Tag: News

BERN.- Since his startling emergence on the art scene in the 1950s as a wild young Tachist, Rolf Iseli (b. 1934) has remained one of the best known Swiss artists. This retrospective exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Bern surveys the artist’s fifty-year-career by means of about one hundred works – large groups of paintings and drawings, sculptures and prints – which Iseli produced in his studio in Berne and in St. Romain in Burgundy. In 1957 Iseli caused a public sensation when he won the Swiss Federation Art Scholarship for a canvas covered in splashes of ink; Sam

HARTFORD, CT.- The Wadsworth Atheneum’s MATRIX contemporary art program returns in February with an exciting roster of emerging artists from around the world. Selected by the Wadsworth’s new curator of contemporary art, Patricia Hickson, artists Kitty Kraus, Justin Lowe, and Kim Schoenstadt will present solo exhibitions in the museum’s dedicated MATRIX gallery in 2010. The MATRIX series re-launch kicks off with an installation of mirrored lightboxes—which will emit dizzying beams of light to transform the gallery space—created by German sculptor Kitty Kraus,

LONDON.- The Trustees of the British Museum announced that Camden Council has given planning permission for the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre. The building will ensure the British Museum can meet its fundamental obligations of preserving, researching, displaying and lending this unparalleled collection for future generations. The building will ensure the British Museum remains one of the world’s leading museums, a civic space serving a local, national and international audience. The Museum would

LONDON.- Big issues are covered in small-scale artworks in “Post Abolition”, which opens at Museum of London Docklands on January 18, 2010. The display features stamp designs from the 1930s onwards commemorating the abolition of slavery and it inaugurates the year-long London Festival of Stamps. “Post Abolition” is created in partnership with the Sands of Time Consultancy. It features over 30 designs, together with new stamps created by students from Barnet College as part of a community project with the Museum. Key stamps in the display include a 1965 Jamaican stamp marking Paul Bogle and the Morant Bay uprising. Also featured is the ‘Black Heritage’ series of stamps launched in 1978 by the US Postal Service featuring Harriet Tubman, known as the Moses of her people for helping men and women escape from the American slave states. Tom Wareham, Curator at the Museum of London Docklands, said: “The great

LONDON.- Leading independent art charity The Art Fund today announces that it has helped save two important objects housed at Seaton Delaval Hall, the Vanbrugh mansion which has been the subject of a major fundraising campaign by the National Trust. The Art Fund has pledged £100,000, enabling the Hall to acquire the ‘Fairfax Jewel’, which consists of three enamelled roundels set in an engraved, rectangular gilt-metal plaque, and the “Marble Bust of Charles II” by Bushnell. News of the charity grant comes on the day that the National Trust announces that Seaton Delaval Hall, close to Blyth in south east Northumberland, has been saved for the nation. Both pieces reflect the royal connections of the Delaval and Astley families, who have owned the Estate since the time of the Norman Conquest. The roundels on the ‘Fairfax Jewel’ were made by Pierre Bordier (dates unknown, active in the 17th-century), a well-known miniaturist at the

ZURICH.- In 2010 the Kunsthaus Zürich will celebrate its hundredth anniversary. Switzerland’s oldest combined collection and exhibition space opened its doors in Karl Moser’s late Jugendstil museum building on the Heimplatz in 1910, and now, in honor of the centenary, the Kunsthaus will showcase its opulent collection, including many donations, and mount a major Picasso show in tribute to its tradition of key exhibitions. In 2015 the artistic idea of a dynamic museum for the 21st century will become reality, and the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft’s success story, which owes its inception in 1787 to the initiative of local burghers, will have been continued in a further exciting chapter – the Kunsthaus extension. On April 17, 1910, on land donated by City Councillor Landolt, the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft opened the ‘Kunsthaus’ – neither a museum nor an art gallery, but rather, as noted by architect

LONDON.- The British Council announced that Vicky Richardson has been appointed as Director Architecture, Design, Fashion, British Council. Vicky will take up the post on the March 1, 2010, continuing the work of Catherine Ince and Alison Moloney who have been Acting Co-Directors of the team since Emily Campbell’s departure in October 2008. Vicky joins from her post as Editor of ‘Blueprint Magazine’ and will play an important role in the ongoing development of the British Council’s national and international work across the fields of architecture, design and fashion. Vicky Richardson commented: “I’ve always admired the work of the British Council and it’s exciting to be joining an organization with such a strong record in architecture, design and fashion. Fortunately Britain has become a magnet for overseas architects and designers, so the remit of promoting cultural exchange is even more

LONDON.- For the third year running, independent charity The Art Fund in partnership with the Crafts Council is calling upon curators to apply to Art Fund Collect – a competitive challenge giving selected curators the opportunity to acquire an ambitious new piece of contemporary craft for their museum or gallery. Curators from accredited museums and galleries across the UK are invited to apply to participate in Art Fund Collect, which takes place on the preview day of the Craft Council’s international fair Collect, held at London’s Saatchi Gallery from May 14 to 17