Museums

EXCLUSIVE: Abramovich Said to Be Owner of World's Most Expensive Painting

Filed under: Art, Wealth

EXCLUSIVE: Abramovich is Likely Owner of World's Most Expensive Painting

When we first reported back in May that Pablo Picasso's 1932 painting Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust (above) had sold for a record-breaking $106.5 million at Christie's we heard whispers that the buyer was a certain Russian oligarch known for his eye-popping acquisitions: Roman Abramovich. Now that the world's most expensive painting has been lent to the UK's Tate Modern museum by the unnamed "private collector" who bought it (as my colleague Deidre Woollard reported), a strong indication that the owner is based in London where Abramovich spends most of his time, we're hearing them louder. [cont'd]

Gallery: Record-Breaking Art

Tags: abramovich, art, art auction, art collectors, auction, billionaire, chelsea, London, modern art, most+expensive+painting, mostexpensivepainting, museums, oligarch, Pablo Picasso, Picasso, Roman Abramovich, Russian billionaires, Tate Modern, UK, wealth, world record, worlds most expensive, worlds most expensive painting

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San Franciso MoMA Explores "How Wine Became Modern"

by Michael B. Dougherty (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Wine

Wine's journey in the US, from its validation at the Judgment of Paris to its current celebration in film, design, and travel, is charted in a new exhibition, "How Wine Became Modern," at San Francisco's MoMA.

Running through April 17, 2011, the show examines the attendant culture that sprung up around wine, during the past 30 years, as its popularity skyrocketed. This includes everything from wine's influence on art and design, its effect on architecture, and the mainstream acceptance of concepts like provenance and terroir. Viewers are lead through a series of rooms, beginning with a photo-mural of the 1976 Judgment tasting, by New York architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and on through exhibits of soil samples (to explain terroir), wine bottle labels, and glassware. There's also a survey of significant wine-related architecture around with the world, with projects from marquee names like Frank Gehry, Santiago Calatrava and Herzog & de Meuron.

The culmination of "How Wine Became Modern" is a "smell wall," where seven flasks of actual liquid provide an education in nosing and the shifting culture of wine terminology.

Tags: architecture, design, exhibitions, How Wine Became Modern, Judgment of Paris, media, museums, san francisco, SFMOMA, wine

YouTube Videos To Play At The Guggenheim

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

Your YouTube video could make it into the Guggenheim Museum. The museum has announced a new exhibition, YouTube Play, which is a partnership between the video site and the museum. YouTube user submit their short creative videos at http://youtube.com/play. The top 20 videos will be chosen by a jury of professional artists and will be on view this fall at Guggenheim museums around the world. This project isn't for goofy videos of your cat, the Guggenheim is looking for high-quality artistic work. The YouTube Play site also bears advertising from HP. Submissions will close July 31. The works will be presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York on October 21, 2010 with simultaneous presentations at the Guggenheim museums in Berlin, Bilbao, and Venice. The videos will be on view to the public from October 22 through 24 in New York and on the YouTube Play channel. So far the channel has around 5,000 subscribers.

[via Washington Post]

Tags: guggenheim, Guggenheim Museum, museum, museum exhibit, museums, video arts, youtube, youtube playlists

Yves Saint Laurent's Legacy Explored In Paris

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Apparel

The legacy of Yves Saint Laurent gets a deep exploration in an exhibition currently at the Petit Palais in Paris. The show is the first in Paris since the designer's death in 2008 and explores the full measure of Saint Laurent's considerable influence on fashion. The LA Times reports that the show is nearly three times the size of the 2008 exhibition at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, California. It includes 307 haute couture and ready-to-wear garments, together with photographs, drawings and films.

Tags: museum, museum exhibit, museums, Yves Saint Laurent

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Celebrity Guest Curators Celebrate The Shaker Legacy

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Events, Art

The Hancock Shaker Village, a living history museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts celebrates 50 years as a museum this year. The site served as a Shaker community from 1790 to 1960 and is now a National Historic Landmark with acres of farm and woods as well as housing a collection of original Shaker furniture, art, objects, tools, textiles and other artifacts. The Village has 18 significant historic buildings including the Round Stone Barn as well as a modern Visitor Center. As you wander through the village you can view pieces of Shaker design, check out demonstrations of Shaker craft, visit the gardens and learn about the Shaker way of life.

To celebrate 50 years the museum asked celebrities and other influential types to serve as guest curators answering the question: "If you could pick any Shaker creation that for you, best illustrates the Shakers' enduring influence, what would it be and why?" Guest curators include designer Michael Graves, television host Al Roker, furniture maker Thomas Moser, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and filmmaker Ken Burns. The exhibit runs now through October 31.Tickets are $17 for adults.

[via ArtFix Daily]

Tags: hancock shaker village, museum, museum exhibit, museum exhibition, museums, shaker, shakers

University Plans To Loan Museum Art To Raise Funds

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

Last year Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts caused an uproar when it announced plans to close its Rose Art Museum and possibly sell off the art. Now the university has a different plan, one that carries its own controversy. The Boston Globe reports that the university plans to hire Sotheby's auction house to act as a broker to loan out selected works from the Rose's well-regarded collection. Usually art loans take place between museums and don't usually bring in revenue but in some cases some museums have paid millions to borrow key works for certain shows. Some people have expressed concern that works could be loaned out to prviate collectors or corporations who don't have conservationists on staff and might not adequately care for the works.

In just under 50 years the Rose has amassed a collection of 7,500 objects that is said to be worth as much as $350 million. The Rose Art Museum collects American art of the 1960s and 1970s and has pieces by Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. Although the museum is in better financial shape than it was a year ago and it still faces an annual structural deficit of between $10 million and $15 million. The university expects to sign a contract with Sotheby's sometime next month and could begin entertaining art loan proposals this fall.

Tags: art loan, Brandeis, brandeis university, BrandeisUniversity, museum, museums, rose art museum

Mark Memorial Day in a Different Way at the Rubin Art Museum

by Alison Wellner (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Events, Art

Memorial Day is the only national US holiday that focuses squarely on death -- remembering fallen members of the armed forces, to be exact, and many people will visit cemeteries and memorials this weekend in their honor.

If that's not quite your brand of vodka, might I suggest that you mark the holiday by visiting the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City? The museum is running a provocative exhibit called Remember that You Will Die, which upon reflection seems just right for such a holiday.

The RMA focuses on Himalayan art, and it's one of the city's newer museums -- it opened its doors in Chelsea in 2004. Remember that You Will Die exhibits 84 works of art and artifacts on the theme of death and the afterlife, gathering works from the East (Tibet) and the West, medieval and early Renaissance Europe along with one contemporary work, a video by American artist Bill Viola. I visited yesterday found a Tibetan apron made of bone and an English physician's walking stick topped with a skull pommel from circa 18th century to be particularly compelling.

Tags: art, death, memorial day, museum, museums, RubinArtMuseum, tibet

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Bank of America's Contemporary Art To Go On Display

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Events, Art

Lately it seems that corporate art is spending less time in offices where only a few can delight and into museums where the art is on display for all. Bank of America's art will be on display at the new Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina this fall. October 1 will bring "New Visions: Contemporary Masterworks from the Bank of America Collection" to the museum. It will showcase more than more than 60 paintings, sculptures, works on paper and photographs by American artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella. Ed Ruscha's Clockspeed is shown at right. Pieces date from 1945 to the present.

"(Charlotte) is (Bank of America's) headquarters and the Mint is the flagship arts institution," said Allen Blevins, senior vice president and director of the bank's corporate art program in a quote in the Charlotte Observer. "It's going to be a phenomenal show."

The Bank of America Collection is said to be one of the largest and finest in the world although the size and value are not known. The collection is focused on contemporary American art. The bank did not set out to collect art but it did collect banks. The art was acquired by banks in different parts of the country which were later acquired by Bank of America and so it includes artists from a variety of U.S. cities. The exhibit includes many large pieces, some of which haven't been seen on the East Coast before. The Observer article says that while the Mint had pick of the litter in assembling the exhibit, it was Bank of America that picked up the tab when it came to the many costs of staging the exhibit including crating and shipping. The Mint will keep the money earned from ticket sales. The exhibit is part of Bank of America's Art in our Communities program. From 2008 to 2010, Bank of America will have loaned more than 30 exhibitions to museums internationally.

Tags: art, bank of america, charlotte, corporate art, mint museum, museums, north carolina

Wedgwood Museum In Administration Over Pension Debt

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

England's Wedgwood Museum could be forced to sell some of its exhibits. The museum website says that the Wedgwood Museum Trust Ltd has been placed into Administration but that the Wedgwood Museum will remain fully operational and open to the general public as usual. BBC News reports that valuable pieces from the museum in Stoke-on-Trent could be seized by creditors and sold because of a pension fund debt. Waterford Wedgwood went into administration last year, with parts of the business later bought by a US firm but it was the Wedgwood Museum Trust that inherited the £134 million pension debt of the whole company.

The question is whether or not the assets are held in trust by the museum or whether they're available for creditors to pillage. The Wedgwood Museum opened in 2008 and is home to an exhibition of more than 250 years of the company's history. Because five of the museum trust's staff were in the same pension plan as the employees of the whole pottery company somehow the museum got left holding the bag. The prize-winning museum hopes to be able to keep its valuable assets intact and to keep the museum open to the public. Wedgwood was founded in 1759, but Waterford Wedgwood was created in 1987. It went into administration in January 2009.

Tags: england, museums, wedgwood, wedgwood museum

Driving in Style: Alluring Autos 1930 - 1965

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Cars & Autos, Events, Books

In conjunction with an exhibition titled The Allure of the Automobile which just opened at Atlanta's High Museum of Art, SkiraRizzoli will publish a book dedicated to the entrancing vehicles featured in it later this month. The Allure of the Automobile: Driving in Style 1930–1965 traces the evolution of the artisan-crafted luxury motorcar. Embodying speed, style, and elegance, the carefully selected vehicles first broke records on racetracks and won awards at prestigious classic car events around the world. Examining the contrasts between European and American design, the influence of the decorative arts, and the significant changes in automotive styling before and after World War II, the book highlights eighteen of the world's rarest and most coveted cars manufactured between 1930 and 1965.

In addition to the legendary Porsche Type 64, the exhibit and book features Steve McQueen's 1957 Jaguar XK-SS and Clark Gable's 1934 Packard Twelve Runabout Speedster, as well as a classic Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato, Bugatti Type 57S and more. Ronald Labaco, curator of the exhibition, provides historical context and pays homage to these remarkable machines that can be seen as fine art, sculpture, and the embodiment of an industrial craft to be remembered for generations, while extensive entries by noted automotive historian Ken Gross consider each masterpiece and Peter Harholdt's photography stunningly details the custom-built designs that were created for the privileged few. See the gallery for images.

Gallery: The Allure of the Automobile

Tags: Allure of the Automobile, Atlanta, classic cars, High Museum of Art, museums, Porsche, Steve McQueen

Visit London's V&A Museum for Quilts: 1700- 2010

by Alison Wellner (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Travel & Hotels, Art

If you're looking for a crafty excuse to visit London in the next few months, I've got a good one for you: Quilts 1700 - 2010, a new exhibit opening at the V&A Museum.

The exhibit, which opens March 20th and runs through July 4th, focuses on quilts both historic and contemporary. The quilt pictured above, "At the End of the Day", is a 2007 creation of artist Natasha Kerr; historic quilts include those commemorating the lives of Admiral Lord Nelson, Charles II and the Duke of Wellington, among others.

(Bonus for fans of Tracy Chevalier, who wrote the novel Girl with the Pearl Earring, which became a movie starring Scarlett Johansson -- she's written a story based on the George 111 quilt, which is in the museum's magazine. There's a great video of her research process here.)

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Tags: art, fiber, london, montreal, museums, quilt, quilt exhibit, quilts, scarlett johansson, ScarlettJohansson, Victoria and Albert Museum

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Strikes Close French Museums

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Travel & Hotels, Art

If you are traveling in Paris right now you might have some difficulty visiting local museums. Workers are at the city's top museums went on strike on Wednesday. The AP reports that the Pompidou Center modern art museum and the Musee d'Orsay were closed Wednesday and the Louvre was only partially open. At issue in the strike is a policy of not replacing half of retiring public servants. Meetings on Wednesday afternoon between union leaders and Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand did not yield any resolution.

The Louvre Museum and the royal palace at Versailles closed Thursday as the French museum workers' strike began to gather strength. The AP paints a scene of tourists gathered outside the Louvre unable to enter past the blockade of protesting workers. Workers at the Francois Mitterrand National Library in southeast Paris have voted to join the strike Friday. At this point it is not known how many workers are on strike. The culture minister has remained adamant that France cannot make an exception for museum workers in the sweeping government staff reductions and that the museums must find a way to survive with fewer employees.

Source

Tags: louvre, museum worker, museums, MuseumWorker, paris, strikes, workers

Baden Baden Museum Celebrates Five Years & One Millionth Visitor

by Alison Wellner (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Travel & Hotels, Art

Five years ago, contemporary art collector Frieder Burda opened a museum right in the heart of Baden Baden, Germany. As one of the world's original resort towns, tradition tends to trumps trendiness in Baden Baden, and this museum, in a building designed by Richard Meier, and the modern and contemporary art exhibits on offer, definitely set tongues a-wagging in town. When I visited this past Spring, the Burda museum was in the midst of an atypical show of 18th century art, including seven giant tapestries. I'd assumed that regular museum goers might be upset about the turn away from contemporary art, but was assured by a local that response was more like relief.

Short-lived, I suppose, since the Burda museum returned to its modern and contemporary art mission. Still horizons have been stretched, five years have passed, and more than a million visitors have passed through the museum's door, Now until November 8th, the museum is exhibiting "Blue Rider" movement paintings, which were first exhibited in early 20th century Munich. (These paintings are usually at the Lenbachhaus in Munich, which is now under renovation. See a few of the works on display in the gallery below.) Next up, starting on November 21st, is an exhibit of the work of German artist Georg Baselitz. The artist himself is involved in the curation of the exhibit, which will be shared with Baden Baden's museum Staatliche Kunsthalle. The Burda will exhibit Baselitz paintings, the Staatliche Kunsthalle will exhibit Baseltiz's sculpture.

Gallery: The Frieder Burda Museum in Baden Baden

Tags: contemporary art, ContemporaryArt, germany, museum, museums, richardmeier

Rothko, Diebenkorn and Degas join Obama in the White House

by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art, Celebrity Design

The world's latest Nobel Peace Prize winner also has excellent taste in art. President Barack Obama has skipped the staid portraits that are usually pulled to adorn White House walls and instead opted for three dozen pieces with a bit more of an edge. Works have been pulled from the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Smithsonian American Art Museum to decorate the building the symbolizes executive authority in the United States.

The Obama family is definitely leaning modern, with Rothko, Degas and Diebenkorn among the artists represented. They've also included a word painting by Ed Ruscha. Not wanting to deprive the public of the opportunity to view works on display, the Obamas limited their choices to artwork in museum storage.

There's now a lot of money hanging from those White House walls. "Red Band" by Rothko, "Berkeley No. 52" by Diebenkorn and "White Line" by Sam Francis together are estimated to be worth between $20 million and $30 million. Throw a piece by Jasper Johns into the mix – specifically "Numerals, 0 through 9" – and you get a sense of the collection the Obamas have assembled.

Even with access to a collection of that caliber, though, I'd still never take Obama's job. And, there aren't enough Rothkos out there to change my mind.

Source

Tags: art, art collecting, art collection, art museum, art museums, ArtCollecting, ArtCollection, artist, artists, ArtMuseum, ArtMuseums, artwork, barack obama, BarackObama, degas, ed ruscha, EdRuscha, hirshhorn-sculpture-garden, jasper johns, JasperJohns, mark rothko, MarkRothko, michelle obama, MichelleObama, museum, museums, national gallery of art, NationalGalleryOfArt, nobel peace prize, NobelPeacePrize, obama, president, president barack obama, president obama, PresidentBarackObama, PresidentObama, rothko, smithsonian, smithsonian american art museum, SmithsonianAmericanArtMuseum, white house, WhiteHouse

How Much Should A Museum Director Earn?

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

This past year we've watched museum after museum struggle through the recession. Some have been forced to close, others have had to fire employees. Nearly all have watched their endowment shrink. Therefore the annual news of the salary earned by Glenn D. Lowry, the director of New York's Museum of Modern Art strikes a particularly off note this year. Lowry, shown above with artist Ron Arad at the opening of Arad's retrospective at the MoMA, has long been one of the highest paid museum directors around. This year he actually took a pay cut, Bloomberg News reports that he earned $1.32 million in pay and benefits in the year ending in June, down from $1.95 million the year before. Lowry took a voluntary pay reduction; the previous year he had received a 13 percent raise. Lowry's compensation includes not just his salary and bonuses as well as a pension and health insurance but he also lives rent-free in the 52-story Museum Tower lifting his total compensation to $2.7 million in 2008.

After this year's big business meltdown many people are questioning how much CEOs of publicly owned businesses should be allowed to earn, a concern that has been around for a long time in the nonprofit world. Those who defend the high salaries say that the high-pressure job of being a museum director is worth the price and that the right director is key for attracting the big givers who donate both money and their prized collections to museums. But for museum staffers who often have advanced degrees and yet earn low salaries this can sometimes be hard to take. To Lowry's credit, he has balanced the museum's budget every year since he became director in 1995 and the museum has expanded its exhibit space and increased attendance. The Museum has also not had to lay off any employees yet.

All across the country museum boards are starting to look at salaries of directors. Like CEOs, museum directors have to satisfy a board of directors who want to see results. But instead of profits, museum success is measured in a variety of ways: success of fundraising, museum attendance and landing the big art donations are just a few of the criteria. There is no doubt that it is a challenging job. But after the rough year that nonprofits have experienced it seems unlikely that many directors will continue to receive seven figure salaries.

Source

Tags: art, glenn lowry, GlennLowry, moma, museum of modern art, MuseumOfModernArt, museums