| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Friday, April 23, 2021 |
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| | What should museums do with the bones of the enslaved? | |
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A page from from Mortons Crania Americana, one of a series of works outlining a supposed hierarchy of intelligence based on skull size, with Europeans on top. As one museum has pledged to return skulls held in an infamous collection, others, including the Smithsonian, are reckoning with their own holdings of African-American remains. Via National Library of Medicine via The New York Times.
by Jennifer Schuessler
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The Morton Cranial Collection, assembled by the 19th-century physician and anatomist Samuel George Morton, is one of the more complicated holdings of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Consisting of some 1,300 skulls gathered around the world, it provided the foundation for Mortons influential racist theories of differences in intelligence among races, which helped establish the now-discredited race science that contributed to 20th-century eugenics. In recent years, part of the collection was prominently displayed in a museum classroom, a ghoulish object lesson in an infamous chapter of scientific history. Last summer, after student activists highlighted the fact that some 50 skulls had come from enslaved Africans in Cuba, the museum moved the displayed skulls into storage with the rest of the collection. And last week, shortly after the release of outside research indicating roughly 14 other skulls had come from Black Philadelphian ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day View of the exhibition GRAFIK! Five Centuries of German and Austrian Graphics. Photo Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Denis Farley.
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| Group show investigates geometric abstraction among a broad array of artists | | Getty announces international project to study Soviet-era plastics | | Louisiana Museum of Modern Art reopens with new exhibition: Mother! Origin of Life | 
Paul Kremer, Drop 22, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 40 in. (152.4 x 101.6 cm.).
NEW YORK, NY.- Alexander Berggruen is presenting Shapes. This exhibition runs April 21-May 27, 2021 at the gallery: 1018 Madison Avenue, Floor 3, New York, NY, 10075. This group show investigates geometric abstraction among a broad array of artists. The works included in the exhibition explore the vast possible interpretations of boundless iterations of form. Shapes can operate unhindered by their relation to the space around them. Or shapes can appear as relational fragments, sometimes recalling distinct objects and locations. Certain artists in this exhibition employ shapes such that their works will operate independently from their surroundings. Ellsworth Kelly stated: I have worked to free shape from its ground, and then to work the shape so that it has a definite relationship to the space around it; so that it has a clarity and a measure within itself of its parts (angles, curves, edges and mass); and so that, with color and tona ... More | | 
Radiogerät SKR 730,VEB Stern Radio Berlin, Werksentwurf ,1990 © Die Neue Sammlung - The Design Museum, A. Laurenzo.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- A childrens barbershop play set, a stylish watering can, a Space Age pedicure kit, and an egg-shaped garden chair are just some of the everyday objects from the former East Germany that hold outsized importance, as scientists use them to learn more about how plastic production and design were shaped behind the Iron Curtain. The Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) has partnered with Die Neue Sammlung - The Design Museum in Munich, the Wende Museum of the Cold War in Los Angeles and the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences to launch German Democratic Plastics in Design, a project looking at how Soviet-era plastics were made and valued. These institutions are studying over 300 household plastic objects made between 1949 and 1990 that are in the collections of the Wende Museum and Die Neue Sammlung - The Design Museum. Ranging from kitchen appliances ... More | | 
Suzanne Valadon, The Abandoned Doll, 1921. Oil on canvas,129,5 x 81,5 cm. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Photo: Lee Stalsworth, Fine Art through Photography, LLC.
HUMLEBÃK.- Louisiana Museum of Modern Art reopened with this years big spring and summer exhibition Mother! Origin of Life. A story of motherhood as portrayed and investigated in modern Western art and culture. Richly unfolded and illuminated in interaction with art, literature, music, film, religion and cultural history. The artworks in the exhibition range from prehistoric fertility goddesses and the Madonnas in Christian iconography to modern images of mother and child and the contemporary reinvention of the role of the mother. Cold or warm, present or absent everyone has a mother. The archetypal mother, embodied in the female figure as a symbol of life and fertility, exists across all times and cultures. The mother ushers us into the world. She is our physical and cultural origin. Even if she ... More |
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| The 5th Audemars Piguet Art Commission is unveiled in Hong Kong | | Original artwork for Boston's 'Don't Look Back' heads to Heritage Auctions | | Stained glass that breaks all the rules | 
Installation image of The Moon is Leaving Us by Phoebe Hui, commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Courtesy of the artist and Audemars Piguet.
HONG KONG.- Audemars Piguet Contemporary unveiled the 5th Audemars Piguet Art Commission by Hong Kong-based multidisciplinary artist Phoebe Hui in the Duplex Studio at Tai Kwun, Centre for Heritage and Arts, Hong Kong from 25 April 23 May 2021, concluding with Art Basel in Hong Kong. The large-scale, site-specific installation titled The Moon is Leaving Us was conceived and realised by Hui in collaboration with guest curator Ying Kwok, with the support of Audemars Piguet Contemporary curator Audrey Teichmann. The artwork explores historical and contemporary observations of the Moon in an effort to re-examine our relationship with it and embrace new perspectives on science through contemporary art.The Moon is Leaving Us is on view by invitation only due to COVID-19 until 23 May 2021. It is publicly accessible through a virtual exhibition tour and digital curator ... More | | 
Gary Norman (American, 20th Century), Boston-Don't Look Back album cover, 1978. Acrylic and airbrush on board, 25 x 46 inches. Estimate: $5,000 - $7,000.
DALLAS, TX.- Gary Norman painted just one album cover during his long career as a maker of commercial art and creator of toy prototypes. That album landed in four million homes in just its first month of release, in August 1978, on its way to becoming one of the most beloved, best-selling and debated records of classic rock's defining decade. And until April 2021, Norman had no idea just how popular Boston's Don't Look Back really was. He says he never knew it reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts, a feat not even achieved by Boston's self-titled 1976 debut, which featured the immortal "More Than a Feeling." Or that its title track, powered by a guitar riff still catchy like a cold, was a Top 5 pop hit. Or that Don't Look Back was among the very first CDs released upon the format's debut in the early 1980s. "I'm not really a music historian," Norman said after listening to that brief highlight reel of Boston's second record. "But wow. The things you find out." He played a small part in that history ... More | | 
The soldering of a glazed glass panel at Judson Studios, Los Angeless oldest stained glass studio, April 16, 2021. Judson Studios is collaborating with emerging and established artists to modernize a medieval craft. Yudi Ela/The New York Times.
by Adam Popescu
LOS ANGELES (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- In 1893, an itinerant plein-air English painter came to the West Coast to die. At 51, William Lees Judson could look back on a life full of adventure: trans-Atlantic crossings, farming Ontarios plains, fighting under Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War, beaux-arts immersion at Paris Académie Julian. When his wife died suddenly and his own health soured, doctors advised him to take the California cure and spend his last days in the Golden States hot, dry air. Instead, he lived another 35 years, started USCs College of Fine Arts in this building, and helped launch the Arts and Crafts movement, his great-great-grandchild David Judson said recently at the stained glass studio the elder Judson founded in 1897. From the studio in Highland Park, with its ... More |
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| Christie's to offer the collection of Prof Dr Karin von Maur | | Lynda Roscoe Hartigan named Executive Director and CEO of the Peabody Essex Museum | | The pianist Hasaan Ibn Ali's lone album arrives, 56 years later | 
Hanna Höch, In der Wüste (In the Desert). Estimate: 40,000-60,000 EUR. © Christie's Images Ltd 2021.
AMSTERDAM.- The Curators Eye: The Collection of Prof Dr Karin von Maur proposes a selection of 145 works of art from the 20th Century. Works by German artists from Schlemmer, Peter Roehr and Joseph Beuys to Hannah Höch and Daniel Richter sit alongside international figures such as Alighiero Boetti, Alexander Calder and Roman Opałka. Rich in breadth and deep in scope, each work bears witness to the eye for detail, quality and significance that drove every aspect of her scholarly activities. The online sale will take place on www.christies.com/vonmaur between 11 and 25 May 2021. A historian, curator and an important cultural voice of her generation, Karin von Maur (born 1938) played a key role in shaping the German art scene as deputy director of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. She oversaw the archive of the German artist Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943), becoming an internationally-renowned expert ... More | | 
First woman Director of the nations oldest continuously operating museum. Courtesy PEM. Photo: Alex Paul.
SALEM, MASS.- The Peabody Essex Museum today announces that Lynda Roscoe Hartigan will become PEMs next Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Executive Director and CEO. Hartigan will assume her role on August 23, 2021 and become the first woman director of the nations oldest continuously operating museum. Currently the Deputy Director for Collections & Research and Chief Innovation Officer at Canadas largest and most visited museum, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Hartigan brings unparalleled organizational experience, a track record of excellence, and a progressive vision to advance PEM as a vital and positive force in peoples lives. We are thrilled to have Lynda at the helm, leading PEM boldly into the future, said Stuart W. Pratt, Chair of PEMs Board of Trustees. As the Museum emerges from the pandemic and what has been the most extraordinary ... More | | 
The pianist Hasaan Ibn Ali. The Philadelphia musicians only album as a bandleader was long thought lost in a fire now his legacy could undergo a reassessment. Larry Fink via The New York Times.
by Dave Cantor
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Hasaan Ibn Ali worked in an ensemble led by Max Roach and was credited as the Legendary Hasaan on one of the groundbreaking drummers mid-'60s releases. But the pianist didnt release an album as a bandleader during his lifetime and in fact, only ever appeared on that one studio album making him more of a jazz-world footnote than a household name. Now his legacy could undergo a reassessment. Ibn Ali did helm an ensemble in the studio in 1965, and the resulting album, long presumed destroyed in a fire, will be released on Friday as Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album. The saxophonist Odean Pope, who played on the record, said Ibn Alis talents have long ... More |
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| Halle für Kunst Steiermark: A new institution in Graz opens to the public | | Christie's presents 'Paris in New York: A Private Collection of Royère, Vautrin, Jouve' | | Bruce Museum reopens April 27 with Holly Danger's "Let in, Let go" video art installation | 
Jimmie Durham, Painted Self-Portrait, 2007.
GRAZ.- The newly designed Halle für Kunst Steiermark opened its doors today with Europe: Ancient Future, an international group exhibition curated by the institution's artistic director, Sandro Droschl. Under the direction of Sandro Droschl, the institution launches with an increased international focus on contemporary art and multidisciplinary practices. Complementing its existing reputation for outstanding regional productions, this new direction will open up further visual and conceptually exciting spaces to showcase HALLE FÃR KUNST Steiermarks strong and progressive cultural commitment. The institute aims to radiate beyond the boundaries of the field of contemporary art, reflect the diversity in our society and contribute critical and exciting perspectives on the ever-changing present times. As a dynamic platform that supports both international and outstanding local artists, the HALLE FÃR KUNST Steiermark ... More | | 
'Antibes' Floor Lamp, circa 1950. © Christie's Images Ltd 2021.
NEW YORK, NY.- Christies will present Paris in New York: A Private Collection of Royère, Vautrin, Jouve, one from a suite of four Design sales this season, to be held on May 26 at Rockefeller Center, New York. An important collection assembled by two private collectors in the 1990s, Paris in New York features more than 50 iconic works by celebrated 20th Century French masters including Jean Royère (1902-1981)one of the most original and innovative designers of the 20th Centuryon the 40th anniversary of his death. Paris in New York offers famed models by Royère including a Polar Bear Sofa, circa 1950 (estimate $400,000-600,000) and an Antibes Floor Lamp, circa 1950 (estimate $150,000-200,000). The auction boasts a stunning selection of talosel mirrors made by French designer and decorative ... More | | 
Holly Danger, an Experiential Designer and Video Artist based in Stamford.
GREENWICH, CONN.- The Bruce Museum will reopen to members and the public on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, with Let in, Let go, a multi-sensory video projection installation created by Holly Danger, a video artist based in Stamford, CT, who has brought experiential events and immersive installations to audiences around the world. Holly Danger transforms ordinary spaces into moving experiences. She mixes natural and digital elements together, creating vibrantly colored, abstract, audiovisual art that is projected onto natural and architectural surroundings. Each work is a site-specific, one-of-a-kind experience that comes to life with the energy and presence of the viewer. On view in the Museums main gallery through Sunday, May 30, Let in, Let go, explores the synchronization of video, art, light, and sound, and how it relates to emotion, connection, and experience. ... More |
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Signorelli's 'The Circumcision' in 10 minutes | National Gallery
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| More News |
 UOVO expands to South Florida with facilities in Miami and Palm Beach NEW YORK, NY.- UOVO, the premier New York-based provider of fine art and collections storage and services, announced that it has acquired Museo Vault, the leading art logistics firm in South Florida. The acquisition of Museo Vault expands UOVOs footprint by 90,000 square feet, adding two superior art storage facilities, one in Miami and a second in West Palm Beach, along with 5 vehicles for art transport, a state-of-the-art viewing room in Miamis Wynwood district, and an in-house crating shop to its portfolio. Museo Vault was founded in 2008 to support the growing Miami art scene. Since then, Museo Vault has become the preferred art logistics partner of the top collectors, galleries, and institutions in the South Florida region. Like UOVO, Museo Vault was the first facility of its kind, purpose-built exclusively for the storage of fine art and cultural ... More  Boijmans loans 15 Chabots to the Chabot MuseumROTTERDAM.- This month will see Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam transferring 15 paintings by Henk Chabot to the adjacent Chabot Museum on a long-term loan. Together we are making the Museumpark into a robust cultural location. The collections of the two museums were brought together in 2019 and 2020 in two exhibitions that were part of the Boijmans Next Door project. This cooperation is being continued with a long-term loan of 15 paintings by the artist Henk Chabot from Museum Boijmans van Beuningens collection. This significant addition means that the Chabot Museum can present a broader, more multifaceted picture of this prominent Rotterdam painter and sculptor. The works will be shown in an exhibition at the Chabot Museum later this year. Sandra Kisters, Head of Collections and Research, Museum Boijmans Van ... More  Cirque du Soleil announces resumption of showsMONTREAL (AFP).- Cue the acrobats: Cirque du Soleil announced Wednesday that four of its shows will return to the stage after more than a year on hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic. The circus troupe's "Mystere" fantasia and water-themed "O" performances will resume in Las Vegas in June and July respectively, the Montreal-based group said in a statement. Its touring show "KOOZA" will resume in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic in November followed by "LUZIA," which draws its inspiration from the sights and sounds of Mexico, reopening in London in January 2022. "This is the moment we have all been waiting for," said Cirque du Soleil CEO Daniel Lamarre. "Almost 400 days have passed since we had to take a temporary hiatus, and we have been anxiously awaiting our return to the stage," he said. Founded in 1984, Cirque ... More  Miller & Miller announces results of online-only Canadiana & Folk Art auctionNEW HAMBURG.- An oil on board painting by Canadian artist Maud Lewis (1903-1970) sold for $25,960, a circa 1865-1870 Prince Edward Island pocket watch trade sign hit $16,520 and a carved slide-top pencil box made around 1800 in Quebec realized $12,980 in an online-only Canadiana & Folk Art auction held on April 17 by Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd. All prices quoted are in Canadian dollars and are inclusive of an 18 percent buyers premium. The circa 1960 painting on green board by Maud Lewis was the top lot of the auction. It showed a favorite local cove of the artist, with the red-roofed Lynch House on the shore and the ferry Princess Helene entering the harbor. The Princess Helene operated between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for 30 years. The signed and framed work measured 11 inches by 13 inches (sight). The 19th century ... More  The Strawberry Hill ostrich sells for over £1.8m in new house record at Cheffins in Cambridge CAMBRIDGE.- A sculpture of an ostrich from the workshop of celebrated Renaissance sculptor, Giambologna, sold for £1,824,540 when it went under the hammer at the Cheffins Fine Sale in Cambridge on 22nd April. Having been held in a private collection for over 180 years, and previously purchased from the Horace Walpole collection at Strawberry Hill, it was sold to a UK-based, private buyer in the room, making a new house record for the firm. The 30cm-high sculpture, which was detailed in A Description of the Villa of Horace Walpole in 1774, was bought by Walpole between 1765 and 1766, having been created by the workshop of Giambologna between the late 16th century and early 17th century. It was then sold at the Great Sale of Strawberry Hill in 1842, 45 years after Walpoles death, to John Dunn-Gardner of Suffolk, ... More  Exhibition presents a new collection of award-winning collectible design by Aki and Arnaud CoorenLONDON.- Carpenters Workshop Gallery is presenting Tiss-Tiss, a new collection of award-winning collectible design by Aki and Arnaud Cooren. The French-Japanese duo have a cross disciplinary approach, fusing notions of traditional handwoven textiles with aluminium in a minimalist design aesthetic. Tiss-Tiss marks their first solo show in the UK and features a selection of nine works, of which eight are new, including chairs, a dining table, bedside tables, stools, a bench and lamps. Each work exposes a relief of fabric on the surface and sewn stitch imprints on the edges which are cast in aluminium. They capture a moment in time during which the linen fabric was carefully laid out and emphasise the beauty of traditional hand-weaving techniques and resulting irregularity. The fluid impression of the textile imprint is juxtaposed to the architectonic, self-supporting ... More  Dr Barbara Steiner appointed Director of the Bauhaus Dessau FoundationDESSAU-ROÃLAU.- Dr Barbara Steiner will be the new director and CEO of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. She was selected by the Foundation Council from a total of 32 international applicants. The art historian with a doctorate will assume the office on 1 September 2021. With Dr Barbara Steiner, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation is gaining a new director with an outstanding personality and profound knowledge of modernism, says Rainer Robra, Chairman of the Foundation Council and Minister of Culture of Saxony-Anhalt. She also has many years of management experience in cultural institutions. In addition, she worked for many years in Leipzig and thus knows eastern Germany not only from media reports. I have confidence in her ability to link locally relevant topics to global discourses and thus to further develop ... More  Bob Porter, jazz producer and broadcaster, dies at 80NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Bob Porter, who as a record producer guided the reissue of vast swaths of the classic jazz canon, and who as a broadcaster helped build WBGO into the largest jazz radio station in the New York City area, died April 10 at his home in Northvale, New Jersey. He was 80. The cause was complications of esophageal cancer, his wife, Linda Calandra Porter, said. Rock n roll had mostly eclipsed jazz in the public ear by the time Bob Porter produced his first album for Prestige Records, organist Charles Kynards Professor Soul (1968), for which he also wrote the liner notes. Porter began regularly producing sessions for the label, mostly in the soul jazz style of the day, including outings by saxophonists Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, organists Jimmy McGriff and Charles Earland and guitarist Pat ... More  Rare Hermès Himalayan handbag comes to Heritage AuctionsDALLAS, TX.- A dazzling example of the rarest and most exclusive handbag ever made will find a new home when it sold in Luxury Accessories Auction May 2. The Hermès 30cm Matte White Himalayan Niloticus Crocodile Birkin Bag with Palladium Hardware (estimate: $75,000-80,000) is the most expensive and iconic bag offered by the Parisian company. "Hermès handbags have a legendary reputation among collectors around the world, Heritage Auctions Luxury Accessories Director Dian D'Amato said. "This Himalayan Birkin is nothing short of spectacular, reserved for a miniscule percentage of VIP Hermès clients. The bag's extraordinary coloration is created through an exceedingly time-consuming process that achieves the desired gradient of color that sets this bag apart through a palette of color designed to mimic the snow-capped ... More  Denver Art Museum to unveil reimagined campus Oct. 24DENVER, CO.- The Denver Art Museum will reopen its expanded and reimagined campus to the public with a free general admission day on October 24, 2021, unveiling all eight levels of its iconic Gio Ponti- designed Lanny and Sharon Martin Building (formerly referred to as the North or Ponti Building), which originally opened to the public 50 years ago, and the new Anna and John J. Sie Welcome Center. Part of an overall campus reunification and building renovation project designed by Machado Silvetti and Fentress Architects, the campus reopening coincides with the Martin Buildings 50th anniversary. We are looking forward to welcoming our community into new, dynamic spaces this fall, to explore art, world cultures and their own creativity, said Christoph Heinrich, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the DAM. For more than three ... More  Daylight Books to publish 'Work Will Set You Free' by Ted Lau, surreal photographs made inside North KoreaNEW YORK, NY.- Hong Kong based artist Ted Lau was always curious about North Korea having grown up seeing daily headlines about missile tests and nuclear weapons. It was after discovering Andreas Gurskys work in North Korea that he decided he had to visit the country to document it for himself. In 2019, an opportunity arose, and he embarked on an exploratory journey that took him to the capital city of Pyongyang, and to the countryside. In Work Will Set You Free (Daylight, May 2021) Lau peers behind the curtain of this secretive, totalitarian country to find out what everyday life is like for the people. Unable to leave their country, or even travel within it, they live and work in a carefully curated bubble which Lau sought to penetrate with his camera. He knew it would prove challenging. Throughout his travels, he was always accompanied ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Sophie Taeuber-Arp & Hans Arp: Cooperations â Collaborations 
Future Retrieval 
Clarice Beckett 
Kim Tschang-Yeul
Flashback On a day like today, American model and photographer Lee Miller was born April 23, 1907. Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, Lady Penrose (April 23, 1907 - July 21, 1977), was an American photographer. She was a fashion model in New York City in the 1920s before going to Paris, where she became a fashion and fine art photographer. In this image: Lee Miller, Pablo Picasso and Lee Miller after the liberation of Paris, Rue de Grand Augustins, Paris, France, 1944. Photographer: Lee Miller. Negative Number: NC0002-1. Notes: DF VB>BW © Lee Miller Archives, England 2015. All rights reserved. ©Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2015.
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