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

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• The Utah Museum of Fine Arts and LDS Church History Museum Show LeConte Stewart
• PhotoEspaña 2011 Awards Announced
• Sigmund Freud Museum in London Celebrates 25th Anniversary
• Famous Australian Still-Life Specialist Margaret Olley ~ A Painter, Not An Artist ~ Dies Aged 88
• Art for the Nation: Acquisitions Made by Sir Charles Eastlake at the National Gallery, London
• The Kevin Kavanagh Gallery Presents a Group Show
• The White Bird Gallery Celebrates 40th Year in Cannon Beach Oregon
• The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Presents New Works by Sean Scully & John Walker
• The Museum of Modern Art presents Tim Burton ~ A Major Retrospective
• Kunstmuseum Wolsburg presents Edward Steichen ~ ' In High Fashion '
• Heckscher Museum Identity Crisis in Art
• Marrakech Art Fair to be Held at Es Saadi Palace in October
• Artsicle Website Launches "Try Before You Buy" Contemporary Art Gallery
• Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History Shows the Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond
• Miami Art Museum Presents Exhibition of Interactive Works by Carlos Cruz-Diez
• Christie's Offers Important Southeast Asian Modern & Contemporary Paintings
• Yorkshire Sculpture Park Opens Jaume Plensa's First Major UK Exhibition
• George Stubbs Painting Expected to Fetch $33 Million at Christies
• Beards & Dragons
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

The Utah Museum of Fine Arts and LDS Church History Museum Show LeConte Stewart Posted: 27 Jul 2011 11:14 PM PDT Salt Lake City, UT.- In a groundbreaking collaboration, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the LDS Church History Museum have partnered to present the largest joint exhibitions ever mounted of work by Utah artist LeConte Stewart (1891-1990). With a combined total of over 200 paintings and works on paper, each venue will feature rarely seen masterworks from private and public collections that focus on urban and rural scenes from Stewart's dynamic career. From the despair of the Great Depression to the powerful beauty of Utah's rural landscapes, these exhibitions provide compelling insight into the life and work of this important artist. "LeConte Stewart: Depression Era Art" is on view at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts until January 2nd 2012. LeConte Stewart (April 15, 1891 – June 6, 1990) was a Mormon artist primarily known for his landscapes of rural Utah. His media included oils, watercolors, pastel and charcoal, as well as etchings, linocuts, and lithographs. His home/studio in Kaysville, Utah is on the National Register of Historic Places. Stewart was born in Glenwood, Utah. His art education began in 1912 at the University of Utah, and included studies at the Art Students League summer school at Woodstock, New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Chester Springs. Stewart became the head of the Art Department at the University of Utah in 1938, and held that post until his retirement in 1956. Stewart is best known for his unidealized landscapes of rural Utah, spawning the term "LeConte Stewart Country." Stewart is quoted as saying, "It is not that I love the lyrical in nature the less, but I feel that in modern life there is no time, no inclination for it. In these pictures I'm trying to cut a slice of contemporary life as it is in the highways and biways [sic] as I have found it." Some of Stewart's paintings have a photographic quality from a distance but are actually formed with broad strokes and a thick palette. Much of his work uses direct impressionistic techniques to convey the meaning of what he saw around him, illustrating things "...that are introspective, that you peer into, that you understand and feel." Stewart stated: "Impressionism is the most important painting innovation of all time....I thought to myself, why not use this technique to express an idea rather than making it the end goal of a painting? I have tried to think of it as a means of interpreting landscaping rather than making it merely impressionistic." Stewart described himself as having an urgency in his work. A plaque in the Kaysville Gallery of Art reads: "I had a great urgency to work as rapidly as possible. Each Saturday I painted one large 24-by-30-inch picture in the morning and another in the afternoon. Between I painted four smaller studies. Six was an average Saturday for me." In addition to landscapes, Stewart also did portraiture and murals. He painted several murals for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon or LDS Church) buildings, including works found inside the LDS temples in Hawaii, Alberta, and Arizona, as well as murals for the Salt Lake City International Airport and the historic Bigelow-Ben Lomond Hotel. Stewart died in Kaysville, Utah at the age of 99. The Utah Museum of Fine Arts is Utah's primary cultural resource for global visual arts. It is unique in its dual role as a university and state art museum. It is Utah's only visual arts institution that collects, exhibits, interprets, and preserves a comprehensive collection of original art objects. The creation of a formal art gallery on the top floor of the Park Building in the early 1900s marks the physical birth of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. In the beginning, paintings by local artists filled this one-room gallery. Over the next five decades, the art department at the University of Utah received major art gifts and specific requests from donors to remodel the gallery into a museum. After the renovation of the gallery was finished, the University's president, A. Ray Olpin, established it as the Utah Museum of Fine Arts on May 6, 1951. In 1967, Frank Sanquinetti was hired as the first professional director. By this time, the Museum had entered a new period of growth, which resulted in the building of a new museum. After the Museum's relocation in 1970, its goal was to focus on the continuation of expanding its collections. Events were held to gain support from the community and the Annual Friends of the Art Museum Acquisition Fund was formed. Over the years this Annual Fund has been helpful with the expansion of the Museum's collections and its ability to offer art and history education. Thanks to the generous patrons, local and national foundations, the University community, and the citizens of the State of Utah, the UMFA's collection now encompasses 5,000 years of artistic creativity. Since the mid-1900s, when the collection was around 800 objects, it has grown to over 17,000 art objects. This huge expansion required the building of yet another museum, and with the help of many generous donors the construction of a new 74,000 square-foot building was started in 1998. The UMFA opened in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building in June 2001, and the preceding year David L. Dee was named Executive Director. Dee resigned in 2009 and was named Director Emeritus. Gretchen Dietrich, former Director of Public Programs and Curatorial Affairs, was named Executive Director of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in July 2010. Since the second relocation, the UMFA has experienced unprecedented growth in all areas of operation. In February 2005, the Utah State Legislature declared the UMFA as an official state institution, confirming the importance of the Museum's role as a center for art, culture, and education in the state of Utah. As Utah's flagship art museum, the UMFA collects, exhibits, interprets, and preserves a comprehensive collection of more than 18,000 original art objects from around the world. Today the UMFA strives to give everyone the opportunity to experience different ideas, values, and cultures from its extensive art collections. Visit the museum's website at ... http://umfa.utah.edu

PhotoEspaña 2011 Awards Announced Posted: 27 Jul 2011 10:21 PM PDT Madrid, Spain - Claude Bussac, Director of PhotoEspaña announced the winners of the PhotoEspaña 2011 Awards. The PhotoEspaña Prize 2011 went to photographer Thomas Ruff (Zell am Harmersbach, Germany, 1968), who received the recognition for the precise and coherent artistic personality that has gained him international prominence. For his part, photographer Chema Madoz was awarded the Bartolomé Ros Prize for Best Spanish Professional Trajectory. The jury decided to bestow this prize to Madoz in recognition of the originality of his work and the solidity of an artistic trajectory that relies on a conceptual language.

Sigmund Freud Museum in London Celebrates 25th Anniversary Posted: 27 Jul 2011 09:29 PM PDT LONDON.- What was life like for the father of psychoanalysis who made a profession of analyzing the lives of others? Insights into how Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis whose work on human sexual repression led to terms as "Freudian slip" and "Oedipus complex," lived can be found at the Freud Museum London which celebrates its 25th anniversary on July 28th. The large brick, early 20th-century house in north London is where Freud spent his final year after fleeing Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1938 before dying on September 23, 1939, at age 83.

Famous Australian Still-Life Specialist Margaret Olley ~ A Painter, Not An Artist ~ Dies Aged 88 Posted: 27 Jul 2011 08:30 PM PDT Sydney, AU (Channel 9).- Margaret Olley was busy at the canvas until her final days. Olley, one of Australia's best known painters, had been completing work for a solo show due to open in September when she was found dead at her inner Sydney home in Paddington on Tuesday, aged 88. Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Australia was mourning the loss of a great artist and a true Australian national treasure. "Margaret will be remembered for her spirited and candid character, her passionate and generous mentoring of young Australian artists and her many donations to the arts," she said.

Art for the Nation: Acquisitions Made by Sir Charles Eastlake at the National Gallery, London Posted: 27 Jul 2011 05:11 PM PDT LONDON.- This summer, the history of the National Gallery comes alive in Room 1. Art for the Nation introduces the first Director of the Gallery: Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865), a man described by one contemporary as the 'Alpha and Omega' of the Victorian art world. The exhibition shows a handful of Eastlake's purchases of Italian Renaissance art and also demonstrates, using little-known items from the Gallery's archive and library, the extent to which Eastlake labored behind the scenes for the National Gallery. On 27 March 1855, aged 62, Eastlake was appointed Director of the National Gallery. In his capacity as Keeper (between 1843 and 1847) and then a Trustee (from 1850) he had become acutely aware of the Gallery's shortcomings. Using his executive powers he set about developing coherent policies on acquisition and display at the Gallery. From this point, he abandoned his career as a painter.

The Kevin Kavanagh Gallery Presents a Group Show Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:50 PM PDT Dublin, Ireland - The Kevin Kavanagh Gallery is pleased to present "Room Outside", an exhibition of new and older work that concerns itself with the idea of landscape but more specifically the artist's representation of a room outside whether it's a real physical space or an imagined constructed space. "Room Outside" will be on view in the gallery, located in Chancery Lane, Dublin from July 28th through August 13th.

The White Bird Gallery Celebrates 40th Year in Cannon Beach Oregon Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:49 PM PDT Cannon Beach, OR.- The White Bird Gallery in Cannon Beach, Oregon celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, and in honour of the event, they are holding a special group exhibition, on view until August 15th. The "40th Anniversary Exhibition" celebrates the art and artists who have contributed to White Bird Gallery over the years. There will also be a 40th Anniversary Party on Saturday, August 6th from 4:00 – 7:00pm. Established in 1971, White Bird Gallery is among the oldest galleries in Oregon and continues to be a long-standing tradition for visitors to the Oregon Coast. With four decades in the same location.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Presents New Works by Sean Scully & John Walker Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:48 PM PDT Richmond, VA.- The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is proud to present "Modern Masters: New Painting by Sean Scully and John Walker", on view at the museum through November 27th. This exhibition features monumental paintings by two of today's most accomplished painters, Sean Scully and John Walker. Promised gifts from Pamela K. and William A. Royall Jr. on the occasion of VMFA's 75th anniversary, these works affirm the unique capacity of paint to evoke the immateriality of light. Rounding out the exhibition are a suite of twelve photographs by Scully and four other recent paintings by Walker. "Modern Masters: New Paintings by Sean Scully and John Walker" is organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and curated by John B. Ravenal, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. All works are either promised gifts or loans from Pamela K. and William A. Royall, Jr. Sean Scully, born in Ireland in 1945, and John Walker, born in England in 1939, are both longtime residents of the United States and are among today's most accomplished painters. While these artists do not usually exhibit together, their works are both featured here by the happy circumstance of promised gifts by Richmond collectors Pam and Bill Royall. These generous donors have offered Walker's North Branch II and Sean Scully's Cut Ground Red Blue to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in recognition of the museum's 75th anniversary. Each of these monumental works exemplifies the artists' dedication to the nuances, traditions and paradoxes of painting. And each suffuses abstract forms with references to the visible world of landscapes, man-made structures and light. Walker's "North Branch II", along with his three other recent paintings in the exhibition, reflects a love for the Maine coast.  During the past decade, he has drawn inspiration from a tidal cove at Seal Point near the Damariscotta River. Often created outdoors, his canvases respond to the landscape and its changing atmosphere by incorporating references to water, clouds, rainbows, trees and earth. He even uses actual mud from the cove, and the rough texture provides a dynamic gestural presence offering a stark contrast to prismatic strokes of bright color that conjure the ethereal nature of light. Through such means, Walker's paintings balance realistic landscapes with painterly abstraction, attending equally to space and surface. Scully's "Cut Ground Red Blue" builds on his interest in architecture. Scully was first inspired to paint geometric units of color during a 1972 trip to Morocco, where the stripes and bands of carpets and tents left a strong impression on him. After visiting Mexico in the early 1980s, he transformed his stripes into bricks of color. Over time, his stroke has softened, revealing underlayers of paint and infusing his minimalist, abstract images with a humanistic touch that expresses a wide range of emotions and ideas. The exhibition also includes a suite of twelve photographs that Scully made in the Dominican Republic showing brightly painted shacks. Scully began taking photographs in 1979 but only began exhibiting them in the late 1990s. Although the photographs do not serve as models for his paintings, Scully's focus on the doors and surrounding wood clapboards of dwellings parallel the compositions of his paintings to a remarkable degree and reflect some of the same interests in light, architecture, pattern, weathering, and the handmade. In the midst of the Great Depression, on January 16, 1936, Virginia's political and business leaders bravely demonstrated their faith in the future and their belief in the value of art by opening the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. The English Renaissance-style headquarters building was designed by Peebles and Ferguson Architects of Norfolk. The museum's first addition was built in 1954 by Merrill C. Lee, Architects, of Richmond. By the mid 1960s, additional gallery space was again desperately needed. The museum's second addition, the South Wing, was designed by Baskervill & Son Architects of Richmond. It featured four new permanent galleries and a large gallery for loan exhibitions, as well as a new library, photography lab, art storage rooms and staff offices. As more exhibition space and visitor services were needed, a third addition, the North Wing, designed by Hardwicke Associates, Inc., Architects, of Richmond, was completed in 1976. It added three more gallery areas (two for loan exhibitions and one for the Sydney and Frances Lewis Art Nouveau Collection) as well as a new sculpture garden with a cascading fountain. In December 1985, the museum opened its fourth addition, the West Wing. It now houses the Mellon collections, consisting of major examples of French Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and British Sporting art (which was permanently given to the museum in 1983); the Lewis Contemporary art collections; and the outstanding Lewis collections of Art Nouveau and Art Deco furniture, glass and other decorative arts. The West Wing was designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates of New York. The museum has assembled a wide-ranging collection of world art characterized by great breadth and exceptional aesthetic quality. It includes significant holdings of Classical and African art, paintings by European masters such as Nicolas Poussin, Francisco Goya, Michel Delacroix and Claude Monet, and American masters such as John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer, one of the world's leading collections of Indian and Himalayan art, an internationally important collection of fine English silver, unequaled holdings of Art Nouveau and Art Deco furniture, ceramics, glass and jewelry, a dynamic collection of Modern and Contemporary art, a popular collection of Fabergé imperial jeweled objects and noted holdings of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, including original waxes and bronzes by Edgar Degas. In 2003, a year after its selection of London-based architect Rick Mather, VMFA unveiled a master plan for a $100-million building expansion and transformation of its 13 1/2-acre campus. Mather's design will provide Virginians with a work of contemporary architecture that will display more fully the museum's extensive collection of world art. His virtuoso handling of transparency and natural light will function as both a tool and a metaphor to open the museum to its surroundings and create an inspiring atmosphere in which to view art. Visit the mueum's website at ... http://www.vmfa.state.va.us

The Museum of Modern Art presents Tim Burton ~ A Major Retrospective Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:31 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) presents Tim Burton, a major retrospective exploring the full scale of Tim Burton's career, both as a director and concept artist for live-action and animated films, and as an artist, illustrator, photographer, and writer. On view from November 22, 2009, through April 26, 2010, the exhibition brings together over 700 examples of sketchbooks, concept art, drawings, paintings, photographs, and a selection of his amateur films, and is the Museum's most comprehensive monographic exhibition devoted to a filmmaker. An extensive film retrospective spanning Burton's 27-year career runs throughout the exhibition, along with a related series of films that influenced, inspired, and intrigued Burton as a filmmaker. Tim Burton is organized by Ron Magliozzi, Assistant Curator, and Jenny He, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Film, with Rajendra Roy, The Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film, The Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition is on view throughout the Museum: the Special Exhibitions Gallery on the third floor features hundreds of drawings, paintings, sculptures, sketchbooks, and moving image works. Downstairs, in the Museum's Roy and Niuta Titus Theater Lobbies, a selection of largescale Polaroids created by Burton is joined by a selection of domestic and international film posters from his feature films, while musical compositions specifically chosen for the exhibition by Burton's longtime collaborator Danny Elfman plays over the gallery's speakers. In MoMA's Agnes Gund Garden Lobby and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, a large-scale balloon and a deer-shaped topiary inspired by Edward Scissorhands are on view. Mr. Magliozzi states: "While Tim Burton is known almost exclusively for his work on the screen, including Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, and more recently Sweeney Todd, this exhibition covers the full range of his creative output, revealing an artist and filmmaker who shares much with his contemporaries in the post modern generation who have taken their inspiration from pop culture. In Burton's case, he was inspired by newspaper and magazine comics, cartoon animation and children's literature, toys and television, Japanese monster movies, carnival sideshows and performance art, cinema Expressionism and science-fiction films alike." MoMA's exhibition draws extensively from the artist's personal archive, as well as from studio archives and the private collections of Burton's collaborators, and includes art from a number of early, unrealized projects. Never-before-exhibited drawings, paintings, and film props, as well as virtually unseen films—including Burton's 1983 live-action, Asian-cast adaptation of Hansel and Gretel—and early student films, are on view. Inspired by the selection of works MoMA's curators chose for the exhibition, Burton created seven new pieces that are on display, including Balloon Boy, a 21-foot-tall, 8-footdiameter balloon appearing as a many-eyed creature that greets visitors in the Museum's Agnes Gund Garden Lobby throughout the opening weeks of the exhibition. Within the galleries a toyhouse diorama inspired by Burton's six-episode Internet series The World of Stainboy (2000) is on display. This work is joined by an animatronic Robot Boy sculpture, based on a character from Burton's 1997 children's book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories, and a revolving, multimedia, black-light carousel installation that hangs from the ceiling. Three original Burton "creature" sculptures are also on display within the gallery. These original works are joined by a precise replica of a deer-shaped topiary from Edward Scissorhands (1990), re-created for the exhibition by Atta Inc. and on display in MoMA's Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. An original animation of MoMA's logo conceived by Burton and produced by Mackinnon & Saunders, is on view in the Ronald S. and Jo Carole Lauder Lobby, and online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFZ3gP0pqzE. Visitors enter the Special Exhibitions Gallery on the third floor through a spectacular three-dimensional monster's mouth. Inspired by Burton's unrealized film project Trick or Treat (1980), the entrance was created for the exhibition by TwoSeven Inc. Upon passing through the creature's mouth on its red-carpeted tongue, visitors proceed through a corridor lined floor to ceiling with Burton's signature black-and-white stripes, and a presentation of Burton's The World of Stainboy Internet series plays on six large monitors. In the galleries the exhibition is organized in three sections, each in relation to Burbank, California, the city in which Burton was raised and the inspiration for much of his early work. SURVIVING BURBANK The introductory section of the Special Exhibitions Gallery consists of a grand salon-style installation of Burton character and creature studies on paper and canvas from the 1980s and 1990s, which serve to demonstrate the outpouring of creative energy and invention he was experiencing as a young artist at the time. Next, ephemera, school projects, and early drawings from Burton's youth in Burbank are displayed in vitrine cases and wall mounts, including a city trash truck sign Crush Litter (c. 1973) that serves as a memento of his first professional award as an artist. These works are exhibited as a reflection of Burton's feelings of adolescent alienation from small-town life, and illustrate how he turned to the strength of his imagination as consolation. Also included is a children's book written and fully illustrated by Burton as a teenager, The Giant Zlig (1976), alongside items that chronicle a youth spent compiling lists of fantastic films, organizing film series, and making short action films. These items reflect Burton's burgeoning interest in classic American horror movies, 1950s science fiction, and Japanese monster culture, all of which offered relief from the boredom of his Burbank childhood. Burton's Super 8mm films from the 1970s, shot in neighborhood backyards and starring childhood friends, are on view, including The Island of Dr. Agor (1971) and Houdini: The Untold Story (1971). Also featured is Stalk of the Celery Monster (1979), an animated short that Burton submitted as his graduation project at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). A sketchbook illustration brought to life, the film reveals Burton's early taste for merging the gothic with the everyday. Other late amateur films on view include excerpts from the 16mm shorts Luau (1980) and Doctor of Doom (1980), which feature a young Tim Burton in starring roles. Created in a spirit of fun, these films satirize foreign-language horror movies and beach party films while toying with traditional animation technique. The works also display a number of themes and visual motifs that resurface in Burton's later professional films. Burton's graphic art and texts for non-film projects like The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories (1997) and his hand-painted models for the collectible series Tim Burton's Tragic Toys for Girls and Boys (2003) round off the exhibition's survey of the artist's creative work in this period. As curator Ron Magliozzi states, "These works further establish Burton's kinship with a generation of contemporary artists—many from Southern California like Burton himself— who have taken inspiration from the surrealism and 'lowbrow' charm of Pop Culture in the second half of the twentieth century." Burton's 2006 music video Bones for The Killers is also on view, along with his commercial work for advertisers Timex and Hollywood Gum, featured in the three spots Gnome (1998), Kung Fu (2000), and Mannequin (2000). These are joined by an excerpt from the stopmotion tests Burton made in the early phases of production for his 1996 film Mars Attacks!. Although plans to employ stop-motion were abandoned for the film, the digital methods ultimately used to animate the Martian's movements deliberately mimicked the less-polished effect of stopmotion. MoMA's Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1 Lobby Gallery has been transformed into a photo gallery with the display of 29 large-scale Polaroids, each approximately 33 inches by 22 inches, created by Burton between 1992 and 1999, along with a curio case of strange objects used in production of the Polaroids. In these works, Burton found another medium for expressing visual themes and motifs that also appear in his sketchbooks, drawings, and paintings. Created in studios and on desert and countryside locations with the aid of live models, the Polaroids employ fantastic objects created for photo shoots and puppets and props from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, while exploring Burton's fascination with holidays, body modification, and the Gothic. The installation is accompanied by musical compositions by Danny Elfman that play over the gallery's speakers. Additionally, a selection of domestic and international posters from Burton's films are on view in the theater lobby galleries. Visit Museum of Modern Art, (MoMA) at : http://www.moma.org/

Kunstmuseum Wolsburg presents Edward Steichen ~ ' In High Fashion ' Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:30 PM PDT   WOLFSBURG, GERMANY - Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg presents Edward Steichen ..'In High Fashion', on view through January 4, 2009. In the fourteen years since it opened, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg has regularly presented the medium of photography in exhibitions devoted to the work of individual artists. To date these have included Lee Miller, Cecil Beaton, Brassaï, Richard Avedon, Man Ray, Pietro Donzelli and Ed van der Elsken. We have also explored the relationship between art and fashion in exhibitions such as Avantgarderobe and Hussein Chalayan. 'In High Fashion', we pay homage to a photographer who, more than any other, defined fashion photography in the 1920s and '30s.

Heckscher Museum Identity Crisis in Art Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:29 PM PDT HUNTINGTON, NY .- The Heckscher Museum of Art presents Identity Crisis: Authenticity, Attribution and Appropriation. This exceptional exhibition which opened on January 15, 2011 and runs through March 27, 2011, explores issues relating to the artistic use of other artists' styles and images in historical and contemporary works. Historically popular artists had followers, imitators and forgers, while more recent artists openly adopt well-known images and styles to comment on originality, authorship and culture. This exhibition presents old master and nineteenth-century works from The Heckscher Museum Permanent Collection, providing a framework for connoisseurship issues, such as authenticity and attribution. Artists to be considered include Canaletto, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jean-Desire-Gustave Courbet, and George Inness, among others.

Marrakech Art Fair to be Held at Es Saadi Palace in October Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:28 PM PDT MARRAKECH, MOROCCO - The first edition of the Marrakech Art Fair will be held from October 9 to 11, 2010 (with a preview on October 8) at the Es Saadi Palace. Galleries from Europe, Morocco and the Arab world are pleased to invite art amateurs and collectors to present their recent discoveries during a four-day event. Modern art, contemporary art, and emerging scenes will be high on the agenda, during an ephemeral leisure staged between patio and garden through art works and creations from the 20th and 21st centuries.

Artsicle Website Launches "Try Before You Buy" Contemporary Art Gallery Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:27 PM PDT New York, NY - Artsicle is a new virtual contemporary art gallery that allows buyers to rent artworks, before buying them, or returning them if they don't match the decor. They provide invitation-only access to some of New York's top emerging artists, adding selected pieces to a collection that can be browsed on-line. With Artsicle, For $50 a month, art lovers can choose a painting, sculpture or print they like from the collections of 30 emerging and more established artists, hang it in their homes and decide whether they like it or not. If they do, they can purchase the art, prices range from $500 to $5,000. If they don't, they can send it back or rent another one. Artsicle believe in supporting today's artists today, and helping them to grow their careers. All of their artists are hand-selected for their talent and unique style in New York's ever changing art scene. Collecting their work allows you to support these talented individuals and own a piece of tomorrow's art history. Alexis Tryon says that so far about 90% of customers are renting and 10% are buying the art immediately, with 20% of renters deciding to purchase the piece within the first month of living with it.

Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History Shows the Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:26 PM PDT WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is extending its exhibit of one of the most rarely seen gems in the world, the Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond, to Sept. 1. Before the diamond was exhibited beginning Jan. 28, it had been out of view from the public eye for more than 50 years. It had previously been on public display at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958.

Miami Art Museum Presents Exhibition of Interactive Works by Carlos Cruz-Diez Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:25 PM PDT MIAMI, FL.- The Miami Art Museum presents an exhibition of interactive works by Carlos Cruz-Diez (b. 1923, Caracas), one of Latin America's most important living masters. "Carlos Cruz-Diez: The Embodied Experience of Color" marks the artist's first exhibition to focus solely on sensory chromatic environments and interactive projects. The exhibition will feature four participatory environments created from color and light including Cromosaturación (Chromosaturation), a groundbreaking artwork first conceived in 1965. On view 20 March through 20 June, 2010.

Christie's Offers Important Southeast Asian Modern & Contemporary Paintings Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:24 PM PDT HONG KONG.- Christie's Fall sale of Southeast Asian Modern and Contemporary Art will be held on November 30 at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. Featuring over 90 exceptional works with an estimate of HK$18 million, this sale will showcase a tightly-edited selection of outstanding paintings by key Southeast Asian modern masters including Indonesian artists Hendra Gunawan, Affandi, S. Sudjojono, Lee Man Fong, Filipino artists Vincente Manansala, Fernando Zobel and Franco-Vietnamese artist Le Pho, as well as a choice lineup of contemporary works by I Nyoman Masriadi, Yunizar and Bencab and others. A cross-section of Singaporean modern and contemporary art by David Chan, Jason Lim and Jason Wee and modernist Chen Wen Hsi will be presented, as well as a rare oil-on-board work by Cheong Soo Pieng.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park Opens Jaume Plensa's First Major UK Exhibition Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:23 PM PDT WAKEFIELD, UK - From April 2011 Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) presents the first major UK exhibition of sculpture and drawings by Jaume Plensa, with new and recent work displayed in the Underground Gallery and surrounding landscape. The exhibition encourages a tactile and sensory exploration of his work and includes large illuminated heads, human shapes formed of letters, angels suspended from walls and inscribed gongs waiting to be struck.

George Stubbs Painting Expected to Fetch $33 Million at Christies Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:22 PM PDT LONDON (Reuters).- Christie's will offer a George Stubbs horse painting for sale in London on July 5 and expects it to make more than 20 million pounds ($33 million), potentially putting it in the Old Masters auction elite. "Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, with a Trainer, a Stable-Lad, and a Jockey" was painted by Stubbs, renowned for his anatomically precise portrayals of horses, in 1765, and is described by the auctioneer as "a true masterpiece." It depicts Gimcrack, one of the most admired 18th century racehorses which won 28 of his 36 races and finished unplaced only once.

Beards & Dragons Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:21 PM PDT LONDON.- There is something about Japanese armour that makes Westerners do a double-take. It may well have something do with the fact that the helmets often come equipped with a beard as well as a dragon. Bonhams next sale of Fine Japanese Art on May 11th, a massive auction of 480 lots estimated to sell for around £1.6m, includes a splendid example of Japanese armour – boasting both beard (white) and dragon (gold and scarlet). The overall effect of this black, blue, orange and gold work of art is to literally stop you in your tracks. The effect it must have had when used by a warrior actively pursuing you with weapons, can only be imagined with a shiver.

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:21 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.

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