LONDON.- An innovative art project developed by the National Gallery is giving a group of stroke survivors the chance to get their creative juices flowing. Ageing Creatively is an outreach programme that aims to make it possible for people who may be isolated, vulnerable or unable to visit the Gallery independently, to access and enjoy the collection. During November, members of the Greenhill Aphasia Group took part in four outreach workshops at the Greenhill Centre in Newham. Aphasia is a difficulty speaking or understanding speech, reading or writing. It occurs following damage to the brain and is most common after a stroke. Participants worked with artist Viyki Turnbull to create still-life drawings and paintings. For this project – titled “The Real and Unreal” – the group looked at images of still-life paintings in the National Gallery’s permanent collection and compared and contrasted the different ap
La Conservera Announces Third Series of Exhibitions
MURCIA, SPAIN.- La Conservera will open its third series of exhibitions by Valentin Carron, FOD, Manu Muniategiandikoetxea, Eva Rothschild and Gert & Uwe Tobias. These five artists, for the most part sculptors, share a set of common concerns and interests and are all engaged in redefining, revising, appropriating or deconstructing concepts and forms grounded in the various movements associated with modernism, focusing their work on an exploration of new materials and conventional techniques. Valentin Carron works across sculpture, painting and installation. He reproduces real objects or elements with a symbolicly charged meaning from his own environment as well as from broader cultural contexts. For his first exhibition in Spain, he is presenting in “Space 1” a work called “Fibre fibre, austère austère” produced by La Conservera. The work comprises twelve elements, each a large wall-like object. These walls look like rough
Mike Figgis Creates Short Films Inspired by Liverpudlians’ Reactions to Art from the Tate Collection
LIVERPOOL.- Four short films inspired by art at Tate Liverpool and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Mike Figgis will be broadcast on Channel 4’s Three Minute Wonders. From Monday 14 – Thursday 17 December 2009 Channel 4 will broadcast four art films that show the people of Liverpool reacting and responding to renowned artworks from the Tate Collection, currently on display at Tate Liverpool as part of “DLA Piper Series: This is Sculpture”. The short films are a Red Mullet Production with Tate Media for Channel 4 and will be broadcast at approximately 19.55 each evening. In addition to their broadcast on Channel 4 the films are also available to view alongside the artworks in the current DLA Piper Series: This is Sculpture display at Tate Liverpool and will be available to view on the Tate website. The first film sees Carl Andre’s “144 Magnesium Square “(1969) relocated to Rapid, a hardware store in Liverpool City
“Deep Sea: Drawings by William O. Golding” to Open at the Morris Museum of Art
AUGUSTA, GA.- “Deep Sea: Drawings by William O. Golding”, an exhibition of twenty-nine remarkable maritime drawings by self-taught African-American artist William O. Golding (1874–1943), opens to the public December 12, at the Morris Museum of Art. Shanghaied from the Savannah waterfront when he was eight years old, William O. Golding chronicled his travels world-wide through drawings that he created near the end of his life while a patient at the U.S. Marine Hospital in Savannah. Between 1932 and 1939, he executed approximately sixty drawings, literally drawn from his memories of the ships on which he sailed and the ports he visited around the globe. “Golding’s is a remarkable story of a remarkable life, most of which was spent as a merchant seaman at the very end of the Age of Sail. He traveled the world at a time when most Americans spent their entire lives within fifty miles of their place of birth, and he
Ringling Museum of Art to Host Exhibition Featuring Objects Bought in 1927
SARASOTA, FL.- Many discoveries surround the more than 300 objects John Ringling purchased in 1927 from Alva Vanderbilt Belmont’s Gothic Room in Marble House at Newport, Rhode Island. These discoveries will be explored in The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art’s newest exhibition “Gothic Art in the Gilded Age: Medieval and Renaissance Treasures in the Gavet-Vanderbilt-Ringling Collection”, on view December 19, 2009 through April 4, 2010. The exhibition considers the development of the collecting and display of medieval and early Renaissance art in the United States during the
Christie’s Expects to Break Auction Records with Rembrandt & Raphael Sale
LONDON (REUTERS).- Christie’s is confident the recession is
well and truly over in the world of fine art, with a record old masters
sale in London next week that includes important works by Rembrandt,
Raphael and Il Domenichino. The world’s largest
auctioneer is calling its December 8th old masters and 19th century
auction a “landmark,” and pre-sale estimates range from 45-63 million
pounds ($75-105 million), its highest ever for such a sale. “This auction promises to be a
landmark sale for the art market,” said Richard Knight, international
co-head of old masters at Christie’s.
Major Outdoor Florida Exhibition by Internationally Acclaimed Artist Yayoi Kusama
CORAL GABLES, FL.- This December, the world famous
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden will present Yayoi Kusama at Fairchild as part
of its annual visual art program. The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, known for
her distinctive sculptures and paintings that involve hand-worked repetition and
bold patterning, will be exhibiting works from the exuberant new sculptural
ensemble Flowers that Bloom at Midnight (2009), a group of her classic
Pumpkins, as well as Guidepost to the New Space, a multi-part floating work
specifically conceived for Fairchild’s Panandus Lake.
Morris Museum of Art to host “Deep Sea ~ Drawings by William O. Golding”
AUGUSTA, GA.- Deep Sea: Drawings by William O.
Golding, an exhibition of twenty-nine remarkable maritime drawings by
self-taught African-American artist William O. Golding (1874–1943), opens to the
public December 12, at the Morris Museum of Art. Shanghaied from the
Savannah waterfront when he was eight years old, William O. Golding chronicled
his travels world-wide through drawings that he created near the end of his life
while a patient at the U.S. Marine Hospital in Savannah. Between 1932 and 1939,
he executed approximately sixty drawings, literally drawn from his memories of
the ships on which he sailed and the ports he visited around the globe.
Deep Sea: Drawings by William O. Golding remains on display through
March 14, 2010.
First One Person Exhibition in New York for Sangram Majumdar at Gallery Schlesinger
NEW YORK, NY.- Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects presents the first one person exhibition in New York City of paintings by Sangram Majumdar at Gallery Schlesinger. Majumdar is a young painterly realist whose work expands the perimeters of contemporary representation. Sangram Majumdar’s paintings describe ostensibly traditional subject matter- still life, landscape and figure. Yet Majumdar’s paintings have grown progressively more radical in the way they try to encapsulate human perception. These paintings are densely layered with a range of marks, implicit narratives, and visual possibilities. In her essay for the exhibition catalog Jennifer Samet observes that “Sangram Majumdar’s paintings reminds us of the potential and the achievement of transfixing simultaneity within a single visual image. He seems to slice open his worlds, cutting into them almost mercilessly to present an image rich with evocation.“ She
Police Seize Stash of Masterpieces Belonging to Founder of Dairy Company Parmalat
ROME (AP).- Italian tax police said Saturday that they had seized works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Cezanne and other giants of art in a crackdown on assets hidden by the disgraced founder of the collapsed dairy company Parmalat. Authorities estimated the 19 masterpieces stashed away in attics and basements were valued at some euro100 million ($150 million). Parma Prosecutor Gerardo Laguardia said that, based on wiretapped phone conversations, officials believed at least one of the paintings hidden by Calisto Tanzi was about to be sold. “We got lucky. We learned that there were negotiations under way to sell one of the paintings” and raid three apartments in the area of Parma, near Parmalat’s headquarters, Laguardia said in an interview on Italy’s Sky TG24 TV. He didn’t identify the painting. Bologna-based tax Police Col. Piero Iovino told The Associated Press by telephone that investigators believed the entire batch of paintings, watercolors and drawings were up to be sold. The prosp