Art News

FREDERICKSBURG, TX (AP).- Former President George H.W. Bush is helping dedicate a $15.5 million gallery expansion that carries his name at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Texas. Bush is expected at the museum in Fredericksburg on Monday, the 68th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks. Bush was a World War II naval aviator and survived being shot down by the Japanese over the Pacific. The museum expansion has been planned for about a decade. It takes

PARIS.- After a hugely popular four-day viewing – attended by 1300 people – today’s sale of exceptional works of art from Africa and Oceania attracted a packed saleroom throughout, with ferocious competition between telephone bidders and collectors in the saleroom. The sale total of over €5 million ($7.9 million) represented a selling-rate of 83% by value. Most of the top prices were paid by private collectors and connoisseurs, predominantly European or American, all seeking exceptional items in a variety of specialized fields.

LONDON.- Michael Landy, one of the most acclaimed and respected British artists of his generation, transforms the South London Gallery into Art Bin, a container for the disposal of works of art. Over the course of the sixweek exhibition the enormous 600m³ bin will gradually fill up as people discard their art works in it, ultimately creating, in Michael Landy’s words, “a monument to creative failure”. Landy famously destroyed all his possessions in his 2001 installation Break Down

LONDON.- Timothy Taylor Gallery will present an exhibition of works on paper by Philip Guston, one of the most important and influential American artists of the 20th Century. The exhibition traces Guston’s development on paper from the 1950s through to 1980 and the remarkable shift in his work from abstraction to figuration. Primarily known as a painter, Guston received critical acclaim early on in his career as an Abstract Expressionist amongst contemporaries such as Jackson

NEW YORK, NY.- McCaffrey Fine Art is showing at their new gallery at 23 East 67th Street the first ever solo exhibition of Kazuo Shiraga in the United States. “Kazuo Shiraga: Six Decades 50.2 x 70.5 cm. which continues through January 23, 2010. Born in Amagasaki, Japan in 1924, Shiraga co-founded the Zero Society (Zero-kai) with Saburo– Murakami and Akira Kanayama in 1952. In 1955 he joined the legendary collective Gutai (Gutai Art Association) and made a series

PORTLAND, OR.- “Beyond Place: Recent Photography Acquisitions” explores place as a subject in photographs by an international roster of artists. The selected works are mostly free of the human figure and focus instead on the power of the photograph to imaginatively transport the viewer, to inspire emotional musings, and to reveal the unknown. From documentary investigations of contaminated landscapes to sensuous portraits of nature to intimate views of private rooms, these photographs reveal how the experience of a place is commemorated, displaced, ciphered, or changed through the artist’s intervention. Artists include Adam Bartos, Susan Dobson, Beth Dow, Pedro Lobo, David Maisel, Saul Robbins, and Donald Weber. Since 2003, the Portland Art Museum, with the support of patrons James and Susan Winkler, has set about expanding its holdings of contemporary photography and, related to that effort, to chronicle the

OTTAWA, ON.- The National Gallery of Canada (NGC) wishes to clarify its position regarding the December 2, 2009 statement by The Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le Front des artistes canadiens (CARFAC) and le Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Québec (RAAV). Canadian artists are directly protected by two areas of legislation: the Status of the Artist Act, 1992, c.33 and the Copyright Act, C-42. The first legislation oversees professional relations and compensation for artists’ services, such as mounting art installations, giving lectures and tours, attending media events, etc. On the other hand, the Copyright Act is a property right legislation that includes governing the use of artworks either on display or in reproduction situations. The NGC is currently negotiating with CARFAC/RAAV under the Status of the Artist Act. CARFAC/RAAV are legally authorized to represent all living Canadian artists under the Stat

NASHVILLE, TN.- “Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece”, an exhibition exploring the human need for heroes through the arts of one of the oldest and most influential cultures in history, will open in the Frist Center’s Upper-Level Galleries January 29, 2010, and remain on view through April 25, 2010. More than 100 works, including statues, reliefs, vases, bronzes and jewelry made between the sixth and first centuries BCE and drawn from prestigious U.S. and European museums illustrate the lives of Greek heroes including their tasks, adversaries, challenges, failures and private moments. Heroes are sometimes portrayed as superhuman protagonists while at other times as average people who rise above the ordinary. Included are both mythological heroes, among them Herakles, Achilles, Odysseus and Helen, and mortal heroes, including warriors, athletes and rulers. The exhibition comes to the Frist Center from the Walt

HOUSTON, TX.- The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will feature more than 80 paintings, watercolors, and drawings of seascapes and coastal scenes from the early career of the pre-eminent late-19th-century American expatriate painter John Singer Sargent (1856—1925), from February 14 to May 23, 2010. Following a presentation at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., this fall, Houston´s showing is the final stop in the United States before the exhibition travels to London´s Royal Academy. Dr. Emily Ballew Neff, MFAH curator of American Painting and Sculpture, organizes the Houston showing, which is complemented by Houston´s Sargents: a show of some 30 Sargent works from private Houston collections. Sargent and the Sea brings together the artist´s early beach scenes and will be the first to examine, in great depth, the little explored marine paintings and drawings produced during the first five years of the artist´s caree