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

---

• The Amon Carter Museum of American Art Announces New Online Collection Database
• A Gift of 47 Photographs by Neil Folberg to the Everson Museum of Art
• Billionaire Ron Burkle Buys Architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Landmark Ennis House
• Ro2 Art Presents Work by Terry Hays and Kathy Robinson-Hays
• Abbey House Plans to Conquer World Markets ~ Will Open Four Branches
• Rolling Stones ~ Unpublished Photos by Peter Webb on View at Snap Galleries
• Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Opens New Dinosaur Hall
• The Brooklyn Museum Shows Hiroshige's One Hunderd Famous Views of Edo On-line
• Centre Pompidou reviews Alexander Calder's Paris Years in Exhibition
• New Major Exhibition Highlights the Collection Frieder Burda
• The Zimmerli Art Museum shows Pop Art and After:Prints & Popular Culture
• MOCA to Present Feathered Edge ~ A New Installation by Ball-Nogues Studio
• Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art will show Highly Regarded Korean Artist Kimsooja
• Modern Art Masters from the Smithsonian Opens at Cheekwood Art & Gardens
• The Matisse Museum in Nice Shows Paintings by Robert De Niro, Sr.
• Louvre Museum presents Yan Pei-Ming's "The Funeral of Mona Lisa"
• "Marco Brambilla: The Dark Lining" at the Santa Monica Museum of Art
• Arab Museum Approves Nudity
• Marcel van Eeden ~ Winner of the 2011 Daniel & Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation Prize
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art Announces New Online Collection Database Posted: 18 Jul 2011 11:05 PM PDT Fort Worth. TX.— The Amon Carter Museum of American Art is pleased to announce that it has recently launched a digital collection database, which includes more than 7,500 artworks from the museum's permanent collection. Easily searchable by artist, artwork or medium, the database can be accessed from the museum's website. The process to create the digital database began in 2009, when the museum received a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to photograph and catalog the works on paper collection. Because the painting and sculpture collection was previously cataloged and digitized, the museum focused its efforts on its 7,000 watercolors, prints and drawings. The museum completed digitization of this area of its collection in December 2010. Also in 2010, the museum received a $150,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to digitize and catalog more than 25,000 photographs. Work began on this initiative in late 2010, and currently more than 2,500 photographs are now digitized, cataloged and entered into the collection database. The museum anticipates that this phase of the digitization project will be complete next summer. "We have more than 250,000 works in our collection, but many are rarely exhibited and never seen by the public," says Andrew Walker, director of the museum. "This new database makes our collection more accessible and allows us to better serve our diverse audiences—artists, scholars, students and art enthusiasts around the world can now look at artworks in our collection for research, scholarship or pure enjoyment. Because we are one of only a few museums in the nation that is dedicated to American art, this is a significant accomplishment." As artworks are photographed and cataloged, they will automatically be added to the searchable database. The Amon Carter has also updated the design of its website says Will Gillham, director of publications. "Our website needed to be redesigned to complement our new graphic identity; but, more importantly, improvements were needed to better serve our visitors. The improvement is tremendous—the site is intuitive and much easier to navigate." Visitors to the site will also find an enhanced Museum Store and Café page, which is continually updated to reflect the new products in the store. The Amon Carter Museum was established through the generosity of Amon G. Carter Sr. (1879–1955) to house his collection of paintings and sculpture by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell; to collect, preserve, and exhibit the finest examples of American art; and to serve an educational role through exhibitions, publications, and programs devoted to the study of American art. Designed by Philip Johnson, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art opened to the public in January 1961. From the beginning, the museum was intended to be a vibrant institution; not only would it house Mr. Carter's collection of works by Remington and Russell, it would expand to encompass a broader range of American art. The museum began to acquire important works of art in various media–paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and books–by many noted artists working in various styles and depicting a range of subjects and forms. In the 1970s, the museum commissioned photographer Richard Avedon (1923–2004) to create what would become the groundbreaking body of work In the American West. Other major works acquired for the collection include "Idle Hours" by William Merritt Chase, "Flags on the Waldorf" by Childe Hassam and "Red Cannas" by Georgia O'Keeffe. On the occasion of its fortieth anniversary the Amon Carter underwent a major expansion. Again designed by Johnson–making the building as a whole a singular example of his work–the museum now has gallery space to accommodate the full breadth of its permanent collection. With its expansive galleries for traveling exhibitions, there are today some 600 works of art on view at any given time. A 160-seat auditorium is available for programs, and the library of 50,000 volumes is the only research facility between the two coasts to house the 7,500 microform reels of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The museum also houses one of the preeminent collections of American photography, and the expansion resulted in climate-controlled vaults (for both cool and cold storage) and a state-of-the-art conservation center, made possible in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.cartermuseum.org

A Gift of 47 Photographs by Neil Folberg to the Everson Museum of Art Posted: 18 Jul 2011 10:30 PM PDT Syracuse,NY - The Everson Museum of Art recently received a gift of 47 black-and-white photographs by Neil Folberg entitled Celestial Nights: Visions of an Ancient Land. Celestial Nights is a stunning portfolio of nocturnal landscapes and star-filled skies set in ancient ruins found in the Middle East. A selection of these photographs are exhibited at the Everson from July 16th through September 18th. The artist skillfully captures a spectacular world of nocturnal landscapes in Israel and the Sinai where the horizon is not always definitive. The earth and heavens are mingled in this series of arresting images, which to Folberg represents a blurred division between present and eternity, substance and spirit, and knowledge and imagination.

Billionaire Ron Burkle Buys Architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Landmark Ennis House Posted: 18 Jul 2011 10:03 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, CA (AP).- Billionaire Ron Burkle has snapped up Frank Lloyd Wright's landmark Ennis House at the relative bargain price of about $4.5 million, the building's sellers announced Friday. Ennis House Foundation chairwoman Marla Felber said Burkle, a supermarket tycoon, would continue rehabilitating the 1924 concrete block home, on which the foundation had already spent $6.5 million for repairs. Burkle is also the owner of the so-called Greenacres Estate in the Benedict Canyon section of Beverly Hills, which he bought in 1993. The estate, like the Ennis House, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Ro2 Art Presents Work by Terry Hays and Kathy Robinson-Hays Posted: 18 Jul 2011 08:33 PM PDT Dallas, TX.- Ro2 Art is proud to present "Cut Copy Paste Paint –  work by Terry Hays and Kathy Robinson-Hays", on view at the gallery until August 12th. The exhibition will take place at Ro2 Art's Uptown gallery, located at 3699 McKinney Avenue #310 at West Village. The title for the show, Cut Copy Paste Paint, was chosen to help partially explain the similarity of the work and process of Kathy Robinson-Hays and Terry Hays. Having shared a studio space for years they also share a copy machine, computer, scanner and printer - equipment they both rely on heavily.

Abbey House Plans to Conquer World Markets ~ Will Open Four Branches Posted: 18 Jul 2011 08:25 PM PDT POLAND.- In a month's time it is going to open a gallery in Berlin, and soon afterwards in Los Angeles, London and Dubai. Abbey House SA operates in the very niche market of works of art, currently estimated at 300 million zlotys. In a few years' time, however, it may grow up to 6 billion zlotys. The total figures related to sales of paintings in Q1 2011 in Poland raise optimism. Works of art worth over 10 million zlotys have been sold, which makes it possible to predict a year-end result of 40–50 million zlotys, i.e. 40 per cent higher than last year.

Rolling Stones ~ Unpublished Photos by Peter Webb on View at Snap Galleries Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:59 PM PDT LONDON.- Itʼs a story that would give any photographer sleepless nights. A classic photo-session for one of the biggest bands on the planet, The Rolling Stones, for the cover of one of their most critically acclaimed albums, "Sticky Fingers". Disaster then strikes, as British photographer Peter Webbʼs negatives go missing soon after the 1971 shoot. Then, out of nowhere, they are discovered again after almost 40 years. Detailed scanning of the negatives reveals a collection of previously unpublished photographs of The Rolling Stones, group shots and solo portraits, in black and white and colour. Many of these are now to be shown together in a gallery exhibition for the first time at Snap Galleries space in central London, some in sizes up to 6 ft. wide.

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Opens New Dinosaur Hall Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:43 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) opened its all-new, 14,000-square-foot Dinosaur Hall, marking the halfway point of the Museum's seven-year transformation. Twice the size of the Museum's old dinosaur galleries, the new permanent exhibition features over 300 fossils and 20 complete mounts of dinosaurs and sea creatures. The hall rivals the world's leading dinosaur halls for the number of individual fossils displayed, the size and spectacular character of the major mounts, including the world's only Tyrannosaurus rex growth series, and the accessible integration of recent scientific discoveries and research into the displays.

The Brooklyn Museum Shows Hiroshige's One Hunderd Famous Views of Edo On-line Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:42 PM PDT Brooklyn, NY.- Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, actually composed of 118 splendid woodblock landscape and genre scenes of mid-nineteenth-century Tokyo, is one of the greatest achievements of Japanese art. In order to protect these very special prints, the Brooklyn Museum can only physically display them periodically, but they are presented in an ongoing online exhibition. The series, reproduced online in its entirety, contains many of Hiroshige's best loved and most extraordinary prints. It is a celebration of the style and world of Japan's finest cultural flowering at the end of the shogunate. Edo was the city where the artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) was born, lived, and died, and it is the place depicted in the majority of his landscape prints. Edo (renamed Tokyo in 1868) was the largest city in the world by the eighteenth century, with a population of more than one million people. Established first as a castle town in 1590, Edo became the de facto political capital of Japan in 1603. For the next two and a half centuries the country would be ruled by a lineage of feudal overlords (shoguns) and regional military lords (daimyo). Required to live in Edo on alternate years, the daimyo, with their families, household servants, and samurai, or military retainers, accounted for about half of the city's population. The remaining citizenry were mostly the many merchants and artisans (known as ch?nin, or townspeople) who provided for the material needs of the city, as well as a substantial contingent of Buddhist and Shinto priests. In this prospering commercial center, economic power resided with the wealthy townspeople. Artistic patronage and production no longer belonged only to the ruling elite but reflected diverse tastes and values. A new urban culture developed, valuing the cultivation of leisure that was celebrated in annual festivals, famous local sites, the theater, and pleasure quarters. The rich urban experience and the landscape of the time were documented by ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world," including woodblock prints like Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Since they could be purchased inexpensively—one print cost the same as a bowl of noodles—refined images became accessible to a wide audience. Hiroshige was born a low-ranking member of the samurai class. He inherited his father's official post within the shogunal fire-fighting organization, which protected Edo castle and the residences of the shogun's retainers. The majority of samurai retainers lived in chronic poverty and were forced to take side jobs to supplement their meager stipends. At age thirty-one, Hiroshige began to study under the ukiyo-e master Utagawa Toyohiro, who gave him the artist's name by which he is remembered. He subsequently led a very successful career in designing series of color landscape prints, such as the famous Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido, 1832, and was considered the foremost artist of topographical prints, best known for capturing the atmospheric effects of place and season. Only a few years after commodore Matthew Perry's mission to open Japan to the West in 1853–54, Hiroshige produced the most ambitious series of his career; prior to this work, landscape print series never attempted so many individual views. Issued between 1856 and 1858, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo was called Hiroshige's "grand farewell performance," since he died in 1858, during a cholera epidemic. The series, actually comprising 118 prints, remains not only the last great work of Japan's most celebrated artist of the landscape print but also a precious record of the appearance, and spirit, of Edo at the culmination of more than two centuries of uninterrupted peace and prosperity. The Brooklyn Museum is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. Its roots extend back to 1823 and the founding of the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library to educate young tradesmen (Walt Whitman would later become one of its librarians). First established in Brooklyn Heights, the Library moved into rooms in the Brooklyn Lyceum building on Washington Street in 1841. Two years later, the Lyceum and the Library combined to form the Brooklyn Institute, offering important early exhibitions of painting and sculpture in addition to lectures on subjects as diverse as geology and abolitionism. The Institute announced plans to establish a permanent gallery of fine arts in 1846. By 1890, Institute leaders had determined to build a grand new structure devoted jointly to the fine arts and the natural sciences; the reorganized Institute was then renamed the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the forebear of the Brooklyn Museum. The original design of the new museum building, from 1893, by the architects McKim, Mead & White was meant to house myriad educational and research activities in addition to the growing collections. The ambitious building plan, had it been fully realized, would have produced the largest single museum structure in the world. Indeed, so broad was the institution's overall mandate that the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Children's Museum would remain divisions of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences until they became independent entities in the 1970s. The museum division of the Institute, which came to be popularly called the Brooklyn Museum, was conceived, moreover, as the focal point of a planned cultural, recreational, and educational district for the burgeoning city of Brooklyn. Although the scope of that envisioned complex of parks, gardens, and buildings changed after the once-independent Brooklyn was absorbed into New York City in 1898, many features of the plan were eventually realized and are reflected in what can be seen today. In the area of land once designated as the Brooklyn Institute Triangle can be found not only the Brooklyn Museum but also such other institutions and facilities as the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Prospect Park Zoo, Mount Prospect Park, and the Central Library of the Brooklyn Public Library system. Just beyond the western edge of the Institute Triangle complex stands the monumental entrance to Prospect Park, marked by the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch (1892) in the center of Grand Army Plaza. The Brooklyn Museum has been building a collection of Egyptian artifacts since the beginning of the twentieth century, incorporating both collections purchased from others, such as the collection of American Egyptologist Charles Edward Wilbour, and objects obtained in archeological excavations sponsored by the museum. The museum's collection of American art dates back to its being given Francis Guy's "Winter Scene in Brooklyn" in 1846. In 1855, the museum officially designated a collection of American Art, with the first work commissioned for the collection being a landscape painting by Asher B. Durand. Items in the American Art collection include portraits, pastels, sculptures, and prints; all items in the collection date to between circa 1720 and circa 1945. Represented in the American Art collection are works by artists such as William Edmondson (Angel, date unknown), John Singer Sargent (Paul Helleu Sketching with His Wife, ca. 1889), Georgia O'Keeffe (Dark Tree Trunks, ca. 1946), and Winslow Homer (Eight Bells, ca. 1887). Among the most famous items in the collection are Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington and Edward Hicks' "The Peaceable Kingdom". The oldest acquisitions in the African art collection were collected by the museum in 1900, shortly after the museum's founding. The collection was expanded in 1922 with items originating largely in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in 1923 the museum hosted one of the first exhibitions of African art in the United States. With over five thousand items in its collection, the Brooklyn Museum boasts one of the largest collections of African art in any American art museum. Although the title of the collection implies that it includes art from all of the African continent, in reality works from Africa are sub-categorized into a number of collections. Western and Central sub-Saharan works are collected under the banner of African Art, while Northern African and Egyptian art are grouped with the Islamic and Egyptian art collections, respectively. he African art collection covers 2,500 years of human history and includes sculpture, jewelery, masks, and religious artifacts from more than one hundred African cultures. Noteworthy items in this collection include a carved ndop figure of a Kuba king, believed to be among the oldest extant ndop carvings, and a Lulua mother-and-child figure. The museum's collection of Pacific Islands art began in 1900 with the acquisition of one hundred wooden figures and shadow puppets from New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia); with that hundred items as its foundation, the collection has grown to npw encompass close to five thousand works. Art in this collection is sourced to numerous Pacific and Indian ocean islands including Hawaii and New Zealand as well as less-populous islands like Rapa Nui and Vanuatu. The museum's center for feminist art opened in 2007 and is dedicated to preserving the history of the movement since the late 20th century as well as raising awareness of feminist contributions to art and informing the future of this area of artistic dialogue. Along with an exhibition space, and library, the center features a gallery housing a masterwork by Judy Chicago, a large installation called "The Dinner Party". Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.brooklynmuseum.org

Centre Pompidou reviews Alexander Calder's Paris Years in Exhibition Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:31 PM PDT PARIS.- An uncommonly lively and engaging character, Calder made his art into a continuous party, a party attended by his many friends, among them Joan Miró, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, Fernand Léger and Piet Mondrian. Trained as an engineer, he was the inventor one of the most innovative and audacious forms of twentieth-century sculpture – the mobile, given its name by Marcel Duchamp. When he arrived in Paris in 1926, aged 27, Alexander Calder was a painter and illustrator. When he returned to the United States in 1933, he was the celebrated exponent of "drawing in space" and one of the greatest sculptors of the twentieth century. "Calder, les années parisiennes, 1926-1933" looks Calder's Paris years, when he discovered his personal artistic vocabulary. On view 18 March trough 20 July, 2008 at the Centre Pompidou. The arrival in Paris of Calder's Circus, the first time it has left the Whitney Museum in New York since the artist's death, is an event in itself, and this exceptional piece stands at the heart of the exhibition. A 'transatlantic' artist, who after 1953 divided his time between the United States, the land of his birth, and his adopted country, France, Alexander Calder (1898-1976) is well known here for the large mobiles and stabiles of painted metal to be seen in French cities (La Spirale, at Unesco, Paris,1958) and sculpture parks (Reims Croix du Sud at Villeneuve-d'Ascq, 1969). Combining lightness and monumentality, playfulness and abstraction, these giant totems have become, for the general public, emblematic symbols of modern art. As well as presenting outstanding pieces, the exhibition offers an opportunity to witness the original state of works conceived in terms of motion and equilibrium but now condemned to immobility by the exactions of time or by the death of their creator and animator, these being here accompanied by films such as Jean Painlevé's and photographs such as Brassaï's, in which they are shown being operated by Calder himself. Little animals of bent metal, acute magazine illustrations, toys sparkling with colour and ingenuity: the young Calder's earliest works offer a key to his art, the art of an inspired DIYer, of a magician who took base materials and primitive mechanisms and transformed them into true sculpture. These assemblies of recycled materials and objects, held together by wire, provided the models for his first masterpiece, the Circus, produced in Paris between 1926 and 1931. At the same time, the Centre's Galerie des Enfants offers an exhibition /workshop for children: "Quel Cirque!" Alexander Calder's fascination with the circus began in his mid-twenties, when he published illustrations in a New York journal of Barnum and Bailey's Circus, for which he held a year's pass. It was in Paris in 1927 that he created the miniature circus celebrated in this film - tiny wire performers, ingeniously articulated to walk tightropes, dance, lift weights and engage in acrobatics in the ring. The Parisian avant-garde would gather in Calder's studio to see the circus in operation. It was, as critic James Johnson Sweeney noted, `a laboratory in which some of the most original features of his later work were to be developed.' This film exudes the great personal charm of Calder himself, moving and working the tiny players like a ringmaster, while his wife winds up the gramophone in the background. The Circus is now housed at the Whitney Museum in New York. Visit the Centre Pompidou at : www.centrepompidou.fr/

New Major Exhibition Highlights the Collection Frieder Burda Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:30 PM PDT BADEN-BADEN, GERMANY- From March 25, 2010 to June 20, 2010, a selection of works from the Collection Frieder Burda will be on display at the Museum Frieder Burda, making for an inspiring encounter with important works from its inventory, as well as with recently acquired paintings. The exhibition, entitled "There is something about these pictures…", will comprise more than 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs and art installations by Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Isa Genzken, Neo Rauch, Robert Rauschenberg, Sigmar Polke, Willem de Kooning, Gregory Crewdson, Anton Henning, Nedko Solakov, Axel Hütte, Max Beckmann, as well as by Johannes Hüppi, John Chamberlain and William N. Copley. The title "There is something about these pictures…" refers to a quotation by the collector Frieder Burda, while talking about his passion for art and the intuitive way in which he built his collection.

The Zimmerli Art Museum shows Pop Art and After:Prints & Popular Culture Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:29 PM PDT   Brunswick, NJ - Since Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup can images first appeared in the 1960s, Pop Art has remained a pervasive force in contemporary art. Numerous artists have created bold, colorful pictures inspired by every day reality and the American Dream: advertising, comics, food, mass-produced consumer goods, the media, political turmoil, and sexy nudes. On exhibition through 14 December, 2008 at the Zimmerli Art Museum.

MOCA to Present Feathered Edge ~ A New Installation by Ball-Nogues Studio Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:28 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), presents Feathered Edge: A New Installation by Ball-Nogues Studio, on view July 26 through November 15, 2009, at MOCA Pacific Design Center. In this site-specific installation by the innovative Los Angeles–based design and fabrication firm led by Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues, 17 miles of colored strings configured in catenary curves span the gallery space to form a dynamic sculptural environment. Initiated by Brooke Hodge and coordinated by MOCA Curator Alma Ruiz, Feathered Edge underscores the artists' continuing investigation of the convergence of digital technology and hand-craft techniques, as well as their interests in the processes and fabrication of automation and in affecting space using unconventional methods and materials.

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art will show Highly Regarded Korean Artist Kimsooja Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:27 PM PDT GATESHEAD, UK - Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art presents the first UK solo show by the highly regarded Korean artist Kimsooja. The exhibition, located in Baltic's largest gallery space on Level 4, will consist of two projected works A Needle Woman and A Laundry Woman-Yamuna River , India.  Kimsooja's work combines performance, video, and installation, addressing issues of the displaced self. Kimsooja brings together a conceptual, logical, and structural investigation of performance through immobility that inverts the notion of the artist as the predominant actor. The exhibition opens on Monday 5 October 2009.

Modern Art Masters from the Smithsonian Opens at Cheekwood Art & Gardens Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:26 PM PDT NASHVILLE, TN.- Modern Masters examines the complex and varied nature of American abstract art in the mid-20th century through three broadly conceived themes that span two decades of creative genius – "Significant Gestures," "Optics and Order" and "New Images of Man." The exhibition "New Images of Man" includes works by Romare Bearden, Jim Dine, David Driskell, Grace Hartigan, Nathan Oliveira, Larry Rivers and several others, each of whom searched their surroundings and personal lives for vignettes emblematic of larger, universal concerns. Issues such as tragedy, interpersonal communication and racial relations guided the creation of these artists' pieces. On exhibit 19 March until 19 June at the Cheekwood Art & Gardens.

The Matisse Museum in Nice Shows Paintings by Robert De Niro, Sr. Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:25 PM PDT NICE, FRANCE- The Matisse Museum has chosen to display the works of the American painter Robert De Niro, Sr. (1922-1993), to answer its vocation of making known the works of Matisse, master of the 20th century, through different angles and, on this occasion, as a source of inspiration. The paintings and drawings of Robert De Niro, Sr. show a relationship to the works of Matisse through the creation of certain compositions, graphic assertion of certain drawings, use of the same techniques, like stumping, and the search for harmonies of colors.  On view March 8 through 31 May, 2010.

Louvre Museum presents Yan Pei-Ming's "The Funeral of Mona Lisa" Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:24 PM PDT   PARIS - The Louvre Museum presents new work by Franco-Chinese artist Yan Pei-Ming. The central piece of the show is the work "The Funeral of Mona Lisa", placed in a room next to the original Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. Pei-Ming's version shows a giant, grey Mona Lisa with tears in her eyes and streaks of paint running down her front goes on display at the Louvre museum this week in the room next to the original by Leonardo da Vinci.

"Marco Brambilla: The Dark Lining" at the Santa Monica Museum of Art Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:23 PM PDT Santa Monica, CA.- On Friday, December 3, 2010 the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA) was proud be a part of the unveiling of the world's first-ever 3D art video by Marco Brambilla, "Evolution (Megaplex)". Now the museum welcomes him back for his first ever solo museum exhibition. Seven major time-based works from 1999 to the present go on show on May 21st, with the exhibition running until August 20th. "The Dark Lining", consists of complex video installations. Much of his work comprises found film footage edited, layered, and spliced to create compelling new narratives and stunning visual mosaics. With exquisite technical production and seamless editing, Brambilla's multi-layered tableaux of interconnecting images and looped video blend into an expansive landscape that forms his hallmark style.

Arab Museum Approves Nudity Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:22 PM PDT DOHA, QATAR - The Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art has created controversy by announcing that it will exhibit works containing nudity and politically radical ideas. They will not be subject to censorship, according to Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Chief Curator of the Mathaf. The museum was founded by powerful Qatari art patron and vice president of the Qatar Museum Authority, Sheikh Hassan bin Mohamed bin Ali Al-Thani and it is due to open in Qatar's capital, Doha, on December 30th. The museum aspires to highlight and share contemporary art by Arabs and artists living in the Middle East that might challenge some preconceptions. It will also serve as a research center, an exciting prospect for the regional arts community.  Mathaf, which simply means "museum" in Arabic, will be housed in a  in a 5,500-square meter former school that has been converted by the French architect Jean-Francois Bodin. The inaugural exhibition, titled, "Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art," will include works from Mathaf's permanent collection of over 6,200 pieces dating from the late 1800s to the middle of the 20th century, all of which were donated from Sheik Hassan's private collection. Skeptics have wondered aloud whether politics will play a role in the acquisition and exhibition of certain works, excluding pieces that might be considered politically or sexually provocative. "Sajjil," which roughly translated as the act of recording features paintings and sculptures by more than 100 key modernists, is aimed at bringing contemporary Arabic art to a wider audience. "Our first exhibition, 'Sajjil' is about the interaction and about the contribution of Arab artists to a larger art historical context," Al-Khudhairi said. "By making it public, we are able to open it up to everyone in Qatar, in the region, internationally. "Crucially, adds Al-Khudhairi, it will also draw attention to a contemporary art scene that developed in parallel with European movements but has been largely overlooked. "The exhibition will give exposure to these artists to fit into history a period of time that's missing from art historical books and accounts," she said. "The collection has nudes; the collection has political works. These things are part of the collection -- we can't deny it "We are not trying to present some sort of new canon, this is why we stress multiple modernities  and contemporary art. She added that Mathaf was willing to risk criticism for showing controversial works. "I think there will be all kinds of feedback and the museum is about creating a space for dialogue; a platform for discussion," Al-Khudhairi said. Saleh Barakat, a Beirut-based leading expert in contemporary Arab art, described the museum's opening as "an exceedingly important moment in the history of modern and contemporary art."

Marcel van Eeden ~ Winner of the 2011 Daniel & Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation Prize Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:21 PM PDT PARIS.- The Daniel & Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation's Drawing Prize has been awarded in Paris on the 31st of March, 2011 to Marcel van Eeden, a Dutch artist born in 1965 in The Hague. He lives and works in The Hague, Zurich and Berlin. The members of the 2011 Drawing Prize jury were Pierre Bourgie (Canada), Michel Delfosse (Belgium), Morris Orden (USA), Ulrich Reininghaus (Germany), Hervé Aaron (France), Jean-Jacques de Flers (France), Bernard Herbo (France) and Daniel and Florence Guerlain. This prize is reserved for both French and foreign artists, whether they live in France or not, but who sustain a privileged cultural link with France (through exhibitions, studies…) and for whom drawing constitutes a significant part of their work, whatever their main mode of expression (painting, sculpture, photography, etc.).

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 18 Jul 2011 07:21 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.

You are subscribed to email updates from Art News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610