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• The Städel Museum's Refurbished Main River Wing Shows its Old Masters Collection
• The Indiana State Museum Shows Selections from its "Your Indiana Collection"
• The Des Moines Art Center Shows "Black White Gray Blue" ~ Civil War Print Exhibition
• Christie's Victorian & British Impressionist Art Sale Highlights Include Works by Millais, Rossetti & Burne-Jones
• The Muskegon Museum of Art Kicks Off its 100th Year Celebrations
• Elizabeth Taylor's Remarkable Pearl Makes History at Christie's
• The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and Watts Towers Arts Center to Show 'Civic Virtue'
• Palazzo Strozzi to show Americans in Florence ~ The American Impressionists
• Milwaukee Art Museum to show 'Jan Lievens ~ A Dutch Master Rediscovered'
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) to showcase "Café and Cabaret" the Avant-Garde
• Sotheby's New York to Offer 19th Century European Art Including Orientalist Paintings
• Pop Culture
• Hans P. Kraus, Jr. Fine Photographs Exhibition to Celebrate 25th Anniversary
• The Whitney Museum of American Art Presents Exhibiton Exploring Its Founding Collection
• Picasso and the Masters opens at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais
• Van Gogh Museum Gets 1.5 Million Visitors
• Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) presents ~ Hail to the Chief: Images of the American Presidency
• Architectonic Views from the IVAM
• Manchester Art Gallery to feature "Angels of Anarchy" Women Artists and Surrealism Exhibition
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

The Städel Museum's Refurbished Main River Wing Shows its Old Masters Collection Posted: 14 Dec 2011 11:08 PM PST Frankfurt am Main, Germany.- The reopening of the Städel Museum's Main River Wing with the new presentation of the Städel's "Old Masters" (1300–1800) collection on December 5th, marks the conclusion of the comprehensive refurbishment measures in the old museum building. Developed by Prof. Dr. Jochen Sander, chief curator of the "Old Masters" collection and Deputy Director of the Städel, the new  presentation benefits primarily from the recovery of the historical main axis of the Main River wing, which, starting from the central Rotunda, connects the large skylight galleries and their related cabinets. While the eastern part of the building is reserved for German, Dutch, and Flemish painting with masterpieces by Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald, Hans Holbein, and Adam Elsheimer, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Brueghel, and Peter Paul Rubens, the rooms following the cupola hall in the west mainly accommodate works by artists from Romance countries' schools, splendidly represented by Andrea Mantegna and Sandro Botticelli, Tiepolo and Batoni, Nicolas Poussin and Chardin. The Rotunda itself houses a small, yet qualitatively outstanding group of early Netherlandish paintings – a tribute to the crucial role played by masters like Jan van Eyck, the "Master of Flémalle," or Rogier van der Weyden in the development of European painting north and south of the Alps. Besides familiar and world-renowned masterpieces of the Städel, the restructured presentation of the collection also boasts numerous new acquisitions, which, as important additions, fill gaps in the Städel Museum's collection of old masters. One of the highlights is certainly the purchased portrait of Pope Julius II by Raphael and his workshop. A portrait of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the Younger could be secured for the museum through the work's acquisition by the Städelsche MuseumsVerein. Guercino's "Virgin with Child," dating from about 1621/22, was added to the collection as a donation by Barbara and her husband Eduard Beaucamp.  During the fifteen-month conversion period, the complete old museum building (the Main River wing and the garden wing) has undergone basic refurbishment. Under the direction of the architectural office schneider+schumacher, which is also responsible for the ongoing extension of the Städel, the fire protection facilities and the barrierfree accessibility of the museum were improved. Further measures concerned the creation of a connection between the old building and the extension via a central stairway located exactly in the axis of the main entrance, as well as the reconstruction of the Metzler Hall, for which the internationally acclaimed artist Thomas Demand conceived a specific work. Since its foundation in 1815, the Städel has been a museum of middle- and smallformat pictures. This already characterized the collection of its founder, Johann Friedrich Städel (1728–1816), but also holds true for the majority of works by old masters added to the collection in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many of these works were donations or legacies left to the museum by Frankfurt citizens eager to follow in Städel's footsteps; most of these works came from private art collections in the Main River metropolis. Such collections had already been part of the repertoire well-off patrician and middle-class Frankfurt families relied on for their self-presentation in the eighteenth century – an instrument that leaves no doubt that they ultimately followed the traditional model of the aristocracy. Yet, not even a decade would pass after the Städel Museum's foundation before this profile determined by the Frankfurt collectors' specific taste began to be changed. First still impeded by quarrels over the founder's will with distant relatives, the administrators of the foundation aimed at making Städel's private collection a public collection from 1828 on – a presentation that was to comprise exemplary works from the most important schools of European painting. This objective was achieved thanks to the stroke of luck that Johann David Passavant, the great art historian and connoisseur, was appointed curator ("inspector") of the Städel – a post he held from 1841 until his death in 1861 – as well as to his successors' collecting activities. "It was not least due to Passavant's expertise – who had set out on his career as a member of the Nazarene movement – that the collection of old masters in the Städel achieved its level of quality which is still admired internationally today," Prof. Dr. Jochen Sander points out. Not only key works of early Netherlandish, German and Italian painting, but also important Dutch and Flemish Baroque paintings were added to the collection assembled by Städel himself. However, representative, "princely" large formats such as Rembrandt's "The Blinding of Samson," Tiepolo's "The Saints of the Crotta Family," or Poussin's "Landscape during a Thunderstorm with Pyramus and Thisbe" would only become part of the museum's holdings in the course of the twentieth century. Today, the Städel Museum still finds itself confronted with the task of filling gaps in its collection of old masters mostly caused by personal preferences of taste. The new hanging offers several new core themes. Right at the start, visitors will find themselves confronted with a so-called Petersburg or salon hanging – a symmetric arrangement of works closely mounted in multiple rows, one above the other – which conveys an idea of Johann Friedrich Städel's original collection in his house on Frankfurt's Roßmarkt. The presentation comprises most of the still extant pictures from the founder's possession. Yet, since far more than four hundred of the five hundred paintings of the original collection were already sold with Städel's explicit approval in the first third of the nineteenth century so that better works could be acquired, the definite appearance of the collection rooms could only be reconstructed selectively. This homage to the founder of the institution and the origins of its collection center around two portraits by Frans Hals that rank among the masterpieces of the Städel's collection. The paintings in the museum were presented in the Petersburg fashion until the early twentieth century, by the way; the taste of the times only changed after. The stairway presentation also recalls the beginnings of the institution by confronting two monumental works by the Nazarene painters Philipp Veit and Friedrich Overbeck, who decisively influenced the Städel's fortunes in the early nineteenth century, with a work by Carl Friedrich Lessing, whose history painting superseded the Nazarenes' religious art. Leaving the stairway behind, visitors enter the Rotunda, where they find themselves face to face with a high-carat ensemble of early Netherlandish paintings. Comprising works by such artists as Jan van Eyck, the "Master of Flémalle," or Rogier van der Weyden, this part of the presentation gives lively evidence of the fact that the Städel Museum boasts one of the most important collections of early Netherlandish painting in the world. Presenting major works by Lochner, Dürer, Grünewald, Holbein, and Elsheimer, as well as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Brueghel, and Rubens, the main galleries to the right are dedicated to German and Netherlandish painting, while the various schools of Romance countries follow to the left with paintings by Mantegna, Botticelli, Tiepolo and Batoni, Poussin and Chardin. The respective lateral cabinets accommodate further, mainly middle- and small-format pictures of the contexts presented in the galleries. Thanks to the specific quality and composition of the Frankfurt old masters collection, specific new core themes continually emerge beyond mere regional groupings and schools. The gallery highlighting German painting on the eve of the Reformation with its magnificent assortment of masterpieces by Dürer, Grünewald, Cranach, Holbein, and Altdorfer not only confronts the visitor with the sacral painting of the era, but also presents itself as an extraordinary portrait gallery. The two rooms reserved for Dutch painting, whose exhibits are grouped around major works by Rembrandt and Vermeer show two obvious core themes: history painting and landscape painting. Visitors will make similar observations in the rest of the galleries and cabinets. Like the stairway presentation with its salon hanging, the two cabinets flanking the stairway in the west outline the history of the Städel Museum's collection. Here we come upon the portraits of a Frankfurt patrician family, the von Holzhausens, which were entrusted to the museum as the last male representative's legacy in 1923. Highcaliber works by Faber von Creuznach, Urlaub, and Ziesenis illustrate the changing character of the family's desire for representation across the centuries, but also document the development of portrait painting between the Renaissance era and the Rococo age. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.staedelmuseum.de

The Indiana State Museum Shows Selections from its "Your Indiana Collection" Posted: 14 Dec 2011 10:55 PM PST Indianapolis, Indiana.-  The Indiana State Museum is pleased to present "Heartland Art: Selections from Your Indiana Collection", on view at the museum through September 15th 2013. "Heartland Art" presents artwork created from the 1870's to the present day from the Indiana State Museum's fine art collection – treasures preserved for the people of Indiana. From early portraits of statesmen to post-impressionistic landscapes and multi-media abstracts, Indiana's history and culture are discovered through the eyes of Hoosier artists.  The exhibition showcases the impressive talent that has made Indiana a leader, for longer than a century, in the creation of Midwestern visual arts. More than 45 paintings and sculptures, selected for their impact and quality, are displayed chronologically to reflect our state's history. Diverse images range from an early Hoosier cabin to a robotic woman, and include an artist's interpretation of the recent Obama election. Come see and take pride in your fine art collection at the Indiana State Museum.

The Des Moines Art Center Shows "Black White Gray Blue" ~ Civil War Print Exhibition Posted: 14 Dec 2011 10:11 PM PST Des Moines, Iowa.- The Des Moines Art Center is pleased to present "Black White Gray Blue" on view until February 5th 2012. "Black White Gray Blue" features an unusual mix of historical and contemporary prints and works on paper from the Des Moines Art Center's permanent collection. The exhibition presents works in which artists revisit the horrors of slavery in America; witness, depict, and interpret the War Between the States; and confront this nation's ongoing legacy of racism. More than just an historical commemoration, Black White Gray Blue invites viewers to consider the ways that modern and contemporary artists Robert Colescott, Jacob Lawrence, Glenn Ligon, Dario Robleto, and Kara Walker have envisioned and interpreted the war, its causes, and its outcomes.

Christie's Victorian & British Impressionist Art Sale Highlights Include Works by Millais, Rossetti & Burne-Jones Posted: 14 Dec 2011 09:24 PM PST London – Christie's Victorian & British Impressionist Art sale will offer 90 paintings and works on paper at auction on December 15th 2011, by a variety of artists ranging from the Pre-Raphaelites to the British Impressionists, including John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Frank Cadogan Cowper, Alfred James Munnings, George Clausen and Wilfred Gabriel de Glehn, for an overall estimate in excess of £4.5 million. The sale is led by the masterly panorama "Derby Day" by William Powell Frith, RA (1819-1909), which is the first original working of the famous "Derby Day" painting, the masterpiece of the artist at Tate Britain. Fresh to the market, this significant picture has been recently rediscovered in New England, North America where it hung on the walls of an unlocked beach house for the past 50 years - it is estimated at £300,000 to £500,000. Based on photographic studies by Robert Howlett, the Tate picture was so popular that it had to be protected by a specially installed rail and a police officer when it was initially shown at the Royal Academy of Arts.

The Muskegon Museum of Art Kicks Off its 100th Year Celebrations Posted: 14 Dec 2011 08:39 PM PST Muskegon, Michigan.- The Muskegon Museum of Art kicked off the celebration of its 100th Year on December 11 with the unveiling of "The First 100 Years", a set of new exhibitions on display throughout the museum that highlights masterworks from the extensive museum collections. Exhibitions of "The First 100 Years" will be open through January 29, 2012. The museum's history began with a gift from lumber baron Charles Hackley, who made his fortune in during the 1980s Michigan lumbering boom. Hackley believed that the growth of Muskegon—the young city he adopted as home—would benefit from progressive new schools, a library and a hospital, and an art museum. Hackley died in 1905 before realizing his dream of an art gallery. However, he left an expendable trust of $150,000, through a bequest in his will, to the Board of Education of Muskegon Public Schools.

Elizabeth Taylor's Remarkable Pearl Makes History at Christie's Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:38 PM PST NEW YORK, N.Y.- The record-breaking $116 million sale of Elizabeth Taylor's "legendary" jewelry collection at Christie's Tuesday night took even the auctioneers' breath away. Fair estimates on each of the 80 pieces suggested they would bring in some $30 million or more. But $116 million? It was "the magic of Miss Taylor present in the room," one auctioneer said, that led to record prices on so many items. The extraordinary beauty, rarity and provenance of the pearl known as "La Peregrina" inspired a fierce bidding battle at Christie's New York at the opening auction of The Collection of Elizabeth Taylor . Estimated at $2-3 million, the pearl reached a world auction record price for a pearl at $11,842,500 (£ 7,579,200 / € 9,118,725) after four and a half minutes of bidding. The pearl, an historic 16th century pear-shaped pearl suspended from a necklace custom-designed for Ms. Taylor by Cartier, has been widely heralded as one of Elizabeth Taylor's most iconic jewels.

The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and Watts Towers Arts Center to Show 'Civic Virtue' Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:37 PM PST Los Angeles, California.- The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and Watts Towers Arts Center present "Civic Virtue" exploring the intertwined histories of two of Los Angeles's oldest and most diverse centers of artistic activity, both operated by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. "Civic Virtue" is on view at both venues from December 15th through February 12th. The Civic Virtue exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG) is a chronological survey of the role of civic government in the development of the arts in Los Angeles, beginning in the early 1950's. The exhibition illustrates the history of the gallery through displays of significant artworks and artifacts including Frank Lloyd Wright's original sketches and drawings for the building; artwork and documentation from City Hall hearings related to charges that modern painting and sculpture were vehicles of Communist subversion; photographs documenting early citywide festivals celebrating diverse artists; images of the seminal experimental performances at LAMAG by Guy de Cointet and Robert Wilhite, Senga Nengudi, Marren Hassinger, and Ulysses Jenkins; and works from many of LAMAG's celebrated exhibitions, including works by Karl Benjamin, David Hammons, Lorser Feitelson, Julius Shulman, June Wayne, John Altoon, Llyn Foulkes, John Mason, Betye Saar and Patssi Valdez.

Palazzo Strozzi to show Americans in Florence ~ The American Impressionists Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:37 PM PST FLORENCE.- Americans in Florence. Sargent and the American Impressionists on view at Palazzo Strozzi , Florence , from 3 March to 15 July 2012, sets out to illustrate the extremely fertile and multifaceted relationship that the painters of the New World established with Florence and other cities in Tuscany between the mid 19th century and the World War 1. After the end of the American Civil War, there was a substantial increase in the number of American artists traveling to Europe , although, of course, the 18th century Grand Tour tradition had never really died. The painters' main destinations were Florence , Venice and Rome , cities which the artists idolized in their eagerness to explore their ancient monuments and to take their own measure against the art of the past. They were also attracted by the charm and variety of the landscape, so different from the countryside back home, by the light, by the evocative and atmospheric panoramic views, and by the picturesque charm of the local people. The exhibition is divided into five sections with works by over thirty Americans artists who worked in Florence . Some, like John Singer Sargent , are famous, while the work of other less well-known artists is being shown in Italy for the first time. On returning home, they all became celebrated painters and authoritative masters who played a crucial role in forming the new generation of American painters and in forging the birth of a national school of painting. Their paintings dialogue in the sections of the exhibition with those by Florentine and Tuscan painters including Telemaco Signorini, Vittorio Corcos and Michele Gordigiani, whose work came closest to the sophisticated manner, so rich in literary allusions, that was favored and nurtured by the most exclusive circles in that cosmopolitan colony. Section 1. Room with a View (Javier post image 2 of 4 near this paragraph) This section focuses on the places where the Americans' daily life was played out in Florence . Sargent's The Hotel Room is typical of their first encounter with the city, involving an inevitable sojourn in a hotel in the centre to give them the time to explore and look for somewhere more appropriate to stay, far from the din, the poverty and the filth of the metropolis. Henry James, an illustrious American writer of the same generation, describes Florence as lethargically overlooking its sluggish green river, as in Lorenzo Gelati's painting View of Florence with Washing hanging out to dry, "basking" in its decadent beauty, brimming with that atmosphere of the past which James and other Americans were aware was so lacking in their own country. Similarly, the market place, as shown in Telemaco Signorini's painting, was a discovery for the Americans, with its hubbub, colours, smells and dirt, not to mention the threat represented by beggars and pickpockets. The aim of these painters and their intellectual friends was to take up residence just outside Florence , in a villa in the hills, such as the village of Batelli in View of Piagentina painted by Silvestro Lega, then in a country setting that has been totally swallowed up by the expanding city today. Section 2. Americans in Florence The second section consists of a gallery of self-portraits and portraits of the exhibition's leading players, the American artists who spent time in Florence , whose work forms the heart of the exhibitions' subsequent themes. These include Sargent, Frank Duveneck, William Merritt Chase , Cecilia Beaux, Edmund Charles Tarbell, Robert Vonnoh , Thomas Eakins and Frederick Childe Hassam , all of whom were ensnared in the engrossing experience of the Old World, and their search for a personal 'room with a view' capable of unveiling the aesthetic and literary mystery of a city to which some of them would later donate their self-portraits (now in the Uffizi). Alongside these painters, the portraits of Vernon Lee and Henry James evoke the presence of the large Anglo-American colony of scholars, collectors, writers and art critics, who in a singular melding of personalities and proclivities, projected onto Florence and its surroundings the utopian ideal of a perennial Renaissance. Section 3. The Circle of Egisto Fabbri: Scholars and Painters This section not only reconstructs the environment in which the influential Italian-American collector Egisto Fabbri's artistic education took place, beginning at the school of Julian Alden Weir in America and continuing in Paris in the shadow of Cézanne, Degas and Pissarro, it also reconstructs the American acquaintances of the young Fabbri who, when he finally returned to Florence, was to devote his energy to the cult of Cézanne and to a spirituality of Symbolist inspiration. Alongside the work of William Morris Hunt and John La Farge, masters of the younger generation setting out for Europe, the section will also include paintings by Mabel Hooper La Farge (John's daughter-in-law) and Mary Cassatt, both of whom were Fabbri's friends; by James Abbot McNeill Whistler and by Sargent himself, who portrayed the leading players in the American society that Egisto frequented, its eccentric and cosmopolitan aspirations acted out against the splendid backdrop of the Florentine hills. Section 4. The Image of Florence and Tuscany Here the visitor encounters views of the city and its surroundings painted in accordance with the literary standards introduced by the novels of Edward Morgan Foster and the literary transfigurations of Edith Wharton, Maurice Hewlett and Elisabeth Pennel, who were to 'invent' the Tuscan countryside we can still recognise today in certain unchanged vistas, and with which the American painters George Inness , Maurice Prendergast , Elihu Vedder, the Duvenecks, Hassam and Merritt Chase proved to be perfectly at ease, translating its variety into sun-drenched naturalistic snapshots or into views prompted by sudden moods or by dreams of a bygone era. Selected watercolours that Sargent devoted to the serene elegance of villa life, alongside others inspired by the gardens of Florence and Lucca , by the Tuscan countryside and by the Carrara marble quarries, provide us with a significant anthology of the highest quality, illustrating this peculiarly American way of interpreting the Italian landscape. Section 5. America through the Lens of Painting and Literature The last section takes the visitor across the Atlantic , in the wake of the American artists who returned home brimming with enthusiasm and experience. These paintings were almost all produced by artists who had painted Florence and Tuscany and whose careers benefited enormously from the experience in the Old World . This was a very different decision from that made by Whistler, Cassatt and Sargent, who elected to stay in Europe , although they were inevitably somewhat nostalgic exiles. Tarbell, Hassam, Weir, Benson, Chase, Cassatt, Lawson and Beaux painted the American landscape and domestic interiors, and portrayed women or leading personalities in American politics and society. Many, on returning from Europe, became the younger generations' teachers and it was this new graft, nurtured also by the collections of European old masters and modern art being put together by America's wealthiest families with advice from the artists themselves (Cassatt, Chase), that forged America's first national school of painting.

Milwaukee Art Museum to show 'Jan Lievens ~ A Dutch Master Rediscovered' Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:30 PM PST MILWAUKEE, WI.- The first U.S. exhibition of the work of Jan Lievens (1607–1674), one of the great Dutch artists of the 17th century, will be on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum February 7–April 26, 2009. Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered challenges the artist's place in art history, calling into question why the artist has only been studied in the shadow of his more famous contemporary, Rembrandt van Rijn. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue will present an overview of the full range of Lievens' career. More than 110 of the artist's finest works will be presented including 50 paintings, 28 drawings, and 34 prints. Jan Lievens remains one of the most fascinating and enigmatic Dutch artists of his time. Daringly innovative as a painter, printmaker, and draftsman, the artist created powerful character studies, formal portraits, religious and allegorical images, and landscapes that were highly esteemed by his contemporaries. His work demonstrates a singular international style that combines the best of Netherlandish realism with the sensuous painting of Rubens, Van Dyck, and the Venetians. Lievens was a child prodigy, whose early works in Leiden were highly praised by his contemporaries and valued by princely patrons. His later career was marked by important civic and private commissions in Amsterdam, The Hague, and Berlin. Nevertheless, his name today barely registers in the public consciousness. The exhibition and catalogue suggest that his posthumous reputation waned after many of his works were mistakenly attributed to other masters—especially Rembrandt (1606–1669), with whom he had a somewhat symbiotic relationship—and because he worked in a remarkable range of styles, reflecting multiple influences from the various cities in which he lived. "Jan Lievens is overdue for a longer art historical evaluation," notes Laurie Winters, curator of earlier European art at the Milwaukee Art Museum, who conceived of the exhibition while viewing paintings by Lievens in a private collection. "The last exhibition of his work—which was in Europe, in 1979—was subtitled 'A Painter in the Shadow of Rembrandt,' reflecting the tendency in the 1970s and 80s to evaluate Dutch artists only in their relationship to Rembrandt. This is the first in-depth exhibition to consider the other significant aspects of Lievens' remarkable career." Completed when the artist was not yet 20 years-old, the early masterpiece The Feast of Esther (c.1625) depicts the dramatic moment from the biblical Book of Esther when the queen reveals to her husband, the Persian king, the plot to destroy all the Jews in the kingdom, including herself. Esther points to the conspirator, Haman, who draws back in terror as the king glares at him before ordering his death. The painting demonstrates Lievens' connection to the Utrecht Carravaggisti, artists from Utrecht who had adopted the realism and dramatic light of Caravaggio. Bearded Man with a Beret (c. 1630) is an expressive character study of the type Lievens made during his Leiden period. In contrast to the old man's modest attire, Boy in a Cape and Turban (c. 1631) is one of the most beautiful and compelling portraits of a figure in the romantic Eastern dress popular at the time. The sensitivity of the boy's face expresses a hesitancy that belies the grandeur. Executed when the two artists were working together and possibly even sharing a studio, Lievens' Portrait of Rembrandt (c.1629), captures his colleague's proud bearing and thoughtful countenance with a portrait-like precision. Other highlights in the exhibition include Prince Charles Louis with His Tutor, as the Young Alexander Instructed by Aristotle (1631)—painted for the king and queen of Bohemia—and The Lamentation of Christ (c.1640), an Antwerp period altarpiece that reflects the influence of Anthony van Dyck. Lievens and Rembrandt were born in Leiden just over a year apart, studied with the same master, Pieter Lastman (1583–1633), and lived near one another until about 1632. Many parallels exist between the works that each produced in Leiden in the 1620s and early 1630s. Even though Lievens' career began earlier, he was often wrongly described as a follower or student of Rembrandt. It is proposed in this exhibition and catalogue that, in many respects, Lievens was the initiator of the stylistic and thematic developments that characterized both artists' work in the late 1620s. Arranged chronologically, Jan Lievens includes such masterful paintings as Lievens' youthful and penetrating Self-Portrait (c.1629–1630). Dendrochronological examinations have revealed that Lievens used an oak panel made from the identical tree that supplied the panel for Rembrandt's Samson and Delilah, suggesting that they purchased their panels from the same maker and perhaps even jointly. Lievens' late work has been consistently neglected, partially because earlier historians believe that he lost his way after leaving Rembrandt's orbit, and succumbed to the influence of the great Flemish master Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) upon his move to London in 1632 in search of courtly success. In fact, after he moved to Antwerp in 1635—where he thoroughly adapted the prevailing taste for Flemish modes of painting—Lievens achieved the international renown he so desperately sought. After his return to the Netherlands, he received important commissions in Amsterdam, The Hague, and Berlin. Among the reasons Lievens' later years have been overlooked was that his frequent moves kept him from fitting into historical assessments of the period, which generally focus on the stylistic character of the time. It was not until the mid-20th century that Lievens' body of work began to be reassessed and a number of important works, wrongly attributed to Rembrandt and other artists, were recognized as being by his hand. Many of these paintings, as well as some recent discoveries, are in the exhibition. Visit the Milwaukee Art Museum at : http://www.mam.org/

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) to showcase "Café and Cabaret" the Avant-Garde Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:29 PM PST BOSTON, MA.- More than 30 bold and subtle posters, prints, and paintings representative of the bohemian nightlife of late 19th-century Paris are presented in "Café and Cabaret: Toulouse-Lautrec's Paris" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). The French aristocrat Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), one of the most famous artists of the Post-Impressionist period, is known for his striking images of performers in the centers of Parisian entertainment in the 1880s and 1890s, specifically the café-concerts and cabaret nightclubs in the neighborhood of Montmartre. Toulouse-Lautrec spent most of his time in this lively section of the city—where women danced the Cancan at places such as the Moulin Rouge—and chronicled in his canvases and lithographs the extravagant nightlife of Parisian dance halls and nightclubs. "Café and Cabaret" will be on view from November 21, 2009, through August 8, 2010, in the Mary Stamas Gallery.

Sotheby's New York to Offer 19th Century European Art Including Orientalist Paintings Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:28 PM PST NEW YORK, NY - On April 24, 2009, Sotheby's New York will offer a selection of the very best examples of the artists, schools and styles of 19th Century European painting – from Academic and Barbizon to Orientalist and Victorian. The sale of approximately 120 lots continues Sotheby's focus on offering collectors a selection of the highest quality works. Works from the sale, estimated to bring more than $14 million, will be on view at Sotheby's New York galleries beginning April 18th.

Pop Culture Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:27 PM PST MINNEAPOLIS, MN - Consumer culture and current affairs are under examination in two new exhibitions in the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP) galleries at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA). Unconventional Wisdom and MILLIONS OF INNOCENT ACCIDENTS address popular and consumer culture as well as the realms of media, politics, war, and fear. Both exhibitions bring humor and commentary to a range of topics, resulting in provocative and satirical contemporary works. These exhibitions will be on view through October 26, 2008.

Hans P. Kraus, Jr. Fine Photographs Exhibition to Celebrate 25th Anniversary Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:26 PM PST NEW YORK, NY. - Celebrating the gallery's 25th anniversary, a new exhibition tracing the history of photography – from its birth in the mid 1830s to the early 20th century – will be on view at Hans P. Kraus, Jr. Fine Photographs from October 14 though November 20, 2009. Silver Anniversary: 25 Photographs, 1835 to 1914 is a survey of iconic works of extraordinary beauty and rarity by the preeminent photographers of the time who defined photography both technically and aesthetically. The exhibition features work by William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of paper negative photography, and some of the greatest photographers of their periods including Anna Atkins, Hippolyte Bayard, Hill & Adamson, J. B. Greene, Roger Fenton, Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Nègre, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Alvin Langdon Coburn. A fully illustrated catalogue by photographic historians Dr. Larry J. Schaaf and Russell Lord will be available.

The Whitney Museum of American Art Presents Exhibiton Exploring Its Founding Collection Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:25 PM PST New York, NY - At the turn of the twentieth century, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, an heiress and sculptor born to one of America's wealthiest families, began to assemble a rich and highly diverse collection of modern American art. This group of objects, combined with a trove of new works purchased around the time of the Whitney Museum's opening in 1931, came together to form the founding collection. 'Breaking Ground: The Whitney's Founding Collection' is the first in a multiyear series of exhibitions aimed at reassessing the museum's collection. Unfolding in chronological order over a two year period, these exhibitions will explore overlooked developments in American art and reconsider iconic figures and masterworks within new frameworks and contexts. This exhibition features a selected group of works from the approximately 1,000 objects in the Whitney's founding collection, including iconic paintings by artists such as Stuart Davis, Charles Sheeler, George Bellows, Rockwell Kent, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O'Keeffe, as well as works by lesser-known artists. The exhibition will be on view from April 28th to September 18th 2011. As the preeminent institution devoted to the art of the United States, the Whitney Museum of American Art presents the full range of twentieth-century and contemporary American art, with a special focus on works by living artists. The Whitney is dedicated to collecting, preserving, interpreting, and exhibiting American art, and its collection—arguably the finest holding of twentieth-century American art in the world—is the Museum's key resource. The Museum's signature exhibition, the Biennial, is the country's leading survey of the most recent developments in American art. Innovation has been a hallmark of the Whitney since its beginnings. It was the first museum dedicated to the work of living American artists and the first New York museum to present a major exhibition of a video artist (Nam June Paik in 1982). Such figures as Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, and Cindy Sherman were given their first museum retrospectives by the Whitney. The Museum has consistently purchased works within the year they were created, often well before the artists became broadly recognized. The Whitney was the first museum to take its exhibitions and programming beyond its walls by establishing corporate-funded branch facilities, and the first museum to undertake a program of collection-sharing (with the San Jose Museum of Art) in order to increase access to its renowned collection. Visit the museum's website at ... www.whitney.org

Picasso and the Masters opens at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:24 PM PST   PARIS - Pablo Picasso was trained in the strict rules of academic painting at a very early age, first by his father, José Ruiz-Blasco, a teacher at the fine art school in Málaga and director of the Malaga Museum, and then as a student (1893-1899) at the fine arts school of La Corùna, at La Lonja (Barcelona).  Drawings from the antique, statuary and architectonics, copies of paintings by the great Spanish masters formed the core of this training, rooted in the humanist pictorial tradition which reminds us that Picasso was born in the 19th century (1881).

Van Gogh Museum Gets 1.5 Million Visitors Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:23 PM PST   AMSTERDAM, NL - The Van Gogh Museum received 1,550,000 visitors in 2007. Major crowd pleasers were the exhibitions Vincent van Gogh and Expressionism and Max Beckmann in Amsterdam, 1937-1947. The Barcelona 1900 exhibition (which runs through 20 January 2008) has also garnered an enthusiastic response, having attracted more than 200,000 visitors to date. This exhibition was recently voted as currently one of the best on show worldwide by Britain's The Times newspaper.

Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) presents ~ Hail to the Chief: Images of the American Presidency Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:22 PM PST MINNEAPOLIS, MN - The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) presents an exhibition on our nation's presidential history through art and artifacts. Featuring paintings, sculpture, prints, photographs, posters, manuscripts, and decorative arts, "Hail to the Chief" represents our country's presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush. This exhibition is organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. This exhibition will be on view at the MIA from August 2 through September 21.

Architectonic Views from the IVAM Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:21 PM PST   ALICANTE, SPAIN - As a result of the collaboration agreement between the IVAM and the Diputación de Alicante, the exhibition Miradas arquitectónicas en la colección del IVAM (Architectonic Views in the Collection of the IVAM) offers an overview of the different and complex ways in which architecture has been represented as an object and sign by an important group of photographers, sculptors and painters since the advent of modernity.

Manchester Art Gallery to feature "Angels of Anarchy" Women Artists and Surrealism Exhibition Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:20 PM PST MANCHESTER, UK - The first major exhibition of women artists and Surrealism to be held in Europe, Angels of Anarchy, opens this autumn at Manchester Art Gallery. Featuring over 100 artworks by 33 women artists, the exhibition is a celebration of the crucial, but at the time not fully recognised, role that women artists have played within Surrealism. Paintings, prints, photographs, surreal objects and sculptures by well-known international artists including Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Leonora Carrington and Lee Miller will be exhibited alongside works by artists less well-known in the UK, such as Emila Medková, Jane Graverol, Mimi Parent, Kay Sage and Francesca Woodman. Manchester Art Gallery is the only venue for this exhibition, making it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the works of so many significant women artists displayed together, with many of the works on loan from international public and private collections. Angels of Anarchy includes some of the most important, radical (and sometimes still shocking) Surrealist works produced during the 20th century by women artists from across the globe, including artists from Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Mexico, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. The exhibition is an ambitious exploration of how women artists have responded to and challenged the traditionally male-dominated artistic subjects of landscape, portraiture, still-life, the domestic interior and fantasy within the Surrealist genre. Through these five themes, the show reveals how these women have developed, enriched and significantly reshaped Surrealism to create an empowering and erotic art form which speaks of their experiences as women and as artists. Among the best-known and most significant artworks in the show are: Leonora Carrington's Self-Portrait (The Inn of the Dawn Horse) (c. 1937-38) and Meret Oppenheim's iconic objects Fur Gloves with Wooden Fingers (1936) and Squirrel (1973/4). The show also includes the rare exhibition of two of Eileen Agar's most famous works together: Angel of Anarchy (1936 - 40) and the counterpart Angel of Mercy (1936). Frida Kahlo's exquisite self-portrait Diego and I (1949) features in the exhibition together with a number of her significant, yet little known still-lifes such as Still Life with Parrot and Flag (1951) and a selection of intimate photographic portraits of the artist by Lola Álvarez Bravo. The exhibition also includes a selection of photographs of women artists by Lee Miller and Dora Maar, a series of androgynous and highly theatrical self-portraits by Claude Cahun, and several haunting self-portraits by Francesca Woodman. A number of the works on display have rarely been on public display, including a Cast of Lee Miller's Torso (c. 1942), while other works by lesser-known artists have never been shown in public before, such as the arresting Mouth with Ear (1973) by Penny Slinger and Josette Exandier's La Caresse (1995). Angels of Anarchy also includes a selection of ephemera such as poetry, books, photographs, letters and cards to illustrate the fascinating relationships between many of the Surrealist artists. In addition, it features a number of Surrealist objects and works on paper (known as 'Exquisite Corpses') made collaboratively by female and male members of the Surrealist group. These, in particular, demonstrate some of the unconventional and playful ways the artists challenged the male tradition of working individually. Between September and January, Manchester Art Gallery is hosting a full programme of events, talks and lectures to coincide with the exhibition, including lectures by author (and son of Lee Miller) Antony Penrose, art historian Dr Alyce Mahon, and the exhibition curator Dr Patricia Allmer. The gallery is also holding lunchtime tours, workshops with contemporary artists influenced by Surrealism, and surrealist poetry workshops and readings alongside the exhibition. In addition, Manchester's Cornerhouse cinema is showcasing a Surreal film series, featuring women filmmakers such as Germaine Dulac, Bady Minck and Nelly Kaplan. Visit : http://www.manchestergalleries.org/

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 14 Dec 2011 07:19 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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