art museum

New Dali Museum Opens In Florida

On January 11 at 11:11 a.m., the new Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida had its official opening marked with an exuberant parade featuring Salvador Dali lookalikes with curving mustaches and a whole carnival of characters. The $36 million museum took two years to build and replaced an older museum that had long drawn Dali aficionados around the world. The museum has over 2,140 pieces, including 96 oil paintings and eight master works and is the largest collection of Dali's work outside his home country, Spain. The new larger museum also has a cafe, patio and garden. In between the galleries a 75-foot spiral staircase that takes patrons to the third floor. HOK and the Beck Group designed the museum which has reinforced concrete walls that can protect the artwork from a category 5 hurricane. As Annie Scott reported back in September, the Dali Museum will be occupied throughout 2011 with a special exhibit called Viva la Revelacion!, displaying all paintings and highlighting other major works from the permanent collection to celebrate the new building. Today marks the first day the new museum is open to the public. Admission is $21.

Tags: art, art museum, salvador dali, st petersburg

No Art Censorship in Bern Museums

by Bobbie Leigh (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Events, Art

Last November, an 11-second clip of ants crawling over a crucifix in a four-minute video by artist David Wojnarowicz was attacked as blasphemous and removed from the Smithsonian Museum's National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. Imagine what those same critics would say about a terrific show in Bern, Switzerland, called "Lust and Vice: The 7 Deadly Sins from Dürer to Nauman." The show is jointly organized by the Art Museum of Bern and the Zentrum Paul Klee, a multi-function glass and steel space by Renzo Piano. Located a short bus ride from the city center, it resembles three rolling hills. In the "hill" that houses Lust, Sloth, and Gluttony, a very conspicuous sign advises visitors the show "is not suitable for adolescents." The art museum, which is located in the city center, presents Pride, Envy, Anger, and Avarice.

Tags: Andreas Gursky, art, art museum, art museum bern, Bern, Cardinal sins, Cindy Sherman, switzerland, Yinka Shonibare, Zentrum Paul Klee

Continue reading “No Art Censorship in Bern Museums”

Billionaire Eli Broad Offered $1 Lease For His New Art Museum

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art, Big Givers

What do you get the billionaire who has everything? How about a $1 a year lease for 99 years. This amazing deal is proposed by Los Angeles officials who want to make sure that billionaire Eli Broad creates a museum in the $3 billion Grand Avenue project in downtown Los Angeles. The Grand Avenue project was to be a huge complex of shops, restaurants and hotels but in this weakened economy it has had some trouble getting off the ground.

Not everyone thinks that Broad should get such a sweetheart deal according to an LA Daily News article. County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich wonders why the city, which is struggling financially, would give up the potential tax revenue in favor of benefiting one of the country's richest men. The art museum won't generate property or sales taxes and although Broad is one of the city's most philanthropic citizens it still seems like a tremendous gift.

The Broad collection was originally supposed to go to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2008 he decided that he wouldn't be installing his 2,000 work contemporary art collection at the LACMA and other locations in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica were discussed. The art is currently located in a four-story building in Santa Monica but it is in a building that does not offer easy public access. The Santa Monica City Council has also offered to lease a 2.5-acre site a couple of blocks from the beach for Broad's museum for $1 per year for 99 years.

Tags: art museum, eli broad, grand avenue, los angeles

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

Museum of Latin American Art Gets Big Endowment

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

One museum that has gotten a bit of financial help this week is the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California. It has received a $25 million endowment from the estate of its founder. Dr. Robert Gumbiner. According to the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Gumbiner was a pioneer in managed healthcare, who died in January at 85. He had established the museum in 1996 and was an avid collector of Latin American art. He left his substantial collection to the museum. Only the earnings of the endowment may be used to pay the museum's operating expenses and ten percent of the earnings have to be reinvested in the endowment in order to help keep the museum going for a long time. The museum will also get additional support from a gift of the Robert Gumbiner Foundation. Both endowments will generate money to pay less than half of the museum's operating costs and so fundraising is still essential. A gala is planned for April 25 and will be the first of a series of events to raise money for the museum.

The museum is located in the former home of the Balboa Amusement Producing Company, a silent film studio between 1913 and 1918. It is currently showing a solo exhibition by the Puerto Rican artist, Arnaldo Roche, titled Arnaldo Roche: Brotherhood/Hermandad which is comprised of 19 large-scale works created between 2002 and 2007.

Tags: art museum, ArtMuseum, long beach california, LongBeachCalifornia, molaa, museum of latin american art, MuseumOfLatinAmericanArt

Las Vegas Art Museum Is Closing

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

It looks like art will be increasingly hard to find in Las Vegas. I wrote last April about the closing of the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in the Venetian. Now the Las Vegas Sun reports that the Las Vegas Art Museum is closing its doors. The museum will close on February 28th. It will keep its name and remain an entity with the hope of opening up its doors again in better times. Like many other museums, the LVAM has been suffering from a lack of donations. The museum cut spending and jobs less than three months ago in an effort to keep the museum viable. The museum began 59 years ago as an art league and became a fine art museum in 1974. It specializes in contemporary art and is currently showing an exhibit featuring 20 emerging artists who live and work in Los Angeles, California.

Source

Tags: art museum, ArtMuseum, culture in trouble, CultureInTrouble, las vegas, LasVegas

Eli Broad Plans His Own Art Museum

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

So maybe now we know why billionaire art collector Eli Broad was so busy at the contemporary art shows in New York last week. Bloomberg reports that Broad is interested in building a public museum in Beverly Hills, California. The news comes after a year in which he got his own building at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art but then decided not to give his collection to the museum. Broad's new museum would display works from his charitable foundation and personal collection and would hopefully open in about three years. It would be located near the corner of Santa Monica and Wilshire boulevards and unseat a Starbucks. The foundation already has a headquarters and private museum in Santa Monica.

Broad's foundation is heavily contemporary with photographs by Cindy Sherman, paintings by Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol's 1986 silkscreen of the Statue of Liberty, Damien Hirst's 1994 lamb in formaldehyde, and Charles Ray's 1973 collection of 16 Kodachrome self-portraits called ``All My Clothes.'' Last week he picked up Ed Ruscha's 1969 mustard-hued ``Desire'' for $2.4 million, Donald Judd aluminum and Plexiglas sculpture for $1.1 million, a small Robert Rauschenberg painting for $2.6 million, and a Jeff Koons sculpture for $2.2 million.

Source

Tags: art, art museum, ArtMuseum, beverly hills, BeverlyHills, eli broad, EliBroad

Las Vegas Guggenheim Heritage To Close

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

For a brief shining moment it looked like art was going to be the next big thing in Las Vegas casinos, soon there will be only one Las Vegas Strip museum now (the gallery in the Bellagio) that the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in the Venetian is set to close on May 11. In 2001, the Guggenheim opened two Las Vegas museums designed by Rem Koolhaas: the Guggenheim Las Vegas and the Guggenheim Hermitage. The Guggenheim Las Vegas closed 15 months later after one showy exhibit dedicated to the Art of the Motorcycle. The Guggenheim Hermitage was a partnership between the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Guggeenheim Heritage saw shows by Lichtenstein, Johns, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Wesselmann, Beckmann, Degas, Picasso, Rubens, Miro, Chagall, Bonnard, Kandinsky, Modigliani and Klee but some say that the New York Guggenheim did not do all it could to help their Las Vegas outpost stay afloat. Others say that even with more exhibits the Guggenheim Hermitage struggled to create community interest. If you want to check out the museum, now is the time, they are offering free admission until the museum closes.

[Thanks, Lana]

Source

Tags: art museum, guggenheim, hermitage, las vegas, venetian hotel, VenetianHotel

Crystal Bridges Museum, The Home of Wal-Mart Art

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

Would you travel to Bentonville, Arkansas for the art? You might want to in 2010 after Crystal Bridges, the art museum being created by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton opens. Walton is creating a national art museum that is dedicated to American artists from the Colonial period to the present. In 2005 Walton outbid a couple of East Coast museums, paying a record price for the 1849 Asher B. Durand work "Kindred Spirits." While some have expressed a certain snobbery over a museum founded by Wal-Mart others applaud the project both for the impressive nature of Walton's collection and for her decision to install the art in an area that is underserved when it comes to major art museums.

The museum design by architect Moshe Safdie is done in glass and light wood and is arranged around two ponds at the center of the compound which are spanned by bridges. The building is set on around 100 acres of Ozarks forest, donated by the Walton family. Visitors will follow a lane through the woods to a knoll that overlooks the pavilions. From the knoll, glass elevators take visitors to a courtyard with a glass lobby that has a view of the water. The museum will offer 34,000 square feet of exhibition space as well as a cafe, performance hall, library and research center. Crystal Bridges is expected to bring in 250,000 visitors a year.

Gallery: Crystal Bridges Museum

Tags: alice walton, arkanasas, art museum, crystal bridges, wal-mart

art museum

Featured Galleries

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular

Also on AOL