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

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• The Pompidou Centre Hosts a Major Retrospective of Edvard Munch
• The Schirn Kunsthalle Opens an Exhibition of "Erró: Portrait and Landscape"
• The Manchester Art Gallery Presents "Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer"
• The Herakleidon Museum Showcases "Sol LeWitt: Line and Color"
• The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Shows "Artistic Evolution: Southern California Artists"
• The Haus der Kunst Shows Ellsworth Kelly in Black and White
• The Museum of Florida Art Shows "Behind the Scenes:A Celebration & Passion for Art"
• Grayson Perry: "The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman" at the British Museum
• The Whitney Museum of American Art Examines Realism and Surrealism
• The Smithsonian American Art Museum ~ A Phenomenal Collection Of American Art In Washington D.C.
• Frank Stella Receives the Julio González Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts
• Detroit Institute of Arts shows 'People at Play in American Prints & Drawings', 1890–1945
• Valentino's Fifty Year Exhibition
• Forum Gallery will showcase Important New Acquistions of Contemporary Masters
• Controversy Follows Conviction of Artist Odd Nerdrum for Tax Fraud
• Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents Photographers Paul Steinitz and Ja’bagh Kaghado
• James Turrell Creates His Largest-Ever Walk-In Light Installation in the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
• The Pinakothek der Moderne exhibits a Retrospective of Zoe Leonard ~ Photographs
• The Groninger Museum exhibits 'From Collenius to Koons' with thanks to the Rembrandt Association
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The Pompidou Centre Hosts a Major Retrospective of Edvard Munch Posted: 07 Oct 2011 12:31 AM PDT Paris.- The Pompidou Center hosts "Edvard Munch, l'oeil moderne (Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye)" on display until January 9th 2012. The artist's entire career will be on show. Munch, pioneer of expressionism, was also known for his modern and symbolist paintings. The exhibition's curators, Angela Lampe and Clément Chéroux, aim to put an end to preconceived ideas surrounding the painter's life and work. At first sight, Munch is deemed to be a solitary painter, which in fact is incorrect given his constant awareness and interest in the surrounding world. This exhibition is a Major Retrospective of the iconic Edvard Munch With a collection never before seen in France of around eighty paintings, thirty artworks on paper, fifty photographs and a film, the exhibition sparks questions concerning the artist's work, as well as his vision of the time. In the main exhibition areas, well–known canvases are set alongside lesser–known ones. The show is presented in a clear and concise manner, allowing the spectator to compare works treating the same subject, but composed at different times. The Pompidou Centre has been able to organise the retrospective thanks to several loans from the Munch Museum in Oslo and other international museums and collectors. Edvard Munch was fully "modern" is the thesis defended by the exhibition devoted to it by the Pompidou Centre, through nearly one hundred and forty works, including paintings of sixty, fifty photographs vintage prints, some thirty 'works on paper, film, and one of the few sculptures by the artist. Through this collection, the exhibition Edvard Munch, the modern eye illuminates the work of the famous Norwegian painter (1863-1944) in a new light by showing how the curiosity of the artist in all forms of representation of his time nurtured and transformed his inspiration and work. His experience in photography, film, readings of the illustrated press or work for the theater have profoundly inspired a work of which the exhibition reveals the dazzling modernity. It shows, in contradiction of the mythology that labels Munch a tormented recluse, he was actually open to the aesthetic debates of his time, in constant dialogue with the contemporary forms of representation, including photography, film and theater. Through the nine themes displayed in twelve rooms, the exhibition presents a series of major paintings and works on paper as it has rarely been possible to see them, and Munch's experiments associated with photography and film. The Centre national d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou (Ther Pompidou Center) was the brainchild of President Georges Pompidou who wanted to create an original cultural institution in the heart of Paris completely focused on modern and contemporary creation, where the visual arts would rub shoulders with theatre, music, cinema, literature and the spoken word. Housed in the centre of Paris in a building designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, whose architecture symbolises the spirit of the 20th century, the Centre Pompidou first opened its doors to the public in 1977. After renovation work from 1997 to December 1999, it opened to the public again on 1 January 2000, with expanded museum space and enhanced reception areas. Since then it has once again become one of the most visited attractions in France. Some 6 million people pass through the Centre Pompidou's doors each year, a total of over 190 million visitors in its 30 years of existence. In a unique location under one roof, the Centre Pompidou houses one of the most important museums in the world, featuring the leading collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe, a vast public reference library with facilities for over 2,000 readers, general documentation on 20th century art, a cinema and performance halls, a music research institute, educational activity areas, bookshops, a restaurant and a café. Unswerving in its interdisciplinary vocation and its core mission - to spread knowledge about all creative works from the 20th century and those heralding the new millennium - each year the Centre Pompidou holds thirty or so public exhibitions plus international events - cinema and documentary screenings, conferences and symposiums, concerts, dance and educational activities - many of which go on to other venues in both France and abroad. Under the rules of the competition, the architectural project to create the museum had to meet the criteria of interdisciplinarity, freedom of movement and flow, and an open approach to exhibition areas. The competition was won by two young architects: the Italian Renzo Piano and British designer Richard Rogers who proposed a constraint-free architecture in the spirit of the 1960s. The supporting structure and movement and flow systems, such as the escalators, were relegated to the outside of the building, thereby freeing up interior space for museum and activity areas. Colour-coded ducts are attached to the building's west façade, as a kind of wrapping for the structure: blue for air, green for fluids, yellow for electricity cables and red for movement and flow. The transparency of the west main façade allows people to see what is going on inside the centre from the piazza, a vast esplanade that the architects conceived of as an area of continuity, linking the city and the centre. The centre quickly fell victim to the unexpected scale of its success. With some seven million visitors per year, the building aged prematurely and had to close in October 1997 for 27 months. During this time 70,000 m² were renovated and 8,000 m² added, mainly to display collections. This was possible by relocating the offices outside the centre. When it reopened on 1 January 2000, the centre was an immediate, overwhelming public success again, testifying to the public's inseparable attachment to the site and its spirit. Visit the center's website at ... http://www.centrepompidou.fr

The Schirn Kunsthalle Opens an Exhibition of "Erró: Portrait and Landscape" Posted: 06 Oct 2011 10:35 PM PDT Frankfurt, Germany  - The Schirn Kunsthalle is proud to present "Erró: Portrait and Landscape", on view at the museum from October 6th through January 8th 2012. The Icelandic artist Erró is one of the great solitary figures of twentieth- century art. At once Pop and Baroque, eye-catching and narrative, critical of society and humorous, moral and inscrutable, over the past fifty years he has produced an opulent, unmistakable oeuvre that resists all categorization. His critical narrative collages reproduce in painting combinations of pictorial elements from various popular sources to create eloquent, often disturbing tableaux. As reflections on great social themes such as politics, war, sexuality, science, and art, these dense visual arrangements seem to create a comprehensive atlas of images of the modern world.

The Manchester Art Gallery Presents "Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer" Posted: 06 Oct 2011 09:30 PM PDT Manchester, UK.- The Manchester Art Gallery will stage the first major exhibition of Ford Madox Brown's work since 1964. "Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer" will bring together 140 works from public and private collections to reveal the pioneering role Ford Madox Brown played in the development of Pre-Raphaelitism and explore how the artist's rebellion against traditionally taught methods led to a completely radical new style. The exhibition's painting highlights include Brown's masterpieces "Work" (1852–63) and "The Last of England" (1852–55), which have been brought together for the first time for over twenty-five years. "Work", acquired in 1885, was the first Pre-Raphaelite painting bought by Manchester Art Gallery and will be shown alongside a selection of rarely displayed preparatory studies.

The Herakleidon Museum Showcases "Sol LeWitt: Line and Color" Posted: 06 Oct 2011 09:11 PM PDT Athens, Greece.- The Herakleidon Museum is proud to present "Sol LeWitt: Line and Color", on view from October 1st through January 29th 2012. "Line and Color" showcases works by the American artist Sol LeWitt, all of which were donated by the artist himself, and are on loan from the New Britain Museum of American Art (Connecticut, USA). The exhibition has the support of the U.S. Embassy in Athens. The exhibition comprises 115 works by Sol LeWitt are mainly prints (such as lithographs, etchings, and woodcuts), but his first oil painting as well as gouache, monotypes, and photographs are also included. The artist's works are known for their geometric shapes and rich colors. A private museum space in the heart of Athens, under the shadow of the Acropolis, the Herakleidon Museum opened its doors to friends of the fine arts in the summer of 2004.

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Shows "Artistic Evolution: Southern California Artists" Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:57 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County presents Artistic Evolution: Southern California Artists at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 1945-1963 as its contribution to the major initiative Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 - 1980. On view through January 15, 2012, Artistic Evolution is inspired by works that were shown at NHM when it was the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science, and Art, the first dedicated museum building in Los Angeles. The Exposition Park museum historically played a crucial role in nurturing the dynamism and richness of the Los Angeles art scene through exhibitions and the coveted annual purchase prize. In the mid 1960s, art exhibitions were moved from the Museum to the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Wilshire Boulevard, and NHM focused its mission on natural history.

The Haus der Kunst Shows Ellsworth Kelly in Black and White Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:56 PM PDT Munich, Germany  - The Haus der Kunst is proud to present "Ellsworth Kelly: Black and White", on view at the museum from October 7th through January 22nd 2012. This exhibition is devoted solely to works in black and white. Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1931 in Newburgh, New York) regularly verified a newfound formal solution through an execution in black and white. Mostly these versions were created in parallel to the coloured versions; sometimes they preceded them. According to Ellsworth Kelly, his paintings in black and white comprise approximately 20 percent of his total œuvre; they account for a higher proportion of his complete work is higher than that of any other two-colour combination. So far these works have never been brought together in an exhibition, although the artist has encouraged this kind of retrospective since the 1990s.

The Museum of Florida Art Shows "Behind the Scenes:A Celebration & Passion for Art" Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:56 PM PDT DeLand, FL.- The Museum of Florida Art is proud to present "Behind the Scenes:A Celebration and Passion for Art", on view through October 30th, in the Lower Main Gallery. In every art museum there are artists working behind the scenes. Their passion for art is channeled into additional administrative and support rolls at that facility. This exhibition will highlight a group of its supporting artists, celebrating the creative works of artists who are actively engaged in the day to day operation of the Museum of Florida Art. Numerous artistic disciplines are revealed as unexpected and often unknown sides of those frequently associated with museum managerial and support activities. Featured in this exhibition are: Pam Coffman (Education Curator), David Fithian (Exhibition Coordinator), Tim Gearheart (Gallery Technician), Dan Gunderson (Board Member), Charon Luebbers (Exhibition Committee Member), Fran Massey (Board Member), Diane Moore (Guild President), Carey Wilson (Event Specialist) and Anna Tomczak (Exhibition Committee Member). Additional works by members of the Museum of Florida Art Guild will also be on display in the Museum Shop.

Grayson Perry: "The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman" at the British Museum Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:45 PM PDT LONDON.- The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman is a memorial to makers and builders, all those countless un-named skilled individuals who have made the beautiful man-made wonders of history. They are an artist in the service of their religion, their master, their tribe, their tradition. Grayson Perry has conceived a major new exhibition for the British Museum. As the artist, curator and guide he will explore a range of themes connected with notions of craftsmanship and sacred journeys – from shamanism, magic and holy relics to motorbikes, identity and contemporary culture. The collections of the British Museum consist of over eight million objects made by men and women from every age and corner of the globe. Upturning the familiar convention of a contemporary artist "responding to a museum's collection", Perry has here developed an entirely new body of new work whilst undertaking a journey of his own through the vast British Museum collection to select over 190 objects that correlate to his own. The exhibition will also feature a number of existing works by the artist, many of which will be on public view for the first time.

The Whitney Museum of American Art Examines Realism and Surrealism Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:44 PM PDT New York City.- The Whitney Museum of American Art is proud to present "Real/Surreal" on view at the museum from October 6th through February 12th 2012. The permeable boundary between the real and the imagined is the subject of this exhibition, which takes a close look at the interconnection between two of the strongest currents in twentieth-century American art, the exhibition includes eighty paintings, drawings, photographs, and prints made in the years before, during, and immediately after the Second World War by such artists as Paul Cadmus, Federico Castellón, Ralston Crawford, Mabel Dwight, Jared French, Louis Guglielmi, Edward Hopper, Man Ray, Kay Sage, George Tooker, Grant Wood, and Andrew Wyeth. An international movement in art and literature, Surrealism originated in Europe in the 1920s. Its practitioners tapped the subconscious mind to create fantastic, non-rational worlds. While some explored abstraction and used the subconscious to directly influence the formal structure of their work, others developed imagery with strong roots in traditional painting. This vein of Surrealism flourished most famously in the work of Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, and influenced a host of artists in the United States. As the movement spread internationally and some of the major figures moved to this country in the upheavals of the War, its ideas became more diffuse and permeated both art and popular culture.  This exhibition, the second in a series of shows reexamining the Museum's collection chronologically from its earliest days to the present, focuses on the tension and overlap between realism and Surrealism. Although the term "realism" has many facets, a basic connection to the observable world underlies all of them; the subversion of reality through the imagination and the subconscious lies at the heart of Surrealism. Surrealism was a liberating force which allowed for all manner of fantastic, unreal imagery, but it also greatly influenced how artists perceived and represented reality. Those who absorbed its ideas learned to invest objects and spaces with symbolic power, making them representative of psychic states, moods, and subconscious impulses. They favored narrative ambiguity over explicitness, intentionally allowing viewers to project their own subjectivity onto the work, so that the viewer's imagination, and the artist's, could intertwine. Yet there are convergences in these different and even oppositional approaches to experience, and they encourage new ways of looking at the art of the twenties, thirties, and forties in America. For example, Edward Hopper, the artist most closely identified with the Whitney, is a painter whose own subjectivity and imagination are integral to his work. Many artists who developed imagery based on new and very specific, concrete conditions of industrial America were essentially interested in artificial worlds and presented these as distillations of reality. Eventotally abstract painters such as Yves Tanguy depended on techniques developed from traditional realist art to render other worlds. By willfully distorting such techniques, Helen Lundeberg and Mabel Dwight could quietly undercut our sense of stability, while showing us recognizable and even mundane objects and settings. Most of the artists on view were academically trained and had a full command of traditional painting and drawing techniques. Those directly connected to European Surrealism or strongly influenced by it used these techniques to subvert and alter the observable world. Harder to categorize are those whose work has certain qualities in common with Surrealism but who tinkered subtly with reality rather than dramatically changing it to expressive ends. Like the Surrealists, their strategies make the familiar unfamiliar, unsettling, or uncanny, and often involve manipulating the tools of representational art. Some, for example, distort spatial perspective by compressing or exaggerating it. They may crop or fragment what they depict, create strange juxtapositions of objects, or unusual shifts in scale; they may distill or accentuate normal qualities in their surroundings—light, shadow, materials, textures—so that these appear abnormal or weird. As the preeminent institution devoted to the art of the United States, the Whitney Museum of American Art presents the full range of twentieth-century and contemporary American art, with a special focus on works by living artists. The Whitney is dedicated to collecting, preserving, interpreting, and exhibiting American art, and its collection—arguably the finest holding of twentieth-century American art in the world—is the Museum's key resource. The Museum's signature exhibition, the Biennial, is the country's leading survey of the most recent developments in American art. Innovation has been a hallmark of the Whitney since its beginnings. It was the first museum dedicated to the work of living American artists and the first New York museum to present a major exhibition of a video artist (Nam June Paik in 1982). Such figures as Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, and Cindy Sherman were given their first museum retrospectives by the Whitney. The Museum has consistently purchased works within the year they were created, often well before the artists became broadly recognized. The Whitney was the first museum to take its exhibitions and programming beyond its walls by establishing corporate-funded branch facilities, and the first museum to undertake a program of collection-sharing (with the San Jose Museum of Art) in order to increase access to its renowned collection. The Whitney's collection— comprising more than 19,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, films, videos, and new media by more than 2,900 artists—contains some of the most significant and exciting work created by artists in the United States during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Visit the museum's website at ... http://whitney.org

The Smithsonian American Art Museum ~ A Phenomenal Collection Of American Art In Washington D.C. Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:30 PM PDT The Smithsonian is the world's largest museum complex and research organization, comprising 19 museums and nine research centers. The Smithsonian American Art Museum, begun in 1829, is the first federal art collection and is dedicated to the collection and display of American Art (art produced by American artists or in America by others). The museum began with gifts from private collections and art organizations established in the nation's capital before the founding of the Smithsonian in 1846. The museum has grown steadily to become a center for the study, enjoyment, and preservation of America's cultural heritage. Today the collection consists of artworks in all media, spanning more than 300 years of artistic achievement. The collection began modestly in 1829 when a Washingtonian named John Varden set out to form a permanent museum for the nation with his collection of European art. At first, the art was placed in a room he added to his own house near the U.S. Capitol. In 1841, Varden's collection was displayed in the newly constructed Patent Office Building (coincidentally, the museum's home today). The establishment of the Smithsonian in 1846 eclipsed the prestige of the institute, which later disbanded. By 1858, many items in the Smithsonian Art Collection on view at the Patent Office Building were moved a few blocks to the newly completed Smithsonian Castle. The remainder of the collection followed in 1862. But a destructive fire there in 1865 increased the Smithsonian's reluctance to build cultural collections. For the rest of the century, most of the artwork was placed on loan to the Library of Congress and to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. A turning point in the history of the collection came in 1906. That year the probated will of Harriet Lane Johnston, an art collector and niece of President James Buchanan, forced an important decision in a federal court: the recognition that the Smithsonian's collection formed a "National Gallery of Art." Coined during a national art-collecting boom, the official name soon attracted major gifts. Highly prized were diverse artworks owned by John Gellatly and American impressionist paintings and Barbizon landscapes collected by William T. Evans. Plans to build a permanent home for the museum on the National Mall came and went, among them a prize-winning modernist structure that shocked federal officials. The competition had been organized after Andrew Mellon gave his European-focused art collection to the nation in 1937 with the stipulation that his new museum be called the "National Gallery of Art" in emulation of the National Gallery of Art in London. To comply with Mellon's wishes for a National Gallery of Art to house his European collection, the Smithsonian museum known as the National Gallery of Art for the previous thirty-one years was renamed the National Collection of Fine Arts in 1937. It was given a new mission based on New Deal idealism: to promote the work of living artists and to build a national audience. The interest in historic preservation after World War II ultimately was responsible for giving the first Smithsonian art museum a new home and preserving an architectural treasure. In 1957, a bill was introduced in Congress to tear down the elegant Patent Office Building to make way for a parking lot. Deteriorated but still one of the purest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the nation, the structure was saved when Congress turned the building over to the Smithsonian. In 1968, after an extensive interior renovation, the museum opened to the public. In 1972, the Renwick Gallery opened to the public as a branch museum featuring American crafts. In 1980, the museum's name was changed to the National Museum of American Art as part of a Smithsonian initiative to standardize the names of its many museums and to reflect the national scope of the collections. Since then, the museum has focused its energy on acquiring and promoting the work of artists in the United States exclusively. Twenty years later, the museum proposed that it be called the Smithsonian American Art Museum as an easy-to-remember name and a straightforward presentation of its mission. Congress approved this change in October 2000. The Smithsonian American Art Museum's main building, a dazzling showcase for American art and portraiture, is a National Historic Landmark and is considered one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the United States. Several important early American architects were involved in the original design of the building, including Robert Mills and Thomas U. Walter. Begun in 1836 and completed in 1868, it is one of the oldest public buildings constructed in early Washington. The Smithsonian American Art Museum's branch for craft and decorative arts, the Renwick Gallery, is close to the White House in the heart of historic federal Washington. Its Second Empire-style building, also a National Historic Landmark, was designed by architect James Renwick Jr. in 1859 and completed in 1874. In the 1990s, the Smithsonian embarked on a plan to restore the main building, and to create innovative new public facilities. The recent renovation (2000-2006) revealed the full magnificence of the building's exceptional architectural features, such as the porticos modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, a curving double staircase, colonnades, vaulted galleries, large windows, and skylights as long as a city block. Full circulation on all three floors for the public has been restored. Extraordinary effort was made to use new preservation technologies to restore the historic fabric of the building and re-use historic materials. Two innovative and bold new public spaces are open to museum visitors: the Lunder Conservation Center and the Luce Foundation Center for American Art. In addition, the Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium and the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard are major enhancements that make this a destination museum for the 21st century. The Smithsonian American Art Museum is one of the nation's leading centers for the study of American art. The museum offers academic opportunities for scholars at the graduate level and above, research opportunities for visiting scholars, and professional museum training for college seniors and graduate students. The museum also produces 'American Art', a peer-reviewed periodical on the arts in America, organizes scholarly symposia, and sponsors several annual publication prize awards. The museum's specialized art databases of a half million records and its extensive photograph archives further research efforts in the field. Education staff and docents welcome students and teachers at both venues, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery. The Smithsonian American Art Museum is the nation's first collection of American art and one of the world's largest and most inclusive collections of art made in the United States, is an unparalleled record of the American experience. The collection captures the aspirations, character, and imagination of the American people across more than three centuries. These artworks reveal America's rich artistic and cultural history from the colonial period to today. In recent years, the museum has strengthened its commitment to contemporary art, and in particular media arts. All regions, cultures, and traditions in this country are represented in the museum's collections, research resources, exhibitions, and public programs. Colonial portraiture, nineteenth-century landscape, American impressionism, twentieth-century realism and abstraction, New Deal projects, sculpture, photography, prints and drawings, contemporary crafts, African American art, Latino art, and folk art are all featured in the collection. More than 7,000 artists are represented in the collection, including major masters such as John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Helen Frankenthaler, Christo, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Lee Friedlander, Nam June Paik, Jackson Pollock, Martin Puryear, Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein. The museum has been a leader in identifying significant aspects of American visual culture and actively collecting and exhibiting works of art before many other major public collections. The museum has the largest collection of 'New Deal' art and the finest collections of contemporary craft, American impressionist paintings and masterpieces from the Gilded Age. Other pioneering collections include historic and contemporary folk art; work by African American and Latino artists; photography from its origins in the nineteenth century to contemporary works; images of western expansion; and realist art from the first half of the twentieth century. The Renwick Gallery, a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, features one of the finest collections of American craft in the United States. Its collections, exhibition program, and publications highlight the best craft objects and decorative arts from the nineteenth century to the present. The museum's Luce Foundation Center for American Art, a study center and visible art storage facility, displays more than 3,300 artworks from the museum's permanent collection in a three-story skylight space. The highlight of the temporary exhibitions currently on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum is "Alexis Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow" until May 8th 2011. Alexis Rockman has been depicting the natural world with virtuosity and wit for more than two decades. He was one of the first contemporary artists to build his career around exploring environmental al issues, from evolutionary biology and genetic engineering to deforestation and climate change. Rockman has garnered attention for embracing these issues, as well as for the epic quality of his projects, including several monumentally scaled canvases. His work expresses deep concerns about the world's fragile ecosystems and the tension between nature and culture, which are communicated through vivid, even apocalyptic, imagery. Rockman achieves his vision through a synthesis of fantasy and empirical fact, using sources as varied as natural history, botanical illustrations, museum dioramas, science fiction films, realist art traditions dating back to the Renaissance, and firsthand field study. Alexis Rockman: A fable for Tomorrow is the first major survey of the artist's work and features 47 paintings and works on paper from private and public collections. The title of the exhibition is taken from the opening chapter of Rachel Carson's influential 1962 book Silent Spring. In it, Carson combines two seemingly incompatible literary genres, mythic narrative and factual reportage. Rockman approaches his paintings with a similar intent. The exhibition traces Rockman's artistic development from the mid-1980s to the present. Highlights include "Evolution" (1992), his first mural-sized painting, and "Manifest Destiny" (2003-2004), an ambitious large-scale work commissioned by the Brooklyn Museum of Art. An accompanying book has been produced, co-published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and London-based D Giles Ltd. In addition to the Rockman retrospective, 3 rotating exhibitions feature exhibits from the main collection. "Close to Home: Photographers and Their Families" until July 24th 2011 presents photographs made during the past three decades by both established and emerging artists. It features thirty-two color and black-and-white photographs from the permanent collection. "Watch This! New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image" takes stock of the cutting-edge tools and materials used by video artists during the past forty years and features key artworks from the history of video art alongside works by the latest generation of artists. The "Grand Salon Installation: Paintings from the Smithsonian American Art Museum" at the Renwick Gallery is an installation of seventy paintings from the collection showing the development of American art from the 1840s to the 1930s. The Smithsonian American Art Museum displays its collections and presents special exhibitions in two locations in Washington, D.C. Its main building is located at the heart of a vibrant downtown cultural district, while its branch museum for contemporary craft and decorative arts, the Renwick Gallery, is located nine blocks west, near the White House. Before you visit, please take a moment to look over our Gallery Guidelines so you know what to expect. If you are looking for a quiet place to work or to check your e-mail, free public wireless Internet access (Wi-Fi) is available in the Luce Foundation Center. Please note: the Kogod Courtyard and the Courtyard Cafe are temporarily closed due to construction. If your time is limited, stop by the Information Desk for a self-guided tour brochure, Ten Highlights, which includes the innovative Luce Foundation Center for American Art and the Lunder Conservation Center, or take advantage of one of the daily docent-led tours of the collection. Don't forget, American Art's main building is open every evening until 7 p.m. so you can visit your favorite painting before going to dinner or heading home. Education staff and docents welcome students and teachers to "our space" at two venues, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery. At the Smithsonian American Art Museum, interactive tours yield lively exchanges about our collection as windows on American history. At the Renwick Gallery, students handle and explore unique craft objects by contemporary artists to learn about process, material, and technique. A variety of programs are offered in the center, including themed scavenger hunts for children, a weekly sketching workshop, Art + Coffee tours and a variety of interactive games. Ten award-winning interactive computer kiosks share information about every object on display and include discussions of each artwork, artist biographies, audio interviews, still images, and nearly seventy videos created exclusively for the Luce Center. Audio tours with more than 180 stops can be accessed through a cell phone, iTunes, or free MP3 players available at the Center's information desk. Visit The Smithsonian American Art Museum at : www.americanart.si

Frank Stella Receives the Julio González Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:29 PM PDT VALENCIA.- American painter Frank Stella received the Julio González Prize recognizing his work in the arts and his contributions to Modern art. This is the ninth time that the award has been given out and previous winners have been: Georg Baselitz, Cy Twombly, Eduardo Chillida, Anish Kapoor, Markus Lüpertz, Robert Rauschenberg, Anthony Caro, Pierre Soulages and Miquel Navarro. Frank Stella was born in Malden, Massachusetts. After attending high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, he went on to Princeton University, where he painted, influenced by the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, and majored in history. Early visits to New York art galleries would prove to be an influence upon his artistic development. Stella moved to New York in 1958 after his graduation. He is one of the most well-regarded postwar American painters who still works today. Frank Stella has reinvented himself in consecutive bodies of work over the course of his five-decade career.

Detroit Institute of Arts shows 'People at Play in American Prints & Drawings', 1890–1945 Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:28 PM PDT Detroit, MI - This exhibition of approximately 100 works on paper serves as a corollary and thematic complement to Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush with Leisure, 1895-1925. It is drawn almost entirely from the DIA's collection and is dominated by the prints of John Sloan, George Bellows, Glenn O. Coleman, and Martin Lewis. On view through 3 August, 2008.

Valentino's Fifty Year Exhibition Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:27 PM PDT SINGAPORE.- One hundred pieces of exquisite haute couture designs by Italian maestro, Valentino Garavani, will be featured in a curated exhibition at Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) from 22 December 2010 to 13 February 2011. The seven-week long show promises to take visitors into a world of timeless glamour and elegance. The exhibition – 'Valentino, Retrospective: Past/Present/Future' – is developed by Paris' celebrated institution Les Arts Décoratifs, and it will feature haute couture looks from founder Valentino Garavani's early designs to present-day creations by current Creative Directors Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli. Visitors will be able to see gowns that were once worn by celebrities such as Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor and others.

Forum Gallery will showcase Important New Acquistions of Contemporary Masters Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:26 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.

Controversy Follows Conviction of Artist Odd Nerdrum for Tax Fraud Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:25 PM PDT OSLO, NORWAY - The famous Norwegian artist, Odd Nerdrum, was sentenced to two years in prison without bail on Wednesday August 17th, when a local court in Oslo found him guilty for tax evasion. Critics claim that Nerdrum's sentence was surprisingly more severe than the punishment recently imposed in a similar case in China concerning the artist Ai Weiwei, who was given a fine and released on house arrest after three months of detainment. Famous for his Old master-like paintings, the 67 year old artist was accused of failing to pay the full amount of taxes on $2.6 million (1.8 million euros) of taxable income from sales between 1998-2002, just before he became an Icelandic citizen.

Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents Photographers Paul Steinitz and Ja’bagh Kaghado Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:24 PM PDT MOSCOW - Moscow Museum of Modern Art and BrainStorm Management present an unprecedented exhibition of the legendary Paul Steinitz – photographer, visual artist and publisher, known by all and by no one. Paul Steinitz, whose silhouette reminds both of an incredibly flamboyant artist and an impoverished vagabond, has been an obscure legend of the Paris and New York underground of the last two decades. To gain proof of it, one needs only to flick through the copies of Amaan Magazine that he has published since the mid-90s. On its pages are writers, filmmakers, designers, and top models – everyone Paul Steinitz photographed was transformed by his vision and later earned international recognition.

James Turrell Creates His Largest-Ever Walk-In Light Installation in the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:23 PM PDT WOLFSBURG, GERMANY - In collaboration with the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, the American light artist James Turrell has created his largest-ever walk-in light installation in a museum context: an 11-metre-high, 'space within a space' structure that covers a floor area of 700 square meters and reaches up to the glass roof of the museum. Turrell's "Ganzfeld Piece:Bridget's Bardo" is a hollow construction divided into two parts. The two interconnecting chambers 'the Viewing Space' and the 'Sensing Space' are both completely empty and – a new feature of this type of work – flooded with slowly changing colored light. The Kunstmuseum is showing The Wolfsburg Project along with a number of Turrell's other works in the most extensive exhibition by the artist in Germany to date.

The Pinakothek der Moderne exhibits a Retrospective of Zoe Leonard ~ Photographs Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:22 PM PDT Munich, Germany - The Pinakothek der Moderne is staging this American artist's first retrospective. The focus is being placed on Zoe Leonard's photographic work of the past twenty years, their subtle, visual look at the relationship between the sexes, the ambivalence between culture and nature, history and the present day, as well as the relation between space and time. Leonard, born in 1961 in Liberty, New York, is one of the most exceptional artists of her generation. Among other venues, her works were shown at the documenta in 1992 and 2007. On view through 5 July, 2009.

The Groninger Museum exhibits 'From Collenius to Koons' with thanks to the Rembrandt Association Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:20 PM PDT   GRONINGEN, NL -To mark the 125th anniversary of the Vereniging Rembrandt (Rembrandt Association), the Groninger Museum will exhibit, in the period 22 November 2008 to 12 April 2009, almost all the works that it has acquired with the assistance of this Association. Acquired with the support of the Rembrandt Association, has been organised to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Rembrandt Association. The exhibition reveals the high quality and diversity of the acquisitions that have been supported by the Association. These include major works of visual arts, decorative arts, applied arts and video art. The Groninger Museum first made an appeal to the Rembrandt Association at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1892, a portrait by the seventeenth-century Groningen painter Hermannus Collenius was purchased. Until long after the Second World War, most of the acquisitions by the Museum, for which an appeal was made to the Rembrandt Association, were connected to Groningen art history. In addition to paintings by Groningen masters such as Collenius and J.J. de Stomme, this involved several important pieces of silver from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Furthermore, the Asiatica collection was reinforced with porcelain, lacquerwork and tapestries. The first modern art that the Museum began to collect on a structural basis was the Expressionistic paintings of De Ploeg, the Groningen Expressionist group. International present-day art was first purchased with the support of the Rembrandt Association during and after the directorship of Frans Haks (1978-1995), and includes an artwork in the form of a mirror by Jeff Koons, silver tea and coffee services by Alessi, a large tapestry by Robert Kushner, and drawings by Andy Warhol. All these works will be on display in Mendini 1. During and after the directorate of Frans Haks (1978-1995) international contemporary art was also purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt. This included a mirror by Jeff Koons, silver tea sets by Alessi, a large tapestry by Robert Kushner, and drawings by Andy Warhol. The Groninger Museum presents, courtesy of the Vereniging Rembrandt, a splendid selection from the Groninger Museum collection. The Groninger Museum is a museum in Groningen in the north of The Netherlands, it is considered to be one of the best museums in The Netherlands. Opened in 1994 it became a highlight in the world of art, designed by the architects Philippe Starck , Alessandro Mendini and Coop Himmelb(l)au. The museum was built in a canal opposite the railway station and consists of three pavilions, one (the circular) made by Philippe Starck, one (the yellow tower) by Mendini himself and one (the deconstructivist part) by Coop Himmelb(l)au. The bridge connecting the station with the museum is a cycling and walking route to the inner city. The modern, futuristic and colourful style of the building is related to the Italian design style called Memphis. Mendini, originally a designer, was asked in 1987 by museum director Frans Haks to think up a new museum. Haks also insisted on sub-architects to make the pavilions. Haks wanted something extravagant. The collections and presentations are the foundation of the Groninger Museum. The Groninger Museum is colourful and extrovert. The Groninger Museum aims at a wide audience.With the presentations, which are of national and international significance, the Groninger Museum hopes to amaze and astound visitors and prompt them towards an opinion. Visit : www.groningermuseum.nl/?lan=Engels

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:19 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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