Category: visual

Richard Meier’s trademark-white High Museum of Art in Atlanta, which opened to wide critical acclaim in 1983, has been conjoined with an addition by Renzo Piano…”

“The National Building Museum turns a quarter-century old this fall, and tonight lots of folks will be celebrating underneath the stupendous Corinthian columns of the museum’s Great Hall. There is, indeed, much to celebrate… It is not an architecture museum. Not engineering, not city planning. Not a museum for stonemasons, sheet metal workers, steel fabricators, real estate developers, social historians, taste makers, apartment dwellers, homeowners and… the list is almost endless. But if the museum is not one of these things, it is all of them.”

“Natvar Bhavsar is a world-renowned painter from India whose huge, colourful canvases hang in more than 1,000 private corporate collections and museums, including the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.” But it took a while for the Western world to warm up to the American-educated Bhavsar’s work, which lean heavily on traditional Indian techniques blended with American abstract expressionism. These days, however, Bhavsar is one of New York’s most respected living artists, and his professional journey serves as a perfect allegory for the city’s legendary diversity.

“An art historian said yesterday she believes she has discovered an early self-portrait of the artist Vincent van Gogh under a painting of a Paris scene. Aukje Verggeese said the portrait came to light when she used X-rays to see a monument visible under the painted surface as she was attempting to pinpoint the scene of the landscape.”

The board of the Getty Trust has formed a committee to investigate some of the difficult issues that have plagues the institution in recent months. “The committee, composed of five board members, will review issues related to an Italian criminal inquiry into allegedly looted antiquities and an investigation by the state attorney general into spending by the trust and its chief executive, Barry Munitz.”

Italian authorities say they have irrefutable proof that “the most prized ancient Greek vase in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art was looted. The Euphronios krater, described as one of the finest antiquities ever obtained by the Met, has been a source of controversy since the museum acquired it 33 years ago. Italian authorities have long maintained that the vase was looted from a tomb north of Rome, but the Met has refused to return it, saying the Italians lack proof.”

Twenty-seven years ago seven paintings were stolen from Michael Bakwin’s home. “The thieves took a Cézanne, two Soutines, a Vlaminck, a Utrillo and two works by the French painter Jean Jansen. Despite a police investigation the works did not resurface until 1999.” Then a negotiation ensued, deals were made, and though the Cezanne was returned, the others are now in dispute…

After a 20-year saga, a collection of 14 master paintings has been given to Scotland, including works by Gainsborough, Murillo and Rubens. “A story that links the National Galleries in Edinburgh to a sleepy village in the heart of the English countryside, includes a decade-old row between two of the most distinguished institutions in Scotland, and, along the way, involves Winston Churchill’s secret headquarters for D-Day.”

“Michael Rush will be the next director of Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum, the university has announced… Rush, 55, will take over from Joseph Ketner, who left the Rose last summer to become chief curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Rush will assume his new position about a year after resigning from the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, which he had run since 1999. He said he disagreed with the institute’s foundation over the organization’s direction.” The Rose Museum is in the midst of trying to raise $12 million for a major expansion.

“Rarely do three well-known art collections come to the auction block in the same season. Even more rarely does one auction house get to sell them all. Starting Tuesday, Christie’s will offer several exceptional works, including a Toulouse-Lautrec painting of a red-haired model, one of the centerpieces of the recent exhibition ‘Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre’ at the Art Institute of Chicago; a 1954 Rothko inspired by Matisse’s 1911 ‘Red Studio’; and an abstract de Kooning from 1977 that has had only one owner: the artist’s lawyer, Lee V. Eastman. Experts at the auction house are trying not to gloat.”