhibition design, and in light projection in a condensed form.

The SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT is one of Europe's most renowned exhibition institutions. Since 1986, more than 180 exhibitions have been realized, among them major surveys dedicated to Vienna Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism, to "Women Impressionists" and the history of photography, to subjects like shopping and the relationship between art and consumerism, the visual art of the Stalin era, the Nazarenes, or the new Romanticism in present-day art. Artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Frida Kahlo, Bill Viola, Arnold Schönberg, Henri Matisse, Julian Schnabel, James Lee Byars, Yves Klein, and Carsten Nicolai were presented in comprehensive solo shows. Visit : www.schirn-kunsthalle.de/index.php?lang=en

Edward del Rosario Opens 4th Solo Show at Richard Heller Gallery

Posted: 01 May 2012 09:37 PM PDT

artwork: Edward del Rosario - Civilization I, 2011 - Oil on linen over panel, 30 x 36 in. - Courtesy of Richard Heller Gallery


SANTA MONICA, CA.-
Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, presents the fourth Los Angeles solo exhibition for New York based painter, Edward del Rosario. The exhibition is on view from March 26th through April 30th, 2011. Del Rosario started his artistic practice as a performance artist and his sense of theatrical staging still influences the work. The actions and interactions of his cast of children, reptiles and animal human hybrids are carefully choreographed and suspended in space. The work is skillfully executed with a fine sense of balance between comedy, tragedy and the absurd. To quote the artist: "When I was younger, there was a time when we (my family) would say the rosary to a giant doll during the months of May and October."

LewAllen Galleries Presented Michael Roque Collins in "Tides of Memory"

Posted: 01 May 2012 09:34 PM PDT

artwork: Michael Roque Collins - "Growing Behind the Arcenale" - Oil on linen - 183.2  x  254.3 cm. - Courtesy LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe. Exhibited in "Michael Roque Collins: Tides of Memory" at the Railyard Gallery.

Santa Fe, New Mexico.- LewAllen Galleries are proud to present "Michael Roque Collins: Tides of Memory", that was on view at the Railyard Gallery from November 4th through December 11th. Michael Roque Collins's art is equally lauded for its visual and allegorical intensities. Dually portentous and promising, his works navigate between literal and symbolic landscapes that propose a dynamic plurality of possible meanings informed by both ancient and modern modes of transcendentalism.
Michael Roque Collins produces some of the most deeply affecting figurative expressionism seen today in contemporary art. His lush oil paintings rip deep meaning from thick paint and bold line. Layering and slicing with his brush and palette knife, he mines the metaphorical mysteries of archetypal symbols—especially those of regeneration and renewal.

The Cavalier Gallery in Greenwich CT Shows New Work by Edward Minoff

Posted: 01 May 2012 09:33 PM PDT

artwork: Edward Minoff  - "First Light", 2010 - Oil on linen, 46 X 60 inches - Image courtesy of Cavalier Gallery - © the artist.

Greenwich, CT.- The Cavalier Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of recent works by the brilliant young realist, Edward Minoff. Featuring his latest monumental seascape "Selene" alongside several additional seascapes, still life, and figurative works will be on view from April 21st until May 11th. For his seascapes, and like the Hudson River School artists (including Frederic Edwin Church, Asher B. Durand, and William Trost Richards) whom he counts as inspiration, Minoff spent months carefully analyzing and observing his subject. He took the time to develop detailed notes, drawings, and color studies to aid in his finished piece, as well as using such scientific methods as Munsell color chips and his knowledge of the properties of light and water to achieve an accurate representation.


The Cantor Arts Center Presents "The Legend of Rex Slinkard"

Posted: 01 May 2012 09:21 PM PDT

artwork: Rex Slinkard - "Young Rivers", circa 1915-1916 - Oil on canvas - Courtesy the Cantor Arts Center. On view in "The Legend of Rex Slinkard" from November 9th until February 26th, 2012.

Stanford, CA.- The Cantor Arts Center is proud to present "The Legend of Rex Slinkard", on view at the museum from November 9th through February 26th, 2012. This exhibition of more than 60 works includes oil paintings, charcoal drawings, and pen-and-watercolor sketches that convey the breadth and strength of Slinkard's short-lived artistic development. The Cantor Arts Center is the primary repository of paintings and sketches by the early 20th-century California artist Rex Slinkard (1887–1918), who died in the influenza epidemic of 1918 while he was serving in the military. During his brief life, Slinkard emerged from his roots as a California rancher to become a painter who helped influence the modernist bent of the emerging California art scene. He studied with Robert Henri in New York City, where he shared a studio with George Bellows and established personal contacts with well-known people in the worlds of visual and literary arts, before returning to Los Angeles, where he painted and taught.


artwork: George Bellows - "Rex", circa 1914-15 Oil on canvas - 34" x 29-1/2" Courtesy the Cantor Arts Center. The exhibition, on view in the Center's Ruth Levison Halperin Gallery, includes an oil portrait by George Bellows of Slinkard, entitled "Portrait of Rex" (c. 1915), on loan from a private collection. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition, with essays, a chronology of Slinkard's life, and a fully illustrated checklist of the Center's complete holding of 268 works by Slinkard. Charles C. Eldredge, Ph.D., who touched on Slinkard's work in his influential exhibition "American Imagination and Symbolist Painting" (1980), and Geneva Gano, Ph.D., contribute essays to the publication, giving context to Slinkard's life and illuminating his artistic legacy. The catalogue is available for sale in the Cantor Arts Center bookshop.

The title of this exhibition comes from artist Marsden Hartley's tribute "Rex Slinkard—Ranchman and Poet-Painter," which referred to the late artist's reputation as "the legend of Rex Slinkard." The tribute became the foreword in the catalogue for Slinkard's memorial exhibitions that were held in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City in 1919 and 1920. Hartley also indicated that the nation had "lost a true, pure artist—as well as a possible great one."  To complement the exhibition and to support Stanford's academic program in American studies, two oil paintings by Marsden Hartley are on loan from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis) for the 2011–2012 academic year. "Painting No. 2" (1913) and "Elsa" (1916) by Hartley are on view in the Center's Marie Stauffer Sigall Gallery of early modern art.

artwork: Rex Slinkard - "Tehachapi", circa 1914 - Oil on canvas - 32" x 37" Courtesy the Cantor Arts Center. - On view until February 26th, 2012.

The Cantor Arts Center boasts a proud and venerable history, as it was conceived of in tandem with the founding of Stanford University itself. The Stanford family, including Leland Jr., traveled the world collecting objects of art and cultural interest. The museum was originally created to make this collection available to students and the public. It has withstood natural disasters and periodic neglect, only to be resurrected, renewed, and expanded, with its collections stronger than ever, thanks to the passionate dedication of Stanford faculty and staff, and art lovers in the surrounding community. One of the highlights of Cantor Arts Center is the Rodin sculpture garden, which contains 20 bronzes. Among them are the famous "Gates of Hell", "Adam, Eve", "The Three Shades", and "The Thinker". "The Burghers of Calais" is displayed in the Stanford Main Quad. In total, the Cantors donated 187 of Rodin's works, making Stanford University the third largest Rodin collection in the world after the Musée Rodin in Paris and the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, PA. The Papua New Guinea sculpture garden, southwest of the Stanford Main Quad, presents 40 works, unique examples of the striking traditional Visual Arts of Papua New Guinea. The Cantor Arts Center's other outdoor collection includes 35 other 19th- to 21st-century sculptures sited around campus. "Stone River," created in 2001 by British artist Andy Goldsworthy, can be found in front of the historic museum building, sited slightly below-grade in a small grove beyond visitor parking. A campus sculpture map is available. The museum also contains a cafe, Cafe Cool, and a Bookshop. Visit the museum's website at ... http://museum.stanford.edu

Hungarian Hunt from Paris to Nagybánya 1904-1914

Posted: 01 May 2012 09:19 PM PDT

artwork: Tihanyi Lajos Onarckep

Budapest, Hungary - This exhibition is an endeavour to present the fauvist current in Hungarian painting, which emerged in the first decade of the 20th century and which has never been presented by any other exhibition.  The artists whose work is displayed here - Róbert Berény, Géza Bornemisza, Béla Czóbel, Sándor Galimberti, Vilmos Perlrott Csaba, Lajos Tihanyi, Sándor Ziffer and others - did not form a group, and did not aspire to conceive an original theory.  However, they were closely knit by a common knowledge of French painting, first of all Gauguin's and Cézanne's art, as well as by a ready acceptance of the approach preached by Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, and Marquet, representatives of the then most recent French pictorial trend, Fauvism.  These Hungarian artists developed their own particular style, blending, besides the French inspiration, the Hungarian Nagybánya School tradition and accomplishments in plein air painting.

Black & White Gallery to exhibit Artificial Realities ~ Erik Benson / Jan Dunning / Leigh Tarentino

Posted: 01 May 2012 09:15 PM PDT

artwork: Erik Benson - Liars (Talking Skulls), 2006 - Acrylic on canvas over panel - 40 in. x 72 in. - Courtesy Black & White Gallery, NYC
New York City - BLACK & WHITE GALLERY is proud to present "Artificial Realities" from February 20th through March 28th, 2009. This exhibition brings together three engaging contemporary artists whose works although executed in highly individual and very distinctive manners convey common interest in exploring the relationships between built and natural environments.  Opening Reception: Friday, February 20th, 6-8pm.

Richard Diebenkorn Works on View in Two Exhibitions at Cantor Arts Center

Posted: 01 May 2012 09:11 PM PDT

artwork: Richard Diebenkorn - Untitled (Tomato & Knife),1963 - Oil on canvas - Lent by the Santa Cruz Island Foundation Credit: Santa Cruz Island Foundation - Photograph: William B.Dewey - © Estate of Richard Diebenkorn


STANFORD, CA - Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University presents two exhibitions of Richard Diebenkorn's work from July 23 through November 9, 2008. Diebenkorn (1922–1993), who spent most of his life in California, studied art at Stanford in the 1940s and returned to Stanford in 1963–64 as artist-in-residence. He and members of his family have generously donated works of his art to Stanford's art museum, now the Cantor Arts Center.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum Opens “The Great American Hall of Wonders”

Posted: 01 May 2012 09:06 PM PDT

artwork: George Inness - "The Lackawanna Valley", about 1856 - Oil on canvas - National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Gift of Mrs. Huttleson Rodgers.

WASHINGTON, D.C.-
The exhibition "The Great American Hall of Wonders" examines the 19th-century American belief that the people of the United States shared a special genius for innovation. It explores this belief through works of art, mechanical inventions and scientific discoveries, and captures the excitement of citizens who defined their nation as a "Great Experiment" sustained by the inventive energies of Americans in every walk of life. "The Great American Hall of Wonders" will be on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum from July 15 through Jan. 8, 2012. The museum is the only venue for the exhibition, which is organized by Claire Perry, an independent curator who specializes in 19th-century American cultural history. Until 2008, Perry was curator of American art at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.

"The Great American Hall of Wonders" investigates questions that are still critical today. The exhibition reveals both the successful experiments of the past, as well as the ones that went awry, and invites today's citizens to explore a valuable legacy left by the founding fathers: a belief in the transformative power of American inventiveness.

artwork: Winslow Homer - "The Initials", 1864, Oil on canvas, Private collection."'The Great American Hall of Wonders' examines the belief in American ingenuity that energized all aspects of 19th-century society, from the planning of scientific expeditions and the development of new mechanical devices to the painting of landscapes and scenes of everyday life," said Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "The museum now occupies the noble historic building that was the Patent Office's home during the Industrial Revolution, so it is a fitting place to display this exhibition about the innovative character of Americans."

The exhibition features 161 objects, including paintings and drawings by pre-eminent artists, including John James Audubon, Albert Bierstadt, George Catlin, Frederic Edwin Church, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Thomas Moran, Samuel F.B. Morse and Charles Willson Peale, as well as sculptures, prints, survey photographs, zoological and botanical illustrations, patent models and engineering diagrams. The exhibition explores six subjects that helped shape America during the period—the buffalo, giant sequoia and Niagara Falls represent American beliefs about abundant natural resources for fueling the nation's progress, while inventions such as the clock, the gun and the railroad linked improvements in technology with the purposeful use of time.

artwork: Charles Willson Peale - The Artist in His Museum, 1822, Oil on canvas - Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (Joseph Harrison, Jr. Collection)Peale's iconic self-portrait "The Artist in His Museum" (1822), which will greet visitors at the entrance to the exhibition, embodies the ideas set forth in the exhibition. Peale—museum founder, artist, scientist and inventor—depicts himself at the threshold of his museum, a democratic reinterpretation of an Old World "wunderkammer" or cabinet of curiosities. Its galleries were filled with portraits of the founding fathers, natural history specimens, mechanical inventions and a massive mastodon skeleton. At a time when many Americans feared that the country would not survive the passing of the founders' generation, Peale insisted that it was not the revolutionary generation, but rather invention itself that lay at the heart of the national project. The next generation began to define what their democratic nation would be in their scientific and artistic descriptions of America's bounteous nature and in mechanical inventions aimed at improving their lives.

"The United States began with an act of imagination," said Perry. "The topic of the exhibition is not science, art or mechanical innovation per se, but rather what Americans of the 19th century believed about those endeavors and how they deployed them to direct their lives and the nation. They considered ingenuity to be their most important asset. Over the course of the century the United States as we know it came into being, and from all indications the process was a seat-of-the-pants business. As we confront the complexities of our 21st-century stewardship, knowing where we have come from may show us where we are headed."

On July 4, 1836, President Andrew Jackson authorized the construction of a patent office where the museum's National Historic Landmark building is located. Construction began later that year. The building was designed to celebrate American invention, technical ingenuity and the scientific advancements that the patent process represents. The museum's building was always intended for public display of patent models that were submitted by inventors. By the 1850s, more than 100,000 people each year visited the building, which became known as the "temple of invention," to see the designs that filled display cabinets in the exhibition galleries. In addition to patent models, the government's historical, scientific and art collections were housed on the third floor. The Patent Office occupied parts of the building from 1840 to 1932.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art. Visit : www.americanart.si.edu/

Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States. Among the significant artists represented in its collection are Nam June Paik, Jenny Holzer, David Hockney, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Singer Sargent, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Albert Bierstadt, Edmonia Lewis, Thomas Moran, James Gill, Edward Hopper, and Winslow Homer.

The museum has two innovative public spaces, the Luce Foundation Center for American Art and the Lunder Conservation Center The Luce Foundation Center is the first visible art storage and study center in Washington, D.C. It presents more than 3,300 objects in 64 secure glass cases, which quadruples the number of artworks from the permanent collection on public view.

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Posted: 01 May 2012 09:05 PM PDT


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.

This Week in Review in Art News

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