The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Saturday, January 27, 2024


 
A Lincoln trove lands at the library (pie safe included)

A flag from Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 campaign with his running mate, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine at the New York Public Library in New York on Jan. 19, 2024. The New York Public Library is acquiring the collection of Jonathan Mann, an Abraham Lincoln expert who died last summer after a random attack on the Manhattan Bridge. (George Etheredge/The New York Times)

by Jennifer Schuessler


NEW YORK, NY.- The New York Public Library’s grand research library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street is home to Virginia Woolf’s walking stick, Charles Dickens’ desk chair and the original Winnie-the-Pooh. But one evening last week, a crowd in one of the library’s elegant public rooms was milling around a goofier treasure: an Abraham Lincoln-themed pie safe. The safe — a large cabinet made to store pies, inlaid with decorative punched-tin panels celebrating the president — was probably created for one of his campaigns. It was on view at a memorial for Jonathan Mann, a collector whose trove of rare letters, photographs, banners, ballots, ribbons, campaign songbooks and other sundry bits of Lincolniana is being acquired by the library. “There are all these individual gems,” Julie Golia, the library’s associate director of manuscripts, archives and rare books, said at the event, which drew about 200 friends, family, collectors and figures from the auction worl ... More


The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
Albert Frey’s Aluminaire House, one of the earliest and edgiest examples of the International Style of modernist architecture in America, being reconstructed on the grounds of the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Springs, Calif. on Jan. 16, 2024. The Aluminaire House drew crowds, and ridicule, in 1931. After several moves and a brush with demolition, it has found a home in Southern California. (Jake Michaels/The New York Times).





Met Opera taps its endowment again to weather downturn   Hands-on art at the Brooklyn Museum's new education center   Georgia Museum of Art receives $1M+ grant to enhance galleries


The Metropolitan Opera in New York, Jan. 24, 2024. The Metropolitan Opera has dipped into its endowment fund again to cover operating expenses as it tries to bounce back from the pandemic. (Amir Hamja/The New York Times)

by Javier C. Hernández


NEW YORK, NY.- The Metropolitan Opera, still reeling from the disruption brought by the pandemic, said Thursday that it had withdrawn nearly $40 million in additional emergency funds from its endowment as it works to survive one of the most trying periods in its 141-year history. The move came after the Met took $30 million from its endowment fund last season to help cover operating expenses amid weak ticket sales and a cash shortfall. Nonprofits usually try to avoid drawing down their endowments, which are meant to grow over time while producing investment income. The Met’s endowment fund is now worth about $255 million, down from $309 ... More
 

Inside the newly renovated Toby Devan Lewis Education Center at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, Jan. 24, 2024. (Rebecca Smeyne/The New York Times)

NEW YORK, NY.- It could easily be an alien civilization: Its citizens have no gender, no organized religion, no formal government. They inhabit a lush ecosystem of candy-colored vegetation, where plants can grow infinitely tall. Residents travel on driverless, ring-shaped buses that hover in the atmosphere. A single year lasts more than two centuries. Yet as extraterrestrial as this environment sounds, you can soon encounter it in New York City. Called “Artland,” it is an ever-expanding fantasy world and traveling museum exhibition designed by children, molded from modeling clay and overseen by the internationally renowned artist Do Ho Suh, whose two young daughters conceived it. On Saturday, from noon to 3 p.m., “Artland” will welcome the public to a free celebration of the newly ... More
 

Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia.

ATHENS, GA.- The Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia recently received a major grant from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation to reimagine and reinstall the museum’s permanent collection galleries. The $1,085,000 grant is the largest in the museum’s history. The foundation is specifically interested in supporting the museum’s work as a university museum. To that end, a portion of the grant will expand the museum’s opportunities for UGA students, ensuring that they benefit from enhanced engagement with the museum’s collections and staff. “The University of Georgia is very proud to be home to the Georgia Museum of Art,” said S. Jack Hu, UGA’s senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. “We are immensely grateful to the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation for supporting the museum’s work and the university’s teaching, research and service missions.” ... More


How art creates us   'Anselm Kiefer: For Jean Noël Vuarnet' first exhibition of watercolores by artist in over 40 years   Copenhagen Contemporary reopens 2000 m2 with new art and a grand opening party


"Crucified Christ," by Alonso Cano (1646), at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts Museum in Madrid, Spain, on Feb. 7, 2023. (Emilio Parra Doiztua/The New York Times)

by David Brooks


NEW YORK, NY.- Recently, while browsing in the Museum of Modern Art store in New York, I came across a tote bag with the inscription “You are no longer the same after experiencing art.” It’s a nice sentiment, I thought, but is it true? Or to be more specific: Does consuming art, music, literature and the rest of what we call culture make you a better person? Ages ago, Aristotle thought it did, but these days, a lot of people seem to doubt it. Surveys show that Americans are abandoning cultural institutions. Since the early 2000s, fewer and fewer people say that they visit art museums and galleries, go to see plays or attend classical music concerts, opera or ballet. College students are ... More
 

Installation Images , Anselm Kiefer: White Cube, Paris.

PARIS.- White Cube Paris is currently presenting until March 2nd, 2024 an exhibition of watercolors by Anselm Kiefer, created over the past decade in the artist’s studio in France. A distinct and important part of his practice, this exhibition marks the first in over 40 years dedicated solely to Kiefer’s watercolors. Comprising a selection of works on paper, the exhibition is titled after French philosopher and writer Jean-Noël Vuarnet, whose time at the Villa Medici (The French Academy in Rome) in the late 1970s inspired his book Extases féminines (1980). Depicting figures drawn from literary, biblical, mythical and artistic references, including Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn, and Die Windsbraut (The Bride of the Wind), after Oskar Kokoschka’s 1913–14 painting, alongside images of flowers and landscapes, these works offer a rare opportunity to view Kiefer’s more intimate watercolors. Watercolour is often r ... More
 

Kapwani Kiwanga, pink-blue, 2017. Baker-Miller pink paint, white paint, white fluorescent lights, blue fluorescent lights, variable dimensions. Exhibition view, "A wall is just a wall (and nothing more at all)", Esker Foundation, Calgary (CA), 2018.© Kapwani Kiwanga / VISDA, Photo John Dean. Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, London / Galerie Poggi, Paris / Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.


COPENHAGEN .- Copenhagen Contemporary kicks off 2024 filling the entire ground floor with new and outstanding art. Two very different exhibitions – the international artist Kapwani Kiwanga and Danish artist Cathrine Raben Davidsen – transform CC’s three large halls, and more than 2.000 m2 of space with mesmerizing paintings, poisonous flowers, and vibrant installations. We are celebrating the double opening of the two exhibitions The Length of the Horizon and Let Everything Happen to You with a grand party co-hosted with Danish ... More



Work on the basis of depiction of space by Max Beckmann explored by Kunstmuseum Den Haag   Julien's auctions lifts off 'History, Space, and Technology' of 250 artifacts from world's greatest leaders and legends   Cleveland Museum of Art acquires rare masterpiece, surrealist photomontages and figurative sculpture


Actors, 1941-1942, Oil on canvas (triptych), detail from right part, 199,4 x 83,7 cm, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA, Donation of Lois Orswell.

THE HAGUE.- Sharp angles, disconcerting perspectives, restrictive framing. Artist Max Beckmann used all kinds of techniques to manipulate space in his paintings. The painted surface was his domain. Painting allowed Beckmann to control reality, which he believed had both physical and spiritual dimensions. His unique depiction of space made him one of the most extraordinary and idiosyncratic artists of the twentieth century. In Universum Max Beckmann Kunstmuseum Den Haag – for the first time – explores his work on the basis of his depiction of space. Max Beckmann (1884-1950) filled his paintings with images and meanings that are not easy to decipher. He employed a unique visual language, which he developed using many sources (literature, religion, mythology) as well as his own observations. His paintings are charged, intellectual, spiritual. ... More
 

U.S. Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager signed Bell X-1 Model rocket research plane.

LOS ANGELES, CA.- Julien’s Auctions has launched “HISTORY, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY” an auction event offering over 250 historical objects from the world’s greatest leaders and legends, who led and transformed the worlds of arts and entertainment, history and politics, as well as a number of rare artifacts used in space exploration, military conflict and scientific discovery taking place online Thursday, February 1st at Julien’s Auctions. Man’s thrilling journey through space and epic missions into the universe will be highlighted with a special collection of spacecraft hardware from NASA’s Apollo and Space Shuttle programs including original Saturn-5 rocket telemetry units; beta-cloth insulation panels used to protect the space shuttle orbiters from solar radiation; orbiter heat shield "Fit Check" tiles; solid rocket booster system tunnel insulation ... More
 

Birdcage Kid (Boy), 2023. Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (British, Nigerian, b. 1962). Fiberglass, cotton, globe, brass, steel, replica birds (domestic feathers), wood, rope, metal; 135.5 x 102 x 88.5 cm. Partial purchase from the J. H. Wade Trust Fund and partial gift of Mark Dinner in honor of Dr. Dudley S. Dinner.

CLEVELAND, OHIO.- The Cleveland Museum of Art announces the acquisition of a rare, late Gothic masterpiece by Veit Stoss, 38 gelatin silver print photomontages by Grete Stern, and a figurative sculpture by British Nigerian contemporary artist, Yinka Shonibare CBE RA. Veit Stoss was one of the most influential German sculptors and is most celebrated today for his dramatically carved and emotionally intense limewood sculptures. This is the first sculpture by Stoss acquired by the CMA. The work depicts Jesse, described in the Bible as the father of David who became king of the Israelites; Jesse is therefore regarded as an ancestor of Christ. “Stoss is the seminal artist of this genre,” said William M. Griswold, CMA ... More


Over 40 paintings from the James Irvine Swinden Family Collection on public display for the first time   Ahlers & Ogletree announces Rare Books & Historical Documents Collection Auction   Latvian National Museum of Art showing oeuvre 'To Paint Every Day' part of the cycle The Generation


Peter Adams, Roots of Antiquity, 20 x 16 inches.

SAN CLEMENTE, CA.- San Clemente’s premiere cultural destination, Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens, announced the opening of its latest exhibition, “Madeline’s Treasures, Selections from the James Irvine Swinden Family Collection.” Featuring over 40 paintings from the Irvine Family Collection, “Madeline’s Treasures” invites viewers to experience a love letter of art from Mr. Swinden to his late wife Madeline. Open during visiting hours now through April 7th, this exhibit is the first time these paintings have been on public display. “We are honored that Mr. Irvine Swinden chose Casa Romantica to host the first public exhibit of these paintings," shared Kylie Travis, Executive Director, Operations and Programming at Casa Romantica. “Madeline’s Treasures is truly one of a kind, and we are excited to share these wonderful examples of contemporary California Impressionism, which Madeline and ... More
 

The auction’s undisputed star lot is the Second Folio edition of Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, printed in London in 1632 (est. $200,000-$250,000).

ATLANTA, GA.- William Shakespeare's Second Folio dated to 1632, an 1818 copy of the Declaration of Independence as published by Benjamin Owen Tyler, and a sea letter from 1793 signed by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are just a few of the expected headliners in Ahlers & Ogletree’s auction slated for February 7th-9th, online and live in the Atlanta gallery. The three-day event comprises the lifetime collection of important historical books and documents from the estate of Fred Bentley, Sr. – over 900 lots in all across the three days. An avid reader and collector his entire life, Mr. Bentley gave generously to his community in support of this passion by founding the rare book rooms at Brenau College and Kennesaw State University. Born and raised in Georgia, ... More
 

Biruta Delle. A Working Day’s Morning on the Left Bank of the Daugava. 1979. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga. Photo: Didzis Grodzs.

RIGA.- Since 27 January through to 21 April 2024, the exhibition of Biruta Delle’s oeuvre To Paint Every Day, part of the cycle The Generation, is on view in the right wing galleries of the 2nd floor of the main building of the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga. Biruta Delle (1944) is a highly respected Latvian artist beloved by exhibition-goers, who has been painting for more than sixty years. Pedagogue Ansis Stunda taught her individually because he saw a special talent. “I no longer had free time – ever. But neither did I want it,” Delle writes in her autobiography (2007). After few years of studying at the Art Academy of Latvia under Konrāds Ubāns, she left the university. The young painter found support among the beatniks in cafe Kaza. Despite her incomplete education, Biruta Delle’s ... More




Coming up at Heritage: A 1991 Topps Baseball Desert Shield Wax Box with 36 Packs



More News

NOMA will install newly commissioned works by Elmgreen & Dragset and Sarah Sze this year
NEW ORLEANS, LA.- The New Orleans Museum of Art has announced a year-long celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, an important part of the museum’s campus and collection. The occasion will be marked with new permanent additions to the nearly 100 works of art installed in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden, programmatic offerings highlighting the natural and artistic beauty of the garden, and a book by publisher Monacelli that focuses on the history of the 12-acre garden and its expansion in 2019. Consistently named one of the top sculpture gardens in the country, the Besthoff Sculpture Garden highlights world-class art from the 19th century to the present day in a landscape unique to South Louisiana. True to Sydney and Walda Besthoff’s vision for offering a space ... More

Dominic Sessa: Fashion's latest obsession
PARIS.- This is a season of firsts for Dominic Sessa — a wondrous Cinderella moment on the threshold of further adventures in fame. Not yet two weeks out from the Golden Globes, when the 21-year-old actor sauntered onto the red carpet — tousle-haired in a Saint Laurent suit, his black silk shirt unbuttoned, his eyes hidden behind dark shades — unleashing a million online stans, he arrived in Paris for his first time at the fashion shows. It has been a virtual eye blink since Sessa was in Santa Monica, California, to receive the Critics Choice Award for best young actor or actress, quickly followed by a BAFTA nomination in the best supporting actor category for his film debut in “The Holdovers,” director Alexander Payne’s darkly funny period drama set at a New England boarding school in the 1970s. Here he is now in the opulent breakfast ... More

Katherine Maher named CEO of NPR
NEW YORK, NY.- NPR announced Wednesday that Katherine Maher would be its next chief executive, picking a leader with an extensive track record in the nonprofit world but without one in the realm of public radio. Maher was previously the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the popular online resource Wikipedia by raising money and providing technology infrastructure, among other services. She is the CEO of Web Summit, an organization that holds technology events around the world. Jennifer Ferro, the chair of NPR’s board, said in a statement that Maher stood out because of her experience tackling “issues around reliable and accessible information,” adding that the search focused on candidates who could “reach audiences on new and existing platforms.” Maher, 40, will take over at NPR during a critical ... More

International exhibition about the diversity of paper as an artist's medium in 'PULP'
DEVON.- Ready-to-wear paper cloaks; polished paper ‘gemstones’; hyper realistic plant replicas; paper made from mushrooms; suits of armour folded from a single sheet of paper; stop-motion animations; and origamic architectural models are amongst work from 30 international artists on show in PULP (20 January - 13 April 2024) at MAKE Southwest. The exhibition celebrates both paper in its widest uses and the undeniable innovation and skill of the artists placing this universal medium at the heart of their work. A material with a history extending as far back as 100BCE China, paper has a multitude of uses. Through varying scales from miniature to vast, two-dimensional and three-dimensional, and from intricately detailed, exquisitely cut pieces to broad sculptural forms, PULP aims to show the huge variety of applications and techniques ... More

Mingei International Museum and CECUT - Centro Cultural Tijuana opening 'La Frontera'
SAN DIEGO, CA .- The exhibition, La Frontera, explores the complexity of the U.S.–Mexico border as a physical reality, geopolitical construction and state of being through the medium of jewelry – an object repeatedly used for communication throughout human history. Mingei International Museum presents this traveling exhibition in conjunction with a concurrent La Frontera exhibition at CECUT- Centro Cultural Tijuana. At Mingei, La Frontera features over 85 works from contemporary jewelry artists from diverse backgrounds, including 24 artists who were born, raised, live or work along the U.S.–Mexico border region. Expanding on traditional jewelry forms, materials and function each artist redefines jewelry itself as they explore the symbolic and material significance of the borderlands and the stories they tell of geography, ... More

Lesley Lokko to receive Royal Gold Medal 2024 for architecture
LONDON.- The Royal Institute of British Architects recently announced that Professor Lesley Lokko, the acclaimed Ghanaian-Scottish architect, educator, author and curator, will receive the Royal Gold Medal 2024 for architecture. One of the world’s highest honours in architecture – presented on behalf of His Majesty the King – the medal recognises Lokko’s commitment to championing diverse approaches to architectural practice and education. For over two decades, Lokko has devoted her career to amplifying under-represented voices and examining the complex relationship between architecture, identity and race, profoundly impacting architectural education, dialogue and discourse. Her work to “democratise architecture” has been hailed by the RIBA Honours Committee 2024 as a “clarion call for equitable representation in ... More

New (and old) moves for a choreographer to hip-hop's stars
NEW YORK, NY.- Choreographer Fatima Robinson made her name, at 21, with an epic Michael Jackson video. Two decades later, she orchestrated the moves for 1,000 performers at a Super Bowl halftime show. Then she rose to become Beyoncé’s director of choreography. But among the most meaningful work of her career has boiled down to a series of handclaps. When Robinson was growing up in Los Angeles, her mother took her and her two younger sisters to see “The Color Purple” — a family milestone. After that, “I saw the movie probably every year of my life,” she said. The girls were inspired by the onscreen sisters’ patty-cake-style routine; they made the claps their own and share it to this day, often in emoji form. If “we’re getting on each other’s nerves,” Robinson said, it’s a symbol of peace. “We know that’s, like, that ... More

How 'Days of Wine and Roses' became their passion project
NEW YORK, NY.- As origin stories go, the transformation of “Days of Wine and Roses” from a movie into a musical is a straight shot, with a twist. Kelli O’Hara and Adam Guettel had the inkling more than 20 years ago, when she was a Broadway ingenue, working on what became her breakthrough Tony-nominated role in “Light in the Piazza.” Guettel had written the music and lyrics for that musical, which went on to earn him a Tony Award for best score. They talked through their coordinating vision for evolving “Wine and Roses,” the midcentury classic of a romance ruined by addiction. “I think I used the words ‘a weird dark opera,’” O’Hara recalled. She already had a co-star in mind: Brian d’Arcy James, debonair and wry, like Jack Lemmon was in the 1962 movie, opposite the O’Hara look-alike Lee Remick. The film memorably traced ... More

Brittany Howard taps into the ancestors, and finds a new groove
NASHVILLE, TN.- When Brittany Howard was 17, she lived alone, in a haunted house in Athens, Alabama, that had belonged to her great-grandmother. At first, she was thrilled. Alabama Shakes, the band she’d started with her high school classmate Zac Cockrell, practiced there. Then doors started to open on their own. Cabinets slammed shut. One day, Howard was outside the back door when she heard the lock slide closed on the inside. Thinking someone had broken in, she crept into the kitchen and grabbed a weapon she kept behind her fridge. “I had this machete, and I’m clearing rooms in the house like I’m Bruce Willis in ‘Pulp Fiction,’” she said on an afternoon in early January. “There’s nobody in the house.” After seven years, Howard abandoned the old, run-down duplex, but she has long maintained a connection to the ghosts of ... More


PhotoGalleries

Gabriele Münter

TARWUK

Awol Erizku

Leo Villareal


Flashback
On a day like today, Dutch painter Hendrick Avercamp was born
January 27, 1585. Hendrick Avercamp (January 27, 1585 (bapt.) - May 15, 1634 (buried)) was a Dutch painter. Avercamp was born in Amsterdam, where he studied with the Danish-born portrait painter Pieter Isaacks (1569–1625), and perhaps also with David Vinckboons. In 1608 he moved from Amsterdam to Kampen in the province of Overijssel. Avercamp was mute and was known as "de Stomme van Kampen" (the mute of Kampen). In this image: Hendrick Avercamp, IJsgezicht met jager die een otter toont. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

  
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