| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |    | Established in 1996 | Tuesday, January 30, 2024 |
| | Man who stole Dorothy's slippers thought the rubies were real | |
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A photo provided by the FBI shows ruby slippers, featured in The Wizard of Oz and stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minn., in 2005. Terry Martin was sentenced on Monday to time served and a year of probation for stealing the slippers from the Judy Garland Museum in Minnesota in 2005. (F.B.I. via The New York Times)
by Michael Levenson
NEW YORK, NY.- Nearly two decades after he broke into the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and stole a pair of Dorothys ruby slippers used in The Wizard of Oz, the man who committed the theft has revealed why: He believed the slippers were adorned with real rubies. Terry Martin, now 76, had never seen The Wizard of Oz and had no idea that the shoes were among the most recognizable cultural objects in American film when he stole them on the evening of Aug. 27, 2005, his lawyer, Dane DeKrey, wrote in court papers this month. Instead, Martin believed that the slippers must have been made with real rubies to justify their $1 million insured value, prosecutors said. He believed he would be able to peel off the gems and sell them on the black market a plan that backfired when a man who traded in stolen jewels informed him that the gems were made of glass. ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Theaster Gates, 11th Floor with Triangle and Mask 2023.
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| New works on paper by Takuji Hamanaka on view at Kristen Lorello | | Thaddaeus Ropac opens an exhibition of Irving Penn's photographs taken in 1967 | | Protesters hurl soup at the Mona Lisa | 
Takuji Hamanaka, Curtain, 2022. Cut and pasted woodblock printed papers, mounted on museum board, 32 x 25 1/2 inches. Photo: Charles Benton.
NEW YORK, NY.- Kristen Lorello is presenting a solo exhibition of new works on paper by Takuji Hamanaka. This is the artist's fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. Hamanaka is known for his optical compositions made with an innovative process of collaging small pieces of papers that are printed in a 19th Century Japanese technique. His works adapt the Bokashi technique, in which an unevenly inked block creates a color gradient when pressed to paper, to a contemporary practice that is at once invigorating, colorful, and abstract. The current exhibition builds upon Hamanaka's investigation of this process as he complicates the surface quality of his works. The new works include overlapped printed papers and silken Gami paper, added to monochrome printed papers affixed to the surface in a mosaic-like way. They evince Hamanaka's ongoing interest in architecture, nature, design, and stained glass, and expand the ... More | | 
Irving Penn, The Bath (B) (Dancers Workshop of San Francisco), 1967. Gelatin silver print, print made 1995. 39.1 x 39.1 cm (15.39 x 15.39 in). © The Irving Penn Foundation.
SALZBURG.- This exhibition is dedicated to a rarely-seen series of photographs by Irving Penn. Taken in 1967, the carefully composed images are the result of Penn's collaboration with the Dancers' Workshop of San Francisco, capturing the groundbreaking work of the American choreographer Anna Halprin. In addition to the photographic series, one of Irving Penn's rare paintings is also part of the exhibition. Penn captured the dancers in his studio as they re-staged Halprin's improvisational choreography, The Bath (1966). The group of 14 photographs, which were printed for the first time in 1995, highlight Halprin's pioneering approach to movement and reveal a more experimental side to Penn's practice. In its entirety, the series is exhibited for the first time in the German-speaking world. The summer of 1967 in San Francisco has become known as the ... More | | 
Visitors angle for a photograph of the Mona Lisa, at the Louvre in Paris on Sept. 14, 2023. (Andrea Mantovani/The New York Times)
by Roger Cohen
PARIS.- Two protesters from an environmental group hurled pumpkin-colored soup on the Mona Lisa at the Louvre museum in Paris on Sunday, splashing the bulletproof glass that protects the most famous painting in the world, but not apparently damaging the work. As the customary crowd around the 16th-century painting by Leonardo da Vinci gasped in shock, the protesters, two young women, followed up their attack by passing under a barrier and standing on either side of the artwork, hands raised in an apparent salute. What is more important? Art or the right to have a healthy and sustainable food system? the activists said, speaking in French. Our agricultural system is sick. They were led away by Louvre security guards. It was not immediately clear how the women got the soup through the elaborate security system ... More |
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| Museum Sint-Janshospitaal: An outstanding new museum that will make your heart beat faster | | Theaster Gates opens first solo exhibition at White Cube New York | | 'Uman: Darling sweetie, sweetie darling' her first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth | 
Installation view.
BRUGES.- An outstanding new museum in the heart of Bruges opens its doors today. St Johns Hospital, one of the oldest and best-preserved hospital buildings in Europe, will immerse its visitors in a brand-new and contemporary museum experience. A museum brimming with heart-warming stories of hospitality and care down the centuries. Since the 12th century, anyone in need of care or a warm bed has been welcome at St Johns Hospital: the sick, the poor, pilgrims, travellers, etc. Empathy and hospitality have been intertwined with the DNA of the hospital and the hospital site for nearly 900 years. That warm history lives on today in a contemporary museum setting, through some fascinating works of art old and contemporary and gripping testimonies. A total experience that goes straight to the heart. Visitors will come face to face at the new museum with unique collection objects and works ... More | | 
Theaster Gates, Sweet Sanctuary Your Embrace, 2023.
NEW YORK, NY.- White Cube is presenting Hold Me, Hold Me, Hold Me by Theaster Gates, the artists first solo exhibition at White Cube New York, located at 1002 Madison Avenue. The title of the exhibition honours the 1970s duet Be Real Black For Me by Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack. Drawing from the echoed repetition of the phrase hold me midway through the song, Gates explores the connections between music, composition, and the complex interactions between artistry and mental health, acknowledging the truth of Hathaways own profound struggles with fame and creative transmission during his lifetime. Transforming the gallery into a tableau of personal and collective memory, the exhibition explores how sound holds pain and suffering, joy, temporality, memory and contingency, through an engagement with the history of built environments, craftsmanship and music. Highlights include the large-s ... More | | 
Uman in the studio, 2023. Photo: Luigi Cazzaniga. Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Nicola Vassell Gallery.
LONDON.- Umans first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth will take place in London, in equal partnership with Nicola Vassell Gallery, NY. Umans ebullient visual vocabulary reflects her expansive cross-cultural experiences. An intuitive artist and voracious autodidact, Uman draws upon her memories of her East African childhood, rigorous education in traditional Arabic calligraphy, deep engagement with dreams and fascination with kaleidoscopic colour and design. With nods to self-portraiture and fictional topographies, Umans paintings fluidly navigate in-between realms to explore both the physical and spiritual, intertwining abstraction, figuration, meditative patterning and a reverence for the natural world. This exhibition will display a selection of large-scale paintings with lavishly detailed and opulently coloured worlds, replete ... More |
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| Fondation Henri Cartier–Bresson presents the exhibition 'Weegee: Autopsy of the Spectacle' | | McMullen Museum of Art presents 'Lost Generation: Women Ceramicists and the Cuban Avant-Garde' | | Statue of Jackie Robinson stolen from Kansas park | 
The Critic, November 22, 1942 © International Center of Photography. Collection Friedsam.
PARIS.- Theres a mystery to Weegee. The American photographers career seems to be split in two. One side includes his sensational photography printed in North American tabloids: corpses of gangsters lying in pools of their own blood, bodies trapped in battered vehicles, kingpins looking sinister behind the bars of prison wagons, dilapidated slums consumed by fire, and other harrowing documents on the lives of the underprivileged in New York from 1935 to 1945. Then come the festive photographsglamorous parties, performances by entertainers, jubilant crowds, openings and premieres to which we must add a vast array of portraits of public figures that Weegee delighted in distorting using a rich palette of tricks between 1948 and 1951, a practice he pursued until the end of his life. How can these diametrically opposed bodies of work coexist? Critics have enjoyed highlighting the opposition between the two periods, praising the former and disparaging the latter. The exhibiti ... More | | 
Artist: Amelia Peláez (18961968), Ceramicist: Juan Miguel RodrÃguez de la Cruz (190290), Water Jug with Abstract Figures, 1951. Painted ceramic.
CHESTNUT HILL, MA.- The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College is showing an exclusive exhibition, The Lost Generation: Women Ceramicists and the Cuban Avant-Garde, which examines the participants and artistic output from 1949 to 1959 of the Taller de Santiago de las Vegas, a ceramic workshop on the outskirts of Havana. The bilingual (English-Spanish) exhibition opened yesterday in the McMullen Museums Daley Family and Monan Galleries and will continue through to June 2, 2024. The majority of the nearly two hundred works on display are from a private collection, and have never before been exhibited in the United States. The exhibition is the first to show how these innovative works by avant-garde women ceramicists influenced other artists of that period whose focus was on more established media. Until now, organizers note, Cuban avant-garde (vanguardia) design has been defined as a ... More | | 
A bronze statue of Jackie Robinson with a Brooklyn Dodgers cap and jersey. The police in Wichita, Kan., said the bronze statue was removed from McAdams Park by thieves who used a truck. (Wichita Police Department via The New York Times)
by Aimee Ortiz
NEW YORK, NY.- Authorities in Kansas are searching for the vandals who stole a life-size bronze statue commemorating Jackie Robinson, the first Black Major League Baseball player, after they cut it off at the ankles, leaving behind just the statues shoes and base. Police in Wichita, Kansas, were notified of the theft about 12:50 p.m. Thursday after getting a call from League 42, the Little League nonprofit that installed the statue in McAdams Park, Andrew Ford, a police spokesperson, said Saturday. He estimated that the statue weighed at least 100 pounds. I dont know what the motivation is, Ford said. All considerations are being looked into. Ford said police had surveillance footage of the statue being cut down and being placed in the bed of a truck that was ... More |
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| Spanierman Modern presents an exhibition of works by Steven Alexander | | Solo exhibition by Arash Nazari opens at Leila Heller Gallery | | Ceija Stojka's first US gallery exhibition on view at Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois | 
Steven Alexander, Clearing 12, 2023. Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 inches. Signed, titled, and dated on the verso.
NEW YORK, NY.- The title of this exhibition, All One Thing, reflects the broad inclusivity of the aesthetic process. It asserts that the painting and the viewer are interdependent, acknowledging all the various elements that operate within the moment of interaction: the formal components of the painting, the organization of those elements as a whole, the presence of the object on the wall, along with the sensibility of the viewer their psychology, physicality, and experience. The title also refers to the work in the context of history and ontology. I think of my paintings as participants in the ancient continuum of painting that goes back to the caves collective evidence of the most fundamental human poetic activity, all sharing the same DNA. In a broader sense, I regard painting as a unique portal through which one may gain access to an infinite web of impulses, and a realization of being part of everything else
.all one thing. The paintings in this exhibition are, first and forem ... More | | 
Arash Nazari, Complex Palace Scene, 2023. 250 x 150 cm. Oil on Canvas.
DUBAI.- Leila Heller Gallery announced the solo exhibition by Arash Nazari, titled 'Poem is My Name'. 'Poem is my Name,' delves into the poetic essence of miniature, presenting images inspired by the rich tapestry of life. The collection draws on the intrinsic connection between poetry and visual art, inviting viewers to not only read poems but also experience them through the visual medium of paintings. Arash Nazari's work highlights the role of art in conveying the language of poetry, offering a profound connection between words and images. Reflecting on the collection, Nazari says, "Successive wars, conquests, destructions, and reconstructions have shaped history, leaving behind a few enduring remnants buildings, poems, and paintings. 'Poem is my Name' is a journey through time, a reinterpretation of historical patterns and colours. It is an exploration of the joy of recreating these patterns and a tribute to the novel ... More | | 
Ceija Stojka, Untitled (the world), 17/01/2000. Ink and watercolor on cardboard, 8 x 6 inches (20.5 x 15 cm).
NEW YORK, NY.- Marianne Le Métayer, Nathalie Vallois, and Georges-Philippe Vallois announce an exhibition of paintings by Ceija Stojka (1933-2013) titled We Lived in Secrecy (A Roma Memory). Stojka was an Austrian Romani artist, writer, singer, and activist who, along with her family, was captured when she was ten years old and interned in the National Socialist concentration camps of Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Bergen-Belsen. It was not until 1982 that West Germany formally recognized that genocide had been committed against the Romani people, and when Stojka was in her mid-fifties in the year 1988, she decided to bring her memories to life, creating a first-hand testimony of what her people endured. Completely self-taught, Stojka devoted herself to painting and drawing scenes from her memories starting from before the war. She worked every day until shortly before her death in 2013. In two decades, Stojka created a body of work consisting of ... More |
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RAW VIDEO: BBCE Authentication of a 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee Hockey Sealed Case
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 Collection presentation of 'Wordplay' opens at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston on January 30thBOSTON, MA.- The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston presents Wordplay, a new collection exhibition exploring a defining aspect of contemporary art: the role of text in visual expression. Since the emergence of conceptual art in the 1960s, artists have used text art to probe philosophical questions, express and subvert political messages, challenge notions of identity, and connect their artwork to multiple references, writers, and cultural icons. Wordplay features 35 worksincluding several recent acquisitions on view for the first timeby artists such as Kenturah Davis, Rivane Neuenschwander, and Joe Wardwell, alongside signature works by Renée Green, Glenn Ligon, Jenny Holzer, Zanele Muholi, and Lorna Simpson, among others. The exhibition is organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial ... More  Galeria Jaqueline Martins announces the representation of Belgian artist Jan De MaesschalckSAO PAULO.- Galeria Jaqueline Martins announced the representation of Belgian artist Jan De Maesschalck. A solo exhibition of new works by De Maesschalck will be opening at our Brussels gallery in February 8th 2024. Composing a kind of ambiguity of meanings, Jan De Maesschalck paintings are characterized by their enigmatic seductive and evocative notions, the works invite the viewers to embark on a journey of interpretation. The atmosphere in Jan De Maesschalck paintings is meticulously crafted through masterful brush strokes, an alluring color palette, and a thoughtful composition, resulting in paintings that carry a subtle weight and allow the viewer to savor the profound sense of melancholy. (Rob Schoonen) Jan De Maesschalck, born in 1958 in Sint-Gillis-Waas (BE), lives and works in Stekene (BE). ... More  AGSA 500: A story of excellence, generosity and beautyADELAIDE.- The Art Gallery of South Australia today unveils the AGSA 500 publication, a landmark book that celebrates 500 key works of art in the states collection. Owned by the people of South Australia, the Art Gallery of South Australia collection is a collective marvel. Established in 1881 and nourished through great ambition, care and generosity, the AGSA collection is today one of the largest and most significant in Australia. This new publication, and many of the acquisitions it highlights, has been made possible through the generosity of the late M.J.M Carter AO, who passed away in January 2024. Max as he was known, gave generously to help grow the collection over many decades. He was dedicated to sharing AGSAs collections remarkable stories with the people of South Australia and beyond and aspired to ensure his home ... More  Mitchell Fine Art opens an exhibition of artworks from Brisbane born artist Ann ThomsonBRISBANE.- Mitchell Fine Art in Fortitude Valley kicks of its 2024 calendar with an exhibition of artworks from Brisbane born artist Ann Thomson. Something Old, Something New features a selection of new works, works from the gallery stockroom and a range of porcelain vases and wooden sculptures. The exhibition is being held concurrently with a survey exhibition at the SH Ervin Gallery in Sydney. Ann Thomson is a painter and sculptor known for her intriguing, expressive artworks. She has been at the forefront of the Australian art landscape for more than 50 years and celebrated her 90th birthday in 2023. Ann Thomson was nine years old when she painted her first still life in Brisbane. 'I was lucky that I found what I needed to do early,' she says. Enrolling after the war at Somerville House, her teachers including Betty Churcher, Joan Kerr, and Caroline Barker, became lifelong friends. ... More  Asian pottery and fine rugs lead the January annex saleALAMEDA, CA.- Michaans Auctions January Annex Sale, held on Monday, January 15th; Tuesday, January 16th; and Wednesday, January 17th; generated over a 93% sell- through rate as Michaans Auctions realized another successful sale for its cosigners. The sale was headlined by Lot 343, a Collection of Asian Ceramics which sold for $2,337, after intense bidding drove its value well over the estimated $5/70. Featuring seven bowls with blue, red, and green paintwork, as well as two plates and saucers this lot highlights the quality of fine ceramics available at Michaans Auctions. The auction also highlighted Asian Porcelain Satsuma Items as Lot 370, which sold for $1,599, and featured intricately painted porcelain from the southern Japanese region. Lot 568B, an Asian Style Scroll featuring seated, bearded figures sold for $1,476. ... More  Schoelkopf Gallery presents 'Small but Sublime: Albert Bierstadt Cabinet Paintings and Oil Studies'NEW YORK, NY.- Schoelkopf Gallery specializing in 19th and 20th century American fine art presents Small but Sublime: Albert Bierstadt Cabinet Paintings and Oil Studies. The exhibition investigates oil paintings of intimate scale descended in the family of the artists wife, Rosalie Osborn. The show opened January 19th and will run through February 23rd, 2024. Ranging in subject matter from Bierstadts extensive travels to imagined realms, the exhibition includes two cabinet paintingshighly finished, fully developed studio compositionsand two oil studies painted en plein air. Bierstadt achieved fame for his monumental landscapes inspired by his peripatetic adventures, such as Sunset Glow, Mount Shasta (1880s), also included in the exhibition. In contrast, the Osborn family works, which have never been exhibited, reveal the painters ... More  'Metamorphosis by Elizabeth Heyert' an exhibition and book about power of transformationNEW YORK, NY.- Known for her groundbreaking photographs of the interior lives of others, most famously The Sleepers and her controversial series of postmortem portraits The Travelers, American fine art photographer Elizabeth Heyert delves once again into the deepest emotional landscapes of strangers in Metamorphosis, a provocative, and visionary new exhibition and book about the power of transformation. Heyert takes the viewer on a fascinating journey into the transcendent worlds of her subjects who after being hypnotized in her studio by a trained hypnotherapist are then photographed naked, acting out childhood memories or transforming themselves emotionally into animals, birds, or other creatures unique to their subconscious fantasies. In her conversation with journalist and historian Lesley M. M. Blume, Heyert ... More  Newport Art Museum announces major gift to permanent collection by Christo and Jeanne ClaudeNEWPORT, RI.- The Newport Art Museum has acquired the work by Christo and Jeanne-Claudes Ocean Front, Newport, Rhode Island 1974. A Documentation Exhibition collection. Donated by the Estates of Jeanne-Claude and Christo, this collection consists of original collages, drawings, and archival materials, as well as documentary photographs by Gianfranco Gorgoni, of the Ocean Front project for which the artists covered the surface of the water and rocks at Cove at Kings Beach in Newport with 150,000 square feet of white woven polypropylene fabric. Ocean Front was on view for eighteen days as part of the landmark exhibition, Monumenta a city-wide display of large-scale public and environmental art by contemporary artists. Monumenta featured works by many artistic luminaries, such as Alexander Calder, Willem ... More  Arts professional Halima Taha to lead artistic visioning at Atlanta's Hammonds House MuseumATLANTA, GA.- Hammonds House Museum, a leading institution dedicated to African diaspora and African American art, announced the appointment of Halima Taha as Artistic Chair for the next three seasons. Taha, an esteemed arts professional, curator, and author of the groundbreaking book Collecting African American Art; Works on Paper and Canvas, brings a wealth of expertise in strategic planning, curation, artist and gallery management to her new role at the museum. In her capacity as Artistic Chair, Taha will oversee the artistic scope of the museum's exhibitions, contributing to strategic planning for the institution's growth in conjunction with its dedicated Board. Her vision is to elevate and expand the intellectual diversity behind the visual statements artists make and to promote African descendent visual culture as a global interconnected thread for cultural diversity. ... More  'Days of Wine and Roses' review: Romance on the rocksNEW YORK, NY.- Seldom have a pair of alcoholics looked as glamorous as they do in Craig Lucas and Adam Guettels bruised romance of a Broadway musical, Days of Wine and Roses, starring Kelli OHara and Brian dArcy James as midcentury-modern Manhattan lovers free-falling all the way to hell, drinks in hand. But whats astonishing about this show aside from the central performances, which are superb, and Guettels anxious, spiky, sumptuous score, which grabs hold of us and doesnt let go is the way its devastating chic snuggles right up to catastrophic self-destruction. For all the glossy come-hither of Michael Greifs tone-perfect production, which opened Sunday night at Studio 54, not for an instant does it glamorize the boozing itself. And yet we can sense the allure: how alcohol might become the one true thing that ... More  The Obies honor 'Dark Disabled Stories'NEW YORK, NY.- The Obie Awards, a scrappy but venerable annual competition honoring the best theater staged off- and off-off-Broadway, has chosen Dark Disabled Stories, Ryan J. Haddads autobiographical work inspired by his experiences navigating the city with cerebral palsy, as the best new American play. The prize was announced Saturday night, both by news release and on Spectrum News NY1, as the American Theater Wing, which presents the Obies, decided to forgo a costly ceremony in most nonpandemic years, the Obies have been handed out at a boozy and often boisterous party and instead to give grants of $1,000 to $5,000 directly to the winning artists and arts institutions. These are unprecedented times, and its extremely challenging for theater right now, so we absolutely want to celebrate the achievements of off- and off-off-Broadway, but in doing so we want to have the most impact by putting money directly in the pockets of the artists and the compa ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Gabriele Münter 
TARWUK 
Awol Erizku 
Leo Villareal
Flashback On a day like today, British painter Patrick Heron was born January 30, 1920. Patrick Heron (30 January 1920 - 20 March 1999) was a British abstract and figurative artist, writer, and polemicist, who lived in Zennor, Cornwall. Throughout his career, Heron worked in a variety of media, from the silk scarves he designed for his fatherâs company Cresta from the age of 14, to a stained-glass window for Tate St Ives, but he was foremost a painter working in oils and gouache. In this image: Susanna Heron poses with Patrick Heronâs Nude in Wicker Chair, 1951.
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