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• The National Gallery of Victoria Showcases "British Watercolours 1760–1900: The Age of Splendour"
• Pierogi Gallery Presents Brian Dewan's Latest Humourous Film Strip
• Andy Warhol - "Bardot" opens at Gagosian Gallery in London
• The Dulwich Picture Gallery Shows "Painting Canada" ~ Tom Thomson & the Group of Seven
• The Dennos Museum Center Hosts The Cape Dorset Annual Graphics Collection
• The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA Presents California Art 1974 -1981
• Dresden's Museum of Military History redesigned by Architect Daniel Libeskind
• The Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery Presents Gabriel Warren's Sculpture
• The Zee Stone Gallery Presents Liu Zhen's Lacquer Paintings
• The Städel Museum in Frankfurt Presents “Max Beckmann & America”
• Paintings from 1967-1975 by Mark Greenwold at DC Moore Gallery
• Brooklyn Museum to feature First Major Exhibition for Nigerian Artist Yinka Shonibare
• Amrita Sher-Gil Exhibited at Haus der Kunst in Munich
• Jacquemart-André Museum Evokes the Private World of the Caillebotte Brothers
• Frist Center to host American Modernism from The Lane Collection
• Arken Museum to Show Impressionists & Postimpressionists from The Israel Museum
• Steve Schapiro Photographs Taken During the Shooting of "The Godfather" & "Taxi Driver"
• The Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts Shows Robert Blair: Paintings and Drawings
• The Michele & Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts Shows Courier & Ives Images of the American West
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

The National Gallery of Victoria Showcases "British Watercolours 1760–1900: The Age of Splendour" Posted: 12 Oct 2011 12:36 AM PDT Melbourne, Australia.- The National Gallery of Victoria is proud to present "British Watercolours 1760–1900: The Age of Splendour", an outstanding exhibition showcasing works by Britain's most celebrated eighteenth century artists including J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Girtin and William Blake. The NGV is also delighted to announce that on display for the first time will be the most recent acquisition to the Prints & Drawings Collection, "The Stepping Stones on the Wharfe, above Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire" (1801) by celebrated artist, Thomas Girtin.  A masterpiece of the artist's late Romantic style this work is an acquisition highlight of the NGV's 150th anniversary year. "British Watercolours" will be on view at the museum from October 14th through February 19th 2012. From the late eighteenth century, watercolour became pivotal to the changing approaches to the depiction of landscape and evolved from the topographical draughtsman's precise recording of the observed world   to the expression of the artist's personal response to nature. This shift in emphasis transformed the medium into a powerful and expressive art form used by some of the Romantic and Victorian era's greatest artists. The NGV's magnificent collection of British watercolours was acquired predominantly throughout the twentieth century, principally through the Felton Bequest, however a number of contemporary watercolours were acquired from Great Britain for the NGV collection before 1900. The establishment of professional societies for the promotion of watercolours from the early nineteenth century contributed to the development of the 'exhibition watercolour' which competed with oil paintings in terms of size, brilliance of colour and effect, and range of subject matter. The complexity of technique and density of colour emulated the look and dramatic power of oil paintings. Artists Turner and Girtin were leading practitioners in the medium, both introducing new technical qualities which influenced a generation of painters. The NGV is fortunate to represent the towering achievement of Turner in the watercolour medium with three works including the masterpiece Red Rigi (1842), a highlight of the exhibition. British Watercolours 1760–1900 traces all of these developments and begins with a group of late eighteenth century watercolours by both amateurs and major artists. Also on display will be a selection of 'exhibition watercolours' from the latter part of the nineteenth century, including a work by Edward Robert Hughes who was associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. British Watercolours 1760–1900 will showcase over 70 works by artists including Paul Sandby, John Robert Cozens, J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Girtin, John Sell Cotman, David Cox, Peter de Wint, William Blake, Richard Parkes Bonington, Samuel Palmer, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown and Edward Burne-Jones amongst others. The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. The main gallery is located in St Kilda Road, in the heart of the Melbourne Arts Precinct of Southbank, with a branch gallery at Federation Square. The St Kilda Road Gallery, designed by Sir Roy Grounds, opened in 1968 and was refubished and extended by Mario Bellini in 2003. In December 2003, the Ian Potter Centre at the NGV Australia at Federation Square, designed by LAB Architecture Studio opened to host the NGV's collection of Australian art. At the time that the gallery opened, Victoria was an independent colony for just ten years, but in the wake of the Victorian gold rush, it was easily the richest part of Australia, and Melbourne the largest city. Generous gifts from wealthy citizens, notably industrialist Alfred Felton, made it possible for the National Gallery to start purchasing large collections of overseas works from both old and modern masters. It currently holds over 65,000 works of art. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au

Pierogi Gallery Presents Brian Dewan's Latest Humourous Film Strip Posted: 12 Oct 2011 12:12 AM PDT Williamsburg, Brooklyn.- Pierogi is proud to show "Brian Dewan: The Tide Waits for No Man", on view from October 14th through November 13th. This exhibition features a new I-CAN-SEE Film Strip of the same name. Film Strips are a form of projected image—a sequenced slide show—originally used for public school and religious education from the 1920s through the '70s, and tended to be dryly informative on dull subjects. The image frames are advanced by hand, frame-by-frame with an accompanying narrative. Dewan appropriates this format to create his own extraordinary tales; simultaneously informative, cautionary, deadpan, and hilarious. Dewan creates the drawings, the accompanying story and narration, as well as all music and sound effects. He approaches "The Tide Waits for No Man" as a literal translation of the word tide and the effects of the moon on Earth and us. He puts a whimsical face to this analogy and reminds us that we are not in control even though we may try. Also on view will be a selection of drawings from the Film Strip, all in a painted Dewanian environment. This will be Brian Dewan's fourth exhibition at Pierogi. His previous I-CAN-SEE Film Strips include Before the White Man Came, Deuteronomy, Grimm's Tales, Neighbors in the Solar System, The Course of Your Research, The King of Instruments, and The Habit of Innovation, among others. Dewan is an accomplished visual artist, musician, and performer.

Andy Warhol - "Bardot" opens at Gagosian Gallery in London Posted: 11 Oct 2011 10:11 PM PDT LONDON.- An exhibition of Andy Warhol's portrait series of Brigitte Bardot opens at Gagosian Davies Street. Five of the works on show have never been exhibited publicly before, and never together in series. Warhol first met Bardot at the Cannes Film Festival in 1967 when she actively supported his attempt to show The Chelsea Girls there after the original planned screening had been cancelled. In 1973, at the height of her fame, she announced her retirement from making films. That same year Warhol received the commission to make her portrait. At this time that he was shifting his focus from filmmaking back to painting and perhaps viewed her coincidental screen exit as the perfect opportunity to commemorate and idolize her in art.

The Dulwich Picture Gallery Shows "Painting Canada" ~ Tom Thomson & the Group of Seven Posted: 11 Oct 2011 09:00 PM PDT London.- The Dulwich Picture Gallery's Bicentenary year of momentous exhibition firsts is to continue in October with "Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven", on view from October 19th through January 8th 2012. This is the first exhibition in the UK devoted to Canada's iconic paintings since the 1920s and forms part of Dulwich Picture Gallery's North American series showcasing the work of artists rarely seen in the UK. "Painting Canada" will feature some of Canada's most iconic landscape paintings. These bold and exciting works were first celebrated not in Canada, but in London, at the British Empire exhibitions at Wembley in 1924 and 1925. Since then, despite becoming greatly revered in Canada, the work of Thomson and the Group of Seven has been virtually unknown on the international stage. This major exhibition will reintroduce them to the British public, with an astonishing 122 paintings on display as well as Tom Thomson's sketchbox.

The Dennos Museum Center Hosts The Cape Dorset Annual Graphics Collection Posted: 11 Oct 2011 08:33 PM PDT Traverse City, Michigan.- The Dennos Museum Center at Northwestern Michigan College is proud to host the 2011 Cape Dorset Annual Graphics Collection until November 27th with the sale of prints beginning Friday, October 21st. The 2011 Annual Print Collection is dedicated to Kananginak Pootoogook, who passed away November 23, 2010.  His final six images are included here; all except one, Starboard Wind, have been signed posthumously by Kananginak's son Johnny. These images capture Kananginak's stylistic range and great popular appeal as a graphic artist. The work of the Kinngait Studios proceeded vigorously this year, producing another strong collection of thirty-three images by eleven artists.

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA Presents California Art 1974 -1981 Posted: 11 Oct 2011 08:13 PM PDT Los Angeles, CA.- As part of the Getty Museum's Pacific Standard Time initiative, bringing together more than sixty cultural institutions from across Southern California for six months beginning October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene, the Geffen Contemporary at the Museun of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is proud to show "Under the Black Sun: Californian Art 1974-1981". The exhibition will be on view until February 13th 2012. Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981 will constitute the most comprehensive survey exhibition to date to examine the exceptional fertility and diversity of art practice in California between 1974 and 1980, a unique period in American history when the political and social roles of artists, the authority of institutions, and the "objecthood" of art were all being questioned.

Dresden's Museum of Military History redesigned by Architect Daniel Libeskind Posted: 11 Oct 2011 08:12 PM PDT DRESDEN, GERMANY - A modern wedge of glass, concrete and steel rips through a 135-year-old former armory building for the armies of Kaiser Wilhelm I, its silvery shimmer and stark lines contrasting sharply with the neoclassical building that it now bisects. American architect Daniel Libeskind knew when he won the bid to redesign Dresden's Museum of Military History that he wanted to create a radical departure — something symbolic of Germany's rigid authoritarian past giving way to the liberal democracy of today. While the modern addition contains more thematic exhibits with a focus on societal forces and the human impulses that lead to violence, the original building presents German military history in chronological order.

The Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery Presents Gabriel Warren's Sculpture Posted: 11 Oct 2011 07:34 PM PDT Nashville, Tennessee.- The Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery is pleased to present "Polar Probings: Sculpture by Gabriel Warren". A reception and gallery talk will take place in the Fine Arts Gallery on Thursday, October 13th with the reception held from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., and the gallery talk given at 6:00 p.m. The exhibition will then reamin in display through December 8th. Gabriel Warren creates sculptures using natural ice formations as source material. As noted by the artist, his sculptures are "intended to reflect the beauty of the natural sources from which they emerge… They represent my attempts to triangulate an understanding of a single natural phenomenon: ice." Warren adds, "although ice is not the only source in the natural world for my sculptural probings, it is the dominant one and has been so for decades. Ice exhibits mindnumbing variability and variety on a visual plane, and, on a scientific one, understanding its behavior is key to understanding many other components of our world."

The Zee Stone Gallery Presents Liu Zhen's Lacquer Paintings Posted: 11 Oct 2011 07:33 PM PDT Hong Kong.- The Zee Stone Gallery is proud to present "Abstract Landscapes", an exhibition of stunning lacquer paintings by Liu Zhen, a Shanghai-based artist whose mastery of the medium takes one of the most ancient art forms in China to a new level of aesthetic expression. "Abstract Landscapes" is on view at the gallery from October 13th through October 27th. Born in Jiangsu Province in 1970, Liu Zhen learnt traditional Chinese ink painting and oil painting at high school. Later, at the Central Academy of Art in Beijing, he studied mural art and began to focus on lacquer painting.

The Städel Museum in Frankfurt Presents “Max Beckmann & America” Posted: 11 Oct 2011 06:34 PM PDT Frankfurt, Germany.- Frankfurt's Städel Museum presents Max Beckmann's condensed late work against the background of the last years of his life and his artistic production in the USA in a major special exhibition starting on October 7th and remaining on view until January 2012. With more than 110 exhibits, including fifty paintings as well as numerous drawings, watercolors, printed graphic works, and sculptures, the show "Beckmann & America" offers a comprehensive survey of this important artist's fascinating last creative period. After living and teaching in St. Louis from 1947 on, Beckmann finally moved to New York where he also accepted a teaching position and where he died walking through the city in 1950. From the point of view of the artist's evolution, these years on American soil were decisive: marking a new beginning for and a further development in his work, they will be the subject of a monographic exhibition for the first time. For Frankfurt am Main, where Beckmann lived, worked, and taught at the Städel School from 1915 to 1933, this project is of special importance: the Städel Museum boasts a rich collection of paintings, drawings, printed graphic works, and sculptures by the artist and has presented a series of exhibitions on specific aspects and periods of his oeuvre. A comprehensive exhibition dedicated to Beckmann was shown as early as 1947. Subsequent shows included, among others, exhibitions focusing on his triptychs (1981), his early paintings (1983), his Frankfurt years (1984), a retrospective (1990/91), as well as presentations of his printed graphic work (2001 and 2006). The exhibition highlighting the artist's American years thus concludes the sequence of shows exploring the individual stages of Beckmann's career. The exhibition is realized on the initiative of the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain as part of the project "The Phenomenon of Expressionism," whose final phase it ushers in. Since August 2009, more than twenty cultural institutions in the Rhein Main region have centered their activities on this early-twentieth-century epoch characterized by a new start and a spirit of innovation in substantial monographic presentations, retrospectives, exhibitions, concerts, film and theater projects, as well as a symposium. "The Phenomenon of Expressionism" is the first cooperative project of the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain. The Städel's elaborate exhibition venture is being carried out with the help of BNY Mellon as Corporate Sponsor. Thanks to the support provided by this internationally operating financial services company, numerous rarely seen works by Beckmann are being brought together in Frankfurt for the show. Crucial loans such as the triptychs "Departure" from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "The Beginning" from the Metropolitan Museum New York and "The Argonauts" from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. have been secured for the show. "The Descent from the Cross" (1917) will also return to the city on the Main for the exhibition. This was the first of Beckmann's paintings to enter the collection of the Städtische Galerie at the Städel, having been purchased by former Städel director Georg Swarzenski directly from the artist's studio in 1919. It was confiscated by the Nazis in 1937 and presented in the exhibition "Degenerate Art." Today, it is part of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Max Beckmann lived and taught in the United States from the late summer of 1947 on. It was only after his ten-year exile in Amsterdam that the artist was able to realize his long-cherished plan to emigrate to the United States in 1947. He spent the last and extremely productive years of his life far from Europe. The new continent held numerous encounters with other people, journeys, and impressions in store for the painter. St. Louis, Missouri became his first home in America; he stayed for two years and held a guest professorship at the city's Washington University. In the fall of 1949, he moved to New York, where he taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. Frequent shorter and longer journeys took him to the Midwest, to Chicago, to New Orleans, to Boulder, Colorado, but also to California and the West Coast, for example. The spatial expanses of the foreign continent – its coasts and the atmosphere of its "wild" landscapes, as well as the cosmos of its metropolises – were a new physical experience for Beckmann which became a perceivable source of inspiration for his art. In the midst of his new life, Max Beckmann suffered a heart attack and died on a street corner near New York City's Central Park. The Städel Musuem was founded in 1815 by the Frankfurt banker and merchant Johann Friedrich Städel. In 1878, a new building, designed according to the Gründerzeit style, was erected on Schaumainkai street, presently the major museum district. By the start of the 20th century, the gallery was among the most prominent German collections of classic Pan-European art; the other such collections open to the public were the Dresden Gallery, the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, and the Altes Museum in Berlin. In 1937, 77 paintings and 700 prints were confiscated from the museum when the National Socialists declared them "degenerate art". In 1939, the collection was moved out of Frankfurt to protect it from damage in World War II. The gallery was substantially damaged by air raids in World War II and it was rebuilt by 1966 following a design by the Frankfurt architect Johannes Krahn. An expansion building for the display of 20th-century work and special exhibits was erected in 1990, designed by Gustav Peichl. Small structural changes and renovations took place from 1997 to 1999. Overall, the collection currently comprises some 2,700 paintings, 600 sculptures and more than 100,000 drawings and prints. The rich collection presents an overview of more than 700 years of European art - from the early 14th Century through the Renaissance, Baroque and classical modernism to the present. Highlights of the extensive collection consists of works by Holbein, Cranach the Elder. Albrecht Dürer, Botticelli, Rembrandt and Vermeer, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann and Paul Klee as well as by Francis Bacon, Small, Serra Judge and Kippenberger. Visit the museum's website at ... www.staedelmuseum.de

Paintings from 1967-1975 by Mark Greenwold at DC Moore Gallery Posted: 11 Oct 2011 06:18 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- Beginning March 17 through 17 April, DC Moore Gallery presents Mark Greenwold Secret Storm: Paintings 1967-1975. This provocative exhibition brings together, for the first time, controversial early paintings made between 1967 and 1975, as well as watercolors and drawings from the period. A catalog including an interview with the artist by Alexi Worth accompanies the exhibition. The six paintings in the show have been virtually un-exhibited, and their overwhelming size, bubblegum palette, and overtly sexual subject matter will surprise even those familiar with Greenwold's more recent, small-scale paintings of friends and family members in unsettling scenarios. The paintings betray Greenwold's early interest in emotionally, psychologically charged subject matter and labor intensive, detail-oriented process. He expended four obsessive years on the 85 x 108 inch painting Bright Promise (1971-75), devoting one year alone to the roughly 1,200 pink, green, blue, and white bedspread pompoms. Greenwold's subject matter ranges from the intrigues of threesomes to anxieties about being drafted during the Vietnam War. These paintings also serve as aesthetic time capsules of an era, capturing the fashion, architecture, interior design, and even other painting trends of the period. Contemplating this body of work, Greenwold says, Looking back, I'm not sure how much I was embracing the loucheness, the freeness, the "shvinger" (ie., "swinger") culture. I used to think of these pictures as almost cautionary tales. But then, paintings always end up seeming celebratory. Especially if you spend a year or more making it, a painting becomes an affirmation. Greenwold tells Worth in the interview, You want me to own up to the sociology and sexual excess of the seventies. Or indeed to admit that as a repressed mid-westerner I was so completely taken up by the sheer sexual impact of that tsunami moment, that my work was some orgiastic celebration of it, and I've been forever after, post-coitally, living in its wake. Both these things are of course true. But to me it's too simple and tidy a reading. Exhibitions of Greenwold's work are rare due to his meticulous, painstaking process. The artist has presented only nine solo exhibitions in the last thirty years, two of which comprised just one painting. His last exhibition, 2007's A Moment of True Feeling, was a ten-year retrospective numbering only thirteen paintings. The 1995 exhibition Mark Greenwold: The Odious Facts featured a mere twenty-seven paintings, nearly every mature work the artist had produced. Curated by Robert Storr for Colby College Museum of Art, Maine, the exhibition traveled to Neuberger Museum of Art, New York in 1996. Greenwold's work has been included in a number of group exhibitions, such as Disparities and Deformations, Our Grotesque, SITE Santa Fe's 5th International Biennial Exhibition in 2004. He has also curated several exhibitions, including Endless Love at DC Moore Gallery in 2004 and The Risk of Existence at Phyllis Kind Gallery in 1998. Greenwold has been the recipient of a number of awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1985, the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome in 1987, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in 1987 and 1994, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 1991, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Francis J. Greenburger Foundation in 2001. His work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO.  Visit DC Moore Gallery at : http://www.dcmooregallery.com/

Brooklyn Museum to feature First Major Exhibition for Nigerian Artist Yinka Shonibare Posted: 11 Oct 2011 06:17 PM PDT Brooklyn, NY - The Brooklyn Museum will present the first major survey of the work of the British-based, Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE, whose art explores the relationship of contemporary African identity to European colonialism. On view June 26 through September 20, 2009, Yinka Shonibare, MBE will include more than twenty works, among them sculptures, paintings, large-scale installations, and films.

Amrita Sher-Gil Exhibited at Haus der Kunst in Munich Posted: 11 Oct 2011 06:16 PM PDT MUNICH, GERMANY - Haus der Kunst presents "Amrita Sher-Gil. An Indian Artist Family in the 20th Century", on view through January 7, 2007.  The exhibition tells the story of an Indian artist family of three generations by uniting the paintings of Amrita Sher-Gil with the photographs of her father, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, with the digitally worked photographs of her nephew, Vivan Sundaram.

Jacquemart-André Museum Evokes the Private World of the Caillebotte Brothers Posted: 11 Oct 2011 06:15 PM PDT PARIS.- Through 11 July 2011, the Jacquemart-André Museum is presenting The Caillebotte Brothers' Private World. Painter and photographer. An encounter between Impressionism and photography, this exhibition evokes the artistic and private world of the Caillebotte brothers. This original perspective of Gustave's paintings and Martial's photography invites the visitor to enter the private world of a large Parisian family and explore the new urban lifestyle which was taking hold at the dawn of the XXth century. The Caillebotte brothers became witnesses of a period that was undergoing a major urban and technological transformation, and a way of life often illustrated by Impressionist artists.

Frist Center to host American Modernism from The Lane Collection Posted: 11 Oct 2011 06:14 PM PDT NASHVILLE, TN.- The Frist Center for the Visual Arts closes the 2009 exhibition year and welcomes the new with Georgia O'Keeffe and Her Times: American Modernism from the Lane Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on view in the Ingram Gallery from Oct. 2, 2009 through January 31, 2010. Featuring 45 paintings and eight photographs by such American masters as Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Arthur G. Dove, Stuart Davis, Marsden Hartley, and Ansel Adams, the Lane Collection is considered by many to be one of the greatest museum collections of American Modernism.

Arken Museum to Show Impressionists & Postimpressionists from The Israel Museum Posted: 11 Oct 2011 06:13 PM PDT COPENHAGEN.- They caused an outrage when they appeared. Today they rank among the most reproduced, popular and priceless artists in the world. Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Rodin, van Gogh, Cézanne, Braque. They can all be seen at Arken Museum of Modern Art. Arken presents the fine collection of French Impressionists and Postimpressionists from The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. 53 paintings and sculptures come to Denmark for four months in the exhibition Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gauguin. On view 31 January through 7 June, 2009.

Steve Schapiro Photographs Taken During the Shooting of "The Godfather" & "Taxi Driver" Posted: 11 Oct 2011 06:12 PM PDT PARIS.- In 1971, Francis Ford Coppola started work on « The Godfather », one of the most acclaimed films ever made. Steve Schapiro, then a 37-year old established photojournalist was hired by Paramount as the special photographer for the film. This title gave Schapiro unprecedented access to one of the most stellar casts ever assembled, photographing whichever film scenes he chose, capturing the memorable moments often cited when referencing this film, including "the whisper", and Marlon Brando with the cat. The exhibition at A.Galerie runs through May 14, 2011.

The Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts Shows Robert Blair: Paintings and Drawings Posted: 11 Oct 2011 06:11 PM PDT New Castle, PA.- The Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts is proud to present "Robert Blair: paintings and Drawings" on view until September 24th. Some 52 rarely seen paintings and drawings provide an extraordinary glimpse into Blair's experience as a paratrooper in the 17th and 82nd Airborne Divisions during World War II and his later association and friendship with Charles Burchfield who praised Blair in his journals as one of the only young students whose work he would like to see more of. The first body of work to be featured at the Hoyt was completed during the Battle of the Bulge, the bloody offensive by the Germans that almost split the Allied Armies in two. Blair received approval from his Colonel to document the disturbing and even horrific scenes of both German and US attacks, provided it did not interfere with his duties.

The Michele & Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts Shows Courier & Ives Images of the American West Posted: 11 Oct 2011 06:10 PM PDT Springfield, MA.- Currier & Ives images of the American West will be on view at the Michele & Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts from June 28th through January 29th, 2012 in the special exhibition "Imagining the Frontier:  Landscape and Hunting Scenes of the American West". Fascination with the Western frontier had a major influence on American art in the 19th century. Currier & Ives mass produced images that witnessed the great drama of Westward expansion, including the California gold rush, trappers and pioneers traveling to unknown territories, conflicts with Indians, buffalo hunting, fires on the prairie, and the building of the transcontinental railroad. Over 60 million buffalo once roamed the American plains. One 19th-century traveler noted that "the plains were black and appeared as in motion." The majority of the artists who worked for Currier & Ives never visited the Great Plains and had to rely on written accounts of the appearance of buffalo to create their designs. The result was that in some Currier & Ives prints, such as The Rocky Mountains, the buffalo look a bit like furry lions. By 1893, only 300 buffalo remained, and they were brought back from the edge of extinction only by continued conservation efforts over the last one hundred years. Images such as The Great West, with a steam train crossing a vast landscape, showed the expanse of the American frontier, a popular and saleable subject for Currier & Ives lithographs. The title helped to romanticize the idea of Westward expansion.  In 1870, they used the word "great" in as many as nine different titles. Through the use of this imagery Currier & Ives promoted the natural beauty of the American landscape and expressed pride in the country's expansion across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. In many cases, the prints represented the winning of the West as a triumph not of the white man over the wilderness but over the Native American. Today historians often criticize Currier & Ives for the blend of fantasy and reality in their images of the West. The Springfield Museums, located in the heart of downtown Springfield, Massachusetts, is comprised of five world-class museums; the Michele & Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts., the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, the Springfield Science Museum, the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum and the Museum of Springfield History. The Museums Association is proud to be home to the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden, a series of full–scale bronze sculptures of Dr. Seuss's whimsical creations, honoring the birthplace of Theodor Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss. \ The Michele & Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts is one of the two Springfield Museums dedicated to fine and decorative arts. The Art Deco-style museum was erected in response to a bequest from Mr. & Mrs. James Philip Gray, who left their entire estate for the "selection, purchase, preservation, and exhibition of the most valuable, meritorious, artistic, and high class oil paintings obtainable," and for the construction of a museum to house them. The museum opened in 1934. The first floor of the museum is dedicated to American art ranging from "Portrait of Nymphas Marston" by John Singleton Copley to "Promenade on the Beach" by Winslow Homer to Contemporary glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly. The American collection also includes the country's only permanent museum gallery dedicated to the lithographs of Currier & Ives. The second floor is a chronological tour of the museum's fine European art collection. Beginning in the Middle Ages with an intricate 15th-century, Hispano-Flemish Fuentes Retable (altarpiece), the galleries lead visitors through the Renaissance and subsequent centuries with fine paintings from Italy and France. The Dutch and Flemish collection is particularly strong. Familiar names in the Impressionism Gallery include Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro and Paul Gauguin. Traveling exhibitions can be found in the Wheeler Gallery. Performances, lectures and presentations are offered in the Davis Auditorium. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.springfieldmuseums.org/

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 11 Oct 2011 06:09 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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