NEW YORK, NY.- America’s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention New York, an exhibition on view at the Museum of the City of New York from May 5 through October 3, 2010, will examine the controversial career and dramatic times of New York’s 103rd mayor. The exhibition presents John V. Lindsay’s efforts to govern a city that was undergoing dramatic changes and that was at the center of the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s; it will highlight Mayor Lindsay’s ambitious initiatives to redefine New York’s government, economy, culture, and public life. Through his outspoken championship of urban values, commitment to civil rights, and opposition to the Vietnam war, Lindsay emerged as a national figure in a troubled and exhilarating era; yet the costs of his approach included the alienation of many members of the white working class and an increasingly out-of-control city budget.
Paintings and Works on Paper by Reeve Schley at James Graham & Sons Gallery
NEW YORK, NY.- James Graham & Sons Gallery presents an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Reeve Schley, Outdoor Light, which marks the artist’s eighteenth solo exhibition with the gallery. Schley has been exhibiting with James Graham & Sons for close to 40 years. The show will be on exhibit from May 5th through June 18th, 2010. The show will feature over two dozen new watercolors as well as four large-scale oil paintings, conveying imagery personal to the artist and painted en plein air. Schley is well known for his depictions of people at leisure. Picnics, tennis games, and sunbathers are common themes, as are landscapes executed on-the-spot at beaches and riversides. Schley’s new works feature scenes from Central Park in New York City, his farm in New Jersey and a lake in Murray Bay in Canada. His ephemeral oils and watercolors capture moments of serenity both
Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Sales Series Totals $360 Million
NEW YORK, NY.- The May sales series of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s New York totaled $360,029,725/ £238,430,281/ €279,092,810, concluding two remarkable days of sales that yielded a new world record for the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. On Tuesday evening, Christie’s sold Pablo Picasso’s 1932 masterpiece, Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust from the Collection of Mrs. Sidney F. Brody for a record $106.5 million. Wednesday’s Works on Paper and Day sales also yielded positive results, totaling $24,481,725/£16,213,063 / €18,978,081, with 84% of lots sold and 81% sold by value. The top lot was the sale’s cover image, Paul Klee’s Reifendes Wachstum (Ripening Growth), a watercolor and collage work from 1921 which sold for $1,142,500/£756,622 / €885,658. With the results of Tuesday’s Evening Sale,
Karola Kraus is the New Director of the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig
VIENNA.- As of October 1, 2010 Karola Kraus, present head of the Staatlichen Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, will take up her position as the new director of Vienna’s Museum of Modern Art and successor to Edelbert Köb. Federal Minister Claudia Schmied appointed this well-connected and experienced managerial figure from the international art scene in order to give the MUMOK new impetus. “Since it was founded the Museum of Modern Art has been dedicated to the contemporary art and culture of the time. It stands for cosmopolitanism, progress, and artistic diversity at the highest qualitative levels. Both the exceptional collection and the incisive architecture of Ortner & Ortner at the centre of the Museumsquartier have given the MUMOK a standing that extends far beyond Vienna’s borders and, in comparison to larger institutions, allow it to be regarded as a jewel. When one considers the collections
Sotheby’s May 2010 Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art Brings $195 Million
NEW YORK, NY.- Tonight at Sotheby’s, the spring Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art brought a total of $195,697,000, nearly reaching the high end of the presale estimate (est. $141/204 million). Forty-three works achieved prices over $1 million, ten works exceeded $5 million, four works brought prices over $10 million, and two works sold for over $15 million. The sale was 87.7% sold by lot and 92.4% sold by value. Two artist records were set: Isamu Noguchi’s Undine (Nadja) soared to $4,226,500 (est. $600/900,000) and Salvador Dalí’s Spectre du soir sur la plage totaled $5,682,500 (est. $4/6 million). The evening’s top price was achieved by Henri Matisse’s spectacular Bouquet pour le quatorze juillet, the artist’s emotional celebration of the first Bastille Day following World War I, which totaled $28,642,500 (est. $18/25 million). “Tonight’s sale result of $195.7 million was clos
After Forty Years, Lisson Gallery Revisits John Latham’s First Solo Exhibition
LONDON.- Forty years on from John Latham’s first solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery in 1970, the gallery revisits works and actions from that seminal show in the wider context of the artist’s work through the 1970s, a period of extraordinary innovation, productivity and influence. The work Latham made during this decade, beginning with the Lisson show, confirmed his position at the forefront of the new conceptual and event-based artistic practices. Through the diverse work he was producing in sculpture, film, painting, text, and performance, he also began to distil his ‘Time-Base Theorem’. At the heart of the theory is a scale or spectrum, a cosmological system for understanding all phenomena – physical and metaphysical – in terms of time and event. The current exhibition attempts a physical embodiment of Latham’s concept
Academy Art Museum Announces Appointment of Erik H. Neil as Director
EASTON, MD.- The Academy Art Museum of Easton Maryland announced that Erik H. Neil PhD of New York City has been selected from more than 150 candidates to be the next Director of the Museum. Mr. Neil is an accomplished museum professional who began his career as Director of the Newcomb Art Gallery of Tulane University; he was also an adjunct professor in the History of Art at Tulane. More recently he was the Executive Director of the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, New York where he spearheaded the complete renovation of the museum building, organized a series of critically acclaimed exhibitions, and introduced new fundraising events. He holds an undergraduate degree in History from Princeton University and earned his MA and PhD from Harvard University in the History of Art and Architecture. He also earned a certificate in Museum Leadership from the prestigious Getty Leadership Institute in Berkley, California. Orig
National Postal Museum Celebrates the 150th Anniversary of the Pony Express with an Online Featured Collection
WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum has launched a new Arago featured collection “Remembering the Pony Express” in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Pony Express. It can be accessed at http://www.arago.si.edu/flash/?eid=425|s1=6|. The legendary name of the Pony Express calls up thrilling images of horse and rider racing across treacherous terrain, yet the actual Pony Express lasted for less the two years (April 1860 –October 1861). Before the Pony Express, mail could take weeks, even months, to travel from the eastern to the Pacific states. William Russell, Alexander Majors and William Waddell proposed a relay system of horses to carry the mail across the dry, daunting and mountainous 1,966-mile central route between St. Joseph, Mo., and Sacramento, Calif. They boasted of 10-day mail delivery. Riders were assigned 75- to 100-mile-long portions of the trail
Stuart Pearson Wright’s ‘I Remember You’ at Riflemaker
LONDON.- The work of Stuart Pearson Wright (b. Northampton 1975) reflects a search for lost identity. One of the first children born in the UK by artificial insemination the artist feels that the process has created an ‘identity void’ which his work attempts to deal with. Wright’s new series of paintings at Riflemaker – shown alongside a film installation featuring Keira Knightley – explore and dispel the stereotypes of masculinity and femininity as depicted in films, books and comics; specifically in the stories and myths of the American West. Choosing portraiture in an era when it was not always seen as a legitimate part of contemporary art, and a winner the BP Portrait Award aged just 26, Wright has spent much of his career attempting to subvert traditional portrait painting. He distorts his subjects, employing his own features and those of his fiancée in meticulously painted and stylised characters set in p
Exhibition of Works on Paper by Norbert Tadeusz Opens at Pinakothek der Moderne
MUNICH.- Norbert Tadeusz, born in 1940, was one of Joseph Beuys’ master pupils in the 1960s. He is regarded as one of the most important contemporary artists in Germany to have held steadfastly to their figurative pictorial world over a period of many decades. The familiar and the everyday in Tadeusz’s graphic work is also dominated by the presence of the (predominantly female) body in its sensual dimension. The artist’s almost obsessive theme is the body’s exposed positioning within a space and its existential isolation that is sometimes reminiscent of Bacon. This is repeatedly expressed in the contorted poses, trailing shadows, distortions and fragmentation, executed in a highly individual palette that combines brilliant colours with morbid, elemental sobriety. As a result, the sheets dispense with any ostensible virtuosity: they gain their sensuality from their direct clarity, accompanied by the distinct notion of the effectiveness of the space. Complexes of around 100 of T