| The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Saturday, December 16, 2017 |
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| | Peru recovers 79 pre-Hispanic textiles from the Museum of Gothenburg in Sweden | |
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People look at textiles belonging to the pre-Inca Paracas culture, dating to 700 BCE-100 BCE, on display in Peru's Culture Ministry in Lima on December 14, 2017. Fifty lots of 79 textiles from the Paracas culture, recently repatriated, were delivered to the Culture Ministry as part of a second shipment, agreed in 2014 between the governments of Peru and Sweden. Ernesto BENAVIDES / AFP.
LIMA (AFP).- Peru has recovered 79 pre-Hispanic textiles that have been illegally located in Sweden since 1935, the ministry of culture said. In 1935, Swedish ambassador to Peru Sven Karrell acquired the fabrics hailing from the Nasca and Paracas cultures and took them to Sweden illegally -- anonymously donating them to The Museum of Gothenburg, according to the Peruvian government. "Thanks to the collaboration between the foreign minister, the culture minister and the city of Gothenburg, we are celebrating the arrival of the second of the three scheduled deliveries, made up of 79 textiles," said Jorge Arrunategui, deputy minister of cultural heritage and cultural industries. The delivery included wraps, cloths and decorative textile borders from the pre-Hispanic Paracas culture, an Andean society known for their unique composition, colors and weaving techniques using cotton and wool from vicunas -- the national animal of Peru, related to the llama. ... More |
| Hayward Gallery Director Ralph Rugoff announced as the Curator of La Biennale di Venezia | | United States returns to Lebanon relics stolen during civil war | | Jade and gold burial suit, finest to survive ancient China, featured in Nelson-Atkins exhibition | 
Ralph Rugoff will continue to lead the Hayward Gallery whilst curating La Biennale di Venezia 58th International Art Exhibition. © Marc Atkins. Courtesy of the Art Fund.
VENICE.- La Biennale di Venezia has today announced the appointment of Hayward Gallery Director Ralph Rugoff as the Curator the 58th International Art Exhibition to be held in Venice in 2019. The dates of the 58th International Art Exhibition have now been confirmed and the Biennale will be held in Venice from May 11th to November 24th, 2019. Based in London, Ralph has been Director of the Hayward Gallery since May 2006. Over the past 11 years, Ralph has curated many acclaimed solo exhibitions by Jeremy Deller; George Condo; Tracey Emin, Ed Ruscha and Carsten Höller. During his tenure at the gallery, Ralph has also curated numerous group exhibitions including: Psycho Buildings: Artists Take On Architecture (2006); The Painting of Modern Life (2007), and the recent off-site exhibition The Infinite Mix (2016). In 2012, he conceived and organised the project Wide Open School, 100 International ... More | | 
The ancient artifacts included a bull's head, which was recovered this summer from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it had been on loan.
NEW YORK (AFP).- The United States on Friday returned to Lebanese officials three relics stolen during Lebanon's civil war, including a statue once exhibited at New York's premier museum, officials said. The ancient artifacts included a bull's head, which was recovered this summer from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it had been on loan. Believed to be of Greek origin, the marble head dates to around 360 BC and has been valued at around $1.2 million. The museum said it handed the head over to the Manhattan district attorney's office after a curator discovered that it may have been stolen during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war. The other relics -- two marble torsos dating to the 4th and 6th century BC -- were excavated in the 1970s from near Sidon, in southwestern Lebanon. The items were subsequently stolen during the war, US officials said. The Manhattan district attorney, who attended the repatriation ceremony with Lebanon's consul general to ... More | | 
Detail of Jade burial suit bound with gold wire excavated from the tomb of a King of Chu at Shizishan, Xuzhou. Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE-9 CE), first half of second century BCE. L. 176 cm (69.29 in).
KANSAS CITY, MO.- In ancient China, death was believed to be such a continuation of life that burial tombs were plotted as elaborate afterlife arenas, complete with large security forces made of clay, horse-drawn chariots, precious stones and jade figures. Dreams of the Kings: A Jade Suit for Eternity opens Dec. 16 at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City and offers a remarkable window into ancient Chinese burial rituals following the discovery of nearly 100 tombs in the mid-20th century onwards in northern Jiangsu Province. Humankinds dream of eternal life is enduring, said Julián Zugazagoitia, Menefee D. and Mary Louise Blackwell CEO & Director of the Nelson-Atkins. The finest quality jade suit excavated to date, showcased in this exhibition, along with the other burial objects on display, reveal the dreams of the elegant kings of Chu. The centerpiece of Dreams of the ... More |
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| National Air and Space Museum releases "VR Hangar" app | | Infamous lock in US Watergate political scandal sells for $62,500 | | Art Institute receives outstanding endowment gift from Ruttenberg family | 
Users will discover three of the museums most popular air- and spacecraft, each with three immersive scenes.
WASHINGTON, DC.- People across the country and around the world can now use their mobile phones to see moments that made air and space history with the new VR Hangar from the Smithsonians National Air and Space Museum. The VR Hangar brings some of the museums most important milestone artifacts to life using real 3-D-scan data in immersive virtual-reality vignettes. The app is optimized for use with Google Cardboard and similar devices, and is available free of charge in the iOS and Android app stores. Users will discover three of the museums most popular air- and spacecraft, each with three immersive scenes: 1903 Wright Flyer: The 1903 Wright Flyer was the product of a sophisticated four-year program of research and development conducted by Wilbur and Orville Wright beginning in 1899. After building and testing three full-sized gliders, the Wrights first powered airplane flew at Kitty ... More | | 
The lock burglars picked to break into the Democratic National Committees headquarters at the Watergate Complex in 1972.
WASHINGTON (AFP).- The lock of a door forced open in 1972, setting off the Watergate political scandal that transfixed the nation and eventually brought down a sitting US president, has been sold at auction for $62,500. "The discovery of this tampered lock and the subsequent arrest of the five burglars set off a chain of events that would eventually lead to the resignation of President Richard Nixon," said the Nate Sanders auction house in its announcement of the sale late Thursday. The humble lock was for the door to the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington's famed Watergate building complex. The brass mechanism weighing about four pounds (1.8 kilograms) has been preserved for nearly half a century by the building's caretaker after a locksmith replaced it following the break-in. The lock, mounted on a wooden panel, was sold with two letters certifying its authenticity. The break-in at the Democratic Party ... More | | 
Michal Raz-Russo, Ruttenberg Associate Curator, with Buzz and Biff Ruttenberg in Leigh Ledare: The Plot, the second presentation in the Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series.
CHICAGO, IL.- The Art Institute of Chicago announced today the remarkable gift to endow the Ruttenberg Associate Curator of Photography and the Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series. This gift comes from brothers David W. Buzz Ruttenberg and Roger F. Biff Ruttenberg in honor of their parents David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg, who were prolific collectors with a passion to support emerging artists. The Ruttenberg brothers continue their parents legacy with this endowment to encourage under-recognized artists while adding essential support to develop curatorial talent. Our parents cultivated a dynamic and abundant collection of what was contemporary at the time, says Buzz, and they were just as interested in encouraging new artists as in the art itself. The newly endowed curatorial position is currently held by Michal ... More |
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| ARKEN invites visitors to step inside Ugo Rondinone's dreamscape inhabited by 45 lifelike clowns | | Dee Dee Ramone Fender Precision Bass sells for more than $35,000 | | Trove of works on paper by sculptor Henry Moore joins The Huntington's collections | 
Ugo Rondinone, vocabulary of solitude, 2014-2016. Courtesy of the artist.
COPENHAGEN.- Slumbering clowns with hats at rakish angles and sparkling, festive costumes. 45 lifelike clown sculptures move into ARKEN when star artist Ugo Rondinone opens his new solo exhibition. Rainbow-coloured messages in neon, towers of stacked boulders in the Nevada Desert, and melancholy clowns. The internationally renowned Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone creates joyous, meditative works that speak to both heart and mind. From 16 December his fascinating installation vocabulary of solitude takes over ARKENs 150 metre long Art Axis. In Ugo Rondinones immersive installation you step into a brilliantly coloured dreamscape populated by 45 lifelike human sculptures in full clown costume cast from male and female models. Usually clowns are happy, energetic and entertaining, but here they are the opposite tired and passive. They are just people out of character and out of their clown shoes captured ... More | | 
Dee Dee had purchased the guitar shortly after the band's equipment was stolen in April 1983, and used the instrument during the mid-Eighties tours.
BOSTON, MASS.- Dee Dee Ramones cream-colored Fender Precision Bass guitar sold for $35,870 according to Boston-based RR Auction. Dee Dee had purchased the guitar shortly after the band's equipment was stolen in April 1983, and used the instrument during the mid-Eighties tours. Photographic research shows Dee Dee playing the bass in several live performances as well as in the Ramones 1986 video Something to Believe In. This instrument is is believed to be one of the, if not the, last Fender Precision basses owned and used live by Dee Dee Ramone. Authentic Dee Dee Ramone Fender Precision basses made available for sale are extremely rare, with only two documented examples having been publicly offered in the past. With his wiry frame, restless energy, and trademark shouts of 1-2-3-4, Dee Dee helped define the look and sound for countless generations of punk ... More | | 
Henry Moore, (18981986), Woman Holding Book, 1983, charcoal, 11 3/4 à 8 1/4 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation. © The Henry Moore Foundation. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2017 / henry-moore.org.
SAN MARINO, CA.- The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens announced today that it has acquired a major collection of graphic art by Henry Moore (18981986), the most prominent British sculptor of the 20th-century. A gift of the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation, the collection contains about 330 works on paper that represent the full range of Moores graphic work and instantly place The Huntington among the largest Moore repositories in North America. Limited-edition etchings and lithographs comprise the greatest part of the collection, and these intricate, often delicate works explore the same universal themes found in Moores monumental sculptures, which are enjoyed by millions in sculpture ... More |
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| Ulterior Gallery opens a solo exhibition by the late Japanese artist Yasuo Ihara | | World record for the oldest known and only surviving Japanese clock-driven celestial sphere in the world | | Rebekah Beaulieu appointed Director of the Florence Griswold Museum | 
Installation view.
NEW YORK, NY.- Ulterior Gallery is presenting Explanation, a solo exhibition by the late Japanese artist Yasuo Ihara. From the time Ihara moved to the United States in 1963 until he passed away in 2010, his work was rarely shown. This is the first exhibition of his work in more than a decade. Yasuo Ihara was born in Osaka in 1932. He began showing his abstract paintings in the mid 1950s at Kodo Bijutsu Kyokai (Kodo Art Association), a nationally known art organization. His paintings attracted much attention while he was still a student at Kwansei Gakuin University. Ihara graduated in 1955 and later established Chusho Sakka Shudan Tempo (Abstract Artists Group Tempo) with other young artists based in the Kansai area in 1962. Hirokazu Moriguchi, Masaya Sakamoto, and Ihara, who were already showing their work at Kodo Bijutsu Kyokai, converged and founded Tempo with Sadamu Kanki, Yasunobu Nakanishi, and Aine Kinashi, a member of the recently di ... More | | 
Ten months ago, the specialists at Piguet Auction House discovered a celestial globe in the Givaudan collection.
GENEVA.- Piguet Auction House ended its December sales last night with a global result of CHF 5.5 million. The highlight from the week-long auction was the sale of a major discovery in the history of science in Eastern Asia. The oldest Japanese celestial sphere known in the world driven by a clock mechanism reached an astronomical sale price of CHF 912,000 to the applause of all the observers in the room (lot 708), achieving a world record in the process. The Watches and Jewellery sales were very popular among collectors at the Genevan auction house selling for a grand total of CHF 1.9 million. The collection of Fine Wines sold on Monday evening was also met with great success totalling CHF 343,900 proving to be the best Wines sale result to date. Bernard Piguet, Director and Chief Auctioneer at Piguet Auction House, exclaims after the sale of lot 708: This result is the culmination ... More | | 
Beaulieu has most recently been the Associate Director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
OLD LYME, CONN.- The Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut announced the appointment of Rebekah (Becky) Beaulieu as Director of the Museum. With a distinguished career that traverses both art museum and historic site administration, Beaulieu has most recently been the Associate Director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine. She begins her new role on February 19, 2018. Beaulieu was selected from a highly qualified pool of candidates after a rigorous national search led by a committee of trustees. She follows Jeffrey Andersen, who has served as the Museums Director for the past 41 years. Beaulieu and Andersen will briefly work together in February to effect a smooth management transition. It was important for us to get this right, states Ted Hamilton, President of the Museums Board of Trustees. Weve not had to look for a director in over 40 years and we were ... More |
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 BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art displays a selection of recent paintings by Sofia SteviGATESHEAD.- Greek artist Sofia Stevi (b. 1982) debuts her first solo presentation in a public institution this winter at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, displaying a selection of recent paintings alongside a new body of work created for her exhibition, turning forty winks into a decade (15 December 2017 22 April 2018). Stevi makes bold, large-scale paintings, sculpture, books, works on paper and installations, drawing inspiration from literature, philosophy and the everyday. Her works bring together a wide range of references, from the writings of Victorian poet Christina Rossetti, to found images on Instagram, which Stevi interprets through a series of studies on fabric. Her background as a designer is incorporated into her fluid use of line and narrative graphics, abstracting her source material and experimenting with soft, pliable materials, such as untreated ... More Claude Lalanne's record "Crocodile" bureau tops Sotheby's $26.4 million Design Auctions in New YorkNEW YORK, NY.- Sothebys December auctions of 20th Century Design concluded this week in New York with a market-dominating total of $26.4 million far outstripping the series high estimate of $19.4 million, and with a robust 87.5% of lots sold across the trilogy of auctions. Wednesdays sales began with our annual December auction of Important Design, whose remarkable $13.9 million result ranks as the highest-ever total for a various-owner Design auction at Sothebys worldwide. The afternoon offered two dedicated sales of important works by Tiffany Studios works, whose combined result of $12.4 million marks Sothebys highest-ever total for a day of Tiffany sales. These results punctuate an outstanding fall season for Design at Sothebys worldwide, with record-breaking auctions in Paris that included the personal collection of celebrated interior ... More Artworks and personal effects from the estate of artist John Douglas Patrick will be sold online Jan. 15KANSAS CITY, MO.- Dozens of original artworks and other personal effects from the estate of John Douglas Patrick (1863-1937), who studied in France and achieved worldwide acclaim by being one of the first Americans ever to be awarded a medal by the Paris Salon in 1889 for his seminal work Brutality, will be sold in an online auction Monday, January 15th, at 7 pm Central. The auction is being conducted by KC Auction & Appraisal Company, based in Kansas City. The catalog is scheduled to be published and open for pre-bidding on New Years Day, January 1st, at the website www.kcauctioncompany.com. There will be no live, phone or absentee (left) bidding. Its an absolute auction; everything sells to the highest bidder, regardless of final price. We expect this auction to generate tremendous interest, locally, nationally and internationally, said ... More Stedelijk Museum announces first exhibition of graphic designer Wim Crouwel in JapanAMSTERDAM.- The exhibition Wim Crouwel - Fascinated by the grid is the first overview of the work of Dutch graphic designer Wim Crouwel in Japan. The exhibition will be on view from 16 December at the Kyoto ddd gallery and from 14 May 2018 at the Ginza Graphic Gallery in Tokyo. Both galleries are solely dedicated to graphic design. The last time Crouwels work was on show at the Stedelijk Museum was during the exhibition Wim Crouwel - A Graphic Odyssey in 2011, in collaboration with the Design Museum (London). Now it is time for a distinguished recognition of his work in Japan. The exhibitions are composed of works from the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Wim Crouwel (b. 1928, Groningen) was inspired by the founders of modernism and developed unique typographic designs based on their principles. His interest in architecture resulted ... More Gerard Byrne presents a new video installation at Kerlin GalleryDUBLIN.- For his solo exhibition at Kerlin Gallery, Gerard Byrne presents a new video installation, In Our Time. Commissioned for the 2017 edition of Skulptur Projekte Münster, In Our Time depicts the daily activities of an archetypal commercial radio station, provoking questions around the relationship between radio broadcasting, time, pop music and collective memory. Although a 'period' piece, the exact setting of In Our Time remains hard to define, as it depicts a presenter at work in a wood-pa nnelled American radio studio, playing classic pop songs, taking call-ins and addressing his absent audience via microphone. The camera floats over the period details that make up Byrne's meticulous mise-en-scène: cassettes and vinyl, microphones, speakers and the various other hardware used to coalesce pop music, call-ins and news bulletins into a seamless ... More 'Jewels of Time: Watches from the Proctor Collection' opens in UticaUTICA, NY.- The aesthetic brilliance and exquisite craftsmanship of beautifully ornamented historical timepieces will be showcased in Jewels of Time: Watches from the Proctor Collection, on view December 16 through April 29 in the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art. Each watch is a work of art and was worn as a bejeweled symbol of prestige and honor. Jewels of Time explores watches as decorative arts and jewelry. This exhibition includes 80 skillfully crafted European timepieces amassed by brothers Thomas R. Proctor (1844-1920) and Frederick T. Proctor (1856-1929), two of the MWPAIs founders, who accumulated this rare and extraordinary collection during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With 300 European and American pieces, the watch collection is one of the largest and most important ever assembled in the United States. When ... More New Orleans Museum of Art to break ground on six-acre expansion of sculpture gardenNEW ORLEANS, LA.- In its effort to further unite, inspire, and engage the New Orleans community, the New Orleans Museum of Art plans to break ground on an expansion of the renowned Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden this month. NOMAs initiative to expand the sculpture garden enables the museum to continue sharing significant art and artists with the broadest possible public. The anticipated completion in winter of 2018 signifies an important benchmark within a year of New Orleans tri-centennial celebrations. The sculpture garden expansion is privately funded, with sites for sculpture, as well as an outdoor amphitheatre and stage, pedestrian bridges and walkways, a new gallery, and an outdoor learning environment. This significant undertaking reinforces NOMAs integral role in serving the diverse ... More New exhibition series highlights global context of American portraitureWASHINGTON, DC.- Portraits of the World: Switzerland is the inaugural exhibition in a series that will highlight the global context of American Portraiture. Each year, the Smithsonians National Portrait Gallery will showcase a portrait created by a foreign artist in an exhibition designed around that artwork. The featured work for this years exhibition is Femme en Extase (Woman in Ecstasy), a portrait of the Italian dancer Giulia Leonardi by the Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler, on loan from the Museum of Art and History in Geneva. The exhibition is on view from Dec. 15 through Nov. 12, 2018. Switzerland and the United States have historically had a close relationship, as borne out by the rather remarkable fact that in 1968 our so-called Sister Republic lent five American portraits to the National Portrait ... More Weinstein Gallery celebrates 25th anniversary with the West Coast premiere of film by Oskar FischingerSAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Weinstein Gallery announced the celebration of its 25th Anniversary with the West Coast premiere of the extraordinary avant-garde film experience Raumlichtkunst (c. 1926/2012) by German-American artist Oskar Fischinger, as an HD three-projector reconstruction by Center for Visual Music. Versions of these groundbreaking immersive multimedia performances were originally performed circa 1926 in Weimar Germany by Fischinger, and in 2017 the acclaimed reconstruction will be presented under Weinsteins PUBLIC programming umbrella at its SOMA warehouse space. Raumlichtkunst, which translates to Space Light Art, is a large-scale immersive black box installation with Fischingers looped abstract imagery accompanied by avant-garde music. The work is considered an early precursor to expanded cinema, immersive media ... More RM Sotheby's reports $526 million in global auction sales in 2017BLENHEIM, ON.- The RM Sothebys Group, comprising both RM Sothebys and RM Auctions*, has maintained and extended its leading market position in collector car auctions in 2017, reporting more than $526 million in global auction sales with a strong 80 percent sell-through rate. 2017 results were driven by the sale of 2,852 lots (vehicles and memorabilia) across 14 auction events, with 119 automobiles achieving prices in excess of $1 million. The $526 million total surpasses the sales total of RM Sothebys primary competitors combined, and represents a 17 percent increase in sales over 2016 results. Demonstrating the strength of the RM Sothebys Groups international marketing efforts, more than 5,700 unique bidders participated in 2017 sales, hailing from 64 countries around the world. ... More Throckmorton Fine Art opens exhibition of photographs by Brazilian photographer Valdir CruzNEW YORK, NY.- Throckmorton Fine Art announces a special 25th anniversary exhibition of photographs by Guggenheim Award-winning Brazilian photographer Valdir Cruz (born 1954) at its New York gallery from December 7, 2017 through February 24, 2018. Presences: Faces of the Rainforest is the latest collection of images in the Valdir Cruz series - Guarapuava: Images of an Eternal Return. It comes during the 25th year of collaboration between the Brazilian-born documentary-photographer and Spencer Throckmorton, and is the seventh solo exhibition at Throckmortons New York gallery on East 57th Street. Spencer Throckmorton says Valdir Cruzs exquisite photographic essay on Guarapuava, the photographers Brazilian birthplace, has been said to bear out Tolstoys observation that to be universal one only needs to talk about his own village. Over ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, Spanish-Mexican surrealist painter Remedios Varo was born December 16, 1908. Remedios Varo Uranga (16 December 1908 - 8 October 1963) was a Spanish-Mexican para-surrealist painter and anarchist. Born in Girona, Spain in 1908, she studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid. She is known as one of the world famous para-surrealist artists of the 20th Century. During the Spanish Civil War she fled to Paris where she was greatly influenced by the surrealist movement. She met her second husband, the French surrealist poet Benjamin Péret, in Barcelona. In this image: Remedios Varo (Spanish/Mexican 1908-1963), Vampiros vegetarianos. Oil on canvas. Painted in 1962. Estimate: $1,500,000 - 2,000,000. Photo: Christie's Images Ltd 2015.
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