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

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• The Smithsonian American Art Museum ~ A Phenomenal Collection Of American Art In Washington D.C.
• Gemeentemuseum shows Modern & Contemporary Art ~ XXth Century
• Turner and The Masters Opens at the Museo del Prado
• Milwaukee Art Museum shows First U.S. Museum Exhibition of Warhol's Late Works
• Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt Shows Works by Spectacular Chinese Sculptural Group
• The Contemporary Arts Center Displays Shepard Fairey Murals Interactively
• The Art Gallery of New South Wales opens "Grand Weekend"
• Tate Liverpool to display Sculpture from the Tate Collection
• Théo van Rysselberghe at Gemeente Museum Den Haag
• Charley & Edie Harper at the Cincinnati Art Museum
• George Eastman Museum features Roger Ballen: Photographs 1982-2009
• ZKM Museum Celebrates 10th Anniversary with Major Exhibition
• International Artist Jaume Plensa to Lecture at Portland Art Museum
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

The Smithsonian American Art Museum ~ A Phenomenal Collection Of American Art In Washington D.C. Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:54 PM PST The Smithsonian is the world's largest museum complex and research organization, comprising 19 museums and nine research centers. The Smithsonian American Art Museum, begun in 1829, is the first federal art collection and is dedicated to the collection and display of American Art (art produced by American artists or in America by others). The museum began with gifts from private collections and art organizations established in the nation's capital before the founding of the Smithsonian in 1846. The museum has grown steadily to become a center for the study, enjoyment, and preservation of America's cultural heritage. Today the collection consists of artworks in all media, spanning more than 300 years of artistic achievement. The collection began modestly in 1829 when a Washingtonian named John Varden set out to form a permanent museum for the nation with his collection of European art. At first, the art was placed in a room he added to his own house near the U.S. Capitol. In 1841, Varden's collection was displayed in the newly constructed Patent Office Building (coincidentally, the museum's home today). The establishment of the Smithsonian in 1846 eclipsed the prestige of the institute, which later disbanded. By 1858, many items in the Smithsonian Art Collection on view at the Patent Office Building were moved a few blocks to the newly completed Smithsonian Castle. The remainder of the collection followed in 1862. But a destructive fire there in 1865 increased the Smithsonian's reluctance to build cultural collections. For the rest of the century, most of the artwork was placed on loan to the Library of Congress and to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. A turning point in the history of the collection came in 1906. That year the probated will of Harriet Lane Johnston, an art collector and niece of President James Buchanan, forced an important decision in a federal court: the recognition that the Smithsonian's collection formed a "National Gallery of Art." Coined during a national art-collecting boom, the official name soon attracted major gifts. Highly prized were diverse artworks owned by John Gellatly and American impressionist paintings and Barbizon landscapes collected by William T. Evans. Plans to build a permanent home for the museum on the National Mall came and went, among them a prize-winning modernist structure that shocked federal officials. The competition had been organized after Andrew Mellon gave his European-focused art collection to the nation in 1937 with the stipulation that his new museum be called the "National Gallery of Art" in emulation of the National Gallery of Art in London. To comply with Mellon's wishes for a National Gallery of Art to house his European collection, the Smithsonian museum known as the National Gallery of Art for the previous thirty-one years was renamed the National Collection of Fine Arts in 1937. It was given a new mission based on New Deal idealism: to promote the work of living artists and to build a national audience. The interest in historic preservation after World War II ultimately was responsible for giving the first Smithsonian art museum a new home and preserving an architectural treasure. In 1957, a bill was introduced in Congress to tear down the elegant Patent Office Building to make way for a parking lot. Deteriorated but still one of the purest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the nation, the structure was saved when Congress turned the building over to the Smithsonian. In 1968, after an extensive interior renovation, the museum opened to the public. In 1972, the Renwick Gallery opened to the public as a branch museum featuring American crafts. In 1980, the museum's name was changed to the National Museum of American Art as part of a Smithsonian initiative to standardize the names of its many museums and to reflect the national scope of the collections. Since then, the museum has focused its energy on acquiring and promoting the work of artists in the United States exclusively. Twenty years later, the museum proposed that it be called the Smithsonian American Art Museum as an easy-to-remember name and a straightforward presentation of its mission. Congress approved this change in October 2000. The Smithsonian American Art Museum's main building, a dazzling showcase for American art and portraiture, is a National Historic Landmark and is considered one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the United States. Several important early American architects were involved in the original design of the building, including Robert Mills and Thomas U. Walter. Begun in 1836 and completed in 1868, it is one of the oldest public buildings constructed in early Washington. The Smithsonian American Art Museum's branch for craft and decorative arts, the Renwick Gallery, is close to the White House in the heart of historic federal Washington. Its Second Empire-style building, also a National Historic Landmark, was designed by architect James Renwick Jr. in 1859 and completed in 1874. In the 1990s, the Smithsonian embarked on a plan to restore the main building, and to create innovative new public facilities. The recent renovation (2000-2006) revealed the full magnificence of the building's exceptional architectural features, such as the porticos modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, a curving double staircase, colonnades, vaulted galleries, large windows, and skylights as long as a city block. Full circulation on all three floors for the public has been restored. Extraordinary effort was made to use new preservation technologies to restore the historic fabric of the building and re-use historic materials. Two innovative and bold new public spaces are open to museum visitors: the Lunder Conservation Center and the Luce Foundation Center for American Art. In addition, the Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium and the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard are major enhancements that make this a destination museum for the 21st century. The Smithsonian American Art Museum is one of the nation's leading centers for the study of American art. The museum offers academic opportunities for scholars at the graduate level and above, research opportunities for visiting scholars, and professional museum training for college seniors and graduate students. The museum also produces 'American Art', a peer-reviewed periodical on the arts in America, organizes scholarly symposia, and sponsors several annual publication prize awards. The museum's specialized art databases of a half million records and its extensive photograph archives further research efforts in the field. Education staff and docents welcome students and teachers at both venues, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery. The Smithsonian American Art Museum is the nation's first collection of American art and one of the world's largest and most inclusive collections of art made in the United States, is an unparalleled record of the American experience. The collection captures the aspirations, character, and imagination of the American people across more than three centuries. These artworks reveal America's rich artistic and cultural history from the colonial period to today. In recent years, the museum has strengthened its commitment to contemporary art, and in particular media arts. All regions, cultures, and traditions in this country are represented in the museum's collections, research resources, exhibitions, and public programs. Colonial portraiture, nineteenth-century landscape, American impressionism, twentieth-century realism and abstraction, New Deal projects, sculpture, photography, prints and drawings, contemporary crafts, African American art, Latino art, and folk art are all featured in the collection. More than 7,000 artists are represented in the collection, including major masters such as John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Helen Frankenthaler, Christo, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Lee Friedlander, Nam June Paik, Jackson Pollock, Martin Puryear, Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein. The museum has been a leader in identifying significant aspects of American visual culture and actively collecting and exhibiting works of art before many other major public collections. The museum has the largest collection of 'New Deal' art and the finest collections of contemporary craft, American impressionist paintings and masterpieces from the Gilded Age. Other pioneering collections include historic and contemporary folk art; work by African American and Latino artists; photography from its origins in the nineteenth century to contemporary works; images of western expansion; and realist art from the first half of the twentieth century. The Renwick Gallery, a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, features one of the finest collections of American craft in the United States. Its collections, exhibition program, and publications highlight the best craft objects and decorative arts from the nineteenth century to the present. The museum's Luce Foundation Center for American Art, a study center and visible art storage facility, displays more than 3,300 artworks from the museum's permanent collection in a three-story skylight space. The highlight of the temporary exhibitions currently on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum is "Alexis Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow" until May 8th 2011. Alexis Rockman has been depicting the natural world with virtuosity and wit for more than two decades. He was one of the first contemporary artists to build his career around exploring environmental al issues, from evolutionary biology and genetic engineering to deforestation and climate change. Rockman has garnered attention for embracing these issues, as well as for the epic quality of his projects, including several monumentally scaled canvases. His work expresses deep concerns about the world's fragile ecosystems and the tension between nature and culture, which are communicated through vivid, even apocalyptic, imagery. Rockman achieves his vision through a synthesis of fantasy and empirical fact, using sources as varied as natural history, botanical illustrations, museum dioramas, science fiction films, realist art traditions dating back to the Renaissance, and firsthand field study. Alexis Rockman: A fable for Tomorrow is the first major survey of the artist's work and features 47 paintings and works on paper from private and public collections. The title of the exhibition is taken from the opening chapter of Rachel Carson's influential 1962 book Silent Spring. In it, Carson combines two seemingly incompatible literary genres, mythic narrative and factual reportage. Rockman approaches his paintings with a similar intent. The exhibition traces Rockman's artistic development from the mid-1980s to the present. Highlights include "Evolution" (1992), his first mural-sized painting, and "Manifest Destiny" (2003-2004), an ambitious large-scale work commissioned by the Brooklyn Museum of Art. An accompanying book has been produced, co-published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and London-based D Giles Ltd. In addition to the Rockman retrospective, 3 rotating exhibitions feature exhibits from the main collection. "Close to Home: Photographers and Their Families" until July 24th 2011 presents photographs made during the past three decades by both established and emerging artists. It features thirty-two color and black-and-white photographs from the permanent collection. "Watch This! New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image" takes stock of the cutting-edge tools and materials used by video artists during the past forty years and features key artworks from the history of video art alongside works by the latest generation of artists. The "Grand Salon Installation: Paintings from the Smithsonian American Art Museum" at the Renwick Gallery is an installation of seventy paintings from the collection showing the development of American art from the 1840s to the 1930s. The Smithsonian American Art Museum displays its collections and presents special exhibitions in two locations in Washington, D.C. Its main building is located at the heart of a vibrant downtown cultural district, while its branch museum for contemporary craft and decorative arts, the Renwick Gallery, is located nine blocks west, near the White House. Before you visit, please take a moment to look over our Gallery Guidelines so you know what to expect. If you are looking for a quiet place to work or to check your e-mail, free public wireless Internet access (Wi-Fi) is available in the Luce Foundation Center. Please note: the Kogod Courtyard and the Courtyard Cafe are temporarily closed due to construction. If your time is limited, stop by the Information Desk for a self-guided tour brochure, Ten Highlights, which includes the innovative Luce Foundation Center for American Art and the Lunder Conservation Center, or take advantage of one of the daily docent-led tours of the collection. Don't forget, American Art's main building is open every evening until 7 p.m. so you can visit your favorite painting before going to dinner or heading home. Education staff and docents welcome students and teachers to "our space" at two venues, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery. At the Smithsonian American Art Museum, interactive tours yield lively exchanges about our collection as windows on American history. At the Renwick Gallery, students handle and explore unique craft objects by contemporary artists to learn about process, material, and technique. A variety of programs are offered in the center, including themed scavenger hunts for children, a weekly sketching workshop, Art + Coffee tours and a variety of interactive games. Ten award-winning interactive computer kiosks share information about every object on display and include discussions of each artwork, artist biographies, audio interviews, still images, and nearly seventy videos created exclusively for the Luce Center. Audio tours with more than 180 stops can be accessed through a cell phone, iTunes, or free MP3 players available at the Center's information desk. Visit The Smithsonian American Art Museum at : www.americanart.si 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

Gemeentemuseum shows Modern & Contemporary Art ~ XXth Century Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:46 PM PST   THE HAGUE, NL - For the first time in its history, the Gemeentemuseum presents a vast display of modern and contemporary art filling two whole floors of its main building. The new exhibition, entitled XXth Century, uses both major historical events like the Wall Street Crash and the Russian revolution to suggest the background against which untiring artistic experimentation constantly transformed the face of Western art. Via outstanding works by artists like Mesdag, Toorop, Van Doesburg, Picasso, Constant, Mondrian, Lewitt, Merz, Lüpertz and Baselitz, it reveals a world still inward-looking at the start of the period but increasingly interested in new external developments as time went on.

Turner and The Masters Opens at the Museo del Prado Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:45 PM PST MADRID.- Having already been seen in London and Paris, Turner and the Masters will now be shown at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Its aim is to reveal to visitors the extent of Turner's links with other historically important artists and the profoundly original way in which he assimilated their influence. This comparison will assist in an understanding of how Turner's approach to and assimilation of other artists was intended not just as an homage to them but also involved a subtle and highly original type of transformation of their teachings. On exhibition 22 June through 19 September.

Milwaukee Art Museum shows First U.S. Museum Exhibition of Warhol's Late Works Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:43 PM PST MILWAUKEE, WI.- The Milwaukee Art Museum presents the first U.S. museum exhibition to explore the work Andy Warhol produced during his late years. Organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum, Andy Warhol: The Last Decade premieres in Milwaukee September 26, 2009 through January 3, 2010 before heading on national tour. Created amidst the bustle of Warhol's Pop celebrity, the works on view illustrate as never before the artist's vitality, energy, and renewed spirit of experimentation during the final years of his life.

Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt Shows Works by Spectacular Chinese Sculptural Group Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:42 PM PST FRANKFURT.- In conjunction with China's appearance as Guest of Honor at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair, the Schirn Kunsthalle is showing, for the first time ever in the West, the spectacular Chinese sculptural group Rent Collection Courtyard (Chin.: Shouzuyuan). This ensemble of more than 100 life-size figures is among the most important works in modern Chinese art history, and is firmly embedded in China's collective memory. Created as a site-specific installation in Dayi in 1965 by teachers and graduates of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, the group of figures soon became a model artwork of the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966. Over the following years several variations of the work were made and exhibited throughout China. The group shown at the Schirn is a mobile travelling version made with considerable effort between 1974 and 1978 from copper-plated fiberglass, and is located in the Art Museum of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing, central China. It is now the only version extant. In a dramatic sequence of scenes, which unites traditional Chinese, Soviet and Western stylistic elements, the ensemble of figures depicts the merciless exploitation of the peasants by a rich, pre-Communist landowner. As the Cultural Revolution largely fades from people's memories, young Chinese artists have repeatedly returned to the work, and it has figured in many current discussions on contemporary art in China. On view at the Schirn Kunsthalle through 3 January, 2010.

The Contemporary Arts Center Displays Shepard Fairey Murals Interactively Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:41 PM PST CINCINNATI, OH.- The Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) announces the first official interactive mobile application for exploring Cincinnati through art! The CAC is the first museum in the U.S. to use the cutting-edge, Google-endorsed SCVNGR technology to explore a city. "We're excited about this opportunity for our neighbors to have fun and engage with the CAC, and with contemporary art, in a very new way," explains CAC Director Raphaela Platow . "We constantly strive to find new ways to bring the community together around art, and there has been a great outpouring of support for that. The Shepard Fairey opening in February was one of the most well-attended in CAC history and museum attendance has followed suit."

The Art Gallery of New South Wales opens "Grand Weekend" Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:40 PM PST SYDNEY.- The Art Gallery of New South Wales Grand Courts, home to Rubens, Van Gogh, Monet, Pissarro, Cezanne, Hogarth, Delacroix, Leighton, Constable, Gainsborough and Australian artists, Roberts, Streeton, McCubbin, Lambert, Bunny, Phillips Fox, Gruner and Ashton, will re-open to the public in 'grand' style on the Gallery's open weekend (September 12 & 13) with more than 50 free events. Some of the most significant and iconic paintings in the world hang permanently on the walls of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in the thirteen grand old courts. These rooms were the very first rooms of the gallery to be built in 1897 in typically grand Victorian style and scale.

Tate Liverpool to display Sculpture from the Tate Collection Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:39 PM PST Liverpool, UK - - Leading cultural figures from different disciplines will be bringing their own unique vision to bear on sculpture from the Tate Collection for DLA Piper Series: This is Sculpture, sponsored by DLA Piper. Transforming the first and second floor galleries are artist Michael Craig-Martin; designer Wayne Hemingway and his son Jack; and artist, director and writer Tim Etchells. From 1 May 2009 the co-curators present dedicated displays of sculpture which have been selected in conjunction with Tate Liverpool curators. The displays feature masterpieces from the Tate Collection by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, alongside recent acquisitions of contemporary art by Sarah Lucas, Jim Lambie and Terence Koh, among others.

Théo van Rysselberghe at Gemeente Museum Den Haag Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:38 PM PST The Hague, NL - Théo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926) is one of the most important figures in the field of Neo-impressionism. He introduced the Pointillist technique of Seurat and Signac in Belgium and played a major role in the group of avant-garde Brussels artists known as "Les XX" (Les Vingt).  This exhibition at the Gemeente Museum will include not only a large number of well-known masterpieces, but also works from private collections which have never previously been seen by the public.  It will be the first ever major retrospective of this influential painter to be held in the Netherlands.

Charley & Edie Harper at the Cincinnati Art Museum Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:36 PM PST CINCINNATI, OHIO – The whimsical art of one of Cincinnati's most respected and loved couples, Charley and Edie Harper, will be the subject of an exhibition later this summer at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Minimal Realism: Charley and Edie Harper, 1940–1960 will include 40 works by both artists. This exhibition will remain on view Aug. 18 through Oct. 21.

George Eastman Museum features Roger Ballen: Photographs 1982-2009 Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:35 PM PST ROCHESTER, NY.- George Eastman House International Museum of Photography & Film  presents an exhibition of photographs by contemporary, and often controversial, artist Roger Ballen. The 74 black-and-white images of this mini-retrospective, titled Roger Ballen: Photographs 1982-2009 , will be on display through June 6, 2010. Eastman House will travel the exhibition worldwide following its Rochester run. Ballen is known for his thought-provoking photography and his particular attention to rich detail, photographing his human and animal subjects in complex, fictional scenes filled with symbolism. Critics have called Ballen's images powerful social statements that at the same time are disturbing psychological studies.

ZKM Museum Celebrates 10th Anniversary with Major Exhibition Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:34 PM PST KARLSRUHE.- The large scale major anniversary exhibition "just what is it ..." celebrates ten-years of the Museum of Contemporary Art in the bays 1 and 2 of the Hallenbau of the ZKM presenting works from Cézanne and the expressionists through to Picasso, from Baumeister to Wols, from Pollock to Rothko, from Warhol and Beuys to Baselitz, Kiefer, Kippenberger, and Rehberger, so extensively laid out and of such high international renown. On 4 December 1999, the Museum of Contemporary Art opened at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe with the goal of presenting key private collections from the German federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.

International Artist Jaume Plensa to Lecture at Portland Art Museum Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:33 PM PST PORTLAND, ORE.- Barcelona-based sculptor Jaume Plensa's room-sized installation In the Midst of Dreams (2009) provides a dramatic introduction to the Portland Art Museum 's DISQUIETED exhibition. Visitors to the Museum have been captivated by the three enormous and luminous heads—cast in translucent resin and lit from within—that rest in a field of stones and bear thought-provoking inscriptions upon their faces. Visitors can learn more about this installation and other works by the artist in a lecture by Plensa to be held Saturday, April 10 at 2 p.m. in the Whitsell Auditorium.

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:32 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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