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

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• Station Museum of Contemporary Art Shows George Gittoes "Witness to War"
• Virtual Tourist Names Ten Worst Public Art Displays
• The Fitzwilliam Museum Explores the Legacy of Joseph-Pierre Redouté
• The Cantor Arts Center Reinstalls its African Arts Collection
• Dubuque Museum of Art Shows Historic Photographs by Edward S. Curtis
• The Mike Weiss Gallery to Feature Stephanie Gutheil's Paintings
• The National Museum of Mexican Art to Celebrate "The Day of the Dead"
• Crowds Attended at Bowdoin College Museum for Edward Hopper's Maine
• Yousuf Karsh's Portaits Celebrated at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts
• The National Gallery Of Art In Washington D.C. ~ A US Treasure Of European & American Art That Attracts 4.5 Million Visitors Annually
• "El Greco - Toledo 1900" Opens in Zaragoza, Spain
• Ted Vasin: Paintings and Sound presented at LIMN Art Gallery
• The National Gallery of Art exhibits Stunning and Significant French Drawings
• The National Gallery, Washington Acquires Famous American West Landscapes
• Michael Werner Gallery exhibits Paintings by Swiss Artist Félix Vallotton
• Cleveland Museum of Art to display 'Artistic Luxury ~ Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique'
• Yeshiva University Museum features "I of the Storm: Michael Hafftka, Recent Work"
• Forum Gallery will showcase Important New Acquistions of Contemporary Masters
• Sperone Westwater Exhibits Charles LeDray
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Station Museum of Contemporary Art Shows George Gittoes "Witness to War" Posted: 27 Aug 2011 12:05 AM PDT Houston, TX.-  The Station Museum of Contemporary Art has extended its exhibition "George Gittos: Witness to War" through September. George Gittoes works in a variety of media: painting, drawing, printmaking, installation, video and film. He was born in Sydney, Australia in 1949. He has been exhibited internationally, most notably, in Documenta X (Germany) in 1997. His other exhibitions include Minefields (Geneva and Moscow) in 2000, Lives in the Balance (South Africa) in 2001, Across the Lines (Sana'a, Yemen) in 2002, and NO EXIT (Aveiro, Portugal) in 2003. His films have received critical acclaim in Berlin, New York, London, Chicago, and Copenhagen. In 1998 he was the artist in residence at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing and in 2002 was the artist in residence at The School of Humanities, University of Michigan. In 1997 he was awarded membership in the Order of Australia (AM) for his service to the arts and international relations and in 2008 was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of New South Wales. Gittoes' exhibition at the Station Museum in Houston is the first major presentation of his artwork in the United States. It reflects the life and the vision of a unique artist who is driven to experience the tragedy of war first hand. It would be difficult to find another artist in the world remotely like him. Gittoes is both a fine artist and a war artist who often risks his life in the process of making his art. He has set up mobile studios in countries mired in conflict and upheaval, for example, Cambodia, Rwanda, Nicaragua, Northern Ireland, Philippines, Bosnia, East Timor, Palestine, Congo, South Africa, Lebanon, Chechnya, Western Sahara, Yemen, and Iraq. He has lived and worked in these countries during the worst of times. His diaries are the center of his creative thinking, and his paintings and films expand and deepen his vision of a world torn apart by warmongers, dictators and politicians. Recently he has been working in the tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the site of his 2009 documentary film The Miscreants of Taliwood. With an inspired simplicity, Gittoes explains his journey, his vision, and his motivation in his own words: "Why do I do it? As far as choosing the roads I have travelled, I have this instinct that if I get comfortable, the work will lose its 'sting.' So I go out of the comfort zones and into the wilderness to find my art. In the past, it was the natural world where predators fed on gentler creatures. In the contemporary context, I go alone to a different kind of human wildness--Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan--not to contemplate nature, but the basics of humanity…" The center of all his creative thinking and invention are the artist's diaries – a series of volumes he has travelled with and worked in – on planes, in bus shelters, refugee camps, battlefields, hotels, great cities of the world, and some of the most remote and unvisited places. The diaries have become a key exhibition element of his multi media installations – and are integrally linked to his use of various other mediums of photography, film, painting, drawing, writing – the central cog to his creative work and life-journey as an artist. The Station Museum is a private institution dedicated to contemporary art. It is an exhibition forum for local, national, and international artists. Its emphasis is on fine arts and artists that are rarely, if ever acknowledged by other cultural institutions. The museum's goal is to encourage the public's awareness of the cultural, political, economic, and personal dimensions of art. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.stationmuseum.com

Virtual Tourist Names Ten Worst Public Art Displays Posted: 26 Aug 2011 11:53 PM PDT LONDON (REUTERS).- Whether publicly funded or privately obtained public art can be as controversial as it is indefinable. Members and editors of travel website VirtualTourist.com (www.virtualtourist.com ) have some very strong opinions which helped them come up with the top 10 pieces of bad public art. Reuters has not endorsed this list. - 1. "Forever Marilyn" Seward Johnson; Chicago, Illinois - Detractors have found so many things to criticize about this work that it's hard to know where to start: its 26-foot (7.9 meter) scale, its impropriety given that the movie to which it pays tribute is set in New York, and its perceived crudeness given that viewers are able to look directly up the screen siren's dress. Luckily, she'll only be there until 2012.

The Fitzwilliam Museum Explores the Legacy of Joseph-Pierre Redouté Posted: 26 Aug 2011 11:27 PM PDT Cambridge, UK.- An exhibition of flower drawings at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, is to explore the legacy of Joseph-Pierre Redouté as a teacher through a comparative display of his work alongside that of his pupils. The 'Raphael of flowers', Joseph-Pierre Redouté (1759-1840), internationally famous for his prints of roses and lilies, was the finest botanical draughtsman of his age.  In France he had a prestigious reputation in his own time, working for the Royal court both for Queen Marie-Antoinette and then for the Empress Joséphine following the French Revolution. "Flower Drawings: Redouté and his Pupils" is on view at the Fitzwilliam Museum until October 30th.

The Cantor Arts Center Reinstalls its African Arts Collection Posted: 26 Aug 2011 10:56 PM PDT Stanford, CA.- The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University present "Expanding Views of Africa", a reinstallation of its African Art Collection. The new exhibition opens in August and will continues indefinitely. This enlarged and enhanced exhibition, which includes 200 works from the collection plus key loans, broadens conventional views of African art, from ancient cultures before the dynasties of the Egyptian Pharaohs to contemporary artists. Before entering the African galleries, a niche off the lobby highlights a single object:  a full-sized bush buffalo costume with mask from the Nunuma culture of Burkina Faso. Once in the first gallery, visitors encounter contemporary works made in a variety of media from the 1950s to the present, by artists living in Africa and the Diaspora. The next space presents African arts from the 16th to the mid-20th century. The final gallery features the oldest African arts in museum collections, ranging from pre-dynastic Egypt to 15th-century sub-Saharan cultures.

Dubuque Museum of Art Shows Historic Photographs by Edward S. Curtis Posted: 26 Aug 2011 10:37 PM PDT Dubuque, IA.- The Dubuque Museum of Art is pleased to present "A New Generation: Images of Children from The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis", on view at the museum through November 27th. As one of the few repositories in the world of a complete collection of The North American Indian by American photographer and adventurer Edward S. Curtis, Dubuque Museum of Art is proud to once again present a themed selection of images from this extensive and stunning collection. this latest installment features images of Native American children, which are some of Curtis's most endearing images. It was an image of a child that gave momentum to The North American Indian project, when Curtis was one of the winners in the "Prettiest Children in America" contest sponsored by Ladies Home Journal in 1904.

The Mike Weiss Gallery to Feature Stephanie Gutheil's Paintings Posted: 26 Aug 2011 04:21 PM PDT New York City.- The Mike Weiss Gallery is pleased to present their second solo exhibition with German artist Stefanie Gutheil. "Dreckige Katze (Dirty Cat)" expands her playful and perverse painterly language and attempts to shine a flashlight in corners of the imagination that are perhaps best kept secret. Gutheil's unruly cast of darkly comic characters burst forth from canvases as three dimensional paintings as well as sculptures. Gutheil's work is simultaneously intensely personal, sexually political and directly referential to the history of German painting. Psychologically driven, Gutheil selects her subject matter from encounters within her daily life — from immediate family to the club kid revelers of her Berlin neighborhood — transmogrifying them into grotesque characterizations. "Dirty Cat" is on view at the gallery from September 8th through October 8th.

The National Museum of Mexican Art to Celebrate "The Day of the Dead" Posted: 26 Aug 2011 03:07 PM PDT Chicago, IL.- The National Museum of Mexican Art is pleased to present its annual celebration of the Day of the Dead with an exhibition dedicated to photographer Milton Rogovin and surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, both artists associated with Mexico, and both of whom passed away earlier this year. The "Day of the Dead" exhibition will be on view from September 9th through December 11th. It was October 1986 when local artists Héctor Duarte and Clay Morison installed the first Day of the Dead exhibition in the National Museum of Mexican Art Courtyard entrance gallery.  At that time, most Chicagoans were unaware of this ancient Mexican celebration, and because of the time of year and the prominent skeletal imagery, they mistakenly thought this tradition was associated with Halloween. However, over the course of the last twenty-five years, this annual, life-affirming exhibition has gradually become a very familiar sight on the cultural landscape of this city.

Crowds Attended at Bowdoin College Museum for Edward Hopper's Maine Posted: 26 Aug 2011 01:36 PM PDT BRUNSWICK, ME - An exhibit of Edward Hopper's paintings of Maine is breaking attendance records at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, but it's just one of three top-notch shows at museums around Maine this summer and fall. Combine a trip to see all three — the others are an Andrew Wyeth show at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland and a 1930s photography exhibit at Colby College in Waterville — with shopping in Freeport, the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, leaf-peeping, dining and maybe a trip to a spa, and you've got an ideal itinerary for a September getaway. Brunswick is having a busy season with crowds coming in for "Edward Hopper's Maine," on view at the Bowdoin College museum through Oct. 16. "It has indeed broken our records many times over.

Yousuf Karsh's Portaits Celebrated at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts Posted: 26 Aug 2011 01:35 PM PDT Kalamazoo, MI.- The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts is pleased to present "Yousuf Karsh: Regarding Heroes" on view at the KIA. Through his portraits, Yousuf Karsh helped to create our collective visual memory of 20th century statesmen, artists, musicians, writers, actors, and celebrities, including Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Albert Einstein, Audrey Hepburn, Andy Warhol and many others. Yousuf Karsh admired individuals of high achievement and his notion of what constituted a genuine hero was affected by his optimistic outlook on society, even in the darkest days of World War II. Karsh's defiant and scowling portrait of Winston Churchill became an instant icon of Britain's stand against fascism. While styles in portraiture changed after the war, Karsh's images, with their engaging lighting and indelible character study, consistently display one of the most recognizable, signature styles in portrait photography. Throughout his long career, Karsh put aside a selection of his own favorite prints of his favorite subjects that are now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. This exhibition contains 100 prints drawn from that collection, accompanied by a catalogue with essay by David Travis, exhibition curator and former Chair and Curator of Photography, The Art Institute of Chicago. Karsh was a master of studio lights. One of Karsh's distinctive practices was lighting the subject's hands separately. He photographed many of the great and celebrated personalities of his generation. Throughout most of his career he used the 8×10 bellows Calumet (1997.0319) camera, made circa 1940 in Chicago. Karsh had a gift for capturing the essence of his subject in the instant of his portrait. As Karsh wrote of his own work in Karsh Portfolio in 1967, "Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can. The revelation, if it comes at all, will come in a small fraction of a second with an unconscious gesture, a gleam of the eye, a brief lifting of the mask that all humans wear to conceal their innermost selves from the world. In that fleeting interval of opportunity the photographer must act or lose his prize." Karsh said "My chief joy is to photograph the great in heart, in mind, and in spirit, whether they be famous or humble." His work is in permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, New York's Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Bibliotheque nationale de France, the National Portrait Gallery London, the National Portrait Gallery of Australia and many others. Library and Archives Canada holds his complete collection, including negatives, prints and documents. His photographic equipment was donated to the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa. Karsh published 15 books of his photographs, which include brief descriptions of the sessions, during which he would ask questions and talk with his subjects to relax them as he composed the portrait. Some famous subjects photographed by Karsh were Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Muhammad Ali, Marian Anderson, W. H. Auden, Joan Baez, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Humphrey Bogart, Alexander Calder, Pablo Casals, Fidel Castro, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, Joan Crawford, Ruth Draper, Albert Einstein, Dwight Eisenhower, Princess Elizabeth, Robert Frost, Clark Gable, Indira Gandhi, Grey Owl, Ernest Hemingway, Audrey Hepburn, Pope John Paul II, Chuck Jones, Carl Jung, Helen Keller and Polly Thompson, Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Peter Lorre, Pandit Nehru, Georgia O'Keeffe, Laurence Olivier, General Pershing, Pablo Picasso, Pope Pius XII, Prince Rainier of Monaco, Paul Robeson, the rock band Rush, Albert Schweitzer, George Bernard Shaw, Jean Sibelius, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Andy Warhol, Frank Lloyd Wright, and, arguably his most famous portrait subject, Winston Churchill. The story is often told of how Karsh created his famous portrait of Churchill during the early years of World War II. Churchill, the British prime minister, had just addressed the Canadian Parliament and Karsh was there to record one of the century's great leaders. "He was in no mood for portraiture and two minutes were all that he would allow me as he passed from the House of Commons chamber to an anteroom," Karsh wrote in Faces of Our Time. "Two niggardly minutes in which I must try to put on film a man who had already written or inspired a library of books, baffled all his biographers, filled the world with his fame, and me, on this occasion, with dread." Churchill marched into the room scowling, "regarding my camera as he might regard the German enemy." His expression suited Karsh perfectly, but the cigar stuck between his teeth seemed incompatible with such a solemn and formal occasion. "Instinctively, I removed the cigar. At this the Churchillian scowl deepened, the head was thrust forward belligerently, and the hand placed on the hip in an attitude of anger." The image captured Churchill and the Britain of the time perfectly — defiant and unconquerable. Churchill later said to him, "You can even make a roaring lion stand still to be photographed." As such, Karsh titled the photograph, The Roaring Lion. However, Karsh's favourite photograph was the one taken immediately after this one where Churchill's mood had lightened considerably and is shown much in the same pose, but smiling. In 1924, the Kalamazoo Chapter of the American Federation of the Arts incorporated as the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts to present classes and establish legal responsibility for the ownership of art objects.  In 1947 the KIA gained a permanent home when it purchased and a renovated a Victorian mansion at 421 West South Street. In the 1930s and 40s, distinguished guest lecturers such as Diego Rivera, Thomas Hart Benton, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier challenged and informed local audiences about the contemporary art world. An eclectic schedule of exhibitions included work by Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee, Japanese prints and ceramics, African Art, Dutch old masters, and even an international kite collection that became a traveling exhibition. Annual juried competitions and exhibitions by local artists and students helped promote and encourage both new and established artists. In 1961, the KIA built a new facility, the Gilmore Art Center at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts at its current location. In 2006, the Art School was named the Kirk Newman Art School to recognize the artist and former Art School director who contributed so much to its development. Today over 100,000 visitors each year enjoy exciting temporary exhibitions, an outstanding permanent collection of nearly 4,000 works, programs, and events at the KIA. Nearly 3,000 students enroll annually in Kirk Newman Art School classes. The collection, originally developed to complement the KIA's art school, focuses on American painting, sculpture and ceramics, American and European works on paper from the 16th century onwards, photography and American art, from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century portraiture and landscape painting to modern and contemporary abstraction and figurative works, is the strength of the KIA's permanent collection. Significant works by Alexander Calder, William Merritt Chase, Dale Chihuly, Richard Diebenkorn, Janet Fish, Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline and Andy Warhol are part of the collection. In recent years, the collection has been expanded to include Oceanic objects, Pre-Columbian gold and ceramics, African art and East Asian art. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.kiarts.org

The National Gallery Of Art In Washington D.C. ~ A US Treasure Of European & American Art That Attracts 4.5 Million Visitors Annually Posted: 26 Aug 2011 01:11 PM PDT Now visited by more than 4.5 million people annually, the National Gallery of Art is now one of the world's leading art museums. The National Gallery of Art was created in 1937 for the people of the United States of America by a joint resolution of Congress, accepting the gift of financier and art collector Andrew W. Mellon. Since its inception, the mission of the National Gallery of Art has been to serve the United States of America in a national role by preserving, collecting, exhibiting, and fostering the understanding of works of art, at the highest possible museum and scholarly standards. The original West Building, designed by John Russell Pope (architect of the Jefferson Memorial and the National Archives), is a neoclassical marble masterpiece with a domed rotunda over a colonnaded fountain and high-ceilinged corridors leading to delightful garden courts. At its completion in 1941, the building was the largest marble structure in the world. On March 17, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the completed building and the collections on behalf of the people of the United States of America. The paintings and works of sculpture given by Andrew Mellon have formed a nucleus of high quality around which the collections have grown. Mr. Mellon's hope that the newly created National Gallery would attract gifts from other collectors was soon realized in the form of major donations of art from Samuel H. Kress, Rush H. Kress, Joseph Widener, Chester Dale, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, and Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch as well as individual gifts from hundreds of other donors. The modern East Building, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect I. M. Pei and opened in 1978, is composed of two adjoining triangles with glass walls and lofty tetrahedron skylights. The pink Tennessee marble from which both buildings were constructed was taken from the same quarry and forms an architectural link between the two structures. The East Building provided an additional 56,100 m2 of floor space and accommodated the Gallery's growing collections and expanded exhibition schedule as well as housing an advanced research center, administrative offices, a great library, and a burgeoning collection of drawings and prints. The two buildings are linked by an underground concourse featuring sculptor Leo Villareal's computer-programmed digital light project "Multiverse". On May 23, 1999 the Gallery opened an outdoor sculpture garden located in the 6.1-acre block adjacent to the West Building at 7th Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W. The garden provides an informal, yet elegant setting for works of modern and contemporary sculpture. The National Gallery of Art contains three museum shops, three cafes and a bar as well as the Library, a major national art research center serving the Gallery's staff, members of the Center for Advanced Study, visiting scholars, and serious adult researchers. Visit the museum's thorough website at .. http://www.nga.gov The National Gallery of Art has one of the finest art collections in the world, including an outstanding and highly representative collection of European art. The permanent collection of paintings spans from the Middle Ages to the present day. The strongest collection is the Italian Renaissance collection, which includes two panels from Duccio's "Maesta", the great tondo of the "Adoration of the Magi" by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, a Botticelli on the same subject, Giorgione's Allendale "Nativity", Bellini's "The Feast of the Gods", the only Leonardo da Vinci painting in the Americas, and significant groups of works by Titian and Raphael. Other European collections include examples of the work of many of the great masters of western painting, including Mattias Grünewald, Cranach the Elder, Rogier van der Weyden, Albrecht Dürer, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, El Greco, Francisco Goya, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, John Constable, J. M. W. Turner and Eugène Delacroix, among many others. American artists featured in the collection include Gilbert Stuart, Winslow Homer, Thomas Chambers, Fitz Henry Lane, Martin Johnson Heade, Frederic Edwin Church and Mary Cassatt among many others. The collection of sculpture and decorative arts includes such diverse works as the "Chalice of Abbot Suger of St-Denis", a superb collection of work by Rodin and Degas, Honoré Daumier's entire series of bronze sculptures, including all 36 of his caricatured portrait busts of French government officials, superb modern sculpture by Henry Moore and others and wonderful examples of Chinese porcelain. The east wing is a showcase for the museum's collection of 20th-century art, including works by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Joan Miró, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston and Mark Rothko as well as hosting the gallery's special exhibitions. The National Gallery of Art is home to fifteen diverse permanent exhibits that highlight artworks by Henri Matisse ("cutouts"), Alexander Calder (untitled mobile, commissioned for the East Building atrium), Andy Goldsworthy ("Roof", a sculpture installed on the ground level of the East Building) and other specially commissioned pieces or highlights from the collection. Three major exhibitions are now on view at the National Gallery of Art. "From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection" (until 2 January 2012) highlights works from Chester Dale's magnificent bequest to the National Gallery of Art in 1962. This special exhibition features some 83 of his finest French and American paintings. Among the masterpieces on view are Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's "Forest of Fontainebleau", Auguste Renoir's "A Girl with a Watering Can", Mary Cassatt's "Boating Party", Edouard Manet's "Old Musician", Pablo Picasso's "Family of Saltimbanques", and George Bellows' "Blue Morning". Other artists represented include Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, and Claude Monet. Dale was an astute businessman who made his fortune on Wall Street in the bond market. Portraits of Dale by Salvador Dalí and Diego Rivera are included in the show, along with portraits of Dale's wife Maud (who greatly influenced his interest in art) painted by George Bellows and Fernand Léger. A selection of works from the museum library entitled "Collections Frozen in Time" (until 24 July 201) focuses on historic private collection catalogues held by the National Gallery of Art's own library. From the Middle-Ages until the 19th century, rulers, nobles, and wealthy merchants acquired and sold paintings, classical sculpture, gems, vases, and numismatics. As these private libraries grew they became a way to demonstrate an individual's wealth and sophistication and had to be documented. Some collectors wrote their own catalogues, others sought noted scholars to catalogue the works. In the days before photography, artists were commissioned to produce lavish engravings depicting the assembled objects in fine detail. The private collection catalogue soon became as much a luxury object as the items it described, and as collections were dispersed over time, these catalogues often remained the only record of the collections' original contents. Until the 15th of May 2011, the National Gallery of Art is spotlighting Ter Brugghen's "Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene" (on loan from the Allen Memorial At Museum of Oberlin College) hanging it alongside their own, famous "Bagpipe Player". Although these paintings belong to different genres, they reveal the sure fluidity of brush, exquisite color harmonies, and sophisticated compositional orchestration for which Ter Brugghen is renowned. "Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene" depicts an episode from the life of Sebastian, a third–century Roman soldier. After refusing to renounce Christianity he was bound to a tree and shot by archers. Irene, along with her maidservant, rescued him, removed the arrows from his flesh, and nursed his wounds. The circumstances prompting the creation of this work are not certain, but it is probable that Ter Brugghen painted it for a hospital in Utrecht. Major forthcoming exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art include "Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals" from 20th February 2011. Organized jointly with the National Gallery, London, this exhibition will explore the 18th century art inspired by the city of Venice. The exhibition celebrates the rich variety of these Venetian views, known as 'vedute', through some 20 masterworks by Canaletto and more than 30 by his rivals, including Michele Marieschi, Francesco Guardi, and Bernardo Bellotto. Responding to an art market fueled largely by the Grand Tour, these gifted painters depicted the famous monuments and vistas of Venice in different moods and seasons. From February 27thth 2011, "Gauguin: Maker of Myth will feature nearly 120 works by Gauguin in the first major look at the artist's oeuvre in the United States since the blockbuster National Gallery of Art retrospective of 1988–1989, "The Art of Paul Gauguin". Organized by Tate Modern, London, in association with the National Gallery of Art, the exhibition will bring together self-portraits, genre pictures, still lifes, and landscapes from throughout the artist's career. It will include not only oil paintings but also pastels, prints, drawings, sculpture, and decorated functional objects. Organized thematically, the exhibition will examine Gauguin's use of religious and mythological symbols to tell stories, reinventing or appropriating narratives and myths drawn both from his European cultural heritage and from Maori legend. Opening on April 17th 2011, a retrospective of work by Gabriel Metsu will featue some 35 paintings. Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667) is one of the most important Dutch genre painters of the mid-17th century. His ability to capture ordinary moments of life with freshness and spontaneity was matched only by his ability to depict materials with an unerring truth to nature. Although his career was relatively short, Metsu enjoyed great success as a genre painter, but also for his religious scenes, still lifes, and portraits. This exhibition will be the first monographic show of Metsu's work ever mounted in the United States.

"El Greco - Toledo 1900" Opens in Zaragoza, Spain Posted: 26 Aug 2011 01:09 PM PDT Zaragoza, Spain - An exhibition of works by master painter El Greco has arrived in Zaragoza. The show of 27 paintings by the 16th century artist offers new insight into El Greco´s art and his adoptive city of Toledo - a town that came to appreciate his unique style anew in 1900 after centuries of neglect. The show aims to summon up life in Toledo through paintings and unpublished photos by the well-known painter and those inspired by his vanguardist techniques in later years.

Ted Vasin: Paintings and Sound presented at LIMN Art Gallery Posted: 26 Aug 2011 01:07 PM PDT San Francisco, CA - LIMN Art Gallery is pleased to present the work of San Francisco-based artist Ted Vasin. The exhibition consists of over a dozen colorful and geometrically precise paintings along with a site-specific sound installation. Vasin has exhibited at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor and the de Young Art Center. In 2006, he was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. On view 7 June through 19 July, 2008.

The National Gallery of Art exhibits Stunning and Significant French Drawings Posted: 26 Aug 2011 01:05 PM PDT WASHINGTON, DC.- Some 135 of the most significant and beautiful drawings made over a period of three centuries by the best French artists working at home and abroad and by foreign artists working in France will be on view in Renaissance to Revolution: French Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, 1500–1800 in the Gallery's West Building from October 1, 2009, through January 31, 2010. This is the first comprehensive exhibition and catalogue to focus on the Gallery's permanent collection of French old master drawings, which is remarkable for its breadth, depth, and individual masterpieces.

The National Gallery, Washington Acquires Famous American West Landscapes Posted: 26 Aug 2011 01:04 PM PDT Washington.DC - The National Gallery of Art has acquired a key landscape of the untamed American West, its third painting by the celebrated 19th century artist Thomas Moran. "Green River Cliffs,Wyoming," painted in 1881 and one of the artist's most famous paintings, has been added to the collection, the gallery announced. The painting, a dramatic sweeping view of the West's natural wonders, was installed late Thursday outside the American galleries on the main floor of the museum's West Building. "Green River," which was featured in the painter's retrospective at the gallery in 1997, is a gift of Vern Milligan, a longtime collector of Western Art and his two children. Milligan purchased "Green River" at auction in 1994 for $2.7 million and has kept it in his private collection, according to the gallery.

Michael Werner Gallery exhibits Paintings by Swiss Artist Félix Vallotton Posted: 26 Aug 2011 01:02 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- Michael Werner Gallery presents an exhibition of paintings by Swiss artist Félix Vallotton (Lausanne, 1865 – Paris, 1925). The exhibition features portraits of women, primarily nudes, and is the first gallery exhibition in New York devoted to the artist's paintings. Félix Vallotton's paintings do not give pleasure easily. In portraiture he is not a flashy virtuoso and his nudes are not "sexy", at least not in any typical fashion. His paint handling is careful and deliberate; his palette, subdued and a little flat; his surfaces, slow and at times somewhat dry. His intense, unforgiving attention to detail lends a palpable realism to the paintings. Enlivened by a thinly veiled eroticism, his subtly voyeuristic scenes leave one feeling more than a little uncomfortable. Paintings of Félix Vallotton is on view from 4 February to 10 April 2010.

Cleveland Museum of Art to display 'Artistic Luxury ~ Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique' Posted: 26 Aug 2011 01:00 PM PDT   CLEVELAND, OHIO - The artistry and master techniques of the most prominent designers of jewelry and luxury goods at the end of the Gilded Age, and the rivalry between them, is explored in Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique, an exhibition of sumptuous objects from The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) and rare loans from public and private collections worldwide. The show, the first comparative study of the work of three of the greatest designers of the 20th century, will be on view October 19, 2008 – January 18, 2009 at CMA before traveling to the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

Yeshiva University Museum features "I of the Storm: Michael Hafftka, Recent Work" Posted: 26 Aug 2011 12:59 PM PDT New York City -  After more than 30 years of portraying the human figure with a neo-expressionist style, Michael Hafftka turns to his Jewish heritage for subject matter and inspiration in his new exhibition, "I of the Storm: Michael Hafftka, Recent Work," at the Yeshiva University Museum. Frequently compared to the painters Soutine, Goya and Rouault, Hafftka here makes use of mystical images, biblical themes and the Hebrew alphabet in watercolors and oils.  The exhibition runs through August 30, 2009. Gallery Talk: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 1:00 pm

Forum Gallery will showcase Important New Acquistions of Contemporary Masters Posted: 26 Aug 2011 12:58 PM PDT New York City  - New Acquisitions, Forum Gallery will showcase thirty works new to the gallery in the last year, and will include large and small-scale paintings, dramatic sculpture and important drawings by Forum Gallery roster artists and twentieth century and contemporary masters. Featured artists include: Steven Assael, Ilya Bolotwsky, Eli Bornstein, Charles Burchfield, Robert Cottingham, Philip Evergood, Paul Fenniak, Sam Francis, Linden Frederick, Gregory Gillespie, Robert Gwathmey, Edward Hopper, Holly Lane, Michael Leonard, Alan Magee, G. Daniel Massad, Odd Nerdrum, Larry Rivers, Brian Rutenberg, Raphael Soyer, Tula Telfair, Bill Vuksanovich, Max Weber, Tom Wesselmann, Francisco Zúñiga, Cybèle Young, and Lisa Bartolozzi. On exhibition 10 July through 22 August, 2009.

Sperone Westwater Exhibits Charles LeDray Posted: 26 Aug 2011 12:55 PM PDT New York City - Sperone Westwater is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Charles LeDray.  For his second solo show at the gallery, LeDray will exhibit thirteen new sculptures.  On exhibition 20 February – 24 March 2007. Fabricated from a long and varied list of materials, LeDray's sculptures—whether presented individually or collectively in parts—challenge notions of scale.  These works, however, offer little or no indication of the complex processes by which they were created.

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 26 Aug 2011 12:54 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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