Tag: Art News

SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Fine Arts Museums
of San
Francisco welcomes the United States debut of Birth of Impressionism:
Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay on view at the de Young Museum May
22 to
September 6, 2010. The exhibition includes approximately 100 paintings
from the
Musée d’Orsay’s permanent collection and highlights the work of
William-Adolphe
Bouguereau, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet,
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler,
among
others. The Musée d’Orsay is lending their most beloved
paintings while
it undergoes a partial closure for refurbishment and reinstallation in
anticipation of the museum’s 25th anniversary in 2011. Birth of
Impressionism
will be followed in the fall of 2010 by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, and
Beyond:
Post–Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay. The de Young
will be the
only museum in the world to host both exhibitions.

NEW YORK, NY.- Flowers Galley presents the New York City
debut
of British artist Claerwen James with an exhibition of her new paintings
that
will run from May 21st through June 26th, 2010. A catalog with a
foreword by New
Yorker critic Anthony Lane will accompany the exhibition. All of the
works
originated as photographs: some scavenged, some taken by the artist, who

believes that the awkwardness of the photographic moment is crucial to
the
painful, elegiac quality of the paintings.

PORTLAND,
ME.- On June 5, the Portland Museum of Art
will debut a website of highlights from its Winslow Homer illustrations
collection. This groundbreaking online gallery on the Museum’s website,

www.portlandmuseum.org,
will provide searchable and
zoomable access to more than 250 of Homer’s wood engravings. Many of
these works
have never been seen by the public before. The engravings are part of a
gift of
445 Homer wood engravings given to the Museum by Peggy and Harold Osher
in 1991,
a nearly comprehensive collection of Homer’s graphic work. The
launch
of this online gallery is in celebration of the Museum’s exhibition
Winslow
Homer and the Poetics of Place on view June 5 through September 12. A
computer
station will be available in the exhibition to allow visitors access to
all of
these works.

LONDON.- This May the Imperial War Museum London
launches Explore History, an innovative project which will see visitors
get up
close and personal with the past thanks to improved access to the
Museum’s
Collections. The Museum’s chief new feature will be the Explore History
Centre,
a specially-designed public space where anyone can drop in for free and
immediately access parts of the Museum’s vast collection of digitized
photos,
film, sound recordings, documents, art, ephemera and books. Visitors

young and old will be encouraged to take advantage of an easy-to-search
web
catalogue, interactive multimedia displays, and the expertise of staff,
to
discover hidden treasures from the Museum’s archives as well as the
personal
stories behind them.

LONDON.- Phillips de Pury & Company’s
Photographs Sale in London totaled £901,375 / $1,288,065 selling 78% by
value and 69% by lot. The Photographs department, European market
leaders, sold
a full range of exciting works from diverse genres and movements
integral to
20th and 21st century photography which generated widespread interest
with top
results for blue chip photographers.

SYDNEY,
AU
– A glowing golden
forest of trees illuminates an ugly site beneath the Western Distributor
at
Ultimo, transforming the dark and un-imaginative space and improving
public
safety. Lord Mayor Clover Moore
switched the lights on Sydney’s newest permanent artwork Aspire on May
19 and
publicly launched the public art project with the community. “Aspire
By Warren Langley is an
eye-catching display designed to enliven the unattractive area below the
freeway
into a luminous outdoor gallery,” said Ms Moore.

MELBOURNE, AU – The National Gallery of Victoria
announced two exciting new acquisitions in the lead up to next year’s
150th
birthday. This is a major gift for the NGV’s Masterpieces for Melbourne
fundraising campaign. The new works, titled Lady Rous née Charlotte
Maria
Whittaker, second wife of the sixth Baronet later Earl of Stradbroke and
Rt Hon.
John Rous, sixth Baronet, later First Earl of Stradbroke in Suffolk
Yeomanry
Calvary Uniform were painted in 1796 by English artist Sir William
Beechey, one
of the leading portrait painters of the Regency period.