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• Knoelder & Company Closes its Gallery Doors After 165 Years in NYC
• LACMA Acquires two life-size Baroque Allegorical Sculptures by Giovanni Baratta
• The Philadelphia Museum of Art Offers a Glimpse of Holland’s Golden Age
• Art Fund appeals to buy the Fourth Plinth's 'Ship in a Bottle' for the National Maritime Museum
• The Laura Russo Gallery Featues Two New Shows in December
• The Amon Carter Museum shows "John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury" a Retrospective
• Bilbao Fine Arts Museum Opens Exhibition on the Splendor of the Renaissance in Aragon
• Maxfield Parrish ~ 'The Art of the Print' at The Everson Museum
• Lawyer Arrested For £20 Million in Stolen Art Faces 10 Years
• "Polemically Small" Art by International Artists at Two California Venues
• India Plans To Host New Global Art Biennale ~ Featuring Worldwide Artists
• Nassau County Museum of Art announces a Major Norman Rockwell Exhibition
• Irish Museum of Modern Art shows Spanish Artist Ferran Garcia Sevilla
• The Austin Museum of Art presents " Modern Art / Modern Lives / Then + Now "
• Skylar Fein Mixed Media Portrait with Related Works at the Brooklyn Museum
• Work by Marguerite and William Zorach at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
• Liam Gillick's "Cat" at the German Pavilion is Subject of Heated Debate As Venice Biennale Ends
• Galleries for Musical Instruments Reopens at Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Allen Memorial Art Museum shows "In the Shadow of World War I"
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Knoelder & Company Closes its Gallery Doors After 165 Years in NYC Posted: 01 Dec 2011 09:41 PM PST New York City (New York Times).- After 165 years, Knoedler & Company, one of the oldest and most prestigious art galleries in the country, is permanently closing its doors. Opened at a time when there were no major museums in New York, Knoedler helped shape the tastes as well as decorate the homes of America's new class of wealthy barons. Although the gallery's history is long and expansive, its statement Wednesday evening about closing was short and sudden: "It is with profound regret that the owners of Knoedler Gallery announce its closing, effective today. This was a business decision made after careful consideration over the course of an extended period of time. Gallery staff will assist with an orderly winding down of Knoedler Gallery." Nothing was said about what will happen to one of Knoedler's most valuable properties: an enormous library that includes letters, photographs, sale records, stock books and catalogs going back to 1863. News of the institution's demise was met with surprise at Art Basel Miami Beach, an art fair where leading artists and gallery owners from around the world have gathered this week. "Goodness me, that's pretty stunning," said Lucy Mitchell-Innes, president of the Art Dealers Association of America, who was at the Art Basel fair. "My reaction is one of tremendous sadness. This is a very venerable institution that provided great art to a number of the great collections and great institutions in this country." Knoedler, at 19 East 70th Street, has been rattled by a series of changes over the past three years, including the recession in 2008. In October 2009, Ann Freedman, the gallery's president and an employee of 31 years, resigned. Two months later, the gallery put the landmark Italian Renaissance-style town house that it has occupied for the past 41 years on sale for $59.9 million. This past February, the building was sold for $31 million. Most recently, a civil lawsuit involving the Dedalus Foundation, a nonprofit organization created by the artist Robert Motherwell, put Knoedler in an embarrassing light. The foundation accused Ms. Freedman of selling forged paintings by Motherwell while she was president of Knoedler, an assertion she has denied. Knoedler will be better remembered for its history of bringing the American art world into existence, however. The gallery, which has occupied eight different homes since it was founded by Michael Knoedler in 1846, has hosted works by the titans of American art, including Frederic E. Church, Winslow Homer, George Bellows, John Singer Sargent, Jackson Pollock, Milton Avery, Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella and scores of others. From its tiny beginnings as the American representative of the French engravers Goupil & Company, Knoedler built a long list of private and institutional collectors like Andrew Mellon, J. P. Morgan, Henry Clay Frick, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, and the Tate Galleries in London. His eldest son, Roland Knoedler, took over the business, eventually moving it in 1925 to 57th Street and Madison Avenue, which became a new center for art dealers. Knoedler's prospects darkened considerably after the gallery passed from the family's control. A move to the East 70th Street town house in 1970, accompanied by expensive renovations and mismanagement, put the business on a precarious financial footing. A year later, the financier and art collector Armand Hammer bought the teetering gallery for $2.5 million. The Hammer Foundation holds a controlling interest in the gallery, and Michael Hammer, Armand's grandson, is the chairman. In 2004 and 2005, Knoedler once again remodeled its town house, restoring original 1909 details and constructing a new exhibition space below the main gallery, where up-and-coming artists could be shown in exhibition. The decision to close the gallery came without warning. Even after the announcement Wednesday evening, the gallery's Web site said an exhibition of Charles Simonds's sculptures would run through Jan. 14, while callers heard a recorded message that insisted, "We are open, but unable to answer your call at this time." Source: NYTimes article by Patricia Cohen  //  Images Courtesy of Knoelder & Company. NYC

LACMA Acquires two life-size Baroque Allegorical Sculptures by Giovanni Baratta Posted: 01 Dec 2011 09:36 PM PST LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has acquired two life-size allegorical figure statues by the late Florentine Baroque master, Giovanni Baratta (1640–1747). The rediscovery of these sculptures, Wealth and Prudence, has been recognized as a major contribution to the study of early eighteenth-century Florentine art. The works are generous gifts to the museum by long-time benefactor, The Ahmanson Foundation, which has contributed extensively to the development of LACMA's collection of European Painting and Sculpture over the last forty years. The sculptures are on view on the third floor of the Ahmanson Building, in the recently reinstalled European galleries. As the first marble examples of Baroque Florentine sculpture to enter the collection, Wealth and Prudence are important additions to LACMA's extensive grouping of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Florentine sculpture. The Baratta works join bronzes by Montauti, as well as a gilded terra-cotta, a wax relief, and medals by Massimo Soldani-Benzi, amongst other notable works in the museum's permanent collection.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art Offers a Glimpse of Holland’s Golden Age Posted: 01 Dec 2011 07:59 PM PST Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.- The Philadelphia Museum of Art is pleased to present "Dutch Treat: A Glimpse of Holland's Golden Age", on view at the museum through January 1st 2012. Continuing the Museum's season of exhibitions devoted to the art and culture of the Netherlands, Dutch Treat offers visitors the rare opportunity to examine the work of one of the most accomplished painters of the Dutch Golden Age, Gerrit Dou (1613–1675), in depth. In his own time, Dou was viewed as the very paragon of art, and was a great favorite of important and influential patrons. He and his fellow artists from Leiden, called fijnschilders ("fine painters"), captivated generations of collectors and art lovers with their scenes of contemporary life, rendered with painstaking detail and modeled in the subtle and rich chiaroscuro inspired by Rembrandt.

Art Fund appeals to buy the Fourth Plinth's 'Ship in a Bottle' for the National Maritime Museum Posted: 01 Dec 2011 07:58 PM PST LONDON.- The Art Fund and the National Maritime Museum launched a public appeal to give Yinka Shonibare, MBE's critically‐acclaimed and much‐loved commission for the Fourth Plinth Nelson's Ship in a Bottle a permanent home at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. The work was commissioned by the Mayor of London for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square where it has been on temporary display since May 2010 and is due to come down from view in January next year. In its new home at the National Maritime Museum Nelson's Ship in a Bottle will not only be a prominent public feature, freely accessible to all, outside the new Sammy Ofer Wing entrance but will complement the museum's collection, which includes important paintings and artifacts relating to Nelson and Britain's maritime history. The Art Fund has contributed a £50,000 grant to the campaign.

The Laura Russo Gallery Featues Two New Shows in December Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:26 PM PST Portland, Oregon.- The Laura Russo Gallery is proud to present two new shows, " Eric Stotik : New Work" and " Frank Boyden : Selected Ceramics", both shows remain on view through December 24th. Eric Stotik presents small, intimate narratives that raise questions about identity, loss, interconnection and the human condition. Incorporating dreamlike figures and settings that warrant further investigation, Stotik's paintings probe a darker side of the psyche, aiming for, as the artist says, "insight with a gasp." Stotik explains that during the last two decades, "My focus on the human form and pathos has not wavered. My intention of presenting viewers with both accusatory and celebratory images with 'gravity' is unchanged. The combination of technical skill in draftsmanship, composition, and visual impact, with concurrent themes of human life and death has always been and remain my artistic compass."

The Amon Carter Museum shows "John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury" a Retrospective Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:25 PM PST Fort Worth, Texas.- The Amon Carter Museum is proud to present "John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury" on view at the museum through January 8th 2012. In this special exhibition of over 50 oils and watercolors, Marin's work from 1933 until his death in 1953 will be on view. Beginning in 1914, Marin drew inspiration from Maine's forested mountains, picturesque towns, misty harbors and rolling seas; in 1933, he began living part of each year on Cape Split, a remote and sparsely settled northern peninsula in Pleasant Bay."John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury" was co-organized by the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, and the Portland Museum of Art, Maine.  Marin grew up in Weehawken, New Jersey, and attended the Stevens Institute of Technology for a year. His experience with architecture might have contributed to the role played by architectural themes in his paintings and watercolors. Marin is often credited with influencing the Abstract Expressionists.

Bilbao Fine Arts Museum Opens Exhibition on the Splendor of the Renaissance in Aragon Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:22 PM PST BILBAO, SPAIN - An exhibition of more than one hundred works illustrates how art evolved in Aragon from the Gothic style favored in the 15th century to the splendor of the Renaissance in the 16th century. Through a selection of one hundred or so works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings and articles in precious metals, the exhibition shows how art evolved in Aragon in the 15th and 16th century. Many of the works on show come from the Museum of Zaragoza, where ongoing reformation work has made this exceptional loan possible. Section one of the show includes a small but valuable selection of works that reflect the influence of the international Gothic style and models from Flemish art. One outstanding sculpture is Pere Joan's Guardian angel in polychromed alabaster—an essential material in Gothic and Renaissance sculpture in Aragon. On exhibition 15 June through 20 September, 2009 at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum. In painting, the panels Martyrdom of St. Engracia by Bartolomé Bermejo, in the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum collection, the Descent attributed to Bartolomé Bermejo, in tandem with his disciple Martín Bernat, and The retable of the Holy Cross of Blesa, by Miguel Ximénez and Martín Bernat, are three fine examples of the heights these maestros were capable of. The second section begins with a group of works that evidence the transition from the Gothic scheme of things to Renaissance ideals in a synthesis of the Flemish and Italian idioms. Contributions from the Museum of Zaragoza collection mean that the superb sculptor Damián Forment, one of the great figures of the Spanish Renaissance, is the artist best represented here. Particularly interesting are the St. Onuphrius and two Virtues, all in alabaster. In the early decades of the 16th century, the large group of sculptures by Forment and his disciples, together with others by contemporaries like Frenchman Gabriel Joly, the Italian Juan de Moreto and Aragon-born Gil Morlanes the Younger, consolidated the new style of the golden age of art in Aragon. Mostly executed in wood and alabaster, the sculptures and reliefs are generally polychromed pieces taken from retables. They undoubtedly set the standards and guidelines for the following generation. Accompanying them are several works by the painter Jerónimo Cósida, one of the finest artists in Aragon at the time. After some early works influenced by Raphael, Cósida's Italianate style was particularly appreciated for its beautiful use of colour and the delicate modelling of the figures. Two Italian artists, Tomás Peliguet and Pietro Morone, well acquainted with the works of both Raphael and Michelangelo, introduced full-blown Renaissance forms in painting in Aragon through their contributions to retables and mural painting projects. From 1570 on, the Rome-inspired new classicism appeared in the late stage of sculpture in Aragon. A major figure here was Basque sculptor Juan de Anchieta, who, in his monument entitled Christ for the church of the Hospital de Gracia and his Calvary, in the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum collection, synthesized the treatment of the nude as developed by Michelangelo with the emotional expressionism of Juan de Juni. Anchieta was an excellent maestro in the carvings for Christ Crucified, which ushered in the shift in the models used for this iconography in art in Aragon. The interest of Martín de Gurrea y Aragón, Duke of Villahermosa, in the genre of the portrait is typical of Renaissance civilization. Highly cultured, a collector of antiquities and paintings, in his time in the Low Countries, Villahermosa persuaded painters Paul Scheppers and Roland de Moys to work for him in Aragon. The works of these two Flemish artists, who had previously visited Italy, signalled the main guidelines for painting in Aragon as the Renaissance drew to a close. Today, the outstanding Bilbao Fine Arts Museum collection has more than seven thousand works, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper and the applied arts ranging in time from the 12th century to the present day. Besides many major early and Old Master works, it also has a broad sampling of modern and contemporary art, placing particular emphasis on paintings from the Spanish and Flemish schools, together with a major collection of works by Basque artists. Visit : www.museobilbao.com/

Maxfield Parrish ~ 'The Art of the Print' at The Everson Museum Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:21 PM PST SYRACUSE, NY.- The Everson Museum of Art presents the long awaited exhibition, Fantasies and Fairy-Tales: Maxfield Parrish and the Art of the Print will open to the public on Thursday, April 29, 2010. The exhibition will remain on view through July 11, 2010. During the height of Maxfield Parrish's popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, he was the most reproduced American artist of his era. Disseminated through magazine covers, book illustrations, calendar pads, advertisements and color reproductions, Parrish's images occupied a ubiquitous presence in popular visual culture.

Lawyer Arrested For £20 Million in Stolen Art Faces 10 Years Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:20 PM PST NEW YORK- AP - The FBI announced last night that as a result of an Art Loss Register (ALR) recovery, they have arrested Robert Mardirosian, the lawyer who tried to sell £20 million of stolen pictures.  If convicted Mardirosian, aged 72, could face up to 10 years in prison. Police are searching for his son Marc after finding three unlicensed firearms and drugs including cocaine at their house.  In 1978 seven pictures including Paul Cézanne's "Fruit and Jug" and two Chaim Soutine's were stolen from the house of the collector Michael Bakwin in Massachusetts.

"Polemically Small" Art by International Artists at Two California Venues Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:19 PM PST Beverley Hills, CA.- "Polemically Small" is a multi-venue exhibition curated by Edward Lucie-Smith, featuring 200 small works by artists from the UK, USA, Germany, Russia, Italy and Spain. The exhibition will be on view, split between the Garboushian Gallery (from May 21st until June 25th) and the Torrance Art Museum (May 28th, also until June 25th). This monumental undertaking is the first major curatorial undertaking by Lucie-Smith in North America. Finding the wall space for an encyclopedic survey of the international avant-garde, even if the works are small, is an undertaking in itself, but locating and delivering the work is another story entirely. In fact, the London-based Lucie-Smith went as far as to literally hand-pick and transport some of the works from Berlin himself, such extreme measures however are to be expected from a tireless advocate for contemporary art.

India Plans To Host New Global Art Biennale ~ Featuring Worldwide Artists Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:18 PM PST New Delhi (AFP).- India's booming art scene is set for a new event modeled on the Venice Biennale that will feature 60 international artists by the sea in the tropical south of the country. The Kochi-Muziris Biennale, launched this week, will be held in January 2012 and will be the first event of its kind in India, featuring artists from all over the world in a three-month show. Conceived by artists Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu and funded in part by the local state of Kerala, the show will make use of numerous industrial spaces in Kochi and exhibition areas in the ancient port of Muziris. "We've always had this idea of bringing in international art into India," Komu told AFP in a telephone interview. "We thought that a Biennale would be the best bet."

Nassau County Museum of Art announces a Major Norman Rockwell Exhibition Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:17 PM PST ROSLYN HARBOR, NY.- "I paint life as I would like it to be," said the great illustrator Norman Rockwell. Seeing himself as a storyteller, Rockwell created the images that defined America and Americans, in this country and abroad. His enormous impact was achieved through the 321 covers he created for Saturday Evening Post from 1916 to 1963. Among Rockwell's most memorable renditions of Americana is his much-loved Four Freedoms series of patriotic paintings symbolizing President Roosevelt's wartime aims: Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear. This contribution to the war effort, published in four consecutive issues of the Saturday Evening Post, raised nearly $140 million in war bonds. Norman Rockwell, opening at Nassau County Museum of Art (NCMA) on Sunday, September 20, 2009 and remaining on view through Sunday, January 3, 2010.

Irish Museum of Modern Art shows Spanish Artist Ferran Garcia Sevilla Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:16 PM PST DUBLIN.- An exhibition by Ferran Garcia Sevilla, a leading Spanish artist whose career has embraced many of the most influential art movements of the past 40 years, opened to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on 10 June 2010. Ferran Garcia Sevilla presents 42 paintings in the artist's characteristically eclectic style, which draws on influences as diverse as his travels in the Middle East, philosophy, Eastern cultures, comic books and urban graffiti. The exhibition comprises works from 1981 to date and includes well-known earlier works, alongside a group of more recent, previously unseen pieces, all illustrating the extraordinary visual richness of Garcia Sevilla's work. The earlier works in the exhibition date from the 1980s, when Garcia Sevilla was one of the principal proponents of the so-called return to painting. This followed a period as an outstanding figure in the vibrant Catalan Conceptual Art scene centred on Barcelona, where he had settled from Palma de Majorca in 1969. Paintings such as Ruc series, created after a trip to Nepal in 1986, brought Garcia Sevilla great international acclaim, as part of an explosion of Spanish art on the international scene, which also included artists such as Juan Mũnoz, Cristina Iglesias, José Maria Sicilia and Miquel Barceló. During the 1980s he showed regularly throughout Europe and beyond, with solo show in Spain, France, the UK and Japan. He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1986, in Documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987 and in ROSC 1988, which took place in number of locations around Dublin, including the Royal Hospital Kilmainham now the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Works from this period such as the celebrated Deus series from 1981 demonstrate the artist's interest in exotic cultures and mythologies, while their execution, with rapid brush strokes and splashes and drips, suggest the immediacy of primitive rituals. The Ruc paintings show a further development of these mythic or symbolic forms in a more graphic style and include what the artist himself has described as some of his most powerful images. Always controversial, he also began to introduce, sometimes self-mocking, phrases into his paintings, such as "If you discover the secret I'm sure you'll get depressed" in Muca 17. Towards the end of the 1980s Garcia Sevilla works take on a more three-dimensional form incorporating everyday objects, including books, shoes and light bulbs. His use of floor tiles in the Mosaico series refers directly to the work of the famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, who used broken ceramics in, for example, his design for Parc Güell. The early 1990s sees the introduction of still further new imagery in the form of coloured discs, hands, feet and arrow motifs in the Sama series from 1990, while the many works that make up the Xa series from 1995 contain primarily black and red forms reminiscent of scaffolding or of the iron grilles used in 19th-century balconies in Barcelona. Towards the end of the 1990s, in series such as Tepe, Garcia Sevilla's work becomes more introverted, featuring drips, intertwining and superimposed lines, dots and nets. While these motifs suggest balloons, gun shots, fireworks and comets as well as force-fields, graphs and atmospheric phenomena, they may also simply be results of the properties of paint as a material. In some cases, he exaggerates the dripping effect further by rotating his canvases. These works were the last to be seen for some time and marked a move from the narrative to the lyrical in which specific references are abandoned. In 1998 Garcia Sevilla stopped exhibiting in solo exhibitions, alienated by what he saw as an overly-commercialised art scene. He continued, however to create work with the same vigour as before and works began to emerge again in a solo show in Barcelona in 2007. In the Moll series from 2008, for example, the dot has become the predominant element, seemingly referring to notions such as the dissolution of reality or the disintegration of matter. Sometimes they are spread over the expanse of the painting; on other occasions, they form constellations and molecular chains. Born in Palma de Majorca in 1949, Ferran Garcia Sevilla lives and works in Barcelona. Major international exhibitions include Foundation Cartier, Paris, 1997; IVAM, Valencia, 1998; Malmo Konsthall, 1998; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Renia Sofía, Madrid, 2001; and more recently exhibitions at Galería Joan Prats, Barcelona, 2007, and Galería Fúcares, Madrid, 2008. Visit the Irish Museum of Modern Art at: http://www.imma.ie/en/index.htm

The Austin Museum of Art presents " Modern Art / Modern Lives / Then + Now " Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:15 PM PST AUSTIN, TX.- The Austin Museum of Art (AMOA) presents Modern Art. Modern Lives. Then + Now. This two-part exhibition, organized by the Austin Museum of Art, draws from AMOA's permanent collection and local collections to explore how modern and contemporary artists merge art and life. It focuses on two distinct periods and areas: the start of modern art in the late 19th and early 20th century in Europe, and the late 20th and early 21st century from diverse cultures and art centers around the world. On exhibit 30 August through 7 December, 2008.

Skylar Fein Mixed Media Portrait with Related Works at the Brooklyn Museum Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:14 PM PST BROOKLYN, N.Y.- A recent work by Skylar Fein titled Black Lincoln for Dooky Chase is on view at the Brooklyn Museum from March 23 through August 2011 as the centerpiece of an installation including related works from the permanent collection. In Fein's 2010 work he overlays a silhouette portrait of Abraham Lincoln on a panel created to resemble an old wall menu from Dooky Chase, a well-known New Orleans Creole and soul food restaurant.

Work by Marguerite and William Zorach at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:13 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- Michael Rosenfeld Gallery presents its first solo exhibition featuring the work of Marguerite Zorach (1887-1968) and William Zorach (1887-1966). On view through August 13, this exhibition consists of a selection of watercolors by each. The six 1915 watercolors by Marguerite Zorach were completed during a summer excursion in 1915 to the White Mountains hamlet of Randolph, New Hampshire. A noticeable feature in these works is the attention to detail, everything from the furniture in the rooms to the patterning of the wallpaper and the design of the rugs. In general the works display the modernist conventions of simplification of form and dramatic flattening of perspective. Later Zorach turned five of the six original watercolors into a set of hand-watercolored transfer lithographs.

Liam Gillick's "Cat" at the German Pavilion is Subject of Heated Debate As Venice Biennale Ends Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:12 PM PST VENICE.- The 53rd Venice Biennale comes to an end on 22nd November 2009, after receiving over 350,000 visitors. The German Pavilion has been at the forefront of media interest and has been the subject of heated debate in the national and international press. With his allusions to Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky's revolutionary Frankfurt Kitchen (1926), Liam Gillick presented an installation that provided a model of democratic and human formation of living space as a counterpart to the absent ergonomic functionality of the pavilion's politically symbolic 1930s architecture. Between these two perspectives on the paradigm of modernism, a connection has been made by a cat - cult icon in antiquity, demon with magic powers in the middle ages, symbol of wisdom in romanticism and domesticated pet today, but still with superstitious connotations - as a speaking witness to history. A self-depreciating alter ego for the artist, the cat stands for this typically formal and enigmatic opposite extreme.

Galleries for Musical Instruments Reopens at Metropolitan Museum of Art Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:11 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- After an eight-month hiatus, The Metropolitan Museum of Art reopens its André Mertens Galleries for Musical Instruments on March 2, featuring a refreshed and reinstalled presentation of its renowned collection of Western musical instruments. Showcasing more than 230 works of art drawn primarily from the Museum's extensive holdings, which are among the most important in the world, the new installation of Western musical instruments will focus attention on individual masterworks by exploring each within its musical and cultural context, by offering exciting comparisons of how individual makers realized the same concept, and by introducing examples of the various instruments' developments. Among the wide range of objects on view—keyboard, string, percussion, woodwind, and brass instruments—a highlight will be the famed "Batta-Piatigorsky" 'cello made in Cremona, Italy, by Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737), on loan from a private collection. Built in 1714, the cello—which was owned by the distinguished cellists Alexandre Batta (Dutch, 1816-1902) and Gregor Piatigorsky (Russian, 1903-1976)—is regarded as one of the best examples of the maker's work.

Allen Memorial Art Museum shows "In the Shadow of World War I" Posted: 01 Dec 2011 06:10 PM PST Oberlin, Ohio - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's 1915 painting Self-Portrait as a Soldier and four powerful self-portraits by Max Beckmann serve as the focal point of this exhibition of primarily drawings and prints dating from about 1910 to 1925. The emotional drama and psychological intensity of the works on view—underscored by Kirchner's disturbing vision of himself as a soldier with his painting hand chopped off—suggests the increasingly varied ways artists sought to express the human condition. On exhibit through 7 June, 2009 Also on view are early Symbolist and Jugendstil explorations by Edvard Munch, Wassily Kandinsky, and Gustav Klimt alongside highly expressive graphic works—some of them direct responses to World War I—by German artists Erich Heckel, Max Pechstein, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Käthe Kollwitz. After the war, a younger generation of artists such as Otto Dix and George Grosz followed a new path of social criticism in powerful explorations of the brutality of war. Exploiting a wide range of themes—portraiture, cityscapes, the circus or variety-hall, and religious imagery—these artists sought to communicate a deeper understanding of the world around them. "Art," Paul Klee famously wrote in 1920, "does not reproduce what is visible, but makes things visible." This exhibition, curated by Abbe Schriber (OC '09) and AMAM Director Stephanie Wiles, was organized in conjunction with Leonard V. Smith and Annemarie Sammartino, Department of History, Oberlin College. Support for the development of this exhibition was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Founded in 1917, the Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) is one of the finest college or university collections in the United States. Comprising more than 12,000 works of art from virtually every culture and spanning the history of art, the AMAM's collection is a vital cultural resource for the students, faculty, and staff of Oberlin College as well as the surrounding community. Notable strengths include seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art, nineteenth and early twentieth-century European and contemporary American art, and Asian, European, and American works on paper. The collection is housed in an impressive Italian Renaissance-style building designed by Cass Gilbert and named after its founder, Dr. Dudley Peter Allen (B.A. 1875), a distinguished graduate and trustee of Oberlin College. In 1977, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates designed an addition that represents one of the earliest and finest examples of postmodern architecture in the United States. Visit : http://www.oberlin.edu/amam/

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 01 Dec 2011 05:10 PM PST 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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