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

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• The Most Modern Van Abbemuseum In Eindhoven, The Netherlands Is Toured By AKN Editor
• Artist Carmen Einfinger Wins International Competition to Design Outdoor Gallery
• Reconstruction of Lost Buildings at Pinakothek der Moderne
• Museo del Prado presents "The Company of Captain Reijnier Reael"
• S.C.State Museum Acquires Major Art Collection
• The Dali Collection in St. Petersburg, Florida to Move to Hurricane-proof Building
• Botticelli Exhibition at Stadel Museum Ends with Record Visitor Numbers
• Tate Liverpool shows the Glenn Brown exhibition of The Extraordinary & Alien
• The Maeght Foundation: Jewel of the French Riviera
• Edmund Yaghjian Retrospective at South Carolina State Museum
• National Museum of American History Showcases Two New Exhibits
• Israel Museum shows 'Orphaned Holocaust Art' Through June
• Marc Chagall ~ Monsters, Chimeras and Hybrids
• Andy Goldsworthy Exhibition at Galerie Lelong in New York
• Bonhams London Dedicates Sale to the Artists of Newlyn and St. Ives
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

The Most Modern Van Abbemuseum In Eindhoven, The Netherlands Is Toured By AKN Editor Posted: 17 Jan 2011 08:08 PM PST The Van Abbemuseum, established in 1936, is now one of the most spectacularly designed museums in the Netherlands. The museum, founded by cigar manufacturer Henri van Abbe in 1936, has a long-established reputation for presenting a surprising, progressive programme which raises issues of art and society in an experimental fashion. In 2003 the existing listed monument designed by architect A.J. Kropholler was thoroughly renovated and integrated within architect Abel Cahen's design for an architecturally progressive, large-scale complex. This provided the museum with the necessary expansion in terms of floor space and facilities. The Van Abbemuseum is one of a growing number of museums for the visual arts, in the Netherlands and abroad, where collection and presentation as well as architectural design are a token of their distinctive, contemporary character. Cahen's design has made a prominent contribution to international museum architecture. The Van Abbemuseum lies on the River Dommel and enjoys a surprisingly natural setting. Landscape architects envisioned a substantial widening of the river, adding fish ladders and a nature-friendly river bank. This has established an 'inner lake' in the embrace of the new building that is overlooked by the museum café and its open-air terrace. The museum café is not only accessible via the main entrance, but can also be reached via the footbridge constructed to the rear of the museum. This work of art, a small, vivid-pink house with the illuminated words 'Echt iets voor u' – 'Just your kind of thing' – on the roof is a design by the Eindhoven-based artist and architect John Körmeling. The museum has several of his works in its collection. The shortest covered bridge in the world is an eye-catcher by day or by night. The façade of the new building is clad with natural stone, namely grey Flammet slate from Lapland. This grey shell, which changes in hue from silver-grey to dark anthracite depending on the weather conditions, accentuates the angular, sleek design of the new building, forming an expressive contrast with the light and surprisingly transparent spaces within. The heart of the Van Abbemuseum is a 27-metre-high tower with inward-sloping walls, onto which every floor opens out. Sweeping flights of stairs and a musical lift form striking vertical traverses. Each floor has its own internal structure, sometimes high and monumental, sometimes modest or surprising in form. Though the museum initially strikes one as labyrinthine, it thereby provides space for intimate presentations as well as large-scale exhibitions and monumental installations. The tower, just like the basement, is treated both as an exhibition space and as a workspace where artists can create work in situ. The Belgian designer Maarten van Severen created the interiors for a range of public facilities, turning the Van Abbemuseum into a user-friendly hub of expertise furnished with state-of-the-art digital equipment. Employing his restrained style and refined palette of colours to great effect, he realized the educational spaces, the museum shop and the auditorium. His highly original design for the library, which extends over three floors around an open well, can rightfully be called a masterpiece of applied art in Eindhoven. The Van Abbemuseum celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2011. A theme common to our activities in 2011 will be our endeavour to escape the confines of the familiar museum walls and to enter into increasingly collaborative relations with with events and traveling exhibitions worldwide. The Van Abbemuseum has become internationally known as a place where a cross-fertilisation of ideas takes place through new forms of extra-disciplinary research. Visit the website at : www.vanabbemuseum.nl/en/ The Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, an internationally renowned collection of modern and contemporary art, with great courage and taste built by museum directors as Edy de Wilde, Jean Leering and Rudi Fuchs. The collection includes Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Richard Long, Robert Morris: they are masters of 20th century modern art work. Their work can be found in Eindhoven, at the Van Abbe Museum. Not the most obvious place. In international circles the collection of the Van Abbe Museum is considered as one of the most remarkable in Europe, if not the world. There is also focus on the current situation of the museum, the Van Abbe still able to expand its collection at a time when the value of art is primarily determined by institutional and private collectors. The current and fourth and last part of "Play Van Abbe" is called The Pilgrim, the Tourist, the Flaneur (and the Worker). The title describes the possible roles that a museum visitor could play when looking at an artwork or exhibition. By doing so, the programme focuses directly on criteria that visitors use to make judgements about art. These criteria have become more complex and uncertain over the last years and are no longer limited to beauty or truth. By offering three classical roles to visitors, the museum curators want to encourage a greater playfulness in making personal judgements and understanding the judgements of others. The pilgrim is likely to be more concentrated on the object of art; the tourist on the relation between objects and stories; the flaneur on time and people passing by. In this way, experiences with artworks at the museum become the basis to make new judgements about what art is and how it effects each one of us. The exhibition includes key works by Joseph Beuys, James Lee Byars, Sarah Charlesworth, Erwin van Doorn, Barry Flanagan, Surasi Kusolwong, Richard Long, Marko Peljhan, Oliver Ressler, Katerina Sieverding, Ulay/Abramovic, Yang Zhenzhong, and others. Also on view is "Lissitzky+ Victory over the Sun" until 3 March, 2011.In 2009 the Van Abbemuseum started the large-scale project Lissitzky+. The museum holds the largest collection of Lissitzky's work outside Russia. The exhibition takes the futurist opera, Victory over the Sun, as its starting point. For this show, the Van Abbemuseum is the first institution ever to have rendered important designs by Lissitzky as large-scale, three-dimensional figures, wholly in keeping with Lissitzky's ideological legacy. His work greatly influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements, and he experimented with production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th-century graphic design. The museum's collection of around 3700 works of art. The museum has an experimental approach towards art's role in society. Openness, hospitality and knowledge exchange are important. We challenge ourselves and our visitors to think about art and its place in the world, covering a range of subjects, including the role of the collection as a cultural 'memory' and the museum as a public site. International collaboration and exchange have made the Van Abbemuseum a place for creative cross-fertilisation and a source of surprise, inspiration and imagination for its visitors and participants. ANNOUNCEMENT: Our Editor has been invited to visit Museums and cultural sites in mainland China, Korea, Vietnam. Myanmar, Thailand (Siam), Singapore, Bali and mainland Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Bhutan, Malaysia, Japan, Mongolia, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, and now the Netherlands. 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 . . Enjoy.

Artist Carmen Einfinger Wins International Competition to Design Outdoor Gallery Posted: 17 Jan 2011 08:06 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- New York-based painter Carmen Einfinger has won an international competition to transform Dolna Square in Gdansk, Poland, into a vibrant outdoor gallery. The only U.S.-based artist selected to participate in the competition, now in its third year, Einfinger's proposal ranked above those of seven architects and designers from several European countries. Einfinger's design—"the Scent of Color"—will revitalize the green space, a terminus for one of the city's public buses in the neglected Lower City District, making it a bright, welcoming, gathering point. The project is slated for completion in 2011.

Reconstruction of Lost Buildings at Pinakothek der Moderne Posted: 17 Jan 2011 08:03 PM PST MUNICH.- For years "reconstruction" has been the subject of a heated debate. However, reconstructions can be found since Antiquity, as throughout history buildings have been destroyed and rebuilt if required, for a variety of reasons and with alternating perceptions and definitions of "reconstruction". A look at history and a differentiated view at the concepts can help to set the problems and arguments in a wider historical context, thus relieving the current discussion of its emotional aspect. On view 22 July through 31 October.

Museo del Prado presents "The Company of Captain Reijnier Reael" Posted: 17 Jan 2011 08:01 PM PST MADRID.- "Just to see that painting would make the journey to Amsterdam worthwhile," wrote Vincent van Gogh in 1885, after having seen this work in the Rijksmuseum. He particularly liked the "orange banner in the left corner", he had "seldom seen a more divinely beautiful figure". The painting that caused such a sensation was the group portrait of the crossbowmen's militia under Captain Reijnier Reael, painted by Frans Hals and Pieter Codde in 1633 - 1637. From Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. On loan from the city of Amsterdam.

S.C.State Museum Acquires Major Art Collection Posted: 17 Jan 2011 07:59 PM PST Columbia, SC - The largest and most significant collection of South Carolina art ever acquired by the South Carolina State Museum has Curator of Art Paul Matheny almost beside himself with excitement.  The collection of 104 pieces, assembled over about 20 years by noted art enthusiast Mark Coplan, fits the museum's mission perfectly, Matheny says :

The Dali Collection in St. Petersburg, Florida to Move to Hurricane-proof Building Posted: 17 Jan 2011 07:56 PM PST ST. PETERSBURG, FL.(EFE) - The largest collection of Salvador Dali works outside of his native Spain is being moved to a more secure location, a hurricane-proof, cement and glass building located just blocks away from its original location in St. Petersburg, Florida. The collection of 2,140 pieces, including 96 paintings by the "enfant terrible" of Surrealism, as well as numerous etchings and drawings, will be relocated in a new, $35 million structure in that west-central Florida city that will have a sturdier structure and be less exposed to the elements. The most unique aspect of the new Salvador Dali museum will be its 45 centimeter-thick (18-inch-thick) walls, capable of resisting the impact of a Category 5 hurricane packing winds of up to 265 kilometers (165 miles) per hour.

Botticelli Exhibition at Stadel Museum Ends with Record Visitor Numbers Posted: 17 Jan 2011 07:54 PM PST FRANKFURT.- When the Botticelli exhibition closed its doors on Sunday, 28 February, altogether 367,033 visitors had seen the presentation on the Florentine Renaissance artist. "Botticelli" was thus by far the most successful show in the Städel's history. Previously, the exhibitions at this museum with the highest visitor numbers were "Rembrandt Rembrandt" (2003) with 245,000 visitors and "Cranach the Elder" (2007/08) with 205,000. With its daily average of more than 3,920, the Botticelli exhibition – which opened on 13 November 2009 – also surpassed earlier shows: "Rembrandt Rembrandt" by thirty-nine percent and "Cranach the Elder" by fifty. Of the visitors to the Botticelli exhibition, approximately forty-five percent came from Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region, and about fifty-five percent from the remainder of Germany and abroad. Sixty-seven percent of the visitors claimed to have come to Frankfurt solely for the exhibition.

Tate Liverpool shows the Glenn Brown exhibition of The Extraordinary & Alien Posted: 17 Jan 2011 07:52 PM PST   LIVERPOOL, UK - Tate Liverpool presents today Glenn Brown, on view through May 10, 2009. Borrowing from art history and popular culture, Glenn Brown transforms a familiar visual history into something extraordinary and alien. Paintings by Rembrandt, Fragonard, Salvador Dalí, Frank Auerbach and many others, including the illustrators for science fiction novels, have all been used by the artist as starting blocks. Yet it is not original paintings that Brown turns to for inspiration but reproductions – images printed on postcards, in books or digitised on the internet.

The Maeght Foundation: Jewel of the French Riviera Posted: 17 Jan 2011 07:45 PM PST The French Riviera wasn't always known as a getaway for the rich and famous.  Under the glittery veneer is a subtle beauty that comes not only from the natural surroundings, but also the warmth and joie de vivre of the local residents. The character of the Côte d'Azur began to change at the end of the nineteenth century, when neoimpressionist painter Paul Signac discovered the remarkable quality of the light in St. Tropez.  Signac brought other artists, including Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Henri Charles Manguin, and Georges Seurat. Farther along the Riviera to the east, the medieval "perched" villages of Tourette sur Loup, Vence, and St. Paul de Vence are veritable artist colonies.  Matisse lived near Vence and designed and built the Rosary Chapel nearby.  Marc Chagall is buried in St. Paul's cemetery.  His mosaics turn up in unlikely places including a baptismal font in a church in Vence and the wall of a private garden.

Edmund Yaghjian Retrospective at South Carolina State Museum Posted: 17 Jan 2011 07:43 PM PST Columbia, SC - Edmund Yaghjian was born in Armenia, but made his mark - literally, and with a paint brush - in America, and especially in South Carolina.   A major retrospective of Yaghjian's work can be seen beginning March 16 through Sept.16 at the South Carolina State Museum in the exhibit Edmund Yaghjian: A Retrospective.   Providence, R. I. was where the two-year-old Yaghjian landed with his family in 1907, and his natural talent won him a scholarship to the Rhode Island School of Design, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1930.

National Museum of American History Showcases Two New Exhibits Posted: 17 Jan 2011 07:42 PM PST WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History is featuring more than a century of toy history in a history highlights case, "Toys from the Attic." Showcasing toys from 1825 to 1939, the case explores the changing experience of an American middle-class child. With the improving economy of the 19th century, children were sent to school rather than to work, and adults began to understand the distinct importance of childhood and its specific needs. These changes allowed American children time to play and encouraged greater demand for manufactured toys. Toy companies began to create evermore sophisticated toys intended to entertain, educate and prepare children for adulthood.

Israel Museum shows 'Orphaned Holocaust Art' Through June Posted: 17 Jan 2011 07:39 PM PST   JERUSALEM - The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, presents Orphaned Art: Looted Art from the Holocaust in the Israel Museum, an exhibition exploring the fate of works of art looted during World War II that were subsequently brought to Israel. Culled from 1,200 such works held in custody by the Israel Museum, all of which lack clear ownership history, Orphaned Art features over fifty paintings, drawings, prints, and books, together with a selection of Jewish ceremonial objects, and includes such artists as Jan Both, Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, Marc Chagall, Egon Schiele, and Alfred Sisley.

Marc Chagall ~ Monsters, Chimeras and Hybrids Posted: 17 Jan 2011 07:31 PM PST   NICE, FRANCE - Musée National Marc Chagall presents Marc Chagall - Monsters, Chimeras and hybrids, on view through October 29, 2007. Exhibition organized by the Réunion des des musées nationaux and the Musée National Marc Chagall, Nice. Media partner : Aufeminin.com. Mysterious chimeras, half-man, half-beast, composite objects with human heads, and fantastic flying animals feature throughout Marc Chagall's work. This is the first exhibition devoted to them.

Andy Goldsworthy Exhibition at Galerie Lelong in New York Posted: 17 Jan 2011 07:29 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- In a major departure from his usual practice of working in the rural landscape, Andy Goldsworthy presents photographs, sculpture and videos made exclusively in New York City. In New York Dirt Water Light, Goldsworthy's subjects include debris, passersby, and the interplay of natural and artificial light—demonstrating the artist's broad, compelling understanding of nature. The exhibition at Galerie Lelong includes nine photographic suites, a triptych of "rain shadow" videos, and a sculptural installation made of dirt collected from the city streets. On view through 19 June.

Bonhams London Dedicates Sale to the Artists of Newlyn and St. Ives Posted: 17 Jan 2011 07:26 PM PST   London - From 1880 until the present day, two small Cornish fishing villages have inspired many of the giants of British art to produce an extraordinary and varied body of work. Bonhams, the international auction house, will be holding a sale dedicated solely to the work of artists from Newlyn and St Ives on Wednesday 19 November 2008 at its New Bond Street salerooms. The sale, Under a Western Sky: the Art of Newlyn and St. Ives, is the first of its kind and recognises the importance of the artists who were drawn to Cornwall by its quiet beauty, simplicity of life and quality of light. The sale includes 19th and 20th Century paintings, sculpture, ceramics and prints.

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 17 Jan 2011 07:25 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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