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• Holiday Greetings From Art Knowledge News . . .
• PowerHouse Books announces "Here We Are: by photographer Panos Kokkinias
• The Polk Museum of Art Presents Hunt Slonem's "An Expressive Nature"
• India Art Fair Returns For its 4th Edition at New Location
• The Kopeikin Gallery to Show Kevin Cooley's Large Scale Photographs
• The Met in NYC Presents "Storytelling in Japanese Art"
• Moderna Museet presents Selections From Its Collection
• Sotheby's to Sell "The Former Peter Stuyvesant Collection" in Amsterdam
• The Gibbes Museum of Art to host Two Special Exhibitions
• The Prado Museum opens Exhibition of Armour & Paintings of the Spanish Court
• Nassau County Museum of Art Showcases the Romantic Fascination of the Sea
• Lawrence Schiller to Present "America in the Sixties & Marilyn Monroe"
• Marc Chagall in Paris During the Early 20th Century at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Tiffany Exhibition Coming to VMFA in May Opens at Musée du Luxembourg in Paris
• Walters Art Museum Receives Grant to Support Digitization of Manuscripts
• Aspects of Artistic Luxury
• Orthodox Jewish Library Seized by Russia Has Jolted US Museums
• Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego exhibits 'Selections From the Collections'
• Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts displays American Impressionism: Paintings from the Phillips Collection
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Holiday Greetings From Art Knowledge News . . . Posted: 18 Dec 2011 10:24 PM PST Greetings - Art Knowledge News has published daily since November of 2004. We are so very pleased that our daily content and excellent art images are provided to us by museums, art galleries, universities, art schools, government agencies, news wire services, PR organizations, RSS art feeds, artists, freelance writers, and occasional tips from readers . . . worldwide. In 2012 we hope to welcome our one millionth registered subscriber. As you may know subscriptions have always been Free and we accept no paid advertising. All of our overhead expenses are covered by a grant from a non-profit foundation, the Art Appreciation Foundation. We therefore can deliver un-biased art related news to our readers . . daily. We are also very grateful to Google, and ther subsidiary Feedburner for handling our automated subscription enrollments and daily delivery.

PowerHouse Books announces "Here We Are: by photographer Panos Kokkinias Posted: 18 Dec 2011 09:55 PM PST BROOKLYN, N.Y.- "Here We Are" is an anthology of Panos Kokkinias' widely exhibited fine-art photography, from 1994 through 2007. The monograph consists of four sections, each representing different bodies of work linked by a common theme: Kokkinias' personal, ongoing obsession with existential subject matter. Panos Kokkinias was born in 1965 in Athens, Greece. He studied photography at the School of Visual Arts, and then at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1996. He earned a PhD in Photography in 2009 from Derby University, Great Britain. The recipient of grants from the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation and Yale University, among others, Kokkinias has exhibited his work worldwide, including shows in Athens, Paris, and New York. His photographs have been published in Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography, (Phaidon Press, 2006) and in Panos Kokkinias (Galerie Xippas, 2004). He lives and works in Athens.

The Polk Museum of Art Presents Hunt Slonem's "An Expressive Nature" Posted: 18 Dec 2011 08:20 PM PST Lakeland, Florida.- The Polk Museum of Art is proud to showcase paintings by New York and Louisiana-based artist Hunt Slonem in an exhibition titled "An Expressive Nature" on view at the museum from December 17th through March 24th 2012. The exhibition will be celebrated at a reception from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, January 13th at the Museum. Slonem will lecture about his work beginning at 6 p.m., and a reception featuring light hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar begins at 7 p.m. Contemporary works by Slonem are sought after by collectors from around the world. His vibrantly colored works can be found in nearly 100 international museum collections and countless other corporate and private collections. Slonem's expressive paintings pivot between the fantastic and the natural.

India Art Fair Returns For its 4th Edition at New Location Posted: 18 Dec 2011 08:00 PM PST New Delhi.- India Art Fair (formerly India Art Summit) is proud to announce its 4th edition from January 26th - 29th 2012 in a new location at the NSIC Exhibition Grounds in New Delhi. Founded in 2008, India Art Fair is the country's premier art fair and a pioneering platform for modern and contemporary art in India. It has attracted more than 170,000 people over its first three editions, making it among the world's most attended art fairs. The upcoming edition will feature 91 exhibitors from 20 countries presenting 1000 of the most exciting modern and contemporary artists across a 12,000 square metre custom built space created for the art fair.  Neha Kirpal, Founding Director of India Art Fair, says "the art fair has seen tremendous growth over a short period of time, and much of its success can be attributed to its focus on providing a relevant and transparent platform for the Indian art scene. It has received unprecedented interest from international museums and private collectors, and cultivated a whole breed of new collectors and art enthusiasts within India.

The Kopeikin Gallery to Show Kevin Cooley's Large Scale Photographs Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:20 PM PST Los Angeles, California.- The Kopeikin Gallery is pleased to present " Kevin Cooley : Take Refuge", on view at the gallery from January 7th through February 11th 2012. The exhibition features large scale photographs and videos evoking human struggles in the harsh and unforgiving, yet sublime, natural world. This body of work was created in disparate locations including the Arctic territory of Spitsbergen and the American West as well in more ordinary places such as New York City and Los Angeles. Referencing the Romantic movement in art and literature, the work attests to both the fear and longing nature inspires. Kevin Cooley is primarily a photo and video artist who does freelance assignment work as well.

The Met in NYC Presents "Storytelling in Japanese Art" Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:19 PM PST New York City.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) is proud to present "Storytelling in Japanese Art", on view in the Sackler Wing Galleries for the Arts of Japan from November 19th through May 6th 2012. Japan has enjoyed a long tradition of storytelling through paintings and illustrated books, which continues today in the popular art of manga (comic books for children and adults).  Showcasing more than 90 vibrant works drawn from the New York Public Library and other local collections, as well as works from the Metropolitan's own holdings, Storytelling in Japanese Art will trace the rich history of illustrated narratives that thrived in the medieval and early modern periods of Japan.  The focus of the exhibition will be on some 20 rare illustrated handscrolls called emaki.  Highlights among them will be: an exceptional fragment of the set of handscrolls nicknamed Frolicking Animals, whose parent scrolls in Japan have the designation of National Treasure and are often referred to as ancestors of modern manga; "The Tale of the Drunken Demon", capturing a dramatic and gory scene of a warrior chopping off a demon's head; and the Illustrated "Legend of Kitano Shrine", a set of five handscrolls that will be displayed simultaneously for the first time.  Dating from the 12th to the 19th century, the exhibition will also include works in other formats: handscroll, fan, book, and screen. Illustrated handscrolls, or emaki, represent an artistic tradition that stretches back to the eighth century in Japan. Extant emaki from the 12th and 13th centuries represent the quintessence of narrative presentation in this highly developed format. The tales, many now part of the canon of classical Japanes literature, include miraculous events of the Buddhist and Shinto religious traditions, romantic trysts of courtiers and court ladies, heroic adventures of men and women during times of war, and antics of animals in the roles of humans, not to mention the macabre escapades of ghosts and monsters. Other highlights of the exhibition include rarely seen masterworks such as A Long Tale for an Autumn Night, a homoerotic tale of a romance between a Buddhist monk and a young male novice. The exhibition also will feature works in various formats illustrating dramatic episodes from The Great Woven Cap, a tale of Fujiwara no Kamatari, the founder of the powerful Fujiwara clan; in its climactic scene, a female diver is chased by a dragon. Some 20 works of art will be rotated into the exhibition in February. The exhibition will include full views of some of the handscrolls in the exhibition on iPad displays within an exhibition reading area. A lavishly illustrated publication and an Audio Guide will also be available. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (colloquially The Met) is an art museum on the eastern edge of Central Park, along "Museum Mile" in New York City, United States. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works of art, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, often called "the Met", is one of the world's largest art galleries; there is also a much smaller second location, at "The Cloisters", in Upper Manhattan, which features medieval art. Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day, who wanted to open a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. It opened on February 20, 1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue. Today, the Met measures almost 1/4-mile (400 m) long and occupies more than 2,000,000 square feet (190,000 m2). The Met's permanent collection is cared for and exhibited by seventeen separate curatorial departments, each with a specialized staff of curators and scholars, as well as four dedicated conservation departments and a department of scientific research. Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine and Islamic art. After negotiations with the City of New York in 1871, the Met was granted the land between the East Park Drive, Fifth Avenue, and the 79th and 85th Street Transverse Roads in Central Park. A red-brick and stone "mausoleum" was designed by American architect Calvert Vaux and his collaborator Jacob Wrey Mould. Vaux's ambitious building was not well-received; the building's High Victorian Gothic style being already dated prior to completion, and the president of the Met termed the project "a mistake." Within 20 years, a new architectural plan engulfing the Vaux building was already being executed. Since that time, many additions have been made including the distinctive Beaux-Arts Fifth Avenue facade, Great Hall, and Grand Stairway. These were designed by architect and Met trustee Richard Morris Hunt, but completed by his son, Richard Howland Hunt in 1902 after his father's death. The wings that completed the Fifth Avenue facade in the 1910s were designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White. The modernistic sides and rear of the museum were the work of Roche, Dinkeloo, and Associates in the 1970s and 1980s. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.metmuseum.org/

Moderna Museet presents Selections From Its Collection Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:17 PM PST Stockholm - Moderna Museet has one of the world's best collections of art, spanning from 1900 to the present day. The photographic collection comprises works from the 1840's onwards. The art collection includes key works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse and Robert Rauschenberg, as well as new acquisitions by contemporary artists. Swedish art is largely integrated with the international works, presenting Swedish artists such as Vera Nilsson and Siri Derkert parallel with Oskar Kokoschka and Georges Braque. The contemporary section is rehung frequently, and it includes a presentation of contemporary film and video art in The Video Corridor. Selections from the collection on view through 31 January, 2010. Moderna Museet's objective is to collect, preserve, exhibit and communicate 20th and 21st century art of all kinds. Visit : www.modernamuseet.se/ Art has experienced yet another expansion over the past few decades, one which in some ways puts issues of techniques and geography in the shade – the broadening of the whole concept of art. This is an expansion that has its roots in the radical works of Marcel Duchamp from the beginning of the last century, with its continuation through dadaism, surrealism and on into the conceptual art of the 1970s. But not until now has the expansion of the concept of art become manifest. Only a few decades ago, it was quite easy to answer the question of "what is art?", at least purely descriptively: painting, sculpture and works on paper. Perhaps there were one or two video pieces out there. It was primarily down to things you could look at – and the visual and visual intelligence. It was no harder to describe art than to describe music, theatre or literature. If you try the same thing now, you realise that it's still quite simple to describe literature or music, which are largely unchanged as genres. But when confronted with art, you see that the concept has undergone a radical expansion to the extent that it has actually become a different type of concept from, for example, literature. For one thing, art can easily encompass what we usually refer to as literature, music, theatre or dance. The exponent or originator has a background as an artist and chooses the arena and context of art for his or her work. This, of course, influences the meaning of the work, both in terms of what we see and how we interpret what we see. Art has progressed from being a cultural category that was largely bound to one particular sense, to becoming a sort of zone in society. This is a zone into which phenomena, actions, design projects and texts can be introduced – perhaps from a life somewhere else in society – onto the art stage, to be examined from new angles and to generate new meanings, while all the time the visual arts, and of course "painting, sculpture and work on paper" still constitute the essential foundation of art. So what we see is not a revolution – that was sparked by Marcel Duchamp in 1914 when he moved an ordinary bottle rack from its workshop setting to an artistic context. But a quantitative leap has given us a far broader notion of art – and thus, of course, new challenges to the modern museum. The modern museum must be agile, it must follow art wherever it goes. Naturally, we will have white cubes and black boxes for the works that require them. Not only have they represented the dominant means of exhibition throughout history, they are still part of the vision of the contemporary artist. But the museum must also be in a position to follow art out of the museum building if it requires other spaces – social, physical or perhaps electronic. The museum is not identical with its building, a lesson learned not least by Moderna Museet during its life in exile between 2002 and 2004, when the nomadic "Moderna Museet c/o" flourished. But, paradoxically, the institution is perhaps more important than ever, simply by maintaining and to some extent defining the zone that is our expanded concept of art, just as the physical museum space was needed in Duchamp's time to provide relief to his examination of the frontiers between art and non-art. This, perhaps is a comfort, even as the challenges to the modern museum – and thus to Moderna Museet – are greater than ever! Lars Nittve, Museum Director

Sotheby's to Sell "The Former Peter Stuyvesant Collection" in Amsterdam Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:16 PM PST AMSTERDAM.- Sotheby's announced that it will offer for sale 163 works from the former Peter Stuyvesant Collection, property of British American Tobacco Netherlands (BAT), on Monday, March 8, 2010 at Sotheby's in Amsterdam. The works from the collection to be offered for sale are estimated to realize in excess of €.4 million. The collection is the largest collection of Post War and Contemporary Art ever to come at auction in the Netherlands. Starting in the late 1950s it became famous as the Peter Stuyvesant Collection and now consists of more than 1000 works created by artists from over 40 countries.

The Gibbes Museum of Art to host Two Special Exhibitions Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:15 PM PST   Charleston, SC – The Gibbes Museum of Art plays host to two traveling exhibitions from December 19, 2008 through March 29, 2009.  Painters of American Life: The Eight will be on view in the Main Gallery and The American Scene on Paper: Prints and Drawings from the Schoen Collection will be showcased in the Rotunda Galleries. "These two exhibitions complement each other because of their focus on early 20th century American life but in two different mediums: paintings and prints. We are fortunate to be able to bring both exhibitions to Charleston simultaneously," states Gibbes Executive Director Angela Mack.

The Prado Museum opens Exhibition of Armour & Paintings of the Spanish Court Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:14 PM PST MADRID.- 35 paintings will be seen alongside 31 full suits of armour and pieces of armour loaned from the Royal Armoury in Madrid, considered the finest collection in the world along with that of the imperial collection in Vienna. Together, they will narrate the evolution and impact of the court portrait in the period from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Particularly noteworthy is the juxtaposition of Titian's portrait of Charles V at Mühlberg and the impressive suit of equestrian armour belonging to the Emperor: a masterpiece of the art made by Desiderius Helmschmid, one of the leading armourers of the 16th century. On exhibition through 23 May, 2010.

Nassau County Museum of Art Showcases the Romantic Fascination of the Sea Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:13 PM PST ROSLYN HARBOR.- Nassau County Museum of Art's (NCMA) newest exhibition portrays the magnetism we feel for bodies of water alongside the dangers, even the terror, that seas often present. This exhibition examines the romantic fascination artists have always had for expanses of water through American and European artists working in many styles from the mid-19th century to the present. Organized by Director Emerita Constance Schwartz, the exhibition opens on Saturday, June 5 and remains on view through Sunday, September 12. The Sea Around Us is sponsored by David Lerner Associates with additional sponsorship by Astoria Federal Savings.

Lawrence Schiller to Present "America in the Sixties & Marilyn Monroe" Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:12 PM PST NEW YORK, NY - Legendary photographer, journalist and film director Lawrence Schiller will bring the Harrowing Sixties back to life when he opens an historic exhibit of his photography at Pop International Galleries on May 15.  This is the first time the exhibit has been shown in the United States and will be open from May 15 through June. Images are available to collectors in limited editions, which have been reproduced as originally printed in color or silver gelatin and some select images in platinum.

Marc Chagall in Paris During the Early 20th Century at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:11 PM PST PHILADELPHIA, PA.- As a center of cosmopolitan culture and a symbol of modernity, Paris held a magnetic attraction for artists from Eastern Europe during the early decades of the 20th century. Most painters and sculptors settled around Montparnasse, which was sprinkled with cafes, and art galleries. It was here that Alexander Archipenko, Marc Chagall, Moïse Kisling, Jacques Lipchitz, Louis Marcoussis, Amedeo Modigliani, Chana Orloff, Jules Pascin, Margit Pogany, Chaim Soutine, and Ossip Zadkine established studios and discovered each other's work. This exhibition will include around 40 paintings and sculptures by these émigrés, whose work was both imbued with the spirit of modernism and informed by their own cultural heritage. The exhibition will focus in particular on the paintings Chagall made between 1910 and 1920, including Half Past Three (The Poet), of 1911, one of the treasures of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. "Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle", which highlights an exceptional strength of the museum's holdings of early modern art, is presented in conjunction with a new international arts festival in Philadelphia that is being organized by the city's Kimmel Center and will run from April 7 to May 1, 2011. "Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle represents the Museum's contribution to this festival and will focus on the powerful influence that Paris had on Chagall and his contemporaries," said Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and CEO of the Museum. The curator of the exhibition, Michael R. Taylor, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Museum, continued: "This exhibition provides a unique opportunity to reconsider the cross-fertilization of ideas that took place in the French capital during the 1910s and 1920s, which was one of the most experimental and creative periods in Western art." Shortly after arriving in Paris in 1911, Marc Chagall rapidly assimilated the pictorial language of the most avant-garde artistic styles of the day, especially Cubism, and married it with the artistic traditions of his native Russia. Chagall developed his own remarkably inventive visual language while living and working at La Ruche (the beehive), so named because of its distinctive cylindrical shape and honeycomb-like maze of artists' studios. Located on the southwestern fringe of Montparnasse, La Ruche was a three-story-high building with a staircase in the center and studios radiating out from its core. Founded by the French sculptor Alfred Boucher, who converted the original domed central building into a series of small, wedge-shaped studios with large windows that provided excellent lighting, La Ruche opened in 1902 and, since the rent was minimal and artists' models were supplied free of charge, it quickly became a thriving artists' community, with its own theater and exhibition schedule. "In La Ruche," Chagall later said, "you either came out dead or famous." By the time Chagall moved there, La Ruche already held a large population of Eastern European artists who had moved to Paris to discover firsthand the most recent trends in modern art. Liberated from the often strict and rigid academic training of their former homelands, they experienced the vibrant artistic interchanges that made Paris such an attractive place to live and work as well as unparalleled exhibition opportunities. Among the other artists to live in or frequent La Ruche in the 1910s were Archipenko, Kisling, Lipchitz, Soutine, and Zadkine, who will be represented in the exhibition by two monumental sculptures in cedar wood that have not been displayed at the Museum since 1963. These émigrés, many of whom were Jewish, were also attracted to the religious tolerance of the French capital, which provided a safe new working environment free from the pogroms and persecution that their families had endured for generations in their former homelands of Russia, Poland, and other Eastern European countries. The French artist Fernand Léger also worked at La Ruche during this time, as did the Italian painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani, whose libertine behavior made him one of the most colorful personalities of this bohemian enclave. While sculptors and painters like Archipenko, Lipchitz, Marcoussis, and Zadkine experimented with the interlocking planes and sharply angled forms of Cubism, other artists attempted to reconcile modern art's abstract geometries with the folk traditions of their native lands. Chagall's brightly colored, folkloric paintings often make reference to the customs and rituals of Jewish life in Vitebsk in his native Russia (now Belorussia), although his monumental 1911 painting Half-Past Three (The Poet), made shortly after his arrival in Paris from art school in Saint Petersburg, reveals—quite literally—the head-spinning impact of Cubism, which encouraged him to incorporate fragmented planes and diagonal shafts of color into his compositions. During his early years in Paris, Chagall studied at the Académie de la Palette with the French Cubist painter Jean Metzinger, whose brightly colored geometric compositions undoubtedly informed Half-Past Three (The Poet) as well as other works from this period. The exhibition will be largely drawn from the Museum's outstanding collection of modern painting and sculpture, but this will be supplemented with a handful of key loans from museums and private collections in the United States and Europe. These include one of Chagall's most famous works, the early masterpiece Paris Through the Window, of 1913, from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, which presents a kaleidoscopic impression of the city of Paris as seen from Chagall's studio window at La Ruche. The deployment of strong, non-naturalistic color in this painting reveals the influence of Chagall's friend Robert Delaunay, who developed a more colorful and poetic variant of Cubism known as Orphism. The motif of the Eiffel Tower, which dominates the background of Paris Through the Window, was also a central feature of Delaunay's work at this time, although the Janus-headed man and the sphinx-like cat in the foreground belong to Chagall's imagination alone and imbues the work with a dream-like otherworldliness. Another important loan to the exhibition is the 1915 painting The Poet Reclining from the Tate Modern in London, which belongs to the same series of euphoric poet paintings as Half-Past Three (The Poet), which Chagall made four years earlier. In his first years in Paris, the artist counted among his closest friends the poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars, both of whom wrote eloquently about his work, and these delightfully tumultuous paintings address the themes of poetic reverie, fantasy and inspiration that also characterized his own approach to art-making. Like many of the La Ruche artists, Chagall returned to his homeland following the outbreak of World War I, which would have a deep impact on his future work, as seen in Wounded Soldier, of 1914, and The Smolensk Newspaper of the same year. In this poignant painting, a young man reacts to the newspaper headline regarding the outbreak of the global conflict with a mixture of terror and disbelief, surely realizing that he would be called up for military duty in the Russian army, while the older bearded man pensively reflects on the wars he has seen during his long life. During the war years Chagall continued to paint scenes that are evocative of his childhood in Vitebsk, such as Purim, of 1916-18, which remains one of his best-known and most beloved paintings of Jewish village life before the Russian Revolution. In 1923 Chagall returned to Paris at the request of the French art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who commissioned the artist to create a 100-plate cycle illustrating La Fontaine's Fables, one of the most revered works of French literature. This project dominated his work from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s, as seen in The Watering Trough, of c.1925, where the bent-over female figure and smiling pig share the sense of otherworldly fantasy and charm that Chagall similarly expressed in the gouaches and prints that he made for the Fables project. The community of artists, writers, and musicians that sprang up in Montparnasse before World War I thrived for three decades, until the occupation of Paris by German troops on June 14, 1940. Like many Jewish artists, including Kisling and Lipchitz, Chagall spent World War II as a refugee in New York, having fled the catastrophe that now enveloped his beloved Paris.  Visit the website : http://www.philamuseum.org/

Tiffany Exhibition Coming to VMFA in May Opens at Musée du Luxembourg in Paris Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:10 PM PST PARIS.- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Director Alex Nyerges, in Paris today for a preview of one of the most significant exhibitions ever mounted of works by the master of American glass, Louis Comfort Tiffany, called the show "dazzling." The exhibition opens to the public at the Musée du Luxembourg Wednesday, Sept. 16, and continues through Jan. 10. It will then travel to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts for a showing from Feb. 11 to May 2, 2009. The American première of "Tiffany: Color and Light" will be at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond May 29. VMFA will be the only American museum to show the exhibition, which will continue in Richmond through August. 15th.

Walters Art Museum Receives Grant to Support Digitization of Manuscripts Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:09 PM PST BALTIMORE, MD.- The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has granted the Walters Art Museum $315,000 for a 2 1/2 year project to digitize, catalog and distribute 105 illuminated medieval manuscripts. Representing diverse Byzantine, Greek, Armenian, Ethiopian, Dutch, English and Central European cultures, this project, entitled "Parchment to Pixel: Creating a Digital Resource of Medieval Manuscripts", will allow for the digitization of approximately 38,000 pages of ancient text and 3,500 pages of illumination. Between 1895 and 1931, Walters collected around 730 codices. Today, the collection includes some 850 illuminated and illustrated manuscripts and 150 single leaves, ranging in date from the ninth to the 19th century and constituting one of the most significant collections of its kind in the country.

Aspects of Artistic Luxury Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:08 PM PST   CLEVELAND, OH.- The Cleveland Museum of Art presents the silver screen's interpretation of turn-of-the-century opulence, some of which is displayed in the museum's current exhibition Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique. The CMA's November film series features films that intersect with objects and the era of Artistic Luxury.

Orthodox Jewish Library Seized by Russia Has Jolted US Museums Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:07 PM PST NEW YORK, NY (AP).- A decades-long dispute between Russia and an Orthodox Jewish group over ownership of holy texts collected for centuries by influential rabbis and seized by the Soviet Union has jolted the U.S. art world, threatening an end to major cultural loans between the two countries. Russia has already frozen art loans to major American institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Houston Museum of Natural Science, fearing that its cultural property could be seized after the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Chabad-Lubavitch movement won a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in 2010 compelling the return of its texts.

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego exhibits 'Selections From the Collections' Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:06 PM PST SAN DIEGO, CA - The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego opened Weighing and Wanting: Selections from the Collection at MCASD's La Jolla location. The exhibition, curated by Dr. Hugh M. Davies, MCASD's David C. Copley Director, features approximately 130 works from the Museum's collection acquired during the past 25 years. Including works by John Baldessari, John Currin, Robert Irwin, William Kentridge, Nathan Mabry, Yoshitomo Nara, Eleanor Antin, Martin Puryear, Lorna Simpson, Bill Viola, and Lisa Yuskavage, among others, the exhibition showcases the variety and depth of the Museum's collection. The exhibition will be on view through January 4, 2009.

Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts displays American Impressionism: Paintings from the Phillips Collection Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:05 PM PST Montgomery, AL -  Since the late 19th century, Americans have always had a fascination with Impressionism, a French-born style of painting depicting landscapes and scenes of life using natural light and virtuoso brushwork. The Phillips Collection, America's first Museum of Modern Art, which began in the Washington, D.C. home of Ducan Phillips in 1921, helped raise awareness and appreciation for artists and their works with its broad representation of impressionist paintings, both French and American. Highlighting the "golden age" of American Impressionism, The Phillips Collection has organized its more than 50 American Impressionist paintings into a traveling exhibition for the first time in nearly 25 years. The exhibition, American Impressionism: Paintings from The Phillips Collection, opened in Washington, D.C. in 2007 and will be on display at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts July 4 through October 19, 2008. It will travel in 2008 and 2009 to museums in Memphis, Tennessee; Rochester, New York; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The exhibition and its excellent accompanying catalogue, American Impressionists: Painters of Light and the Modern Landscape, features paintings by such acclaimed American artists such as William Merritt Chase, William Glackens, Lilian Westcott Hale, Childe Hassam,Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast, Theodore Robinson, Helen M. Turner, John Henry Twachtman, and Julian Alden Weir, among others. Impressionism began as an art movement in the 1860s in Paris by a group of artists who included such household names as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Their work broke the rules of standard academic painting by using short, thick brushstrokes to capture the essential form of a subject as revealed by light, rather than its details. The Impressionists also took their work outdoors. Previously, still lifes, portraits, and, even landscapes, were painted indoors, and often adapted from earlier drawings and preliminary studies. Impressionists captured actual sunlight by painting en plein air, or outof-doors. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, American art patrons, many of whom had made fortunes from the war, traveled abroad and embraced European culture. To announce their wealth and sophistication, they built grand houses, showcasing imported paintings by old masters as well as contemporaries. In order to appeal to these prospective patrons, aspiring American artists studied in Europe, especially Paris, where Impressionism was quickly gaining notoriety. Soon after, American artists began developing a style of Impressionism that was similar to their French counterparts; however, rather than replicating the French style, their work developed into an American interpretation. They, too, painted en plein air, sought to convey sunlight, and often painted landscapes and scenes of leisure, but American Impressionists retained more structure and realism in their work, some even tapping into urban life and the cultural energy that was increasingly concentrated in Northern cities. With the start of WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII, Impressionism lost its cutting-edge as contemporary art became to be regarded as more in-touch with a chaotic world, and took precedence. In the 1950's, however, Impressionism experienced a resurgence that continues today. American Impressionism: Paintings from The Phillips Collection is organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. The exhibition and national tour are supported by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of the American Masterpieces Program. The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sunday Noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free and donations are welcome. For more information, call the MMFA at 334.240.4333 or visit the website at www.mmfa.org . The Museum opened in the Wynton M. Blount Cultural Park on September 18, 1988. Since that time, over one million visitors have enjoyed the wide range of exhibitions and programs offered throughout the year. An unusually successful partnership of public and private commitment to the arts in Montgomery, Alabama has assured the future of one of the South's premier cultural institutions.

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 18 Dec 2011 06:04 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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