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

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• The Brooklyn Museum Presents First Large-Scale Exhibition of American Art of the 1920's
• Blain/Di Donna's Inaugural Exhibition Surveys René Magritte
• The Gallerie Jeanne Boucher & Gallerie Jaeger Boucher Show Yang Jiechang
• Two Temple Place opens With Highlights from the William Morris Gallery Collection
• Christie's Announces Results of Dubai Part One of Sale
• The Tullie House Museum & Gallery Celebrated Mervyn Peake's Centenary
• National Portrait Gallery in Washington presents "Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories"
• The Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts to Show Masterpieces from the Wadsworth Atheneum
• The Smithsonian Museum of American Art Shows New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image
• The Savannah College of Art and Design Re-Opens as a Major Teaching Museum
• The de Young Museum and Musée d'Orsay Announce Two Impressionist Exhibitions to Debut in San Francisco
• The National Gallery of Art opens Solo Exhibition of Robert Bergman's Photographs
• Exhibit by Gerard Rancinan Serves Revisions of Old Masters at Paris' Palais de Tokyo
• Julian Schnabel was Elected Honorary Royal Academician
• The Dallas Art Museum ~ A Texan 'Round-Up' Of Fine Art
• Tourcoing Fine Arts Museum (MUba) to Celebrate the 100th birthday of Eugène Leroy
• Heckscher Museum of Art exhibits Robert Rauschenberg & His Contemporaries
• The de Young Museum to host 'Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents,1900–1970'
• Birmingham Museum of Art Acquires the Buten Wedgwood Collection
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

The Brooklyn Museum Presents First Large-Scale Exhibition of American Art of the 1920's Posted: 28 Oct 2011 12:21 AM PDT Brooklyn, New York.- The Brooklyn Museum is proud to present the first wide-ranging exploration of American art from the decade whose beginning and end were marked by the aftermath of World War I and the onset of the Great Depression. "Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties", which includes some 138 paintings, sculptures, and photographs by 67 artists, will be on view from October 28th through January 29th 2012 prior to a national tour. American life was dramatically transformed in the years following the Great War, as urbanization, industrialization, mechanization, and rampant materialism altered the environment and the way people lived. American artists responded to this dizzying modern world with works  that embraced a new brand of idealized realism to evoke a seemingly perfect modern world. The twenties saw a vigorous renewal of figurative art that melded uninhibited body-consciousness with classical ideals. Wheareas images of the modern body were abundant, artists represented American places and things as distilled and largely uninhabited arrangements of pristine forms. Encompassing a wide array of artists, Youth and Beauty celebrates this striking and original modern art and questions its relation to the riotous decade from which it emerged. The first section of the exhibition's two primary thematic sections is Body Language: Liberation and Restraint in Twenties Figuration, which investigates the realist portrait, naturally erotic figure subjects, and heroic types. Throughout the twenties, motion pictures, advertising, "healthy body culture," and the theories of Sigmund Freud all contributed to an era of physical liberation, sensuality, and a near obsession with bodily perfection. Many artists celebrated the modern physical ideal in nude subjects that pictured the newly exposed body freed from conventional restrictions and empowered through fitness or liberating forms of dance. Artists also responded to the rising influence of urban black culture with representations of the idealized black body. Although startlingly direct, these images are also restrained in a way that suggests an uneasiness with the accelerated energy and action of modern life. Works that celebrate this controlled modern physicality include George Wesley Bellows 1924 "Two Women", in which a nude and a fully clad figure are juxtaposed in a domestic setting. Thomas Hart Benton's 1922 "Self-Portrait with Rita", which portrays the bare-chested artist beside his wife, who sports a daring body-revealing swimsuit. Works such as Alfred Stieglitz's "Rebecca Salisbury Strand", a voluptuous nude subject for which the wife of photographer Paul Strand served as a model, display a direct and frank sensuality. John Steuart Curry's 1928 "Bathers", a scene of robust male nudes cooling themselves in a water tank, channels heroic proportions and Renaissance ideals to foreground healthy physicality in an age of rampant automation and urbanization. The new realism was also apparent in portraits that portray natural beauty with decisive clarity and assertive immediacy. Often cast in the format of the newly popular "close-up," twenties portraiture emerged from a culture in which advertising prompted rigorous self-scrutiny and current theories of psychology suggested complexly layered personalities. The portraits on view will include Luigi Lucioni's magnetic 1928 likeness of the young artist Paul Cadmus; Imogen Cunningham's intimate photograph of the seminal writer Sherwood Anderson; and Romaine Brooks's stark 1924 portrait of Una, Lady Troubridge, lover of the English novelist Radclyffe Hall. The exhibition's second half, Silent Pictures: Reckoning with a New World, explores subjects as diverse as still life and industrial and natural landscapes while highlighting their shared qualities of compositional refinement and muted expression. Painters and photographers depicted the ready-made geometries of industrial towers, stacks, and tanks, and the webs of struts and beams, with little reference to their utilitarian actualities or to human activity. In his masterful 1927 composition "My Egypt", Charles Demuth transformed the functional architecture of a massive grain elevator complex into a transcendent composition swept by fan like rays. Charles Sheeler paid homage to modern engineering in his pristine 1927 photograph "Ford Plant, River Rouge, Blast Furnace and Dust Catcher", commissioned by Ford's advertisers. In George Ault's 1926 "Brooklyn Ice House", the artist's reductive treatment of the industrial buildings and playful description of a black smoke plume result in a compelling combination of the modern and the naive. Challenged by the sensory assault of the modern urban-industrial world around them, artists also portrayed American landscape settings as precisely distilled and largely uninhabited. Intent on maintaining their own individuality in a new era of mass-production and mass-market advertising, they described the features of more remote American places with a marked intensity and austerity. In Edward Hopper's 1927 "Lighthouse Hill", the forms of architecture and landscape are stripped of incidental details and cast in a transcendent raking light. Georgia O'Keeffe's 1927 "Lake George Barns" (one of seven works by the artist in the exhibition), offers a similar hybrid realism, as does Ansel Adams's 1929 photograph of the sculptural Church at Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico. In their still-life compositions, American artists of the twenties applied a modernist penchant for essential form to exacting arrangements of insistently simple things. Objects as disparate as flowers, soup cans, razors, eggs, and cocktail shakers, appear in compositions that suggest the new tensions between the traditional and the modern in art and in life. Twenties images such as Peter Blume's "Vegetable Dinner", in which one modern woman enjoys a cigarette while her counterpart peels some humble vegetables, prompts consideration of the individual's relationship to the larger material world. Imogen Cunningham's 1929 photograph "Calla Lilies" embodies a precise, natural perfection akin to modern body ideals, while Gerald Murphy's 1924 "Razor" employs a hard-edged billboard aesthetic to foreground the required accessories of the well-groomed modern man. The Brooklyn Museum is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. Its roots extend back to 1823 and the founding of the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library to educate young tradesmen (Walt Whitman would later become one of its librarians). First established in Brooklyn Heights, the Library moved into rooms in the Brooklyn Lyceum building on Washington Street in 1841. Two years later, the Lyceum and the Library combined to form the Brooklyn Institute, offering important early exhibitions of painting and sculpture in addition to lectures on subjects as diverse as geology and abolitionism. The Institute announced plans to establish a permanent gallery of fine arts in 1846. By 1890, Institute leaders had determined to build a grand new structure devoted jointly to the fine arts and the natural sciences; the reorganized Institute was then renamed the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the forebear of the Brooklyn Museum. The original design of the new museum building, from 1893, by the architects McKim, Mead & White was meant to house myriad educational and research activities in addition to the growing collections. The ambitious building plan, had it been fully realized, would have produced the largest single museum structure in the world. Indeed, so broad was the institution's overall mandate that the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Children's Museum would remain divisions of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences until they became independent entities in the 1970s. The museum division of the Institute, which came to be popularly called the Brooklyn Museum, was conceived, moreover, as the focal point of a planned cultural, recreational, and educational district for the burgeoning city of Brooklyn. Although the scope of that envisioned complex of parks, gardens, and buildings changed after the once-independent Brooklyn was absorbed into New York City in 1898, many features of the plan were eventually realized and are reflected in what can be seen today. In the area of land once designated as the Brooklyn Institute Triangle can be found not only the Brooklyn Museum but also such other institutions and facilities as the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Prospect Park Zoo, Mount Prospect Park, and the Central Library of the Brooklyn Public Library system. Just beyond the western edge of the Institute Triangle complex stands the monumental entrance to Prospect Park, marked by the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch (1892) in the center of Grand Army Plaza. The Brooklyn Museum has been building a collection of Egyptian artifacts since the beginning of the twentieth century, incorporating both collections purchased from others, such as the collection of American Egyptologist Charles Edward Wilbour, and objects obtained in archeological excavations sponsored by the museum. The museum's collection of American art dates back to its being given Francis Guy's "Winter Scene in Brooklyn" in 1846. In 1855, the museum officially designated a collection of American Art, with the first work commissioned for the collection being a landscape painting by Asher B. Durand. Items in the American Art collection include portraits, pastels, sculptures, and prints; all items in the collection date to between circa 1720 and circa 1945. Represented in the American Art collection are works by artists such as William Edmondson (Angel, date unknown), John Singer Sargent (Paul Helleu Sketching with His Wife, ca. 1889), Georgia O'Keeffe (Dark Tree Trunks, ca. 1946), and Winslow Homer (Eight Bells, ca. 1887). Among the most famous items in the collection are Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington and Edward Hicks' "The Peaceable Kingdom". The oldest acquisitions in the African art collection were collected by the museum in 1900, shortly after the museum's founding. The collection was expanded in 1922 with items originating largely in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in 1923 the museum hosted one of the first exhibitions of African art in the United States. With over five thousand items in its collection, the Brooklyn Museum boasts one of the largest collections of African art in any American art museum. Although the title of the collection implies that it includes art from all of the African continent, in reality works from Africa are sub-categorized into a number of collections. Western and Central sub-Saharan works are collected under the banner of African Art, while Northern African and Egyptian art are grouped with the Islamic and Egyptian art collections, respectively. he African art collection covers 2,500 years of human history and includes sculpture, jewelery, masks, and religious artifacts from more than one hundred African cultures. Noteworthy items in this collection include a carved ndop figure of a Kuba king, believed to be among the oldest extant ndop carvings, and a Lulua mother-and-child figure. The museum's collection of Pacific Islands art began in 1900 with the acquisition of one hundred wooden figures and shadow puppets from New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia); with that hundred items as its foundation, the collection has grown to npw encompass close to five thousand works. Art in this collection is sourced to numerous Pacific and Indian ocean islands including Hawaii and New Zealand as well as less-populous islands like Rapa Nui and Vanuatu. The museum's center for feminist art opened in 2007 and is dedicated to preserving the history of the movement since the late 20th century as well as raising awareness of feminist contributions to art and informing the future of this area of artistic dialogue. Along with an exhibition space, and library, the center features a gallery housing a masterwork by Judy Chicago, a large installation called "The Dinner Party". Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.brooklynmuseum.org

Blain/Di Donna's Inaugural Exhibition Surveys René Magritte Posted: 28 Oct 2011 12:13 AM PDT NEW YORK, N.Y.- Blain|Di Donna presents as its inaugural exhibition, Dangerous Liaisons, a survey of paintings, works on paper and objects by the Belgian Surrealist René Magritte. Bringing together over twenty five major oils, gouaches and drawings, this is the first Magritte show of this scale to be presented in New York in almost fifteen years, and comes at a time of renewed interest in Surrealism and its key exponents. The exhibition's title is derived from Magritte's seminal early work, Les Liaisons dangereuses (1935), an enigmatic painting thought to have been inspired by the eighteenth century French novel of the same name, in which two rival lovers deploy sex as a weapon to humiliate others. As with many of the works in the artist's oeuvre, it delights and disturbs in equal measure; uncanny, poetic, playful and erotic, it underlines his unsettling ability to pull at the threads of philosophical and psychological certainties, and in doing so eloquently sets the tone of the exhibition as a whole.

The Gallerie Jeanne Boucher & Gallerie Jaeger Boucher Show Yang Jiechang Posted: 27 Oct 2011 11:57 PM PDT Paris.- Following Yang Jiechang's solo exhibition "On Ascension" at the Bucher Gallery in 2008, they are pleased to present this coming autumn a two-part exhibition by the artist entitled "Tale of the 11th day" in their two Paris spaces, on both the Left and Right Bank of the Seine. The two-part exhibition marks their commitment to an artist whose work they have been following for over 20 years. The first opening will be in the Galerie Jeanne-Bucher space on the Left Bank,  and will present a selection of exceptional paintings from the 1990s including the '100 Layers of Ink series'. A second opening will be held in the Galerie Jaeger Bucher's new space on the Right Bank, as part of the evening opening organised by the  galleries in the Marais during the FIAC art fair and will present the artist's latest series of works entitled 'Stranger than Paradise'. the Left bank exhibition will remain on view until Novermber 26th, while the Right Bank show will continue through December 30th.

Two Temple Place opens With Highlights from the William Morris Gallery Collection Posted: 27 Oct 2011 11:06 PM PDT London.- A new London gallery will open this October dedicated to showcasing publicly-owned art from UK regional collections. Two Temple Place will launch with the inaugural exhibition "William Morris: Story, Memory, Myth" on October 27th, featuring highlights from The William Morris Gallery collection. Two Temple Place is one of London's hidden architectural gems, an extraordinary neo-Gothic mansion built for William Waldorf Astor and completed in 1895, on Embankment. Two Temple Place is owned by and houses the charitable trust The Bulldog Trust. The Trust are planning exhibitions of treasures from the UK's regional museums and collections at Two Temple Place, along with a calendar of cultural and charitable events to complement the exhibitions and the Trust's more general charitable aims.  "William Morris: Story, Memory, Myth" will remain on view until January 29th 2012.

Christie's Announces Results of Dubai Part One of Sale Posted: 27 Oct 2011 09:30 PM PDT DUBAI.- Christie's established Dubai's place as a truly international sale centre with the introduction of a two part sale format, in line with the major auctions in London, New York and Hong Kong. The most important works of the season were offered at this evening's auction of Modern and Contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish Art Part I, with a second session (150 lots) to follow offering works at a more accessible price level, encouraging a new, younger group of collectors to participate. With a pre-sale estimate of $4.5 million, this evening's auction (Part I) realized $4,998,850 USD / AED18,360,776.

The Tullie House Museum & Gallery Celebrated Mervyn Peake's Centenary Posted: 27 Oct 2011 09:30 PM PDT Carlisle, UK.- Mervyn Peake (1911 – 1968) is the best-selling author and illustrator who became internationally recognised for his Gormenghast trilogy of books, often placed alongside great imaginative works of fiction such as J R R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. 2011 is the 100th anniversary of Peake's birth and a range of exhibitions, events, publications and broadcasts are being presented to celebrate the centenary year. On Saturday 23 July, one of the largest exhibitions ever staged of the artist's work, "Lines of Flight: Mervyn Peake, the Illustrated Work" showed at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle.

National Portrait Gallery in Washington presents "Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories" Posted: 27 Oct 2011 09:18 PM PDT WASHINGTON, D.C.- Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) is famous as a modern writer and the creator of such memorable phrases as "rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." But Stein's reach went far beyond literature to include collaborations in book making, operas and ballet. As an American expatriate in Paris, she was an influential style-maker, art collector and networker. This fall, the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery presents the major exhibition "Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories" on exhibition through Jan. 22, 2012. This exhibition is an art-filled exploration of Stein's multiple identities as a literary pioneer, transatlantic modernist, American celebrity, art collector and muse to artists of several generations. The exhibition also features Alice B. Toklas (1877–1967), Stein's lifelong partner, and explores the aesthetics of dress, home decor, entertainment and food that the two women created together.

The Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts to Show Masterpieces from the Wadsworth Atheneum Posted: 27 Oct 2011 07:17 PM PDT Springfield, Massachusetts.– "Old Masters to Monet: Three Centuries of French Painting from the Wadsworth Atheneum" will premier at the Michele and Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield from December 13th through April 29th 2012. The Wadsworth Atheneum, America's oldest public art museum, founded in 1843, has never before presented a full-scale survey of its distinguished collection of French paintings. This exhibition of 50 outstanding masterpieces provides a history of French painting, ranging from the 17th through the 19th centuries and into the beginning of the 20th century. All the major types of painting are represented, including religious and mythological subjects, portraiture, landscape, still life, and genre.

The Smithsonian Museum of American Art Shows New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:54 PM PDT Washington, D.C.- The Smithsonian American Art Museum opened a new gallery dedicated to examining the history and the latest developments in the art of the moving image. This permanent-collection gallery, located on the museum's third floor, allows for the presentation of the full range of media art practices. "Watch This! New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image", the current exhibition in the gallery features key artworks from the history of video art and a new generation of artists on the cutting edge of media arts.

The Savannah College of Art and Design Re-Opens as a Major Teaching Museum Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:53 PM PDT Savannah, Georgia.- The Savannah College of Art and Design announces one of its most important education initiatives to date: the new SCAD Museum of Art, a significantly expanded and re-imagined contemporary art and design museum conceived and designed expressly to enrich the educational milieu for SCAD students, professors, and art and design enthusiasts. SCAD Museum of Art re-opens to the public on Saturday, Oct. 29th. Inaugural exhibitions at the new museum include: Bill Viola, The Crossing; Liza Lou, Let the Light In; Kendall Buster, New Growth: Stratum Field; a solo exhibition of recent works by Kehinde Wiley; and selections from the SCAD Museum of Art's Permanent Collection, including the Evans Collection of African American Art, presented in the new Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies within the museum. In keeping with the university's mission, a year-round program of exhibitions, installations, performances and museum programs and events will engage with SCAD's 41 majors and more than 50 minors - from fashion and fibers to painting and sound design. This programming will also provide students and professors across all disciplines a collaborative space to experience celebrated works of art and design, and to interact with the renowned and emerging artists who create them. SCAD Museum of Art provides one square foot of academic space for every square foot of exhibition space. Galleries act as extensions of the traditional classroom, and, on the second floor of the museum, 12 classrooms create expansive learning laboratories. These museum classrooms are specifically designed to facilitate the learning experience – wide hallways and doorframes allow for easy movement and study of large works of art, and storage facilities located among the classrooms allow access to all of SCAD's collections and temporary works. SCAD continues its award-winning legacy of adaptive reuse in the museum's distinctive design and execution. The new museum joins past and present by uniting the ruins of the Central of Georgia Railroad 1853 depot, a National Historic Landmark and the only surviving antebellum railroad complex in the country, with 65,000 square feet of new space. At 82,000 square feet total, the revitalized and re-envisioned structure honors the historical elements of the older buildings, preserving parts of the ruins as they exist today, while also featuring modern applications and materials. An 86-foot-tall steel and glass lantern punctuates the museum design and will soon adorn the Savannah skyline with a beacon of light. The design of the new museum was conceived by President Wallace and Senior Vice President for College Resources Glenn Wallace. SCAD alumnus and professor Christian Sottile of Sottile & Sottile and Lord, Aeck & Sargent Architects, in association with Dawson Architects, executed the design, which was supervised by SCAD alumnus Martin Smith, executive director of design and new construction. The expansive facility includes galleries and classrooms, a 250-seat theater, a terrace and outdoor projection screen, a conservation studio, a museum café, and an event atrium. The museum is home to two new signature galleries: the Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies, which boasts one of the most significant collections of African American Art in the United States and the André Leon Talley Gallery, which celebrates style and design in its myriad forms. SCAD Museum of Art also features breakthrough technology, highlighted by a state-of-the-art interactive orientation center in the museum's entry hall. Designed by Pentagram exclusively for the museum, this 10-foot-long touch pad delivers information and images of the facility, exhibitions, artists and museum events. The inaugural lineup of exhibitions sets the tone for the roster of national and international, renowned and emerging artists whose work will be presented in the museum: "Bill Viola: The Crossing" Co-commissioned by SCAD in 1996, "The Crossing" premiered in Savannah and has since been exhibited around the world. Rich in metaphor and grounded in shared spiritual beliefs of East and West, this canonical video art celebrates Viola's signature ability to convey complex themes with scale and sound. As meticulous as it is magnetic, Liza Lou's work never fails to draw a crowd. In "Let the Light In", the artist engages themes of containment, labor and repetition with millions of brilliant glass beads that illuminate the will and sensibility of human workmanship. As she has for much of her career, Lou brings a painter's eye to her sculptural work, examining visual themes from the Pop Art and Neo-Expressionist tradition in unique environments of her own design. Commissioned by SCAD for the debut of SCAD Museum of Art, "New Growth: Stratum Field" is a site-specific sculptural installation designed and constructed to converse with the resonant features of the museum's 290-foot south-facing gallery. Recalling Buster's most iconic structural forms, this work explores biological architecture in all its many incarnations. The monumental and life-size portrait paintings of acclaimed artist Kehinde Wiley transpose elements of contemporary culture onto Baroque and Renaissance decorative backdrops.  In addition to exposing students to the work of lauded visiting artists, the museum will also present rotating exhibitions that feature selections from the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art, the Earle W. Newton Collection of British and American Art, as well as from SCAD's permanent collection, which include works by Salvador Dalí, Nicholas Hlobo, Richard Hunt, Willem de Kooning, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Wangechi Mutu, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Carrie Mae Weems. SCAD maintains a permanent collection of more than 4,500 artworks, many of which will appear on rotation at the newly expanded museum. The SCAD Permanent Collection includes: The Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art, one of the most significant collections of African American art, spanning more than 150 years and featuring prized works by Bannister, Duncanson, Bearden, Hunt and many more; The SCAD Costume Collection, which includes garments donated by Cornelia Guest, daughter of fashion icon C.Z. Guest, and haute couture from Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Oscar de la Renta and Givenchy, among others; The 20th-century Art Collection, which includes an array of Modern art prints by major 19th- and 20th-century figures, from Goya and Renoir to Rauschenberg, Dali, de Kooning and Picasso as well as contemporary works by artists such as Nicholas Hlobo, Yeondoo Jung, Wangechi Mutu, Yinka Shonibare MBE and Carrie Mae Weems. The 19th- and 20th-century Photography Collection, featuring works by Cartier-Bresson, Mapplethorpe, Leibovitz and Warhol; The Earle W. Newton Collection of British and American Art, consisting of rare books, antique maps, paintings and work by Hogarth, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Reynolds and Romney. The SCAD Museum of Art will feature SCAD's third annual deFINE ART program from February 21st to 25th 2012. deFINE ART is a major event highlighting the SCAD School of Fine Arts and its degree programs in painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography and more. Over the course of a week, SCAD students and community members enjoy lectures, exhibitions and performances by some of the top names in art.Since its inception in 2009, deFINE ART has attracted thousands of visitors and featured acclaimed artists and professionals such as Marina Abramovic, Nick Cave, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Marilyn Minter, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Sarah Thornton, Gary Tinterow and Richard Vine. Visit the museum's website at ... http://scadmoa.org

The de Young Museum and Musée d'Orsay Announce Two Impressionist Exhibitions to Debut in San Francisco Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:38 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Musée d'Orsay jointly announce two consecutive special exhibitions, Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay and Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay which will be on view at the de Young Museum for a combined eight months beginning in May 2010 and ending in January 2011. Each exhibition will include approximately 100 paintings from the Musée d'Orsay's permanent collection and highlights the work of nearly 40 artists including Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Rousseau, Seurat, Sisley, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh and Vuillard. The Musée d'Orsay will loan the exhibitions while it undergoes a partial closure for refurbishment and reinstallation in anticipation of the Musée's 25th anniversary in 2011. The de Young will be the only museum in the world to host both exhibitions. Tickets for the general public will go on sale on April 6, 2010. "These two exhibitions present a rare and unique opportunity for Americans to see the evolution and incubation of the Impressionist style from the collection of the most important repository of French 19th and early 20th century art — the Musée d'Orsay," says John E. Buchanan, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. "These exhibitions give us the opportunity to share with visitors some of the most seminal works of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art that they would only be able to see in Paris or in an art history book as the likelihood of them traveling en masse again is slim." The first exhibition, Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay opens in the Herbst special exhibition galleries at the de Young on May 22, 2010 and runs through September 6, 2010. This exhibition puts forth nearly 100 works by the famous masters who called France their home during the mid-19th century and from whose midst arose one of the most original and recognizable of all artistic styles, Impressionism. This exhibition begins with paintings by naturalist artists such as Bougereau and Courbet and presents American expatriate James McNeil Whistler's Arrangement in Gray and Black, known to many as "Whistler's Mother." Early work by Manet, Monet, Renoir and Sisley are on view as well as a selection of Degas' paintings that depict images of the ballet, the racetrack and life in "la Belle Époque." Notable works in this exhibition include: The Fife Player by Edouard Manet (1866) Family Reunion by Frédéric Bazille (1867) Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1 or Portrait of the Artist's Mother by James McNeil Whistler (1871) The Birth of Venus by William Adolphe Bouguereau (1879) The Cradle by Berthe Morisot (1872) Saint-Lazare Station by Claude Monet (1877) The Swing by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1876) Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878 by Claude Monet Racehorses Before the Stands by Edgar Degas (1866-1868) The Dancing Lesson by Edgar Degas (1873-1876) Portraits at the Stock Exchange by Edgar Degas (1878-1879) The second exhibition, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post- Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay, opens on September 25, 2010 and runs through January 18, 2011. This exhibition presents 120 of the Musée d'Orsay's most famous late Impressionist paintings including those by Monet and Renoir, followed by the more individualistic styles of the early modern masters including Cézanne, Gauguin, Lautrec and van Gogh, and the Nabis painters, Bonnard and Vuillard. The exhibition will also provide a unique look at the Orsay's spectacular collection of Pointillist painters including work by Seurat and Signac. Notable works in this exhibition include: A Dance in the Country by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1883) The Circus by George Seurat (1891) Self Portrait by Vincent van Gogh (1887) Starry Night over the Rhone by Vincent van Gogh (1888) The Artist's Bedroom at Arles by Vincent van Gogh (1889) Portrait of the Artist with the Yellow Christ by Paul Gauguin (1889) Tahitian Women, On the Beach by Paul Gauguin (1891) Still Life with Onions by Paul Cézanne (1895) The Snake Charmer by Henri Rousseau (1907) Tickets for both exhibitions will be timed and dated. Group tickets will be available on October 1, 2009. Member tickets will be available March 2, 2010. Concurrent Exhibitions at the Legion of Honor Two special exhibitions that provide context and heighten the understanding of the Musée d'Orsay exhibitions will run concurrently at the Legion of Honor. Impressionist Paris: City of Light (May 22–September 6, 2010) transports visitors to Paris circa 1874 as represented in over 100 paintings, photographs, prints, drawings and illustrated books from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and several private collectors. The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism (September 25, 2010 – January 2, 2011) presents a chronological survey of the development of the Japanese print and its influence on the Impressionist painters.

The National Gallery of Art opens Solo Exhibition of Robert Bergman's Photographs Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:37 PM PDT WASHINGTON, DC.- In the first solo exhibition of American photographer Robert Bergman (b. 1944), approximately 30 color portraits will display the artist's exceptional ability to reveal the singular nature of each of his subjects and their common humanity. On view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from October 11, 2009, through January 10, 2010, "Robert Bergman: Portraits, 1986–1995" presents everyday people the artist encountered in the streets of the United States during his travels from 1985 to 1997. The portraits were previously published in Bergman's book, "A Kind of Rapture," with an introduction by Toni Morrison and afterword by art historian Meyer Schapiro.

Exhibit by Gerard Rancinan Serves Revisions of Old Masters at Paris' Palais de Tokyo Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:36 PM PDT PARIS (AP).- At first glance, it's pure Gericault: The heap of writhing figures mimics the perfect, triangular composition of the French artist's iconic 1819 painting "The Raft of the Medusa." Look closer and you see a pierced and tattooed multicultural crowd clothed in logo-emblazoned tatters, striving not toward the elusive shoreline but toward a smudgy Hollywood sign and the Eiffel Tower floating in the distance. While Theodore Gericault's masterpiece brought to life a historical shipwreck, French photographer Gerard Rancinan's reworking grapples with the issue of immigration, capturing the plight of the boatloads of desperate people who wash up onto Europe's shores daily.

Julian Schnabel was Elected Honorary Royal Academician Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:35 PM PDT LONDON.-The Royal Academy of Artsannounced that Cornelia Parker was elected a Royal Academician in the category of Sculpture at the General Assembly held in December 2009 and that Julian Schnabel was elected Honorary Royal Academician. Schnabel's paintings, sculptures and works on paper have been exhibited widely including: Tate, Whitechapel Gallery, Centre Georges Pompidou, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art.

The Dallas Art Museum ~ A Texan 'Round-Up' Of Fine Art Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:34 PM PDT The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas. In 1984, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Arts District, Dallas, Texas. The new building was designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, the 2007 winner of the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal. The Dallas Museum of Art collection is made up of more than 28,000 objects, dating from the third millennium BC to the present day. The museum's library contains over 50,000 volumes available to curators and the general public. The Dallas Museum of Art's history began with the establishment in 1903 of the Dallas Art Association, which initially exhibited paintings in the Dallas Public Library. The Museum's collections started growing from that moment on, and it soon became necessary to find a permanent home. The museum, renamed the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in 1932, relocated to a new art deco facility within Fair Park in 1936, on the occasion of the Texas Centennial Exposition. This new facility was designed by a consortium of Dallas architects in consultation with Paul Cret of Philadelphia. In 1943 Jerry Bywaters became the director of the DMFA and under his tenure, impressionist, abstract, and contemporary masterpieces were acquired and the Texas identity of the museum was emphasized. In 1963 the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts merged with the Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art. The permanent collections of the two museums were then housed within the DMFA facility, which suddenly held significant works by Paul Gauguin, Odilon Redon, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Gerald Murphy, and Francis Bacon. By the late 1970s, the greatly enlarged permanent collection and the ambitious exhibition program fostered a need for a new museum facility. The museum moved once again, to its current venue, at the northern edge of the city's business district (the now designated Dallas Arts District). The $54 million dollar facility, designed by New York architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, gave the museum a new 370,000-square-foot facility when it opened in January 1984 (the museum's Sculpture Garden opened a year before in October 1983). At the same time the name was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art. In 1985 the new decorative arts wing, built to house 1,400 objects from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, opened. In 1991, construction began on the addition of the Nancy and Jake L. Hamon Building, designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes. When this opened in 1993 the museum gained an extra 140,000 square feet. In 2003, the Dallas Museum of Art marked its 100th birthday on January 19, and celebrated by remaining open for 100 continuous hours with 45,000 visitors in attendance. The museum collects, preserves, presents, and interprets works of art of the highest quality from diverse cultures and many centuries, including contemporary. As well as its galleries and library, the Dallas Museum of Art contains a café, museum shop and a unique 12,000-square-foot learning environment, the Center for Creative Connections. Visit the museum's website at … www.dallasmuseumofart.org The Dallas Museum of Art's collections include more than 24,000 works of art from around the world ranging from ancient to modern times. The collection of ancient Mediterranean art includes Cycladic, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and Apulian objects. The museum's collections of South Asian art range from Gandharan Buddhist art of the 2nd to 4th centuries AD to the arts of the Mughal Empire in India from the 15th to the 19th century. Highlights include a 12th century bronze Shiva Nataraja and a 10th century sandstone representation of the god Vishnu as the boar-headed Varaha. Objects in the museum's highly regarded African collection come from West and Central Africa.The objects date primarily from the 16th to the 20th centuries, although the earliest object is a Nok terracotta bust from Nigeria that dates from somewhere between 200 BC to 200 AD. The museum's significant collection of European art starts in the 16th century. Some of the earlier works include paintings by Giulio Cesare Procaccini ("Ecce Homo"), Pietro Paolini ("Bacchic Concert"), and Nicolas Mignard ("The Shepherd Faustulus Bringing Romulus & Remus to His Wife"). Art of the 18th century is represented by artists like Canaletto ("A View from the Fondamenta Nuova"), Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre ("The Abduction of Europa"), and Claude-Joseph Vernet ("Mountain Landscape with Approaching Storm"). The 19th and 20th century collection of European art also stands out. Among significant works in this collection are "Fox in the Snow" by Gustave Courbet, "The Seine at Lavacourt" by Claude Monet, "I Raro te Oviri" by Paul Gauguin, "Beginning of the World" by Constantin Brâncuşi, "Interior", and "Les Marroniers ou le Vitrail" by Edouard Vuillard. The collection of works by Piet Mondrian is also particularly noteworthy (with works like "The Windmill", "Self-Portrait", and "Place de la Concorde"). In 1985 the Dallas Museum of Art received a one-of-a-kind gift from Wendy Reves in honor of her late husband, Emery Reves. The Reves collection is housed in an elaborate 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m²) reproduction of the couple' home in France, Villa La Pausa (originally created for Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel), where the works were originally displayed. Among the 1,400 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper Emery Reves had collected are works from leading impressionist, post-impressionist, and early modernist artists, including Paul Cézanne, Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vincent van Gogh. Another part of the Reves wing is devoted to decorative arts and includes Chinese export porcelain, European furniture, Oriental and European carpets, iron, bronze, and silver work, antique European glass, and rare books. The Dallas Museum of Art has significant holdings of ancient American art. The collection covers more than three millennia, displaying sculptures, prints, terracotta, and gold objects. Works in the ancient American collection span 3,000 years and represent twelve countries. Highlights include ceramics from the southwestern United States, ceramics and stone sculpture from Mexico and Guatemala, gold from Panama, Colombia, and Peru, textiles and ceramics from Peru and the Head of the god Tlaloc (Mexico, 14th-16th century). The American art collection includes paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from the United States, Mexico, and Canada from the colonial period to World War II. Among the highlights of the collection are "Duck Island" by Childe Hassam, "Lighthouse Hill" by Edward Hopper, "That Gentleman" by Andrew Wyeth, "Bare Tree Trunks with Snow" by Georgia O'Keeffe and "Razor" and "Watch" by Gerald Murphy. One of the most beautiful pieces in the collection is "The Icebergs" by Frederic Edwin Church. This painting had long been referred to as a lost masterpiece. The painting was given to the museum in 1979 by Norma and Lamar Hunt. The Dallas Museum of Art also has one of the most thorough collections of Texas art. This is in great part thanks to Jerry Bywaters, director of the DMA from to 1943 to 1964, who was also one of the Dallas Nine, an influential group of Texas artists. In addition to paintings by Bywaters, the DMA has great works by Robert Jenkins Onderdonk, Julian Onderdonk, Alexandre Hogue, David Bates, Dorothy Austin, Michael Owen, and Olin Herman Travis. The Museum's growing collections are the foundation for a broad range of special exhibitions organized by the DMA -- from nationally traveling shows such as Thomas Struth and Henry Moore: Sculpting the 20th Century to focused exhibitions such as the recent Dialogues: Duchamp, Cornell, Johns, Rauschenberg and the upcoming Van Gogh's Sheaves of Wheat. From its establishment in 1903 as the Dallas Art Association, one of the Museum's missions was to collect and exhibit the work of living artists. However, it was only with the 1950 acquisition of Jackson Pollock's "Cathedral" that the collection really started. Every important artistic trend since 1945 is represented in the Dallas Museum of Art's vast collection of contemporary art, from abstract expressionism to pop and op Art, and from minimalism, and conceptualism to installation art, assemblage, and video art. The collection is now the largest in the world outside of specialist modern and contemporary art museums. Contemporary artists within the collection whose reputations are well established include Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Smithson. Among photographers represented in the collection are Cindy Sherman, Nic Nicosia, Thomas Struth, and Lynn Davis. When the current Museum facility opened in the mid-1980s, several artists were commissioned to create site-specific works especially for the Dallas Museum of Art: Ellsworth Kelly, Sol Lewitt, Richard Fleischner, and Claes Oldenburg with Coosje van Bruggen. In recent years, the museum has shown a strong interest in collecting the work of contemporary German artists such as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Anselm Kiefer, while simultaneously collecting works by young contemporary artists. Amongst the highlights of the collections are Jakson Pollock's "Cathedral", Steve Wolfe's "Untitled (Piano Music for Erik Satie)", John Chamberlain's "Dancing Duke" and Alan Saret's "Deep Forest Green Dispersion". The museum's collection of works on paper, includes photographic works from the earliest pioneers, such as Gustave Le Gray and Henri Le Secq through to Cindy Sherman. Temporary exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art reflect the breadth of its collections and its educational role. Currently on view is "Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement" (until May 8, 2011). This exhibition offers the first comprehensive examination of the life and work of the recognized patriarch of the American Arts & Crafts movement, Gustav Stickley. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue will explore Stickley as a business leader and design proselytizer, whose body of work included furnishings, architectural and interior designs, and related imagery that became synonymous with the movement that was at its height between approximately 1880 and 1910. This exhibition will include over 100 works produced by Stickley's designers and workshops, including furniture, metalwork, lighting, and textiles, along with drawings and related designs. Also featured in the exhibition is a re-creation of Stickley's seminal model dining room from his 1903 Syracuse Arts & Crafts exhibition. "Line and Form: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Wasmuth Porfolio" (until July 17th 2011), features sixteen works drawn from a rare example of a portfolio within the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art. In 1910 Frank Lloyd Wright and Berlin publisher Ernst Wasmuth issued 'Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright (Studies and Executed Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright)', a portfolio of one hundred stylishly rendered lithographs of plans, details, and perspective views produced by the architect and his assistants. Including defining works such as the architect's Oak Park home and studio, Unity Temple, and the Larkin Company Administration Building, among other projects, this portfolio served as the first and most important publication of Wright's innovative Prairie school creations and an inspiration for European and American architects in the decades to follow. This is a rare opportunity for the public to see these design illustrations from a pivotal time in Wright's career. A third design exhibitiojn, "Form/Unformed: Design from 1960 to the Present" is on show until 29th January 2012, and features more recent design works. Including over thirty works drawn largely from the Museum's collections dating from the 1960s to the present, this exhibition reveals the transformation of ideology and forms that have shaped international design of the last half century. From the technological and formal ideals of modernism to the influence of the handmade object, the works reflect increasingly complex and vibrant relationships between concepts of function, aesthetics, and material expression. Featured are designs by Raymond Loewy, Verner Panton, Frank Gehry, Aldo Rossi, Ettore Sottsass, Robert Venturi, Donald Judd, Zaha Hadid, Louise Campbell, and Fernando and Humberto Campana. In the Center for Creative Connextions, "Encountering Space" runs until August 31st 2011 and presents works of art from the Museum collections and asks visitors to consider how space is used to invite engagement, raise questions, and create meaning. As viewers begin to encounter works of art this way, they are no longer passive observers but active participants. Until April 17th 2011, the museum is offering visitors the opportunity to see "2011 Young Masters Exhibition", selected works created by Advanced Placement® Studio Art, Art History, and Music Theory students participating in the O'Donnell Foundation's AP Fine Arts Incentive Program™ in the Concourse beginning February 26.

Tourcoing Fine Arts Museum (MUba) to Celebrate the 100th birthday of Eugène Leroy Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:33 PM PDT STRASBOURG, FRANCE - The Tourcoing Fine Arts Museum (MUba) celebrates the 100th birthday of Eugène Leroy by presenting 150 masterpieces from public and private collections from around the world. Thanks to the exceptional donation made by Eugène Jean and Jean-Jacques Leroy, the MUba Fine Arts Museum, Eugène Leroy, Tourcoing bears witness to the importance of the painter today, both through the work and the personality of Eugène Leroy. The MUba has now become the global reference point for the painter. Opens 10 October, 2010.

Heckscher Museum of Art exhibits Robert Rauschenberg & His Contemporaries Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:32 PM PDT   HUNTINGTON, NY - Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) is a renowned American institution located in Bay Shore, Long Island. Beginning on January 10, 2009, The Heckscher Museum of Art will celebrate this important Long Island establishment with a new exhibition of works titled Robert Rauschenberg and His Contemporaries: Recent Prints from Universal Limited Art Editions. Robert Rauschenberg was a central figure at ULAE from its early years until his death in May 2008, and this exhibition serves as homage to him.

The de Young Museum to host 'Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents,1900–1970' Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:31 PM PDT San Francisco, CA - Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900–1970 presents the work of artists of Asian ancestry who lived and worked in the United States. This exhibition represents the first comprehensive survey of these artists, and seeks to advance awareness of this under-represented group in American art history. Their art reflects the currents of identity and style that shift between aesthetics of diverse international geographies. On view at the de young Museum October 25, 2008 — January 18, 2009.

Birmingham Museum of Art Acquires the Buten Wedgwood Collection Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:30 PM PDT   BIRMINGHAM, AL - The Birmingham Museum of Art announced the acquisition of the Buten Wedgwood Collection of more than 8,000 objects made by the Wedgwood factory in England dating from 1759. Combined with the Museum's existing Dwight and Lucille Beeson Wedgwood Collection of more than 1,400 objects, the recent acquisition establishes the only collection of its kind in the U.S., and the largest and most comprehensive collection of Wedgwood ceramics outside of England. With this acquisition Birmingham will present two and a half centuries of Wedgwood production. The year 2009 marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the company. "We are thrilled," says Anne Forschler-Tarrasch, PhD, The Marguerite Jones Harbert and John M. Harbert III Curator of Decorative Arts at the Birmingham Museum of Art. "Surprisingly, there is very little overlap between these two important collections. They complement each other in their strengths and together provide the nation with an invaluable resource for the study of what is undoubtedly one of the most important ceramics manufactories in history." The Buten family concurs "Along with the contagious enthusiasm of its staff, the Birmingham Museum of Art was chosen because of its outstanding and glamorous Beeson Collection, now augmented in a serious way by the 19th and 20th century strengths of Buten," says David Buten, son of collection founders Harry and Nettie Buten, and former Director of the Buten Museum of Wedgwood. "Whereas England's Wedgwood Museum focuses on very significant pieces, Birmingham's collection is much more representative of the entire production in terms of stylistic values and vogues from 1759 to current day. This is an enormously important collection." The Buten Wedgwood Collection The Buten Wedgwood Collection consists of more than 8,000 ceramic pieces dating from the inception of the Wedgwood Company in 1759 through the mid-20th-century. The collection is comprehensive and includes examples of all types of objects made by the factory, in all media, and with a full range of decorative motifs. In addition, it encompasses an extensive library of literature relating to Wedgwood, archival materials from the Buten Museum of Wedgwood, as well as documents and archives from the factory itself, including photographs, and letters written by Josiah Wedgwood or his contemporaries. While the collection includes many pieces made during the lifetime of Josiah Wedgwood and during the period of partnership with Thomas Bentley from 1769 to 1780, the bulk of the collection dates from the 19th and 20th centuries. Highlights of the collection include a large basalt figure of Somnus, god of sleep, made about 1774. Only one other example of this figure is known; this second example was made as part of the original decoration for the bedroom of Princess Luise of Anhalt-Dessau in Wörlitz, where it remains today. Another highlight is a large footed vase known as the "Alexander" vase painted by Emile Lessore (1805-76), a freelance decorator who worked for Wedgwood during the later part of the 19th century. This vase is one of a pair (the second vase is in the collection of the Wedgwood Museum) painted by Lessore in 1863/64 after the painting Alexander at the Tent of Darius, by Charles LeBrun (1619-90). The collection also contains a number of other pieces painted by Lessore. The collection includes examples of hand-painted and transfer-printed cream ware; Wedgwood's Etruscan ware; 18th-century jasper vases; several copies of the Portland Vase made by Wedgwood after the original Roman glass vessel in the British Museum; Victoria ware; pieces painted by Thomas Allen and those designed by Harry Barnard in the 19th century; majolica; Fairyland lustre; Arnold Machin figures; John Skeaping animals; tiles; mid-20th-century pieces designed by Norman Wilson; a plate from the Theodore Roosevelt White House service; objects by studio potters Elwyn James, Michael Dillon, and David Puxley; as well as a number of experimental and trial pieces. Harry M. and Nettie Buten Harry Buten was a collector: he began collecting as a youth and by the time he was a young man had formed a number of collections. Harry and his wife Nettie collected their first piece of Wedgwood in the summer of 1931—a silver lustre Queen's ware jug. The Butens continued to collect throughout the next five decades, devoting themselves to searching for the most unique Wedgwood wares. The couple collected locally, mostly in their home base of Philadelphia, but also in New York, Chicago, and occasionally London. They were active in a number of Wedgwood societies and were founding members of the Wedgwood International Seminar, with Harry serving as one of its first presidents. In 1957, the Butens dedicated their Wedgwood collection, by then numbering more than 4,500 pieces, to the public. On October 31st they opened the Buten Museum of Wedgwood in Merion, PA, with one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of Wedgwood in the world. Outside of the Wedgwood Museum at Barlaston, Buten was the only museum devoted entirely to the products and history of the Wedgwood firm. The Butens were interested in telling the entire Wedgwood story and presenting all types of objects made from the time of the firm's establishment in 1759 to the present day. The Dwight and Lucille Beeson Collection Since the mid-1970s, the Birmingham Museum of Art has been home to the Dwight and Lucille Beeson Wedgwood Collection. Formed over a period of 40 years by Birmingham natives Dwight and Lucille Beeson, who in 1976 pledged their collection to the Museum, the collection includes pieces of all types made prior to the turn of the 19th century and has a strength in pieces made during the partnership of Josiah Wedgwood and Thomas Bentley from 1769 to 1780. A catalogue of the collection was published by the Museum in 1992. Josiah Wedgwood and his Company Josiah Wedgwood was born in 1730 in Burslem, England, the youngest of 13 children. His formal education ended with the death of his father when he was nine in 1739. At that time he left school to work under his elder brother Thomas, who was master potter at the Churchyard Works, where from 1744 until 1749 he was apprenticed to Thomas. When Wedgwood was 12 years of age he contracted smallpox and was forced to abandon his apprenticeship for a time. When he improved, he continued his apprenticeship, which ended in 1749, and afterwards stayed on with his brother three more years. Nonetheless, Thomas refused to accept his younger brother as partner, forcing Josiah to leave the family business. Around 1752 he went into partnership with the potters John Harrison and Thomas Alders and the three men continued to produce salt-glazed and other traditional Staffordshire wares. Two years later, Wedgwood entered into another partnership with Thomas Whieldon, a well-known Staffordshire potter, who had built a good business. The partnership was fruitful and during their five-year partnership, Wedgwood was free to pursue his experiments with different clays and glazes. In 1759, Wedgwood branched out on his own and started a pottery at the Ivy House works in Burslem, a facility outfitted with pottery wheels and kilns owned by his cousins Thomas and John Wedgwood. Another cousin, Thomas Wedgwood, became manager of the company while Josiah continued to pursue his experiments. In 1762 Wedgwood moved his company to larger premises at the Brick House and Works, also in Burslem. Here he continued to manufacture useful wares. In 1764 he married his third cousin Sarah Wedgwood, niece of Thomas and John Wedgwood. The couple had eight children. Wedgwood continued to pursue his pottery experiments and in 1768 he developed the clay body he called black basalt. Black basalt is a rich, smooth stoneware body used by the company for large plaques, vases, busts, medallions, as well as useful wares. About 1776 Wedgwood introduced his dense white stoneware jasper. Stained by metal oxides, jasper was made in several shades of blue, green, lilac, yellow, as well as in black and white. His most important contribution to ceramic art, Wedgwood prized jasper above all his other productions. Wedgwood died at his home, Etruria Hall, on January 3, 1795, at the age of 64 years. Visit The Birmingham Museum of Art at : http://www.artsbma.org/

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:29 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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