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• Peru Celebrates Machu Picchu's 100th Rediscovery Anniversary
• Kunst Haus Wien Hosts Four Month Exhibition of Friedensreich Hundertwasser
• Pinakothek der Moderne Shows "Curvatureromance" by the American Artist John Chamberlain
• Whitechapel Gallery Presents Thomas Struth: Photographs 1978-2010
• Hollywood Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in London
• Norman Rockwell's "The Problem We All Live With" to Be Exhibited at The White House
• Exhibition of André Kertész Photography at The WAG
• Kahlo's "Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace & Hummingbird" at the Ransom Center
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) hosts Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913–2008
• Halcyon Gallery Presents Pedro Paricio: Master Painters
• Oh l’amour ~ Contemporary Photography from the Stéphane Janssen Collection
• Pierre et Gilles Retrospective opens at C/O Berlin the International Forum For Visual Dialogues
• The Art Institute of Chicago Presents Modernist Pae White
• The New Jersey State Museum features Mel Leipzig ~ Selected Works
• Blanton Museum of Art to feature 'Birth of the Cool' ~ California Art/ Design/ Culture
• Bauhaus Archiv opens Amerika 1928 ~ Photos of a Study Trip by Walter Gropius
• Whitney Museum announces John Baldessari in Conversation with Adam Weinberg
• Gagosian Gallery features Mike Kelley's First NY Show Devoted to Painting
• Williams College Museum of Art Presents Gregory Crewdson/Edward Hopper
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Peru Celebrates Machu Picchu's 100th Rediscovery Anniversary Posted: 07 Jul 2011 11:05 PM PDT LIMA, PERU - Tourists love the enigmatic Inca citadel of Machu Picchu high in Peru's Andes. They may love it too much. As the country prepares to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the rediscovery of the "Lost City of the Incas" this week, archaeologists are warning that a heavy flow of visitors and poor administration are threatening one of the greatest wonders of the world. The Incas built Machu Picchu atop an Andean peak 7,970 feet (2,430 meters) high, with a breathtaking view across the inhospitable abysses that surround it. Some experts believe it was a refuge for one or more Inca rulers, others that it was a religious sanctuary. The site receives an average of 1,800 visitors a day and the maximum allowed by authorities is 2,500. Already, the former farming village of Aguas Calientes that is used as a jumping-off point for tourists has grown into a town of 4,000 inhabitants with five-star hotels and restaurants. In some places, authorities have noticed soil erosion and damage to vegetation, Juan Julio Garcia, regional director of Peru's culture ministry, told The Associated Press. Tourism companies and some local officials constantly pressure authorities to allow even more tourists, arguing it would benefit local communities. Cultural guardians fear irreparable damages if the tourist flow surges, and they are especially concerned by official plans to build a highway to the remote 15th-century ruin. Tourists now must reach Machu Picchu only by foot or by a scenic, zigzagging narrow-gauge train ride. "In one way or another, the train controls the flow (of tourists). There is a maximum capacity on the train and this maximum capacity determines how many people can reach the monument. In contrast, with a road, any person or tourism company can reach the site and try to enter the sanctuary," Garcia said. But rains washed out the rail route in January 2010, trapping 4,000 tourists in the towns of Machu Picchu and Aguas Calientes for five days. Without road access to the area, the government had to airlift tourists out by helicopter. In Aguas Calientes, which serves as a tourist base for Machu Picchu, there were shortages of food and water for those stranded.. In September, Peru's Congress approved construction of an access road to Machu Picchu. That raised a red flag at UNESCO, which inscribed the Inca stronghold on its World Heritage list in 1983, boosting the site's fame and making it eligible for international technical support. The U.N. agency had already expressed concern about management of the site. It said in 2008 that there were "urgent problems with deforestation, the risk of landslides, uncontrolled urban development and illegal access to the sanctuary." The U.N. agency threatened to put it on its list of endangered sites if the road project is not canceled, a move that would be a blow to Peru's prestige. Peruvian tourism authorities insist they are protecting the monument. Carlos Zuniga, head of the Foreign Trade and Tourism office for the Cuzco region, said that officials have given UNESCO proof of concern for Machu Picchu by completing a plan for use of the sanctuary and by issuing a decree that funds generated by tourism to Machu Picchu be used in maintaining the site. Previously, earnings were sent to the central government in the capital, Lima. Garcia, of the culture ministry, said local authorities support the highway project because they want to break the monopoly of PeruRail, the train company owned by Chilean and British interests. Aguas Calientes Gov. Antonio Sinchi Roca said the monopoly hurts the local economy. "Many entrepreneurs who could reach the zone don't because the cost of transportation is so high." Machu Picchu was largely unknown to the outside world, abandoned and covered in highland jungle, until July 7, 1911, when Yale University historian and explorer Hiram Bingham reached Machu Picchu and later announced its existence. He became famous as the site's modern discoverer, though Peruvian Agustin Lizarraga had been there first. He wrote on one of the citadel's stones with a piece of charcoal: "Lizarraga, July 14, 1902, for posterity." For decades, the site's remoteness, as well as the cost of reaching it, kept foreign tourists at bay. In the 1980s, visitors shunned Peru because of a raging guerrilla conflict that ended in 1999. In 1991, about 77,000 tourists visited. That number has risen about tenfold over the past decade, reaching more than 800,000 in 2009, the year before the rail line washed away. The director of Machu Picchu Archaeological Park, Fernando Astete, said the main problem facing the site today is that the area is controlled by rival municipal authorities contending for tourism dollars. "Local authorities in and around the zone don't know what UNESCO is, they know nothing about it. They don't know they are in a protected area," Astete told The AP. Many authorities view the citadel as "a marketing issue" and don't make decisions based on technical criteria about conservation of the site, Garcia said. An example occurred in 2000, when a beer company was allowed to film a television commercial in Machu Picchu. The heavy arm of a crane used in the filming fell onto and damaged the emblematic Intihuatana Stone, which many believe to be sacred. This didn't stop authorities from recently permitting the filming of dance scenes for the Bollywood movie "Endhiran" ("The Robot"), starring former Miss World Aishwarya Rai. Peru's government had planned a big celebration in the ruins themselves for theanniversary, but called that off when UNESCO objected. Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.

Kunst Haus Wien Hosts Four Month Exhibition of Friedensreich Hundertwasser Posted: 07 Jul 2011 09:25 PM PDT Vienna - With this exhibition KUNST HAUS WIEN honours the artist on whose philosophy and artistic principles this institution is largely based. The 20th anniversary of KUNST HAUS WIEN, a museum which unites, under one roof, international temporary exhibitions and the permanent Museum Hundertwasser, offers an occasion for this special exhibition project. For a period of four months, all of KUNST HAUS WIEN is thus devoted to Friedensreich Hundertwasser. The exhibition is on view from July 7th until November 6th.

Pinakothek der Moderne Shows "Curvatureromance" by the American Artist John Chamberlain Posted: 07 Jul 2011 09:24 PM PDT MUNICH.- CURVATUREROMANCE is the first museum presentation of the large-format metal sculptures completed during the last four years by the American artist John Chamberlain (b.1927). The show also marks the start of the AMERICAN SUMMER program in the Pinakothek der Moderne, on view from July 7th through October 23rd. As early as the late-1950s Chamberlain created a sculpture for the first time that made use of colored steel parts from a car that was in the backyard of his friend Larry Rivers. He thereby found his Carrara - a working material that was to become as natural for Chamberlain, as marble was for sculptors of the Renaissance.

Whitechapel Gallery Presents Thomas Struth: Photographs 1978-2010 Posted: 07 Jul 2011 09:06 PM PDT LONDON.- The Whitechapel Gallery's major summer exhibition presents Thomas Struth's first solo show in Britain for almost 20 years. Struth's large-scale photographs bring his intense and precise vision to subjects as diverse as visitors looking at famous works of art in the world's great museums, family portraits and the dense undergrowth of the Asian jungle. The exhibition is on view from July 6 through September 16, in Galleries 1, 8 & 9. Thomas Struth is an artist who travels widely and captures cities from New York to Tokyo, while his latest vast colour photographs show sites of cutting edge technology such as the Kennedy Space Station on Cape Canaveral and Korean shipyards. The exhibition includes his iconic museum series of life-size photographs showing tourists admiring Michelangelo's David statue in Florence, Italy, and pupils chatting in front of Velazquez Las Meninas at the Prado, Madrid. The works show the awe that art can inspire on people's faces, without revealing the object they are looking at, and are testament to Struth's continuous interest in places of culture around the globe.

Hollywood Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in London Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:35 PM PDT LONDON.- This new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery examines the importance of photography in creating the stars of Hollywood from 1920 to 1960. Glamour of the Gods: Hollywood Portraits, Photographs from the John Kobal Foundation includes portraits of Marlene Dietrich, James Dean, Joan Collins, Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe by nearly 40 photographers including George Hurrell, Clarence Sinclair Bull, Laszlo Willinger, Bob Coburn and Ruth Harriet Louise. This exhibition is on view from July 7th until October 23rd.

Norman Rockwell's "The Problem We All Live With" to Be Exhibited at The White House Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:34 PM PDT STOCKBRIDGE, MA.- Norman Rockwell Museum announces the loan of Norman Rockwell's iconic painting "The Problem We All Live With," part of its permanent collection, to The White House, where it will be exhibited through October 31. The loan was requested this year by President Barack Obama, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Ruby Bridges' history-changing walk integrating the William Frantz Public School in New Orleans on November 14, 1960, that later inspired Rockwell's bold illustration for the January 14, 1964 issue of "Look" magazine. "The Problem We All Live With" was the first painting purchased by Norman Rockwell Museum in 1975. The White House loan was made possible through the support of the Henry Luce Foundation.

Exhibition of André Kertész Photography at The WAG Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:24 PM PDT Winnipeg, Canada - Hungarian-born photographer André Kertész (1894-1985) gained critical attention for his unorthodox compositions and use of unusual camera angles. In 1925 he moved to Paris, becoming involved with the Dada movement. Due to the looming war in Europe he relocated with his wife to New York in 1936. Over his long and impressive career he created an exceptional number of serene and exquisite images. At the heart of Kertész's mastery was his belief in catching the right moment when the subject changes and shifts into something else wholly new. His interest in using light to capture and create specific shadows is a characteristic that dominates his compositions. On view through 9 September at WAG.

Kahlo's "Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace & Hummingbird" at the Ransom Center Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:23 PM PDT AUSTIN, TX.- The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, celebrates the homecoming of one of its most famous and peripatetic art works, the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo's "Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird" (1940). The painting is on display from July 6, which is Kahlo's 104th birthday, through Jan. 8, 2012. Since 1990 the painting has been on almost continuous loan, featured in exhibitions in more than 25 museums in the United States and around the world, in countries such as Australia, Canada, France and Spain. The painting was most recently on view in exhibitions in Berlin, Germany; Vienna, Austria; and Madrid, Spain. It will next be on view in the three-venue exhibition "In Wonderland: The Surrealist Activities of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States," organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). This exhibition will be on view at LACMA from Jan. 29, 2012 through May 6, 2012; at the Musee National des Beaux-arts du Quebec in Quebec City, Canada, from June 7 to Sept. 3, 2012; and at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, Mexico, from Sept. 27, 2012 through Jan. 13, 2013. Kahlo (1907-1954) taught herself how to paint after she was severely injured in a bus accident at the age of 18. For Kahlo, painting became an act of cathartic ritual, and her symbolic images portray a cycle of pain, death and rebirth. Kahlo's affair in New York City with her friend, the Hungarian-born photographer Nickolas Muray (1892-1965), which ended in 1939, and her divorce from the artist Diego Rivera at the end of the year, left her heartbroken and lonely, but she produced some of her most powerful and compelling paintings and self-portraits during this time. Muray purchased the self-portrait from Kahlo to help her during a difficult financial period. It is part of the Ransom Center's Nickolas Muray collection of more than 100 works of modern Mexican art, which was acquired by the Center in 1966. The collection also includes "Still Life with Parrott and Fruit" (1951) and the drawing "Diego y Yo" (1930) by Frido Kahlo. The history of the Harry Ransom Center officially began in 1957, when Vice President and Provost Harry Huntt Ransom founded what was then called the Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. The true origins of this institution, however, began 60 years earlier when the University began to acquire important private libraries and art that formed the foundation of what would later become the Ransom Center.  Visit : http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) hosts Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913–2008 Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:10 PM PDT Los Angeles, CA - The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913–2008, the first major exhibition to bring together the magazine's historic archive of rare vintage prints with its contemporary photographs, on view from October 26, 2008 through March 1, 2009. Featuring a remarkable selection of 150 portraits.

Halcyon Gallery Presents Pedro Paricio: Master Painters Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:09 PM PDT LONDON.- Halcyon Gallery present Paricio's first exhibition in London. Pedro Paricio: Master Painters is on view from May 12th through June 17th, 2011. Tipped by international critics and curators as a rising star, Spanish artist Pedro Paricio is enjoying a serious reputation in the art world, following exhibitions throughout Spain, Europe and USA. Juan Manuel Bonet, Art Critic and former Director of Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, has described Paricio's work as "…the freshest thing I've seen in the emerging contemporary art world in 30 years". Tomas Paredes, President of the Madrid Association of Art Critics, foresees a bright future for Paricio: "Be sure that here we have a true phenomenon – a tornado – you can feel it, you can smell it, you can see it – if you miss it, you'll regret it".

Oh l’amour ~ Contemporary Photography from the Stéphane Janssen Collection Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:08 PM PDT TUCSON, AZ - Love—l'amour—is one of art's enduring themes, inspiring collectors as well as creators. Stéphane Janssen, Belgian by birth and resident in Arizona, discovered a love of art in his teenage years. He went on to assemble an extensive and entirely unique collection including almost every creative medium: painting, ceramics, photography, and more. For this exhibition, Janssen generously shares a group of contemporary photographs that reflect his vision as a patron. The Center for Creative Photography's exhibition Oh l'amour: Contemporary Photography from the Stéphane Janssen Collection, will be on view at the Center for Creative Photography through March 1, 2009.

Pierre et Gilles Retrospective opens at C/O Berlin the International Forum For Visual Dialogues Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:07 PM PDT BERLIN.- C/O Berlin, International Forum For Visual Dialogues, will present the retrospective of French artists Pierre et Gilles from July 25 through October 4, 2009. As only venue in Germany, C/O Berlin presents the exhibition as the first of Pierre et Gilles in fifteen years. The show comprised a total of 80 unique large-format works – from their early photographies of the 1970s to the brand new pictures that were never shown in public before

The Art Institute of Chicago Presents Modernist Pae White Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:06 PM PDT CHICAGO - The diverse work of Pae White engages art, architecture, and design to heighten the experience of site and context. Growing up in the "modernist mecca" of Southern California in the late 1960s and 1970s, White developed a visual vocabulary drawn from a variety of influences that range from consumer culture to "high" art—Eames furniture, Vera Neumann scarves, and Milton Glaser graphics, among them. On view at the Art Institute of Chicago May 19–September 25.

The New Jersey State Museum features Mel Leipzig ~ Selected Works Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:05 PM PDT TRENTON, NJ.- Artist As Curator and Mel Leipzig: Selected Works by Trenton-based painter Mel Leipzig, are now on display at the New Jersey State Museum through September 6, 2009. Visitors may watch the artist at work while he creates a new painting on the Museum's campus. Mr. Leipzig will be painting en plein air (in the open air) continuing through the end of May. He will be on - site, weather permitting, on Wednesdays and Saturdays from noon to 4 pm.

Blanton Museum of Art to feature 'Birth of the Cool' ~ California Art/ Design/ Culture Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:04 PM PDT   Austin, Texas - Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture At Mid-century takes a look at the broad cultural zeitgeist of "cool" that influenced the visual, graphic, and decorative arts, furniture, architecture, music, and film produced in California in the 1950s and early 1960s. The exhibition, organized by the Orange County Museum of Art, includes a jazz lounge; a media bar with film, animation, and television programming; a period art gallery of hard-edge abstract paintings; selections of art, architectural, and documentary photography; and an interactive timeline that highlights examples of California, national, and international culture and history in the 1950s.

Bauhaus Archiv opens Amerika 1928 ~ Photos of a Study Trip by Walter Gropius Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:03 PM PDT   BERLIN.- "Gropius praises efficiency here" runs the headline in the New York Times on May 27, 1928. The article relates that the architect Walter Gropius had been in America for several weeks to study the more efficient and timesaving methods of mass production. In the spring of 1928, Walter Gropius had resigned his post as director of the Bauhaus Dessau and, together with his wife Ise, embarked on a much longed-for study trip through the USA. There he would deal primarily with modern building techniques, particularly the steel-frame construction of New York skyscrapers. The trip is financed by Adolf Sommerfeld, the building contractor and longtime patron of the Bauhaus, with whom Gropius plans to carry out large building projects in Berlin that will make use of the state-of-the-art technology.

Whitney Museum announces John Baldessari in Conversation with Adam Weinberg Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:02 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY - In honor of the late Walter H. Annenberg, philanthropist, patron of the arts, and former ambassador, the Whitney Museum of American Art established the Walter Annenberg Annual Lecture to advance this country's understanding of its art and culture. In this fourth Annenberg Lecture, John Baldessari will speak about his work in conversation with Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney's Alice Pratt Brown Director. For more than fifty years, Baldessari has masterfully juxtaposed painting, photography, sculpture, and other media to probe how meaning is created through images, objects, and text.

Gagosian Gallery features Mike Kelley's First NY Show Devoted to Painting Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:01 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- Gagosian Gallery presents Mike Kelley's "Horizontal Tracking Shots," his first show in New York devoted entirely to painting. Evoking painting as a series of experiences akin to the movie camera gliding through space, capturing action as it goes, Kelley has devised a spatial push-pull effect through the arrangement of large polychrome panel paintings and smaller framed canvases. In the untitled colored reliefs, individual colors pop or recede in relation to each other. The colors of the flat support panels are determined by key colors in the organically shaped panels that are attached to them. On  view through 23 December, 2009.

Williams College Museum of Art Presents Gregory Crewdson/Edward Hopper Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:00 PM PDT Williamstown, MA - The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) presents Drawing on Hopper: Gregory Crewdson/Edward Hopper, an intimate glimpse inside the creative process of two artists separated by time but connected through a single subject: the psychological landscape of American culture.  This exhibition will feature Edward Hopper's Morning in a City, which has recently been treated by the Williamstown Art Conservation Center, along with several of the painting's preparatory sketches, on loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art.  Additionally, three enigmatic photographs by contemporary photographer Gregory Crewdson will be on view with their accompanying documentary stills. On exhibition until 15 April, 2007.

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:00 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.

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