Rose Art Museum will sell no art

Boston.com: Exhibitionist: Rose Art Museum will sell no art
Brandeis University has agreed to put in writing that it will sell none of the Rose Art Museum's prized collection of modern art, putting an end to a more than two-year public relations mess that led to a lawsuit with four supporters and an international wave of criticism.

As a result of the school's promise, the four Rose Art Museum supporters - Meryl Rose, Jonathan Lee, Lois Foster and Gerald Fineberg - have agreed to settle their lawsuit against Brandeis in which they had sought to protect the collection.

In interviews today, Rose and Lee praised the school's new president, Fred Lawrence, for his appreciation of the museum's collection, which includes works by Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Morris Louis, and Helen Frankenthaler.

Lawrence, who inherited the Rose dispute from Jehuda Reinharz, said settling it had been a priority.

"My statement to the art world is that we have affirmed the important role of the Rose at Brandeis and we not only invite their participation, we welcome it. In fact, we're counting on it," said Lawrence, referencing his desire to have the museum work on developing traveling exhibitions.

Rose, who had heavily criticized Reinharz, said she was thrilled by the agreement announced today.

"Obviously, the new president really gets this," she said. "He absolutely gets the importance of this collection and the important place the Rose has in the art world."

It was back in January of 2009 that Reinharz stunned the art world by announcing that Brandeis would close the Rose and sell off its 6,000-object collection. After heavy criticism from Brandeis supporters and others, he backed down and agreed to delay the sale. The lawsuit, though, was filed because the Rose supporters felt they needed a guarantee that the art would not be sold in a time of crisis.

Folk Art Museum’s Final Week Before Close

The New York TimesL Arts Beat: Folk Art Museum’s Final Week Before Close
Lovers of folk art have just a week left to visit the American Folk Art Museum at its home on West 53rd Street before it closes its doors there for good. Struggling under a heavy load of debt, the museum recently sold the building to the Museum of Modern Art. On Thursday, it said that its last day in the building would be Friday, July 8. The museum will remain in operation in its much smaller branch at 2 Lincoln Square, where it currently has a show of quilts from the collection. MoMA has not yet said what it plans to do with the building, which was designed by the architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien and opened in 2001. A spokeswoman for the folk art museum, Susan Flamm, said that the museum would have 90 days to vacate the building after the sale closes, which she said would happen in mid-July.

Bishcoff on Art: Impressionism at Morris County Library

NJ.com: Bishcoff on Art: Impressionism at Morris County Library

Through July 18, the Morris County Library is hosting a show of early, never-before-exhibited watercolors by New Jersey impressionist Lee W. Hughes. Drawn from private collections, the 32 paintings on exhibit include landscape, marine and industrial subjects; most were executed en plein-air in Morris and Somerset counties, near Mendham, Brookside, Bernardsville and Califon.

Born in 1930, Hughes spent most of his career living in and painting New Jersey. He has taught at the Newark School of Fine Arts and at art associations in Morris and Somerset counties, and his paintings have been included in more than 200 exhibitions, including at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. His work is represented in the Morris Museum, Seton Hall University, Delbarton School and China’s Zhejiang Museum collections, as well as in corporate. He currently lives in California.

“The Collectors’ Collection” was organized by Connoisseur Fine Art, Bernardsville, and by Tracy Pollock and John Cross. The Morris County Library is at 30 Hanover Ave., Whippany (second floor). Free. Library hours are 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Photography exhibition at Plainfield Public Library

The Plainfield Public Library hosts its first Summer Invitational Photography Exhibition from July 16 to Sept. 30. The exhibition will feature 36 photographs from three local photographers: Paul LeGrand, William Monroe and Jackie Schnoop. All three have won multiple awards in the library’s annual Plainfield Photograph Contests; Monroe earned blue ribbons in 2006, 2008, and 2009, and two first prizes in 2010.

Most of the photographs have not been exhibited before. They range from cityscapes and landscapes to floral studies and urban portraits. The exhibit is in the library’s Room 2 Gallery. The exhibit will be launched with a reception for the artists on July 16 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and continue through Sept. 30.

The Plainfield Public Library is at 800 Park Ave., Plainfield. Open 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday. Free. For more information see plainfieldlibrary.info.

Brooklyn Museum cancels ‘Art in the Streets’ exhibit

The Brooklyn Museum has canceled the spring 2012 presentation of “Art in the Streets,” the first major exhibition on the history of graffiti and street art, for lack of money, the museum announced June 21. The exhibit has been controversial since it opened last April at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, where it is on view through August. Los Angeles police claim the exhibit has inspired a spike in graffiti and vandalism throughout the city. The exhibition had been scheduled to open in Brooklyn next March.

“This is an exhibition about which we were tremendously enthusiastic, and which would follow appropriately in the path of our Basquiat and graffiti exhibitions in 2005 and 2006, respectively,” said Brooklyn Director Arnold L. Lehman. “As with most arts organizations throughout the country, we have had to make several difficult choices since the beginning of the economic downturn three years ago.”

As Lehman says, Brooklyn is not the first arts institution to trim its programs in the wake of the banking collapse, but City Councilman Peter Vallone has been pressuring the museum to drop the show, saying it would “create more crime, as it did in L.A., and also send a message loud and clear that graffiti is commendable and worthy of posting in a museum exhibit.”

The show includes more than 50 artists from New York, LA, Sao Paulo, San Francisco and London. One of the New York artists, Angel (LA II) Ortiz, had to miss last April’s opening because he was locked up on Riker’s Island — or three separate tagging counts.

Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum to Close for Renovations

New York Times Travel: Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum to Close for Renovations
Starting in fall, travelers to Amsterdam will have to make do with fewer artistic masterpieces, as the Van Gogh Museum closes for a six-month refurbishment.

Two of the city’s other major museums, the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum, are already partly closed for renovations. Like them, the Van Gogh Museum will be displaying some of its best-known pieces elsewhere: starting in October, 75 paintings and a selection of works on paper will be shown at the nearby Hermitage Amsterdam.

The Rijksmuseum has been undergoing renovations since 2003 and is unlikely to reopen entirely until 2013. A small selection of its most famous works, including Rembrandt’s “Night Watch,” are on display in its Philips Wing; others are on special display at the Schiphol Airport.

The Stedelijk, Amsterdam’s premier contemporary art museum, has been closed since 2005; it also has a temporary space.

An estimated 1.5 million people visit the Van Gogh Museum annually. The museum features the largest collection in the world of pieces by the artist, including eight self-portraits — but not “Starry Night,” which is at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

What does Whitey Bulger know about the 1990 Gardner Museum art heist?

Los Angeles Times: What does Whitey Bulger know about the 1990 Gardner Museum art heist?
In 1990, two men dressed as police officers broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and stole a Vermeer, five Degas and three Rembrandts.

The masterpieces and four other paintings stolen that day are estimated to be worth more than $500 million.

Two decades later, the case remains stubbornly unsolved. It has been called “the holy grail of art crime.”

But with the arrest in Santa Monica Wednesday of notorious Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, many in the art world are now asking: Could it provide a break in the greatest art heist in American history?

Rumors have long swirled that Bulger, the head of the city’s powerful Irish American mob at the time, may have played a role -- or must have known who did.

Some have speculated that he stashed the stolen masterpieces away to use as a “get out of jail free card” if he was ever caught. Others think he sent the paintings to allies in the Irish Republican Army to use as a bargaining chip.

The Gardner Museum had no comment on the arrest on Thursday other than a tweet saying, “Until a recovery is made, our work continues.”

Many who have studied the case are similarly skeptical about Bulger’s direct involvement. Last year, investigators in the Gardner case said that there is no evidence in the mountains of wiretaps and other records to link Bulger to the crime.

“He was quite a powerful figure at the time of the heist,” said Ulrich Boser, author of "The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft." “But his M.O. was to collect criminal taxes, not to organize fresh crimes.”

As Boser writes in his book, after Bulger became an informant for the Boston FBI, he helped them take out his Italian competitors, the Cosa Nostra, leaving him the uncontested king of the underworld in Boston. By 1990, his focus was on collecting protection money from lesser underworld figures like bookies and drug dealers.

“To organize something like the Gardner heist doesn’t make sense,” Boser says.


Still, Boser and others familiar with the case believe that Bulger may still have important information to contribute. Little happened in Boston in those days without Bulger knowing about it.

“If he was interested, he could have found out what was going on,” said Robert Wittman, the former head of the FBI’s art squad who helped investigate the Gardner theft. “I think there’s a good chance he knows something.”

In Wittman’s memoir, “Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures,” he recounts a botched undercover sting operation to recover several of the Gardner paintings from two French mobsters living in South Florida.

“We were two weeks away from getting the Rembrandt,” Wittman recalls wistfully.

It was one of many occasions in which the FBI was foiled in an effort to recover the stolen art. The only high-profile case more frustrating may well have been the search for Whitey Bulger, which ended suddenly with his arrest.

“There was an entire squad in the Boston FBI office called the Whitey Bulger Squad,” Wittman says.

“They spent 20 years looking for him all over the world, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to find him. The whole time he was in California.”

Could the Gardner heist soon come to a similarly sudden close? The case is certainly on a long list of things the FBI is hoping to talk to Bulger about, Wittman said.

For Boser, the real lesson of the Bulger arrest is the importance of publicity in keeping a cold case alive. The FBI recently launched a media campaign in 14 cities to help determine Bulger's whereabouts.

“Many people thought this case was over,” he said, referring to the Bulger case. “It was the recent publicity that made the difference. When we think about the Gardner case, publicity will make the difference too.”

“Someone somewhere knows what happened to those paintings.”

Exhibit displays the art of scientific imagery

MSNBC: Exhibit displays the art of scientific imagery

NEW YORK — Some species of bacteria live inside leeches, providing their hosts with nutrients. The relationship between these two creatures roused the artistic side of two scientists.

Two American Museum of Natural History curators added fluorescent molecules to DNA designed to pair up with the bacterial DNA, and that allowed them to create pictures of bacteria inside adult and juvenile leeches. Some of the bacteria are visible as tiny gold specks.

Nine of the pictures are on display as part of a new, yearlong exhibit at the natural history museum that explores the artistry of scientific images.

Check out this amazing science exhibit

“When you first look at it, it’s really quite abstract," said Mark Siddall, curator of invertebrate zoology at the museum, who with associate curator Susan Perkins created the leech with bacteria images. "I thought this might be something that other people might like to engage with."

The artistic side of science
The exhibit, "Picturing Science: Museum Scientists and Imaging Technologies," draws from a wide range of research currently under way at the museum. It includes: an Andy Warhol-style analysis of a meteorite's chemical composition, a bird's-eye view of the Messier 101 galaxy pieced together from images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, elegant black-and-white images of insect genitalia, and ritual objects stashed within a Tibetan wooden figure.


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Advertise | AdChoicesAdvertise | AdChoicesAdvertise | AdChoicesColor, form and spatial relationships are typically the domain of an artist, but scientists will use these characteristics to explore scientific questions, Siddall said.

Their methods can be fairly low-tech. Three species of fish were still whole when images were made of their insides, but the bones and cartilage stand out sharply thanks to the use of dyes and chemicals to make the other tissues transparent. And an arachnologist needed only ultraviolet light to make ghostly images of scorpions.

Highly sophisticated techniques are also represented. A mathematical simulation of how gas behaves after a star explodes as a supernova generated an image of the orange flames of interstellar gas. The colorful meteorite slices and the insect genitals were both created by bombarding the specimens with electrons (the negatively charged particles in atoms) under sophisticated microscopes.

Looking inside a lizard
Edward Stanley, a doctoral candidate in comparative biology at the museum’s Richard Gilder Graduate School, uses computed tomography (CT) scans to look at evolutionary patterns within a family of lizards.

His contribution to the exhibit shows the white skeleton of an Armadillo lizard, a native of southern Africa, which bites its tail and rolls into a ball to protect its soft belly while exposing its bony plates to predators. These plates appear as semi-transparent, leafy green scales covering the back of its body, limbs, head and tail.

So why not just dissect the lizard or remove the rest of its tissue to look at these bones?

"That's a destructive method, and the museum has a finite number of specimens," Stanley said. "This way we get all the information out without having to destroy the armor."

Removing skin, muscle and other tissue would destroy the arrangement of the bony plates, an important part of Stanley's research on the evolutionary history of this species and its relatives.

CT scans, also used in medicine, employ X-rays to create three-dimensional images. Because they can visualize the interior of an object, a CT scan makes it possible for scientists to avoid damaging a specimen, in this case a preserved lizard. CT scans have other advantages: They are quick, easy and provide additional data, like the volume of individual bones, Stanley explained.

The exhibit is on display at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan until next June.

A Resurgence in Art Buying Over the Web

The New York Times: A Resurgence in Art Buying Over the Web
Roland Sledge, a 65-year-old lawyer for an oil and gas company in Houston, is no art world habitué. He began collecting prints and works on paper a little more than a decade ago, focusing on Abstract Expressionism, and has done some business with small New York galleries, “though I mostly just stumbled into things that I liked,” he said in a broad Texas accent.

“I don’t have a lot of connections,” he added.

But Mr. Sledge, and a growing number of collectors like him, have lately been demonstrating that connections may not be as important as they once were — and that online sales, a segment of the art business given up for dead not long ago, are becoming an increasingly important part of its future.

Over the last year and half, Mr. Sledge has collected almost exclusively online, buying nine pieces at an average of about $4,000 each at online-only auctions through Artnet, the art market information company. Artnet tried and failed to become one of the pioneers of online sales in 1999, suspending those auctions two years later after it lost millions of dollars and decided that the market wasn’t ready. But it got back into the business in 2008, and after less than three years, the auctions now account for 14 percent of the company’s income.

The glamorous, newsmaking sales of Sotheby’s and Christie’s these are not. The average price of an artwork won through an Artnet auction is about $6,800 now, up from $5,600 last year, which wouldn’t come close to paying the commission on most high-end auction sales. But Artnet is one of many companies that believe the time might finally be right for a sizable portion of the art market to begin migrating online, the way sales for specialized items like rare books and antiques already have.

The VIP Art Fair, a weeklong online event that mimicked the mechanics of a traditional art fair with virtual booths, attracted a large international group of blue-chip galleries last January and, despite some well-publicized technical glitches, was seen as a success by dealers and collectors. Art.sy, a venture that will use Pandora-like technology to help art buyers find pieces and the galleries selling them, has already lined up heavyweight supporters like the dealer Larry Gagosian and Jack Dorsey, a founder of Twitter. And most major auction houses also now allow online bidding for sales happening in the physical world.

But while online bidding and fairs and services like Art.sy essentially serve as a digital bridge to bricks-and-mortar galleries and auction houses, Artnet officials say that much of the art market below a certain price level will soon operate almost entirely in the virtual realm. Auctions on Artnet take place around the clock, eBay-style (though the lots close only on weekdays, so far), and the company vets sellers and relies on their photographs and descriptions of the provenance and quality of artworks.

A buyer, who pays a 15 percent commission to Artnet, usually sees only a single picture of the work and often doesn’t talk to the seller, who could be an art dealer, a private collector or an artist’s family. (Sellers pay a 10 percent commission.) After the auction, the buyer pays the seller, and the work is shipped.

“It’s one thing to point out to someone where they can find something and give them a gallery’s phone number,” said Hans Neuendorf, the company’s chief executive, referring to many other online art-selling services. “It’s another thing to make a sale online.”

“That’s a sea change, in my opinion,” said Mr. Neuendorf, who presents himself as a kind of revolutionary, “and it’s happening.”

Art sellers have been waiting for it to happen for many years. Sotheby’s tried online-only sales for lower-priced works in the late 1990s, but, like Artnet, it abandoned the initiative a few years later, convinced that buyers simply were not willing to pay four- or five-figure sums for art they had not seen in person.

Mr. Neuendorf said several factors led Artnet, a public company based in Berlin, with offices in New York, to venture back into the field. One was the comfort people have begun to feel with online commerce in general, he said. But the more important factor was the considerable increase in the last decade in the number of people who spend money on contemporary art as a pastime or as an investment. They tend to see online art sales as more accessible and transparent than sales in the gallery world, with its reputation, fair or not, for being a kind of exclusionary club. And as many online art vendors like to point out, there are far more $5,000 and $10,000 prints and photographs in the world than there are $50,000,000 Warhols changing hands at marquee auctions.

Michael Moriarty, the chairman of Skate’s Art Market Research, a consulting firm that closely follows Artnet’s business, said his analysts had been skeptical about Artnet’s ability to make online auctions a significant part of its business. Artnet has long been known as the Bloomberg terminal of the auction business; it made its name even before the advent of the Web by building a database of historical auction prices that now numbers in the millions, on which collectors, dealers and auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s rely.

But the company’s online auction business has now moved more than 6,500 pieces, generating $2.5 million in commissions on $12 million in sales for Artnet in 2010, including a few high-dollar outliers, like a Richard Prince painting that sold for $295,000 (before commissions). The business is not yet profitable for Artnet, but the company says that is only because it has been spending considerable money to develop the auctions. It projects that they will begin to turn a profit toward the end of next year.

“Now it seems that the technology has reached a point, and the market has evolved to a point, where this kind of business is really gaining traction,” said Mr. Moriarty, a former lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission. Of Artnet, he added, “It’s not going to be long before they’re going to have to worry about a lot of competition.”

If Mr. Sledge is any guide, art buyers still need a little live reassurance from human beings that what they are seeing and reading about on the screen is what it appears to be. The former East Village art dealer Gracie Mansion, who now works as a specialist for Artnet’s auctions, speaks often with Mr. Sledge when he has questions.

“She’ll go and take a close look at the information she has and tell me there’s some foxing on it or some other problem,” said Mr. Sledge, whose name was provided to a reporter by Artnet, along with those of several other frequent buyers. “I didn’t even know what foxing was, to tell you the truth.” (It refers to spots or browning on paper works.)

He added, however, that his main reason for starting to buy through online auctions (one recent acquisition was a small Elaine de Kooning work on paper) was the prices: “My sense is that a lot of the sellers aren’t taking a haircut by having to go through galleries, and so those savings are coming to me.”

Mr. Neuendorf said that while Artnet operated in a different world from Sotheby’s and Christie’s, he believed that it had only begun to mine a huge swath of the secondary art market that will move onto the Web. “I think they’re very happy doing what they’re doing; we’re not even on their radar,” he said of the major auction houses.

“And that’s good,” he added with a wink, “because it gives us time to catch up.”

Brooklyn Museum Cancels Graffiti Display

Graffiti isn't art, so I don't mind this at all!

New York Times: Brooklyn Museum Cancels Graffiti Display
The Brooklyn Museum has canceled plans for a controversial exhibition of graffiti art, citing financial constraints. The show, “Art in the Streets,” is currently at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, where it has drawn large crowds but has also attracted criticism for prompting an increase in graffiti in the surrounding neighborhood.

Among the critics was Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who published an article in City Journal this spring titled “Radical Graffiti Chic,” in which she accused the Los Angeles museum of glorifying vandalism.

Her article alerted The Daily News that the show was headed to Brooklyn in 2012, and in late April, it ran a sharply critical editorial, writing that art “mavens will be sticking their thumbs in the eyes of every bodega owner and restaurant manager who struggles to keep his or her property graffiti-free.”

On May 5, shortly after the editorial ran, Peter F. Vallone Jr., a member of the City Council, wrote to the director of the Brooklyn Museum, Arnold L. Lehman, urging him not to do the exhibition. “Let me be very clear, taxpayer money should NOT be used to encourage the destruction of our taxpayers’ property,” Mr. Vallone wrote, noting that the museum receives about $9 million annually from the city.

But in announcing the show’s cancellation on Tuesday, the museum cited cutbacks, not political pressure. “This is an exhibition about which we were tremendously enthusiastic,” Mr. Lehman said in a statement. “The cancellation became necessary due to the current financial climate.”

One of the featured artists, a street artist based in Los Angeles named Saber, said that he was disappointed the show would not go to Brooklyn, but that Mr. Lehman and the Brooklyn Museum’s curator, Sharon Matt Atkins, had been receptive. “Maybe there are some things going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about,” Saber said, but “the people who work there — the director, Sharon — they’re all really enthusiastic, great people.”

Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, said he had approached another institution in New York, which he declined to name, about taking the exhibition. “We will find a way to bring it to New York,” Mr. Deitch said in an interview. “If not in a museum, we’ll just do it on our own.”

Billionaire shapes an art museum for the heartland

The Seattle Times: Billionaire shapes an art museum for the heartland

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — The era of the world-class museum built by a single philanthropist in the tradition of Isabella Stewart Gardner, John Pierpont Morgan Jr. and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney may seem to have passed, but Alice Walton is bringing it back.

Yet her mission is unlike those of her predecessors, or of more recent art patrons such as Ronald Lauder and his Neue Galerie. They set out to put great works on display in cultural capitals such as New York and Boston. Instead, Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art — the first major institution in 50 years dedicated to the vast spectrum of American art, to be housed in a building more than twice the size of the current Whitney Museum of American Art — seeks to bring high art to Middle America in Bentonville, a town of 35,000 that is best known as the home of Wal-Mart.

Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, has worked on the museum for nearly a decade but has said little about it in public until now. In a recent interview at Town Branch, her family home, she said she wanted to turn Bentonville into an international destination for art lovers when the museum opens Nov. 11.

At the moment the most significant nearby cultural attractions are two hours away: a museum of Western and American Indian art in Tulsa, Okla., and, in the other direction, the country-music magnet of Branson, Mo.

"For years I've been thinking about what we could do as a family that could really make a difference in this part of the world," said Walton, 61. "I thought this is something we desperately need, and what a difference it would have made were it here when I was growing up."

The 201,000-square-foot museum was designed by the Boston architect Moshe Safdie for a site around two ponds on 120 acres of former Walton family land. Named for the nearby Crystal Spring, the museum will display top-flight works by American masters from the Colonial era to the present, with the largest concentrations coming from the 19th and 20th centuries. Although the collection — about 600 paintings and sculptures — is small by the standards of big museums, it is growing at a steady clip.

"She has not just been concentrating on what could be perceived as the greatest hits in American art," said John Wilmerding, an art historian and professor at Princeton University, who has been advising Walton for seven years and is on the Crystal Bridges board. "She has collected the work of some of these artists in depth," quietly amassing substantial bodies of work by figures such as Martin Johnson Heade, Stuart Davis, George Bellows and John Singer Sargent.

Walton, who has been an art collector most of her life, turned to buying art specifically for the museum in 2005, resulting in a years-long spending spree that has made her a recognized force in the art market. She has been one of those mysterious anonymous buyers at auctions and at galleries who often pay top dollar and has spent many tens of millions of dollars on works such as Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington from 1797 ($8.1 million), Asher Durand's "Kindred Spirits" from 1849 ($35 million) and Norman Rockwell's 1943 "Rosie the Riveter" ($4.9 million).

She has also bought more recent works, including a Jasper Johns "Alphabets" painting from 1960-62 (priced at $11 million) and a 1985 Andy Warhol silkscreen of Dolly Parton and a 2009 Chuck Close triptych depicting Bill Clinton (prices unknown). (She is hoping that Parton and Clinton, a friend, will attend the opening.)

Her museum has commissioned several major site-specific works, including a giant silver tree by Roxy Paine that sits at the entrance and a hypnotic large-scale light installation by James Turrell. The museum's director, Don Bacigalupi, recruited nearly two years ago from the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, is a specialist in contemporary art and has been encouraging Walton to expand the museum's holdings by living artists.

Museum officials said they were planning for about 250,000 visitors in their first year and expect an annual operating budget of $16 million to $20 million. In addition to the 120 full-time jobs the institution is creating, they said, it will pump millions of tourist dollars into northwest Arkansas.

Walton started thinking seriously about building an art museum in the late 1990s and brought it up a few times at the meetings the family holds three times a year. She thought she needed the backing of her nieces and nephews, she said, because the land would have eventually become theirs. Walton, who is divorced, has no children.

"That decision brewed for a year and a half," she said, before there was unanimous agreement.

She had the means to realize her vision. According to calculations by Forbes, her net worth is $21 billion, making her the ninth-richest person in the United States and the 21st richest in the world. A celebrated horsewoman who seems more comfortable in sneakers than stilettos, she is the youngest of four children; while her eldest brother, S. Robson Walton, is chairman of Wal-Mart, and another brother, Jim, is a member of the board, she is not involved in the company's daily operations. (A third brother, John, died in a plane crash in 2005.) Although she started and ran an investment company in the late 1980s and '90s, she now divides her time between Bentonville and Millsap, Texas, where she breeds cutting horses and runs the 1,600-acre Rocking W Ranch.

Along with family approval of the project, there has been some financial help. Last month, Crystal Bridges said the Walton Family Foundation had pledged $800 million to the institution for an operating endowment, acquisitions and future capital improvements, a gift believed to be one of the largest ever to an American museum.

The museum's board, meanwhile, includes members well-equipped to chip in, such as John Tyson, chairman of Tyson Foods, and C. Douglas McMillon, president and chief executive of Wal-Mart International. Although Alice Walton took only one art-history course in college, she said, she has spent much of the past 25 years reading about the subject, and — according to advisers and others who have spent time with her — she is a savvy collector.

"Often when something would come up privately she'd say, 'Wait, it will come to auction where we can get it at a better price,' " Wilmerding recalled. "And she'd be right."

John Richardson, the Pablo Picasso biographer, met Walton through friends during one of her frequent trips to New York, and visited the Museum of Modern Art with her. "She knew exactly what she was looking at," Richardson recalled of their walk around the show "Abstract Expressionist New York."

"I was surprised," he said. "When we were looking at a painting by Norman Lewis" — an African-American painter who is relatively obscure compared to many of the other artists in the show — "she not only recognized his work but said the museum already had bought something of his, which is quite adventurous."

At least one aspect of her approach to art sets her apart from most collectors of her financial muscle, who traditionally gravitate toward the European Impressionists and early modernists or international contemporary art stars.

"I never would have thought of collecting anything but American, truly," she said. "This is the heartland of the country. It's what should be here."

Walton acknowledged that in the beginning it was not always easy dealing with members of the East Coast art establishment. "A lot of people there don't really know this part of the world, really don't know the people here and the desire and the need for art," she said. "But once they come and see what's here and what we have, their attitudes will change."

She is realistic enough to know that a world-class museum can't be created overnight, or even over a decade. "We want to share; we want to borrow; we want to loan; we want to have really active partnerships with museums worldwide," said Walton, who has talked with Henri Loyrette, director of the Louvre, and who, until recently, lent Durand's "Kindred Spirits" to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"We'll be opening without a lot of things," she added with a smile. "But that's just fine."

Documentary 'Women Art Revolution' chronicles the genesis of the Feminist Art Movement

The documentary makes the point that the average person can't identify more than one female visual artist, and that this is because women artists have been marginalized.

But really... can anyone name more than one male visual artist? Any average person? They might know Van Gogh, because he cut off his ear, and they might know Picasso because his stuff looks stupid...but who else will they know?

OLA.com: Documentary 'Women Art Revolution' chronicles the genesis of the Feminist Art Movement
Ignoring the pretension of the inverted exclamation point in the title, the documentary "¡Women Art Revolution" has a point to make, and it wastes no time in making it.

It happens within the first two minutes, as director Lynn Hershman-Leeson polls people outside New York's Whitney Museum of American Art. The question: Can you name three female visual artists?

There's Frida Kahlo, of course, and then ... then ...

Point made. There are thousands more, of course, but the art establishment has for so long marginalized them, ignored them and condescended to them that few outside the art community have anything more than a casual knowledge of most of them.

"¡Women Art Revolution" -- opening today for a weeklong run at the Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center -- is their story, built around hundreds of hours of interviews Hershman-Leeson conducted with artists, critics and curators over decades of involvement in the feminist art movement. It's a movement with origins in the civil rights struggle of the late 1960s, but which really blossomed in the 1970s, and its story is a compelling one, with its cast of strong, driven, fascinating women.

Hershman-Leeson's film does a nice job of recounting the movement's origins -- there's an exhaustive amount of information here, and it's just a drop in the bucket of what the filmmaker has made available online -- but one only wishes she would have focused less on talking heads and more on the art at the center of it all. There are one or two exceptions (Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party" installation springs to mind), but, for the most part, she tries to squeeze in images of so many works that few get a chance to stand out.

Still, whether you're empowered by it or threatened by it, it's difficult to take issue with the importance of the feminist art movement. These women deserve to have their voices heard, and this film finally lets them have their say.

Protesters allowed inside the Milwaukee Art Museum

JSOnline: Protesters allowed inside the Milwaukee Art Museum
A small group of artists held a "sing in" at the Milwaukee Art Museum Friday in solidarity with detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Inside, the museum prepared to open a large exhibit of Chinese art organized in cooperation with China on Saturday.

"We sang outside and inside for over an hour," said Peggy Hong, one of the event's organizers. "We got some thumbs up and fist pumps, and some museum visitors came to sing with us."

"We are justice seeking people," the group sang. "And we are singing, singing for our lives."

Museum visitors took photographs and video of the demonstration, including a large group of Chinese tourists, Hong said.

The protesters were supportive of the exhibit, "The Emperor's Private Paradise," an unprecedented show of 18th-century objects from the Forbidden City. But they called upon MAM to take a stronger stand against the suppression of artists in China.

"We believe strongly that the art museum has a strong responsibility to address the injustice that is going on in China right now," Hong told WISN.

Earlier this month, Mike Brenner came to MAM to shave his head in solidarity with Ai, creating a hairline similar to that of the detained artist. Brenner was booted from the premises by museum guards and police were called to the site. The story was picked up by media outlets around the world.

MAM's director Dan Keegan later told OnMilwaukee that the Brenner's protest was "cool" and the overreaction a goof up in museum communication.

"We of course have concern for any artist who is prevented from saying what he or she wants to say," Keegain told WISN.

Keegan declined interviews regarding Ai Weiwei for several weeks. As the final touches were placed on the exhibit, however, Keegan granted interviews in which he said he didn't believe the museum should engage in any form of protest, drawing into question the actions of other cultural institutions that have signed petitions and taken stronger stands.

Art world figures and institutions around the world have taken a stand, calling for Ai's release, by doing things such as signing a petition started by the Guggenheim. The Tate Modern placed a prominent banner on the exterior of its building that reads: "Release Ai Weiwei."

Keegan said he believes the museum should be a platform for learning, a safe place where the public can come to learn about Chinese culture and history, as well as the contemporary situation. To that end, MAM has scheduled a panel discussion regarding Ai Weiwei's case for July 7. The participants have not yet been announced.

How the Milwaukee Art Museum snagged the big China show

JSOnline:
Staging the exhibit was also a way to familiarize Milwaukeeans with a culture that has become so important to the local economy. This is the first time the museum has done a major exhibit of Asian art.

With the money lining up and Ng convinced and talking up Milwaukee back at the Palace Museum, it would now be up to the Chinese. A delegation was sent here on a “vetting trip” last year. They’d go to a baseball game, to Bradford Beach and Discovery World. They’d meet the mayor and local politicians. They’d have a few good meals. And they’d tour places like Bucyrus.

But it was Santiago Calatrava who closed the deal.

“They came and saw what is the most beautiful museum in all of America” and the deal was done, said Berliner, who repeated this phrase publicly at opening celebrations this week.

“It’s not even overselling to describe a city that has a Saarinen and a Calatrava on the lake, side by side, as extraordinary,” said Ng, of the Eero Saarinen War Memorial complex and the art museum’s extension.

“This is just the kind of architecture that modern China envies. A Calatrava? This kind of high-art pushing of the building form? They were totally impressed.”

Floating art gallery can dock in Newport, RI

Boston.com: Floating art gallery can dock in Newport
NEWPORT, R.I.—A 228-foot luxury yacht that serves as an art gallery has been given permission to dock in Newport Harbor.

The SeaFair was given a license this week to dock behind Perry Mill Wharf between June 30 and July 13.

The Newport Daily News reports that yacht's owners, Expoships, GP Inc., host international dealers of fine art, glass, paintings, jewelry, sculpture, photography and furniture.

Visitors pay $20 to board the yacht and view and buy the art, which includes pieces that sell for $3,000 to $35,000. The company says over 18,000 visitors boarded the yacht during a recent five-day visit to Sarasota, Fla.

Some local residents opposed giving the yacht permission to dock, saying the gallery won't be paying taxes and will give local businesses unfair competition.

Art Museum To Open In Rough Section Of Detroit

NPR: Art Museum To Open In Rough Section Of Detroit
A nonprofit group is trying to restore Detroit's status in the art world by drawing artists to an unlikely place: a century-old former bank in a neighborhood so infested with crime that some of the building's pipes were stolen and its windows riddled with bullets.

If the museum takes root, organizers hope galleries and other businesses follow, potentially transforming the downtrodden area in the same way art houses famously changed the Chelsea and SoHo neighborhoods of New York City.

Tate Osten, a Russian-born art consultant, and a group of volunteers have spent months rehabbing the old Detroit Savings Bank branch and are days away from opening their first exhibition.

Their group, called Kunsthalle Detroit (pronounced KOONST-hah-leh, or German for "art hall"), aims to improve the city not only aesthetically, but economically.

"Such a metropolitan city as Detroit has to be on the cultural map of the world like it was 100 years ago," Osten said. "And that's basically what triggered me and my friends and colleagues to put our minds together to create this institution."

A decades-long exodus has left Detroit with hundreds of vacant structures, which have drawn out-of-town artists seeking what they regard as a blank canvas.

But this canvas is heavily blighted, too. Waist-high grass fills the abandoned lot across the street. The few nearby buildings being actively used include a junkyard, an auto shop, a church and a grocery store with a roof encircled in barbed wire. Detroit's skyline towers in the distance.

A few steps from an entrance to the main exhibition hall is a bus stop where, on a recent day, a man waiting for his ride ambled around the side of the building and relieved himself against a back wall in plain view of the street.

"It's a bad area," Osten acknowledged. "We pretty much cannot take the graffiti off (the exterior of the building), because it was painted by local gangs. I've heard very bad stories. Every now and then, we hear a shooting. I had guys approaching me who would advise me not to be here in this area without a gun."

Thieves broke in about a year ago and swiped video projectors, DVD players and tools. Despite the setbacks, Osten believes this is a good location and that most passers-by are just curious about what's happening inside.

The museum has installed a surveillance system and will bring in security guards for its inaugural exhibition, which is to open Friday. It includes works from about a dozen artists, including Sebastian Diaz Morales and Hans Op de Beeck.

Painter Donald Cronkhite, who lives in the suburb of Allen Park, said Osten's effort is exciting because "someone is realizing the need for a place like this and is willing to take a chance putting it in Detroit."

In the past, "many artists felt like they had to leave Detroit and to go to New York or Chicago in order to make it in the art world, but the artists are coming back." Many of them are buying vacant homes and renovating them for studio space.

Beginning in the 1960s, SoHo drew scores of artists who turned the forgotten industrial wasteland into a creative mecca. In the years that followed, some of the nation's most influential contemporary artists lived there. Chelsea made a similar transformation of its own, changing from a district known for factories and warehouse piers to a hub for art, with hundreds of galleries.

Osten's fledgling nonprofit museum is not far from the 125-year-old Detroit Institute of Arts and about the same distance from the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, which opened in a gutted former Dodge dealership in 2007.

She believes the art hall will succeed because of the city's tremendous potential, its wealth of available space and "young energy."

Although the project is not designed to make money, Osten hopes it will be a catalyst for improvements. She wants to transport "elite art into the raw ground" and expose it to an audience that "might never in their lives travel outside of their neighborhood."

Osten knows the international contemporary art scene well, having worked first for billionaire financier George Soros' Open Society Foundations in St. Petersburg, Russia, and later in New York as a project coordinator and consultant who put together collections for corporate and private clients. She's also a classically trained ballerina who served as the director of a ballet museum for seven years.

In May 2009, she caught glimpses of Detroit's physical devastation on TV. Never having set foot in the city, she knew only about its heritage as an automotive capital and that it had "some trouble in the `60s."

She rented a car and drove from New York to Detroit. What she saw made her cry and affirmed her belief that "something had to be done."

So she and her husband moved here permanently in July of that year, buying a 2,400-square-foot home in the city's Boston Edison neighborhood for $27,000.

"It was stripped of everything," said Osten, who then formed Kunsthalle Detroit and set about searching for the group's home, which was leased last winter for $60,000.

Kunsthalle Detroit gets by through private donations. It shares the same name and spirit as other kunsthalle locations around the world that Osten hopes to collaborate with in the future. It has no plans to sell any of the art it displays and intends to charge only a small entrance fee in the form of a suggested donation.

Osten has sold personal jewelry and clothing to pay off expenses. She searches Craigslist for tools that might help with the various construction projects.

While she has grand plans of buying up abandoned buildings across Detroit and setting up a system of satellite art centers, she's focused for now on making the first space a success.

"This is just the beginning," she said. "The change begins with one."

Premiere of Rembrandt’s graphics

BlicOnline: Premiere of Rembrandt’s graphics

BELGRADE / As the Louvre museum is currently exhibiting Rembrandt’s figures of Christ, Belgrade-based National Museum will be displaying graphics of the famous Dutch artist until 19 June, as well works from other artists on permanent display at this Serbian cultural institution.

The title of the exhibition is “Original truth of black and white. A glimpse at the Collection of Dutch and Flemish graphic works at the National Museum in Belgrade” and it has been mounted by curator Dragana Kovacic for the occasion of the International Museum Day.




“Original truth of black and white” is a representative selection of 45 works of artists who marked the historical development of the graphic art, such as Lucas van Leyden, Johannes Sadeler, Hendrick Goltzius, Rembrandt van Rijn, Adriaen van Ostade, Jan and Andries Both, Jan van de Velde, Nicolaes Berche and Lucas Vorsterman.

Artistically and stylistically speaking, this exhibition portrays the art of renaissance, mannerism, baroque and rococo, while technically it is copper plate engraving and line engraving, both highly demanding techniques the aforementioned masters brought to perfection in their time.

- “Rembrandt’s experiments with plate engraving and line engraving are particularly important and this will be the premiere showing of these pieces to the Serbian public. At this particular exhibition Rembrandt’s work will be represented by Ecce homo (1636), Self-portrait in a cap (1630), Portrait of a Man (1631), Driving the Merchants from the Temple (1635),” said Kovacevic, adding that Dutch and Flemish graphic artists experimented with copper engraving’s concepts of light and shadow

OH Museum Gives Close View of Van Gogh Restoration

ABC News: OH Museum Gives Close View of Van Gogh Restoration

A bit late with this, it was first published May 23, 2011:

Visitors to the Cincinnati Art Museum can watch as chief conservator Per Knutas (payr kuh-NOO'-tahs) slowly and carefully removes wax that was applied in the 1970s to the masterpiece, "Undergrowth with Two Figures." The Cincinnati Enquirer reports the microscope he's using for the very detailed work is hooked up to a 42-inch flat screen monitor, so patrons can follow his progress up close.

Wax was put on the back of the painting to protect the canvas and secure the paint. But Knutas says some of the wax seeped to the front surface, obscuring van Gogh's vibrant colors.

Art Museum loses modern-art curator to Dartmouth

Philly.com: Art Museum loses modern-art curator to Dartmouth
Michael R. Taylor, the highly regarded curator of modern art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, has been named director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

He will assume his new position in August, succeeding Brian Kennedy, who moved to the Toledo Museum of Art in September.

Taylor, who was named the Art Museum's first modern art curator in 2004, said in a statement that he was "absolutely delighted" with his new position. The Hood's collection, he said, offered "exciting possibilities," particularly in the area of "student-driven exhibitions, which I believe hold the key to the museum's future success."

Taylor has been a whirligig of curatorial activity since Anne d'Harnoncourt named him to the newly created position of curator of modern art in 2004.

He is responsible for curating many of the museum's most ambitious and high-profile exhibitions, including this year's "Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle"; "Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris" in 2010; "Marcel Duchamp: Etant donnés" in 2009; "Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective," also in 2009; and "Salvador Dalí: The Centennial Retrospective" in 2005.

He is a scholar of Dada and Surrealism, and author of the award-winning Marcel Duchamp: Etant donnés, which served as the hefty catalog to the Art Museum exhibition.

"The pace of things has been remarkable," Christine Poggi, a professor of art history at the University of Pennsylvania, once said of Taylor's seemingly indefatigable curatorial efforts. Taylor also taught at Penn and opened up the museum as a setting for student seminars. Said Poggi, "He's really a great colleague. You can feel the enthusiasm."

The 43-year-old, London-born Taylor came to the museum in 1997 but already had spent time in Philadelphia while researching his Courtauld Institute doctoral dissertation, on Duchamp's ready-mades. D'Harnoncourt spotted him in Paris when he curated a 1995 Duchamp segment of a show at the Pompidou Center, and within two years brought him to Philadelphia.

In making the announcement, Dartmouth provost Carol "who understands the vital role of the Hood in the life of the students, faculty, and entire community, and will be a tremendous asset to the Hood and Dartmouth."

What happens next at the art museum has yet to be determined. Director Timothy Rub was traveling Friday and could not be reached for comment.

But in the Dartmouth College news release announcing Taylor's appointment, Rub, who was director of the Hood from 1991 to 1999, called it "an outstanding institution, with a strong commitment to scholarship and to the unique role that an art museum can play in enriching the creative life of the Dartmouth community."

Of Taylor, he said, "We will miss Michael dearly, but wish him well and are grateful for the many contributions he has made to this institution during the past 15 years. He is an exceptional curator and will be a great director."

Columbus, Ohio: Arts Festival kicks off today

Columbus, Ohio: Arts Festival kicks off today
The three-day Columbus Arts Festival will kick off its 50th anniversary event at 11:30 today and run through 6 p.m. Sunday.

As many as 400,000 people attend the festival annually, which will be in the Discovery District again this year as construction wraps up on the Scioto Mile. It will move back to the area along the river next year.

The Columbus Arts Festival has long been a showcase of fine artists from throughout the country, a competitive juried show in which only 20 percent of the applicants are accepted.

This year, the festival boasts an inclusive atmosphere: A recent art-school graduate can sell work, a central Ohio painter can produce a "freestyle mural" in front of a crowd, and the city's independent arts groups can offer their spin on traditional carnival games.

As the festival turns 50, it's becoming a more interactive, collaborative effort involving artists, organizations and restaurants that reflect the city's spirit.

"We didn't want to just celebrate the 50th anniversary; we wanted to broaden the appeal of the festival to the local community," said Jami Goldstein, spokeswoman for the Greater Columbus Arts Council, which produces the event.

"When people walk around the festival this year, they'll feel that something is different."

As many as 400,000 people attend the three-day festival, which began in 1961 on the Statehouse lawn by a neighborhood group seeking to add events Downtown.

It eventually expanded to the riverfront, where it remained until Scioto Mile construction forced its move to the Discovery District in 2008.

As the festival prepares to move back to the river next year, the council thought it was time to launch new initiatives that can carry the event into the future.

For the first time, extra booth space has been allotted to 10 "emerging artists" from central Ohio who will sell their works alongside festival veterans.

Among the local artists is Chelstin Ross, a 2009 graduate of the Columbus College of Art & Design who otherwise wouldn't have considered applying to the festival.

The 24-year-old, who paints abstract watercolor landscapes inspired by her childhood in rural Bucyrus, has previously participated only in school events. .

But the arts council is charging her a reduced booth fee, hosting boot camps to help with her preparation and pairing her with a mentor who can provide guidance.

"It's opportunities like this that make an artist community grow," said Ross, who lives in Olde Towne East. "At some point, I definitely want to walk around and feel how honored I am to be there."

Other central Ohio artists not selling their work at the festival will have a chance to participate, too.

In "Expose Yourself" - a series of live, 45-minute demonstrations each afternoon and evening - Downtown resident Emily Rickard, 22, will create a multilayered collage by asking audience members to select her materials - including fabric swatches, paper scraps and candy wrappers.

Jon Stommel, 26, of the King-Lincoln District, will stand in front of a blank canvas, turn on a playlist of music and see what happens.

Stommel has painted in public before and looks forward to interacting with the crowd while creating what he calls a "freestyle mural."

"I really just got addicted to the cycle of energy between painter and viewer when the process is so immediate," he said. "This opportunity is very much what I've been waiting for for a long time."

Festival visitors will have a chance to create in the new All Hands on Art tent, a grown-up activity area where nostalgic adults can play with a Lite-Brite or Play-Doh (while enjoying drinks from a nearby bar).

Carnival games can be played for a fee, which will benefit the 10 independent arts groups that created them. The Columbus Idea Foundry, for example, constructed an oversize pinball machine; the Phoenix Rising Print Cooperative will ask participants to fish for greeting cards instead of the traditional plastic ducks.

Groups hope to introduce the festival crowd to what might be an unfamiliar local art scene, said Adam Brouillette of Couchfire Collective and the Wonderland Columbus project, both of which will host games.

"The people who normally go to the Columbus Arts Festival are not the type of people who go to Agora," he said, referring to an independent art show last month.

"I'm hoping this becomes another good communication between the independent arts community and the institutional arts community, and that those teams start working together."

Troops sent across the Pacific on the ship, now inactive, left behind Kilroy-style markings on the canvases — inked jokes, doodles, mash notes to girl

Wall Street Journal: NYC's Metropolitan Museum raises suggested prices
NEW YORK — New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is raising the amount it asks visitors to pay from $20 to $25, saying it needs the increase because its endowment has shrunk and museumgoers are throwing less money into the till.

Visitors to the museum can technically pay whatever they want under a longstanding agreement with the New York City government, which owns the building and helps cover overhead costs. But the museum sets a suggested admission price, and visitors are encouraged to pay it. The new prices were announced Friday.

The average donation has declined 16 cents in the last year, spokesman Harold Holzer said. He declined to disclose the amount, saying the museum does not want to encourage visitors to pay less.

Each visitor costs the museum $40, he said, and the museum has been running a small deficit for years.

The museum has millions of dollars in investments, but the amount it can withdraw is based on a five-year average value of that endowment. So even though the stock market has recovered, any gains are off-limits, Holzer said.

"One of the serious problems is the money that we spend out of that endowment," Holzer said. "That's going to be with us in the budget for a couple of years."

The increase takes effect on July 1. The suggested price for seniors will rise from $15 to $17 and from $10 to $12 for students. Children under 12 will still get in for free.

Holzer said the museum expects to get about 5 million visitors this year as the economy recovers and vacation travel picks up