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

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• La Cinémathèque française Displays Tim Burton's unique talents in a Major Retrospective
• The Emmanuel Fremin Gallery to Show Thomas Barbèy's Surreal Photographs
• The Armory Show Returns to New York City Piers 92 and 94
• The Art Museum of Southeast Texas Shows Artists Meredith Jack & Robert Pruitt
• David Lynch's solo exhibition in New York opens at Tilton Gallery
• The Frick Collection Shows Drawings Bequeathed by its Former Director
• "The Whimsical World of Pop Surrealism" hosted at the Art Gallery of Calgary
• The Calabi Gallery to feature "100 Years of Bay Area Art"
• The Lyman Allyn Art Museum shows "America @ Work: New Deal Murals"
• National Gallery Of Art exhibition Honors Chester Dale & His Major Gifts
• Krannert Art Museum’s 50th Anniversary Celebration Begins
• MOCA Receives Gift from Photographer Max Yavno's Estate
• Kemper Museum Acquires Two Magnolia Laurie Paintings from Causey Contemporary
• Martin-Gropius-Bau presents " From Spark to Pixel"
• Brussels Centre for Fine Arts Presents 'Views on Europe'
• Italy Lends the Getty Museum a Bounty of Berninis
• Russian Photographer Yevgeny Khaldei Retrospective at The Martin Gropius Bau
• Ink_d Gallery Presents New Works on Paper by Missum
• The Savannah College of Art and Design Re-Opens as a Major Teaching Museum
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

La Cinémathèque française Displays Tim Burton's unique talents in a Major Retrospective Posted: 06 Mar 2012 10:45 PM PST PARIS.- The Tim Burton event at La Cinémathèque française is not only a wonderful opportunity to see all of his films (including very limited-distribution short films) but also, thanks to the major exhibition designed by the New York MoMA in 2009 and shown here this spring, an opportunity to discover Burton's talents as a draftsman, painter, video director, photographer and inventor of colorful, amazing sculptures. Eccentricities and visual reveries The exhibition shows original works that are conscious mixtures of pop, Goth and surrealism – a creative hybridization claimed by the artist, who enjoys mixing and subverting genres. Some are from his youth and are pure visual reveries imagined for projects that remained in the planning stage: "I was making a drawing when all of a sudden, I said to myself: What difference does it make if I know how to draw or not? What's important is that I like it. From that moment on, I didn't worry about trying to reproduce a human body or whether people cared for my drawings or not." In contrast, others are recent working prototypes whose artistic value is nonetheless incontestable. Their spatial arrangement makes visitors feel as if they are entering the laboratory of this modern Dr. Frankenstein, the creator of a cosmogony where the macabre and the comic join together rather than in opposition. It is a place where the filmmaker's intimate work (sketchbooks, amateur films) is shown next to legendary cinema productions, such as Edward Scissorhands or Sleepy Hollow, whose hidden side is revealed here for the first time. Born in 1958, Tim Burton is one of those filmmakers who have always maintained a link to their childhood and who have known how to make this link the magic lever for creating a world with which the public immediately identifies. This eccentric cinematographic world subverts the principles of conceptual staging and heads in the direction of a work based on images, where emotion is the key factor. Burton says this himself when he talks about preparing his films, using a drawing rather than a storyboard (too arithmetic). "The more I make films, the less I use a storyboard. Now, I make little sketches." He believes in the spontaneous gesture, scribbled zealously on paper at the limits of the subconscious, and in making dissident films, without compromises, within an economic framework that is nonetheless the one of Hollywood blockbusters. Tim Burton is most certainly the last great Hollywood craftsman. It's not by accident that in 1994 he made a film on Ed Wood, the king of American low-budget movies, a sort of premonitory alter-ego. The two men share the fact that they have made freedom the cornerstone of their ethic. However, unlike Ed Wood, who was always broke, Burton represents the majestic and powerful side of the emancipated cinema that is fascinated by science fiction, melodrama and everything grotesque. In this biopic, Burton makes Ed Wood (interpreted by Johnny Depp, his alter-ego in eight feature films since 1990) a less desperate character than he actually was and, above all, a mirror of Burton's own personality, with a story that subtly draws out the bits and pieces of a profession of faith. Wood made Bride of the Monster in 1955. Burton would make Corpse Bride in 2005, going even further in the exploration of the Otherworld without second-degree kitsch. Burton has a sincere tenderness for freaks of all types and has addressed this subject since his childhood. As if to protect them, he wraps his "monsters" in a poetic scenario and a particularly sophisticated plastic approach that revives stop-motion, an old animation method that confers unequaled virtuosity and simplicity to his films. Movies as escape Burton is a filmmaker whose precocious love of films nourished the development of his own characters. The little extraterrestrials in Mars Attacks! (The exhibition shows the film's entire development, from the first drawings to the original mock-ups in resin that were made for filming) are not unrelated to Planet 9 (1959) by Ed Wood. Young Burton discovered this film when he lived in Burbank, a residential suburb of Los Angeles, bathed in sunlight and totally boring: "a world without a history, without culture, without passion." It is also the outpost of the Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. For Tim, movies were never very far away and were, from his childhood on, his main means of escape ("I've always loved monster films. They never scared me. They all had something I enjoyed tremendously.") With his overflowing imagination, this introverted adolescent succeeded in breaking free of the oppression he felt in this Puritanical environment by drawing and making short films that are shown here in exclusivity (Prehistoric Cavemen, Houdini, Tim's Dreams). In the most accessible types of spectacles, such as carnival attractions and ritual celebrations, Burton found the subjects that he explored in his first works. "For me, Halloween was always the most wonderful night of the year. There were no longer any rules to follow and I could be whatever I wanted." Although he was not a particularly good student, his talent brought him a number of prizes in municipal contests (in 1975, he created 1975 an anti-litter poster that is one of the exhibition gems). When he was eighteen, he entered the prestigious California Institute of the Arts, founded by Walt Disney to train his future artists. After two years at the Institute, Tim Burton presented his end-of-studies project in 1979, which earned him a place in the Disney Studios animation department. He stayed there for four years as an animator and artist designer on The Black Cauldron. Since his proposals were not used in the final version of this animated film, the future filmmaker concentrated his attention on more personal projects (Luau, a short film in the form of a hilarious Hawaiian parade) and met people who would accompany him throughout his career. "The artistic director Rick Heinrichs is so closely associated to my world that we make up a film couple comparable to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. He was able to materialize in 3D all the strange drawings I made." A certain number of Burton's characteristic stylistic traits emerged during this period, as well as his use of bodily transformations. With the help of two friends from the studio, Vincent and Frankenweenie (1982) were made, although the studio did not encourage their distribution because they were thought to be too morbid. Effectively enough, his preparatory drawings were made with a dark and melancholy line that conveys this feeling. Vincent Price, who was Burton's idol to such an extent that the artist made his portrait at the age of twenty (also shown in the exhibition), accepted to be the narrator of Vincent. Later, in 1990, Price would interpret the father-figure inventor of young Edward Scissorhands in two flash-back scenes (which was his farewell to the movies). The question of parent-child relationships is at the heart of Burton's kingdom. To film this youth that fascinates him, Burton chooses choreographies where both the grace and awkwardness of his characters is expressed. Thus, we see Kim (Winona Ryder) dancing in the snow, in symbiosis with the art of Edward, who carves ice sculptures (the teenager's sexual energy makes the camera turn in circles on its axis); Lydia (Winona Ryder once again), weaving as she levitates in a little plaid dress in Beetlejuice; a melodious whirlwind drawing Victor, the young virgin of Corpse Bride, away to a jam session at the moment he encounters the Corpse Bride in the after-life; and the colorful dance of the Oompa Loompas propelling poor Charlie's childhood (and the chocolate factory) toward the discovery of the real world. A question of filiation For Burton's adult heroes, the question of their filiation is nonetheless unresolved. It is at the heart of a knot of suffering, as materialized in the traumatic memories of Wonka, repudiated by his father (brilliant choice of Christopher Lee as the vampire-father), the Sweeney Todd barber's attachment, in spite of himself, to his daughter Johanna (driving even his bloody vengeance), or the tall tales of Ed Bloom in Big Fish, which were for years an obstacle to his son's love. These impossible or tortured relationships are shown in the mask motif that haunts a great many of Burton's drawings (his Clowns and Boys series in the nineties), as well as his two adaptations of Batman. The rigid, painted face, while hiding facial deformities, provokes dread because it disavows the passing of time. Batman is an orphan, who is driven to find his parents' assassin, just like his enemy, the Penguin, who was abandoned at birth. These two ageless beings without a genealogy engage in a battle refereed by Catwoman, sheathed in latex and the embodiment of absolute, feral and seductive femininity, like a Hitchcock heroine. In the film, Burton pays tribute to Hitchcock, his tutelary spirit, but in a more grotesque way (the shot where Batman almost falls into the void recalls the shot of James Stewart at the beginning of Vertigo). "I love these characters, their duels, the fact that they are haunted by darkness and a desire for light." Burton likes the intermediate zone. Twilight. Somewhere between the indie move and the blockbuster. The most European of American filmmakers? The exhibition provides an opportunity to see Burton's work from past to present and to reveal elements stemming from his latest films, Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie, which will be released this year. The latter film is a stop-motion remake that tells the same story as the 1982 version, although the action takes place in an imaginary European country named New Holland. Following Mars Attacks!, a science-fiction satire of an America that is ready to explode (populated by shady promoters, New Age adepts and fascist military men), and starting with Sleepy Holllow, which is set in a community of Dutch immigrants recently arrived in the New World, Burton refocused his work on a new geography. He decided to come closer physically and aesthetically to Europe. London very much in the time of Jack the Ripper provides the background for Sweeney Todd; there are English references to Roald Dahl (Charlie) and Lewis Carroll (Alice). What does this shift of a center of gravity mean? Burton's own identity has been subject to metamorphoses like those undergone by the characters of his Divine Comedy: the polymorphic heroes of Trick or Treat (1980), immortalized with colored pencils. Is Burton the most European of American filmmakers? Is he the most modern of a long line of illusionist directors who invented enchantment and fear along with cinematography? "Films knock at the door of our dreams and our subconscious. Although this reality varies depending on the generation, films have a therapeutic impact – just like fairy tales used to have."

The Emmanuel Fremin Gallery to Show Thomas Barbèy's Surreal Photographs Posted: 06 Mar 2012 09:56 PM PST New York City.- The Emmanuel Fremin Gallery is pleased to announce its second exhibition for renowned photographer Thomas Barbèy. "Dreams from the dark room" will be an exhibition of black and white photo compositions that give evidence to the artist's ability to capture the impossible and fantasied through the manual process of developing film negatives and the assemblage of various imagery. "Dreams from the dark room" will run from March 15th to April 21st, with an opening reception to be held on Thursday, March 15th from 6 to 8 PM. Thomas Barbèy was born in Greenwich, Connecticut and spent his childhood in Geneva, Switzerland. He began drawing seriously at an early age, using black "encre de Chine" and gouaches for color. Some early influences for his surrealistic images have been Philippe Druillet, Roger Dean, René Magritte, M.C. Escher and H.R. Giger. He has been interviewed and featured on the cover of "Inked" Magazine and featured in the New Britain Herald. Barbèy lives in Las Vegas, Nevada and travels 2-3 times for inspiration as he continues to capture new fantasies with his lens. Thomas exhibits in galleries throughout the world and is included in many private collections.

The Armory Show Returns to New York City Piers 92 and 94 Posted: 06 Mar 2012 09:28 PM PST New York City.- The Armory Show fourteenth edition will take place from Thursday, March 8th to Sunday, March 11th, on Piers 92 and 94 in central Manhattan. A leading international contemporary and modern art fair, The Armory Show is one of the most important annual art events in New York City. The Armory Show–Contemporary on Pier 94 will feature 120 leading international exhibitors, 19 invited exhibitors in Armory Focus: The Nordic Countries, 11 exhibitors in the inaugural edition of Solo Projects and 7 organizations participating in the Not-for-Profit Section. In total, 30 counties will be represented. The Armory Show–Modern, a section dedicated to international dealers specializing in historically significant Modern art, will present 71 exhibitors representing nine counties. For its fourteenth edition, The Armory Show will inaugurate three exciting programming initiatives. Armory Film, curated by the Moving Image Fair, will feature an international selection of contemporary video and experimental films; Solo Projects, a section dedicated to single artist presentations, will debut on Pier 94 featuring eleven leading young dealers from around the world; and the fair will launch its new Media Lounge where on-site programs including Armory Film, Open Forum, the lively talk series, and Armory Performance will take place. The Armory Show is also introducing a new private VIP hour, offering VIP ticket holders the opportunity to view works, speak to dealers, and walk the floor for one hour daily before the fair opens to the general public. The Armory Show-Contemporary features a global roster of elite galleries. Long-time exhibitors include Lisson Gallery (London), Sean Kelly (New York), Victoria Miro (London), Galerie EIGEN + ART (Berlin), Marianne Boeksy (New York), Peter Blum (New York), Andrew Kreps Gallery (New York), Galleria Continua (San Gimignano, Beijing, Le Moulin), Mai 36 Galerie (Zurich), Sies + Höke (Düsseldorf), Nathalie Obadia (Paris), Massimo de Carlo (Milan), Galerie Krinzinger (Vienna), Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects (Culver City) and Kukje Gallery/Tina Kim Gallery (Seoul, New York). The Armory Show also welcomes a selection of important new international dealers to the 2012 fair, including David Zwirner (New York), Sprüth Magers (Berlin), Gallery Hyundai (Seoul), Greene Naftali (New York), Galerie Guido W. Baudach (Berlin), Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont (Paris), Klosterfelde (Berlin), Poligrafa (Barcelona), RAMPA (Istanbul), and On Stellar Rays (New York). Solo presentations, curated exhibitions and groundbreaking new work will dominate the fair floor. On Pier 94, highlights include a new, site-specific installation, made especially for The Armory Show by Michael Riedel at David Zwirner (New York); a collaboration between Greene Naftali (New York), Galerie Krinzinger (Vienna) and Galerie Guido W. Baudach (Berlin) to present Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard; a three-man exhibition of Olafur Eliasson, Ragnar Kjartansson and Birgir Andresson by i8 (Reykjavík); the work of heralded American sculptor Alice Aycock presented by Galerie Thomas Schulte (Berlin); a curated booth at Sean Kelly (New York) highlighting the gallery's younger artists including Alec Soth, Peter Liversidge and Kehinde Wiley; a two-person installation from Gallery Hyundai (Seoul) featuring works by the internationally renowned artists Ai Weiwei and Lee Ufan; Philippe Parreno, Tala Madani and Leigh Ledare at Pilar Corrias (London); Bob van Orsouw Gallery (Zurich) will feature works by Ernesto Neto, Hannah Greely and Julian Opie; a solo presentation of renowned artist Leon Golub at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts (New York); a Wang Du installation at Galerie Laurent Godin (Paris); a new series by Andres Serrano, Anarchy, will debut at Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art (New York); a solo booth at Whitney Biennial artist Kate Levant at Zach Feuer Gallery (New York); and a solo presentation of new paintings, videos and wall drawings by Fabrice Hyber at Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont (Paris) in advance of the artist's exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, in the fall. The Armory Show–Modern, a section dedicated to international dealers specializing in historically significant Modern art, will include blue-chip work from leading fine art dealers including Galerie Thomas (Munich), James Goodman Gallery (New York), Simon Capstick-Dale Fine Art (New York), Marlborough Gallery (New York), Galerie Ludorff (Düsseldorf), Oriol Galeria d'Art (Barcelona), Wetterling Gallery (Stockholm) G.A.M. Galleria d'Arte Maggiore (Bologna), Hollis Taggart Galleries (New York) and Michael Rosenfeld Gallery (New York). Deborah Harris, Managing Director of The Armory Show-Modern notes that "Armory Modern is in top form this year. Our exhibitor list is more refined and we have greatly expanded our international scope. We are honored to welcome the leading, international modern dealers to Pier 92 in March." Solo Projects is a new addition to this year's fair featuring dedicated single artist presentations with Dario Escobar at Josée Bienvenu Gallery (New York); Galeria Lucia de la Puente (Lima) presenting work by Billy Hare; Francois Ghebaly Gallery (Los Angeles) and Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery (New York) showing Patrick Jackson; Wallace Whitney at Horton Gallery (New York); Tom Fairs at KS Art (New York); Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects (Toronto) showcasing Mike Bayne; Clifford Owens on view at On Stellar Rays (New York); SEVENTEEN (London) displaying Kate Owens; TEAPOT (Cologne) showing Christian Eisenberger; and Jennifer Dalton at Winkleman Gallery (New York). Additional features of The Armory Show include the work of commissioned artist Theaster Gates who will be featured at Kavi Gupta (Chicago); the eclectic and engaging Open Forum talk series curated by Amanda Parmer of the Whitney Independent Studies Program; the inaugural edition of Armory Film; an acclaimed VIP program and a lively opening night party benefiting The Museum of Modern Art. Visit the fair's website at ... http://www.thearmoryshow.com

The Art Museum of Southeast Texas Shows Artists Meredith Jack & Robert Pruitt Posted: 06 Mar 2012 09:11 PM PST Beaumont, Texas.- The Art Museum of Southeast Texas (AMSET) is proud to present its winter exhibitions showcasing artwork by two prominent Texas artists. "Meredith Jack: Back in Black" and "This Rejection of the Conqueror: Works by Robert Pruitt" will both be on view at the museum through April 8th 2012. An opening reception for both exhibitions will be held from 6-8 p.m. on Friday, January both Meredith Jack and Robert Pruitt will be present to conduct discussions about their work. For the better part of the last two decades, AMSET director, curators and the Acquisitions Committee, an ongoing assembly made up of AMSET board members and other community members, have continuously worked to assemble a cohesive but integrated body of artwork. The areas of concentration have evolved to include modern and contemporary American art with a focus on the Texas region, including painting, prints, photography, sculpture, as well as contemporary folk art and a core collection of earlier 19th and 20th century works that can provide context in which to view later work.

David Lynch's solo exhibition in New York opens at Tilton Gallery Posted: 06 Mar 2012 08:56 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- Jack Tilton Gallery presents David Lynch's first solo exhibition in New York since 1989. The show will run March 6th – April 14th, and the reception with artist in attendance will take place Friday, March 16th, 6 – 8 pm. An icon among American filmmakers, David Lynch is equally committed as a visual artist. He began his career as a painter and started making short films while a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia to find a way to make his paintings move. Lynch works across many different media to create paintings, sculpture, works on paper and photographs. Recent paintings combine primitively drawn figures and text with thick textured areas of paint and, often, inserted lit colored light bulbs. Framed in thick gold frames under glass (inspired by Francis Bacon's frames), they become box-like, objects in their own right. Narrative subjects exhibit Lynch's trademark whimsy, wit and humor along with his recognizable penchant for the ambiguous, yet precisely depicted, frozen moment that unveils an instinctual, often violent or tragic human emotion, almost verging on the absurd.

The Frick Collection Shows Drawings Bequeathed by its Former Director Posted: 06 Mar 2012 08:00 PM PST New York City.- The Frick Collection is pleased to present "A Passion for Drawings: Charles Ryskamp's Bequest to the Frick Collection", on view at the museum through April 8th. Over the course of fifty years, from the 1950s until his death in 2010 at the age of eighty-one, former Frick Collection Director Charles A. Ryskamp (1928–2010) assembled an extraordinary personal trove of European drawings. Reflecting on his pursuits in 2009, Dr. Ryskamp remarked, "I have always believed that giving, as much as acquiring, is the principle of my collecting."  This spirit of sharing is embodied in a group of ten superb drawings that he bequeathed to the Frick, selected from among his large and varied collection by Anne L. Poulet, Director Emerita, and curators Colin B. Bailey and Susan Grace Galassi. Other sheets were donated to the Morgan Library & Museum, where Dr. Ryskamp served as Director from 1969 to 1987, or auctioned at Sotheby's for the benefit of Princeton University, where he began his career as a professor of literature. The works bequeathed to the Frick transform the museum's holdings in drawings, enlarging them by nearly a third, while complementing the permanent collection's focus on landscape and figural subjects. This winter and spring the Frick celebrates Charles Ryskamp's generosity (and discerning taste) with an exhibition of the works from his bequest.  The drawings, which have never before been shown at the Frick, will be presented in the Cabinet, a space created by Dr. Ryskamp during his tenure as Director from 1987 to 1997 and intended especially for the display of works on paper.  The installation is accompanied by two oil-on-paper studies of clouds by John Constable, which Dr. Ryskamp was instrumental in bringing to the Collection. A precocious collector of books and prints in his youth, Charles Ryskamp turned his attention to drawings in the mid-1950s.  His tastes tended toward eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British works, in keeping with his academic pursuits in the fields of late neoclassical and Romantic English literature. A drawing from the bequest by William Blake, for example, embodies the unorthodox approach to subject and technique that often characterized the Romantic tradition in Britain. With cascading streams of graphite lines, Blake portrays the wavy hair, furrowed brow, and stern gaze of Owen Glendower, a Welsh prince who led uprisings against the English crown in the early fifteenth century. The exhibition also features a double-sided sheet by the draftsman Henry Fuseli, on which a biblical scene of Satan and Job opposes a view of the Germanic hero Siegfried grappling with a monstrous serpent. Fuseli's use of twisted forms, energetic pen lines, and dramatic washes typifies his inventive approach to traditional themes. Drawings concerned with the natural, observable world — central to artistic practices in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — held great appeal for Dr. Ryskamp. In the exhibition, Edwin Henry Landseer's drawing of otterhounds pursuing their quarry along a riverbank demonstrates the artist's acute facility with light, as he conveys the transitions from bright sun to shadow with strokes of watercolor and gouache. David Wilkie handles atmospheric effects with similar dexterity in his study of two figures safeguarding Scottish royal treasure, using chalk and gouache to suggest the glow of the regalia in a gloomy castle interior. Joining these works is a small but arresting watercolor portrait by George Stubbs of Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India. The artist records the sitter's features and stoic expression, as well as the textures of fabric, hair, and skin, with the same careful precision that marks his renowned animal paintings and anatomical studies. This important sheet is one of the few works on paper by Stubbs in the United States outside of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. Charles Ryskamp's interests as a collector gradually extended beyond Britain to the Continent. Among the four French works bequeathed to the Frick is a luminous botanical study by Pierre-Joseph Redouté of two different varieties of plums. Redouté's highly finished watercolor may have been preparatory for an illustrated volume of the Empress Josephine's gardens at Malmaison, although the present composition was never engraved. The artfulness with which Redouté composes the specimens is matched by his scientific precision in documenting their features. Using delicate washes of blue, green, and gold, the artist depicts the fruits' subtle gradation of tones and conjures the powdery "bloom" coating their skin. Redouté's lyrical response to the natural world is echoed in the exhibition, albeit in a different key, by Pierre-Étienne-Théodore Rousseau's plein air sketch of a pond at the edge of a wood, which captures the sunny Barbizon countryside through swift, energetic pencil strokes. A sketchbook sheet by Rousseau's contemporary Eugène Delacroix offers a similarly spontaneous view of a scene he encountered during a trip to North Africa in 1832. In his drawing of a domestic interior, the artist delights in the bold color combinations and novel shapes of Moroccan architecture, which would later inform his Orientalist paintings. An early work by Edgar Degas in the exhibition shows the artist applying his keen skills of observation to the figure. Using a hard graphic line — influenced by Ingres, whom he much admired — Degas expertly renders the anatomy of a classical sculpture (perhaps one of the famous horse tamers in the Piazza del Quirinale) that he observed as a young artist in Rome.  This carefully studied work finds a foil in the sole Italian drawing in the bequest, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's Young Man Holding a Book (c.1758), which was dashed off in a few calligraphic strokes of brown ink and wash. The varied subjects and styles of the works in the exhibition speak to Dr. Ryskamp's vibrant intellect. A scholar and a museum director, he equated the collecting of art with the acquisition of knowledge. Through his generous gift to the Frick, his remarkable drawings will continue to delight, inspire, and stimulate the curiosity of all. The Frick Collection is a not-for-profit educational institution originally founded by Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), the Pittsburgh coke and steel industrialist. In 1913, construction began on Henry Frick's New York mansion at Seventieth Street and Fifth Avenue, designed by Carrère and Hastings to accommodate Mr. Frick's paintings and other art objects. The house cost $5,000,000, but from its inception, took into account Mr. Frick's intention to leave his house and his art collection to the public. Mr. Frick died in 1919 and in his will, left the house and all of the works of art in it together with the furnishings ("subject to occupancy by Mrs. Frick during her lifetime") to become a gallery called The Frick Collection. He provided an endowment of $15,000,000 to be used for the maintenance of the Collection and for improvements and additions. After Mrs. Frick's death in 1931, family and trustees of The Frick Collection began the transformation of the Fifth Avenue residence into a museum and commissioned John Russell Pope to make additions to the original house, including two galleries (the Oval Room and East Gallery), a combination lecture hall and music room, and the enclosed courtyard. In December 1935 The Frick Collection opened to the public. In 1977, a garden on Seventieth Street to the east of the Collection was designed by Russell Page, to be seen from the street and from the pavilion added at the same time to accommodate increasing attendance at the museum. This new Reception Hall was designed by Harry van Dyke, John Barrington Bayley, and G. Frederick Poehler. Two additional galleries were opened on the lower level of the pavilion to house temporary exhibitions. The nearby Frick Art Reference Library was founded in 1920 to serve "adults with a serious interest in art," among them scholars, art professionals, collectors, and students.The paintings in the Frick Collection include works by Hans Holbein, Rembrandt van Rijn, Giovanni Bellini, El Greco, Titian, Diego Velazquez, Frans Hals, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Johannes Vermeer, Francois Boucher, Thomas Gainsborough, Anthony van Dyck, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Claude Lorrain, Francisco Goya, Joseph Mallord William Turner, James McNeill Whistler, Francesco Laurana, Jean-Antoine Houdon, John Constable, Edgar Degas, and Severo Calzetta da Ravenna. Vermeer's "Mistress and Maid", the last painting Mr. Frick bought, is one of three pictures by that artist in the Collection, while Piero della Francesca's image of St. John the Evangelist, dominating the Enamel Room, is the only large painting by Piero in the United States. Most of the sculpture purchased by Mr. Frick for the Collection was from the Italian Renaissance. Notable in the Collection are works by Vecchietta, Laurana, Francesco da Sangallo, Antonio Pollaiuolo, Riccio, and Severo da Ravenna. French sculpture includes the Lemoyne Garden Vase for the interior courtyard and remarkable works by Coysevox, Houdon, and Clodion. A number of splendid early North European sculptures are also in the Collection, above all the bust of the Duke of Alba by Jonghelinck, the Multscher reliquary bust, and bronzes traditionally ascribed to Adriaen de Vries and Hubert Gerhard. Visit the museum's website at … www.frick.org

"The Whimsical World of Pop Surrealism" hosted at the Art Gallery of Calgary Posted: 06 Mar 2012 07:31 PM PST Calgary, Alberta.- The Art Gallery of Calgary is porud to present "Down the Rabbit Hole: The Whimsical World of Pop Surrealism", on view through April 7th. This contemporary group showing featuring artists Landon-Jon Ference, Eric Louie, Pilar Mehlis and Heather Watts. This exhibition explores a wide array of themes including: fairytales, fantacy and urban mythology, and is sure to spark curiosity and inspire a sense of wonder in audiences of all ages. At the artist talk and sneak preview on February 9 from 7 to 9pm the artists: Landon-Jon Ference, Eric Louie, Pilar Mehlis and Heather Watts will share their insights into fairytales, fantasy, dreams and biomorphism among the other otherworldly themes of Pop Surrealist Art. The exhibition features fanciful and bizarre images brimming with convoluted dreamlike qualities. Enmeshed somewhere between sleep and awake, the vague and indescribable scenes depicted in these artworks involuntarily blend to stimulate sensations of joy, amusement, fear, bewilderment, enchantment, sadness and excitement.

The Calabi Gallery to feature "100 Years of Bay Area Art" Posted: 06 Mar 2012 07:09 PM PST Petaluma, California.- The Calabi Gallery is pleased to present "100 Years of Bay Area Art", on view at the gallery from March 11th through May 13th. The San Francisco Bay Area has produced a rich and varied art legacy. Its natural beauty and reputation as a progressive oasis on the western frontier have always been magnetic to artists. An opening reception will be held on Sunday, March 11th, from 1 to 4pm. Unfortunately, the gallery representation and promotion necessary to drive patronage have historically failed to keep pace with artistic production. This imbalance may have actually enhanced creativity, since pandering to a commercial market which doesn't exist would be pointless.In any case, much Bay Area art of the last 100 years has a flavor unique to the region.

The Lyman Allyn Art Museum shows "America @ Work: New Deal Murals" Posted: 06 Mar 2012 07:00 PM PST New London, Connecticut.- The Lyman Allyn Art Museum is proud to present "America @ Work: New Deal Murals in New London and Beyond", on view from March 8th through June 9th. The exhibition has been organized by Guest Curator Barbara Zabel, Professor Emeritus of Art History at Connecticut College. The lobby of the New London Post Office on Masonic Street boasts remarkable murals painted in the 1930s. Hailed by Philip Eliasoph as "the Sistine Chapel of Connecticut," these murals by New England artist Thomas LaFarge (1904-1942) feature scenes of a crew at work on a whaling ship. La Farge's murals were created under the auspices of the art projects of the New Deal, President Roosevelt's comprehensive relief program designed to put Americans back to work during the Great Depression.

National Gallery Of Art exhibition Honors Chester Dale & His Major Gifts Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:39 PM PST WASHINGTON, DC.- New York investment broker Chester Dale's 1962 bequest made the National Gallery of Art one of the leading repositories in North America of French art of the late-19th and early 20th centuries. From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection, on view in the Gallery's West Building from January 31, 2010 through July 31, 2011, will bring together 81 of the finest French and American paintings that Dale and his wife Maud, an artist and critic, assembled from the 1920s through the 1950s. The exhibition and its accompanying book will explore the Dales' passion and talent for acquiring great art. Many of the works in the show are among the most renowned masterpieces in the history of art, but due to a stipulation in the bequest, may only be seen at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. "It is impossible to overestimate the transformative impact of the collection of Chester Dale and his wife Maud on the National Gallery of Art," said Earl A. Powell III, director. "Their legacy has not only enriched the Gallery but the nation as well, by sharing these extraordinary works of French and American art with the American public and the world."Exhibition Organization and Highlights From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection coincides with the Gallery's renovation of the northeast Main Floor galleries, where many of the Dale works are usually displayed chronologically and by artist. The exhibition in the Ground Floor central galleries, however, will be organized thematically for the first time—a nod to the exhibitions dedicated to still lifes, portraiture, and other subjects that Maud Dale arranged in New York City during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Viewing the works through the lens of these themes provides a fresh look at the scope of the Dales' collection. The first gallery showcases key works by some of the Dales' favorite artists: Henri Matisse's The Plumed Hat (1919)—his first major purchase of French modern art—Auguste Renoir's A Girl with a Watering Can (1876), Vincent van Gogh's Girl in White (1890), and Amedeo Modigliani's Gypsy Woman with Baby (1919). A section displaying paintings of women includes portraits by Renoir, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, and Pablo Picasso, as well as nudes and studies of the female form by Renoir, Cassatt, Matisse, and Gustave Courbet. Portraits of men are also featured, with works by Degas, Picasso, Paul Cézanne, and Edouard Vuillard. A room devoted to landscapes and cityscapes includes two of Claude Monet's celebrated views of Rouen Cathedral (1894), George Bellows' Blue Morning (1909), Eugène Boudin's The Beach at Villerville (1864), and Robert Henri's Snow in New York (1902). Another room is dedicated to the genre of still lifes, with examples by Cézanne, Matisse, Georges Braque, and Henri Fantin-Latour. The centerpiece of a gallery devoted to the idea of "monumental modernity" is the rich pairing of two large-scale works by two of the art world's major figures: Edouard Manet's The Old Musician (1862) is hung opposite Picasso's Family of Saltimbanques (1905). The synergy in subject and composition between these two masterworks creates a dramatic pairing. The room also features Paul Gauguin's Self-Portrait (1889), Van Gogh's La Mousmé (1888), and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's A Corner of the Moulin de la Galette (1892). Rounding out the exhibition are portraits of the collectors themselves, by four of the key artists whose work they championed. Chester Dale is painted by Salvador Dalí and Diego Rivera; while Maud is depicted by George Bellows and Fernand Léger. A new 15-minute documentary film profiling Chester and Maud, produced by the National Gallery of Art on the occasion of this exhibition, will be shown continually in the galleries, along with informational text about the Dales and a chronology of their collection. A selection of books from the Chester Dale Collection and related documentary material from the Gallery Archives will be installed in Gallery G-21 of the West Building. Additional works of art from the Chester Dale collection on display throughout the East and West Building galleries will be identified by a special icon for visitors who wish to explore this collection further. Chester Dale and the National Gallery of Art An astute businessman who made his fortune on Wall Street in the bond market, Dale thrived on forging deals and translated much of this energy and talent into building his art collection. His purchases were guided by his personal tastes as well as by his wife Maud. Initially the couple began collecting American paintings; among their favorite artists was their neighbor, George Bellows, who painted portraits of both of them. By 1925, Maud had begun to steer Dale towards French art, and it was at her urging that he concentrated his collecting in the area of French art from the time of the Revolution to the present, together with earlier artists whom she called "ancestors." They purchased many works on regular trips to Europe after World War I. Dale often commented that he had the inquisitiveness and Maud had the knowledge. Even after Chester Dale became a partner in the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in the late 1920s, Maud continued to advise and direct their acquisitions. Dale continued to make remarkable purchases in the early years of the Great Depression. Although he curtailed his activity by the mid-1930s, Dale added outstanding examples of both French and American art to his already spectacular collection in the years that followed. Maud Dale died in 1953. On May 27 of the following year, the 71-year-old Dale married his late wife's longtime secretary, Mary Towar Bullard. Dale served on several museums' boards of trustees during his lifetime, starting with The Museum of Modern Art in 1929, the year it opened, and remaining in the post until 1931. In 1943 he became a trustee for three other museums: the Art Institute of Chicago (until 1952), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (until 1956), and the National Gallery of Art. For Dale, the nascent National Gallery of Art offered the rare opportunity to put his mark on a major international institution, becoming a founding benefactor rather than one of many donors competing for wall space. In 1941 Chester Dale loaned seven American paintings for the dedication of the National Gallery of Art and later in the year added 25 of his most important French paintings selected to illustrate the development of French art. Further loans would follow. Dale made his first gift to the National Gallery in 1942, donating three old master paintings. This was followed by two substantial gifts in 1943: one comprising eight American canvases; the other, 11 of his greatest old master works, including paintings by El Greco and François Boucher. Dale would donate an additional 14 works to the Gallery during his lifetime, including three paintings by Bellows and the first work by Monet to enter the museum's collection. These gifts, combined with loans already in place, seemed to make the National Gallery of Art the obvious candidate to receive Dale's collection; but he continued to make substantial loans to other museums, with large segments of his collection lent to both Chicago and Philadelphia in the 1940s. Nonetheless, in 1951 and 1952, Dale recalled these works, lending them instead to the National Gallery. At his death in 1962 he bequeathed to the Gallery the core of his still-substantial collection of modern art, comprising 223 paintings, seven sculptures, and 23 works on paper—among the single most valuable gifts ever given to the National Gallery. Subsequently, 17 works were donated by Dale's estate, bringing the total number of works in the Chester Dale Collection to 306. As a result of Dale's generosity, the Gallery's permanent holdings of 19th-century French paintings nearly tripled in size. "It's not just the backbone," the former Gallery director John Walker is reputed to have said, but "the whole rib structure of the modern French school here." In addition to shaping the Gallery through the donation of his collection, Dale also served as president of the National Gallery from 1955 until his death. Visit : http://www.nga.gov/

Krannert Art Museum’s 50th Anniversary Celebration Begins Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:38 PM PST CHAMPAIGN, IL.- New exhibitions kick off Krannert Art Museum's 50th Anniversary celebration, two of which highlight the breadth of KAM's permanent collection. At Fifty: Krannert Art Museum, 1961–2011 (August 26 through October 23, 2011) celebrates the extraordinary range of KAM's collection. In a unique, interactive architectural space, sculpture, painting, video, photography, decorative objects, and drawings co-mingle. Objects from ancient Greece and Latin America are featured in dialogue with nineteenth century European paintings and twentieth century video; realism sits astride abstraction; photography and drawings illustrate how artists have represented humanity for more than a century. Traditional hierarchies are removed, allowing the works to speak to each other and to viewers across time. A selection of artists includes: John Singleton Copley, Gustave Courbet, Walker Evans, Hans Hofmann, Jasper Johns, Isoda Koryūsai, Barbara Kruger, Edouard Manet, Mark Rothko, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, Carrie Mae Weems, Edward Weston, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

MOCA Receives Gift from Photographer Max Yavno's Estate Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:37 PM PST LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), announced a generous gift of $435,000 from the estate of renowned Los Angeles photographer Max Yavno, nearly 25 years after his death. Yavno, who died in 1985, was an accomplished fine art and commercial photographer known for his social documentation and sensitive depiction of urban realism. Said Stephen McAvoy, successor executor of the estate of Max Yavno and retired controller of City National Bank, "I am amazed and pleased that 25 years after Max's death, these funds are still able to benefit the museum, and are eligible to be matched by the generous grant given to the museum by The Broad Foundation."

Kemper Museum Acquires Two Magnolia Laurie Paintings from Causey Contemporary Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:36 PM PST BROOKLYN, NY.- Causey Contemporary announced that two paintings by Magnolia Laurie are being acquired by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, MO for their permanent collection. Paintings, "November Charlie" (I am in distress and require immediate assistance) and "To Abandon My Vessel" (Alfa Bravo) were selected for the museum by curator Barbara O'Brien after visiting Magnolia solo exhibition at Causey Contemporary. The exhibition entitled "All After: All Before" opened on February 12, 2010 and runs through March 13, 2010 at the gallery's 293 Grand St. Location in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. This acquisition will mark the first by a museum of Magnolia's work. The two paintings headed for the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art each feature the color coded signal flags that ships use to relay messages to one another often when in distress. Thus suggesting that the structures depicted are attempting to communicate the need for assistance in the face of whatever adversity they are positioned within. Magnolia's exhibition title , All After All Before is in fact taken from AA...AB, the Morse code for repeating a message. Often used to highlight or draw attention to a part of the message, it is a signal to request communication from whoever can receive it. Additionally, Magnolia Laurie's paintings represent delicate and makeshift illogical structures and systems that may not endure their own weight, let alone the impending disruptions. They reference the sustained need to try, to build, to create, even in the face of complete futility. Magnolia Laurie received her BA in Critical Social Thought from Mount Holyoke College, a Post Baccalaureate Degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She was awarded a MICA Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center in 2007 and is currently an Artist Fellow for the Hamiltonian Gallery in DC. Magnolia Laurie lives is Baltimore, MD, as an artist in residence at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson. Causey Contemporary represents exquisite technically and conceptually challenging art.  The gallery exhibits the work of its core group of 13 artists in 11 shows annually, in addition to hosting special exhibitions by other critically recognized artists.  Causey Contemporary participates in two or more international art fairs annually and also organizes international touring exhibitions. Causey Contemporary and its artists have been covered in Artnews, Artforum, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and multiple other art and culture publications.  Gallery artists are included in the collections of MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and other institutions throughout the world. Causey Contemporary was established in 1999 as Ch'i Contemporary Fine Art.  Founder and Director Tracy Causey-Jeffery changed the name in September 2009 to commemorate the gallery's expansion and its tenth anniversary. Visit : http://www.causeycontemporary.com/

Martin-Gropius-Bau presents " From Spark to Pixel" Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:35 PM PST   Berlin, Germany - In an international overview, the 'From Spark to Pixel. Art + new media' exhibition in the atrium and on the first floor of the Martin-Gropius-Bau presents 24 installations by artists from 12 countries involving the use of digital and interactive electronic media in a large-scale context. In all, 20 of the 24 installations will be on show for the first time in Germany. Some installations will be shown as world premieres: FLOW BERLIN 2007 by Erwin Redl, Time May Change Me, I Can´t Change Time by Brad Hwang and CaMg(CO3)2 by Jean Michel Bruyère, as well as the newly developed part of Joachim Sauters / Dirk Lüsebrink's: The Invisible Shapes of Things Past.

Brussels Centre for Fine Arts Presents 'Views on Europe' Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:34 PM PST Brussels, Belgium - For the first time, Views on Europe presents the whole spectrum of 19th-century German painting.  At its core is the way German artists saw other European countries.  Via some 150 masterpieces from the state museums of Berlin, Dresden, and Munich and from other major German collections this exhibition explores the roots of European culture.  In an unprecedented cooperative undertaking by the three greatest state collections of 19th-century painting (the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen), supplemented by important loans from other German museums and galleries, the exhibition looks at German art of the 19th century from a variety of perspectives.  In doing so, it pays particular attention to its many international connections.  Major European countries and regions are linked with particular themes.  Countless stimuli from 19th-century Europe's art, its past, and its present were reflected in German art.  These interactions can be clearly seen in the exhibition. How did the Germans of the 19th century – in the period stretching from Goethe to Rilke - see Europe?  What did they see, what did they fail to notice?  The aim of this exhibition is not to present German history, with its wars, potentates, and revolutions.  Rather, it demonstrates the varied content and artistic mastery of German painting in the 19th century.  The history of Germany includes the history of its neighbors and of exchanges with them.  Naturally, this involved political, intellectual, and artistic interchanges of varying intensity and quality.  It is clear that looking to the South – towards Greece and Italy as the roots of the entire culture of Europe – as well as looking to Germany's French, Belgian, Dutch, and Austrian neighbors – was particularly productive.  But there were, starting in the late 18th century, many and varied cultural links with other countries too.  In this exhibition – very much in the spirit of the European Union itself – lines of communication are set out between nations, countries, and regions.  Its presentation also reflects the history of Germany as a history of small states, which in combination form a cultural unity and diversity.  "This exhibition is about interaction", explains its curator, Bernhard Maaz.  "German history is the history of its neighbors and of exchanges with them."  The journey begins in Greece, the cradle of European culture.  Artists such as Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Anselm Feuerbach idealized the places and myths of Antiquity.  Italy was the preferred destination of masters such as Joseph Anton Koch, Friedrich Overbeck, and Carl Blechen; Philipp Otto Runge, Johan Christian Dahl, and Caspar David Friedrich drew inspiration from the Copenhagen Academy.  Another powerful pole of attraction was formed by the Austrian and Swiss Alps, immortalized in breathtaking panoramas by Friedrich and Ludwig Richter.  From Bohemia and Spain we make a detour via English portraiture.  Belgium, too, left its traces, with its historical painting.  Max Liebermann stylized Dutch genre painting to depict a social Utopia; Carl Spitzweg and Wilhelm Leibl turned enthusiastically to French-style plein-air painting.  Our journey ends in Berlin, with an exceptionally perceptive observer: Adolph Menzel, a star in the European firmament. Exhibition organized by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Munich in collaboration with BOZAR EXPO, Brussels.  Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.  On the occasion of the German Presidency of the Council of the European Union under the patronage of Dr. Angela Merkel, Chancelor of the Federal Republic of Germany.  On exhibition until 20 May, 2007. Visit Centre for Fine Arts - 23 Rue Ravensteinstraat - 1000 Brussels - Website : www.bozar.be

Italy Lends the Getty Museum a Bounty of Berninis Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:33 PM PST ROME, ITALY -  A major loan exhibition of Bernini's sculptures, paintings and drawings that is also described as the first full viewing of this artist's portrait busts is headed for the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles this summer. Including major loans from Italian museums, the exhibition underlines the benefits gained by the Getty from its recent handover of several dozen Greek antiquities that Italy asserted had been looted from its ancient archaeological sites.

Russian Photographer Yevgeny Khaldei Retrospective at The Martin Gropius Bau Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:32 PM PST BERLIN - The first major retrospective devoted to the Russian photographer, Yevgeny Khaldei, opens in the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin on 9 May 2008. Khaldei, the Russian Robert Capa, provided extensive photographic coverage of the Second World War, the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. Some of his images are world-famous and have become icons in the history of photography. Khaldei is known primarily for his spectacular documentary photos of the Second World War and the staged hoisting of the red flag of the Soviet Union on the top of the Reichstag building in Berlin in 1945, but also for the photos he took at the Potsdam Conference and during the Nuremberg Trials. In addition to these historic images the retrospective shows hitherto unpublished pictures taken by Khaldei as well as photos dating from the 1930s up to the end of his career in the 1980s. Born in the Donetsk area of the Ukraine in 1917, Khaldei was given his first camera at the age of 13. In 1936 he became a press photographer with the Soviet news agency TASS. He was in action with his camera during the Second World War from 22 June 1941, the day the German armed forces invaded the Soviet Union.  Khaldei witnessed many battles, from Murmansk in the north down to the Black Sea in the south. As a soldier and photographer he witnessed the retreat of the German troops and documented the advances made by the Red Army on the road to Belgrade, Budapest, Vienna and, finally, Berlin. He worked, with interruptions, for TASS and Pravda up to the 1970s. He died on 6 October 1997. The retrospective, comprising over 200 original photos, provides the first-ever representative selection of Khaldei's complete works. Khaldei travelled throughout the Soviet Union as a TASS press photographer, taking pictures of dams under construction in Sibiria, the oilfields of Baku and the grain harvest in the Ukraine as well as photos of the political rulers of the time. The exhibition illustrates the the tension in Khaldei's work between propaganda and documentation, a critical examination of which is to be found in the exhibition catalogue. Khaldei's work comprises both freelance photography and commissioned works. Khaldei's images are closely bound up with German history in birographical, historical and aesthetic terms. The exhibition aims to make this connection clear to the general public in both Germany and the Ukraine. As a Jew, Khaldei suffered repeatedly from anti-Semitism; his father and three of his sisters were murdered in 1941 by German soldiers. Taking that into account, it is noteworthy that Khaldei's work cannot be subsumed unter the heading of propaganda or of heroic Modernism. His photographic eye remained consistently focused on the lives of ordinary people. All of the photos by Yevgeny Khaldei on display in the exhibition come from the Ernst Volland and Heinz Krimmer collection. They are supplemented by photos taken by his Soviet colleagues. Dimitri Baltermans and Georgi Petrussov.  The exhibition will subsequently go on show in Kiev. Martin-Gropius-Bau is one of the most famous and most beautiful exhibition halls in Germany.  It was built in Berlin by architects Martin Gropius (for whom it is named ) and Heino Schmieden in the Renaissance style, as an arts and crafts museum. It was opened in 1881 and housed the Berlin Museum of Prehistory and Early History as well as well as the East Asian Art Collection since World War I. The building was severely damaged in 1945 during the last weeks of World War II. It was classified as a historical monument in 1966. It was meticulously restored in 1978, and has become one of the most famous and most beautiful exhibition halls in Germany, hosting many international exhibitions

Ink_d Gallery Presents New Works on Paper by Missum Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:31 PM PST Brighton, UK.- The Ink_d Gallery is proud to present "Place - Works on Paper by Missum", on view at the gallery from October 21st through November 21st. Missum is one half of the artist collective Miss Bugs. This unique artistic parternship, founded in 2007, has produced a body of work that has achieved international acclaim and developed a passionate home-grown following. In early 2011, Missum began to explore her own individual aesthetic. Departing from the kinetic, graphically-led collage style that had become synonymous with the work of Miss Bugs, Missum's focus addresses a more traditional method of printing.

The Savannah College of Art and Design Re-Opens as a Major Teaching Museum Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:30 PM PST Savannah, Georgia.- The Savannah College of Art and Design announces one of its most important education initiatives to date: the new SCAD Museum of Art, a significantly expanded and re-imagined contemporary art and design museum conceived and designed expressly to enrich the educational milieu for SCAD students, professors, and art and design enthusiasts. SCAD Museum of Art re-opens to the public on Saturday, Oct. 29th. Inaugural exhibitions at the new museum include: Bill Viola, The Crossing; Liza Lou, Let the Light In; Kendall Buster, New Growth: Stratum Field; a solo exhibition of recent works by Kehinde Wiley; and selections from the SCAD Museum of Art's Permanent Collection, including the Evans Collection of African American Art, presented in the new Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies within the museum. In keeping with the university's mission, a year-round program of exhibitions, installations, performances and museum programs and events will engage with SCAD's 41 majors and more than 50 minors - from fashion and fibers to painting and sound design. This programming will also provide students and professors across all disciplines a collaborative space to experience celebrated works of art and design, and to interact with the renowned and emerging artists who create them. SCAD Museum of Art provides one square foot of academic space for every square foot of exhibition space. Galleries act as extensions of the traditional classroom, and, on the second floor of the museum, 12 classrooms create expansive learning laboratories. These museum classrooms are specifically designed to facilitate the learning experience – wide hallways and doorframes allow for easy movement and study of large works of art, and storage facilities located among the classrooms allow access to all of SCAD's collections and temporary works. SCAD continues its award-winning legacy of adaptive reuse in the museum's distinctive design and execution. The new museum joins past and present by uniting the ruins of the Central of Georgia Railroad 1853 depot, a National Historic Landmark and the only surviving antebellum railroad complex in the country, with 65,000 square feet of new space. At 82,000 square feet total, the revitalized and re-envisioned structure honors the historical elements of the older buildings, preserving parts of the ruins as they exist today, while also featuring modern applications and materials. An 86-foot-tall steel and glass lantern punctuates the museum design and will soon adorn the Savannah skyline with a beacon of light. The design of the new museum was conceived by President Wallace and Senior Vice President for College Resources Glenn Wallace. SCAD alumnus and professor Christian Sottile of Sottile & Sottile and Lord, Aeck & Sargent Architects, in association with Dawson Architects, executed the design, which was supervised by SCAD alumnus Martin Smith, executive director of design and new construction. The expansive facility includes galleries and classrooms, a 250-seat theater, a terrace and outdoor projection screen, a conservation studio, a museum café, and an event atrium. The museum is home to two new signature galleries: the Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies, which boasts one of the most significant collections of African American Art in the United States and the André Leon Talley Gallery, which celebrates style and design in its myriad forms. SCAD Museum of Art also features breakthrough technology, highlighted by a state-of-the-art interactive orientation center in the museum's entry hall. Designed by Pentagram exclusively for the museum, this 10-foot-long touch pad delivers information and images of the facility, exhibitions, artists and museum events. The inaugural lineup of exhibitions sets the tone for the roster of national and international, renowned and emerging artists whose work will be presented in the museum: "Bill Viola: The Crossing" Co-commissioned by SCAD in 1996, "The Crossing" premiered in Savannah and has since been exhibited around the world. Rich in metaphor and grounded in shared spiritual beliefs of East and West, this canonical video art celebrates Viola's signature ability to convey complex themes with scale and sound. As meticulous as it is magnetic, Liza Lou's work never fails to draw a crowd. In "Let the Light In", the artist engages themes of containment, labor and repetition with millions of brilliant glass beads that illuminate the will and sensibility of human workmanship. As she has for much of her career, Lou brings a painter's eye to her sculptural work, examining visual themes from the Pop Art and Neo-Expressionist tradition in unique environments of her own design. Commissioned by SCAD for the debut of SCAD Museum of Art, "New Growth: Stratum Field" is a site-specific sculptural installation designed and constructed to converse with the resonant features of the museum's 290-foot south-facing gallery. Recalling Buster's most iconic structural forms, this work explores biological architecture in all its many incarnations. The monumental and life-size portrait paintings of acclaimed artist Kehinde Wiley transpose elements of contemporary culture onto Baroque and Renaissance decorative backdrops.  In addition to exposing students to the work of lauded visiting artists, the museum will also present rotating exhibitions that feature selections from the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art, the Earle W. Newton Collection of British and American Art, as well as from SCAD's permanent collection, which include works by Salvador Dalí, Nicholas Hlobo, Richard Hunt, Willem de Kooning, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Wangechi Mutu, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Carrie Mae Weems. SCAD maintains a permanent collection of more than 4,500 artworks, many of which will appear on rotation at the newly expanded museum. The SCAD Permanent Collection includes: The Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art, one of the most significant collections of African American art, spanning more than 150 years and featuring prized works by Bannister, Duncanson, Bearden, Hunt and many more; The SCAD Costume Collection, which includes garments donated by Cornelia Guest, daughter of fashion icon C.Z. Guest, and haute couture from Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Oscar de la Renta and Givenchy, among others; The 20th-century Art Collection, which includes an array of Modern art prints by major 19th- and 20th-century figures, from Goya and Renoir to Rauschenberg, Dali, de Kooning and Picasso as well as contemporary works by artists such as Nicholas Hlobo, Yeondoo Jung, Wangechi Mutu, Yinka Shonibare MBE and Carrie Mae Weems. The 19th- and 20th-century Photography Collection, featuring works by Cartier-Bresson, Mapplethorpe, Leibovitz and Warhol; The Earle W. Newton Collection of British and American Art, consisting of rare books, antique maps, paintings and work by Hogarth, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Reynolds and Romney. The SCAD Museum of Art will feature SCAD's third annual deFINE ART program from February 21st to 25th 2012. deFINE ART is a major event highlighting the SCAD School of Fine Arts and its degree programs in painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography and more. Over the course of a week, SCAD students and community members enjoy lectures, exhibitions and performances by some of the top names in art.Since its inception in 2009, deFINE ART has attracted thousands of visitors and featured acclaimed artists and professionals such as Marina Abramovic, Nick Cave, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Marilyn Minter, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Sarah Thornton, Gary Tinterow and Richard Vine. Visit the museum's website at ... http://scadmoa.org

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:29 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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