| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Friday, March 5, 2021 |
| | | Forgotten mausoleum of Roman emperor Augustus reborn | |
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People visit the Mausoleum of Augustus (Mausoleo di Augusto), a large tomb built by the Roman Emperor Augustus in 28 BC on the Campus Martius near the river Tiber, as it reopens on March 03, 2021 in Rome. The Mausoleum of the first Roman Emperor Augustus, which has been closed for fourteen years, is reopening to visitors. Filippo MONTEFORTE / AFP.
by Gildas Le Roux
ROME (AFP).- A newly renovated colossal mausoleum for the founder of the Roman empire Augustus has reopened to the public in the Italian capital after centuries of neglect. "Until now we have always known it as a ruin, but it is one of the most important monuments of antiquity," explained Alessia, a masked guide taking a small group of visitors on the labyrinthine route through five concentric enclosures. "It was so majestic, they had never seen anything like this in Rome." The mausoleum was built on the banks of the River Tiber between 28 and 23 BC. It is a vast, towering monument to Augustus, the great-nephew of Julius Caesar who built the Roman empire during his 40-year rule. The cylindrical base has a diameter of 90 metres, on top of which was planted a mound of cypress trees. On the summit, a bronze statue of the emperor stood guard, taking the total height to 45 metres. At the centre of the mausoleum, originally ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Ralph Augsburger, a conservator at ArtCare Conservation, with the long-missing Panel 28 from Jacob Lawrence's series "Struggle: From the History of the American People," in New York on Feb. 3, 2021. The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Amr Alfiky/The New York Times
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| He was born into slavery, but achieved musical stardom | | Almine Rech opens Günther Förg's third solo exhibition with the gallery | | Two Picasso portraits to highlight Christie's 20th Century Art Evening Sale |
Thomas Greene Wiggins, who performed as Blind Tom. Born into slavery, Wiggins became a touring phenomenon, playing his own compositions and improvising on the piano. Golder & Robinson/Library of Congress via The New York Times.
by Anthony Tommasini
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Charity Wiggins, a slave on a Georgia plantation, was 48 in May 1849, when she gave birth to a baby boy. The child, whom she named Thomas, was born blind, and she feared that their owner would deem him a useless burden with potentially dire consequences. Sure enough, before long her family of five, at the time was put up for sale to settle some of the owners debts. Wiggins made a bold plea to Gen. James Neil Bethune, a fiercely proslavery lawyer and newspaper editor in Columbus, Georgia, to keep her family together; probably out of pity, he agreed and bought them. He could not have imagined that acquiring the Wiggins slaves would make him a fortune. For within a decade, Wiggins son had become a touring ... More | |
Günther Förg, Untitled, 1990. Acrylic on lead on wood, 150 x 115 cm. 59 x 45 1/4 in. Signed and dated on the reverse © 2021 Estate Günther Förg, Switerland / VG Bild-Kunst Bonn.
PARIS.- Almine Rech is presenting A Game of Chess, Günther Förgs third solo exhibition with the gallery, organized in collaboration with the Estate of the artist, following on the shows the gallery organized in London in 2015 and 2018. Förg was born in the Allgäu region and studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, his ideas have continuously migrated through numerous media. In 1984, Förg earned his spurs after being included in 'von hier haus', an exhibition on new German painting that Kasper König curated in Düsseldorf. Since then, he has been associated with two trajectories in postwar art. The history of his reception within the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam illustrates the duality of his protean artistic practice. In 1995, the Stedelijk, which at the time was led by Rudi Fuchs, presented Förg as the successor to the Germanic painters grouped together as the so-called Neo Expressionists: G ... More | |
Pablo Picasso, Femme assise dans un fauteuil noir (1962, estimate : £6,000,000 - 9,000,000). © Christie's Images Ltd 2021.
LONDON.- Christies will present two major portraits by Picasso as leading highlights in the 20th Century Art Evening Sale on 23 March. Painted on 18 June 1932, Femme nue couchée au collier (Marie-Thérèse) (estimate: £9,000,000-15,000,000) is one of the colourful, love-filled paeans that Pablo Picasso painted of Marie-Thérèse Walter in the first half of this seminal year. Painted some 30 years later, Femme assise dans un fauteuil noir (Jacqueline) (1962, estimate: £6,000,000-9,000,000) depicts his wife Jacqueline. Both of these vibrant portraits represent significant stylistic moments in Picassos career. Keith Gill, Co-Head of Sale, 20th Century Art Evening Sale, Christies: Keith Gill, Co-Head of Sale, 20th Century Art Evening Sale, Christies: Christies is delighted to offer these two symbolic paintings by Picasso as star lots in our Evening Sale series on 23 March 2021. Seen together, Femme nue co ... More |
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| Fauci is giving his Coronavirus model to the Smithsonian | | Carol Bove's light-touch heavy metal faces down the Met | | Academy helped buy its boss a new home. She left in under 6 years. |
The model, which he said was made with a 3D printer at the National Institutes of Health, is a blue sphere studded with spikes replicating the spiked proteins that can latch onto cells in our airways, allowing the virus to slip inside.
by Allyson Waller
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- A piece of personal pandemic history belonging to the nations top infectious disease expert has found a new home at the Smithsonians National Museum of American History. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, presented his three-dimensional model of the coronavirus to the museums national medicine and science collections Tuesday at a ceremony that was conducted by videoconference. I wanted to pick something that was really meaningful to me and important because I used it so often, Fauci said in an interview Wednesday about his decision to give the model to the museum. The model, which he said was made with a 3D printer at the National Institutes of Health, is a blue sphere studded with spikes replicating the spiked proteins that can latch onto cells in our airways, allowing the virus to slip inside. Fauci said he had often used it as a visual aid when briefing members of Congress and former President D ... More | |
A member of Carol Bove's team shapes the steel beams of one of her sculptures, intended for the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the help of a hydraulic press at her studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Nov. 10, 2020. George Etheredge/The New York Times.
by Jason Farago
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- I didnt want them to sit politely on the pedestals, Carol Bove said to me this past summer. The sculptor was tiptoeing around a pile of crushed, tangled steel tubes, lying on the floor of her studio in the far south of Brooklyn. Shed reopened her workshop after a pandemic shutdown, and all around were the accouterments of art and industry. Forklifts and girders. Welders masks and hazmat suits. But there was also, rather incongruously, a shadow of a century past: a huge plaster replica of a beaux-arts sculpture pedestal, a full-scale copy of the empty ones on the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The crumpled tubes would form part of one of Boves largest-ever projects, for the museums second commission of new outdoor sculpture. Last week, after a six-month COVID-induced delay, the completed works were driven uptown and were being craned into place at 1000 Fifth Ave. There are four of them: abstract ... More | |
Katy Clark speaks during the Brooklyn Academy of Music Gala at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in New York, May 30, 2018. Clark served as president of the academy from 2015 until earlier this year. Krista Schlueter/The New York Times.
by Robin Pogrebin
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- One of the perks of leading premier cultural institutions, besides the substantial salaries, is the use of elegant apartments, which are often owned by arts organizations and passed from one top executive to the next. But the Brooklyn Academy of Music took it a step further in 2015 when Katy Clark became its president. The organization gave its new leader nearly half the purchase price of a $1.9 million, three-bedroom prewar home overlooking Prospect Park that she could call her own. The unusual one-time housing bonus of $968,000 came on top of her new starting salary of $355,000, which was a considerable boost from the roughly $200,000 she had been making in her prior job. Now, after just five years in the post, Clark left BAM in January for a lower-profile job at a foundation and the apartment has gone with her, leading to questions about the fiscal prudence of such an outlay to lure a leader whose tenure wound up being much shorter than her predecessors. The questions ... More |
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| Kasmin Gallery announces representation of Elliott Hundley | | Ernest Howard Shepard's Winnie the Pooh illustration could bring $50,000+ at Heritage Auctions | | Sprüth Magers opens the first solo exhibition at the Los Angeles gallery of works by Cindy Sherman |
Elliott Hundley © Max Knight.
NEW YORK, NY.- Kasmin announced representation of Elliott Hundley (b. 1975). The Los Angeles-based artist is known for expanding the traditional notions of collage and assemblage in a multidisciplinary practice of painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography that synthesizes ancient epics, futuristic narratives, and contemporary realities. The resulting works resemble theatrical landscapes that delve into the artists psyche, reflecting Hundleys desire to create a new personal mythology. To mark the announcement, an online viewing room, Elliott Hundley: Preface, is now live on the gallery website, presenting new paintings, sculpture, and works on paper. The artists first solo exhibition will go on view at Kasmin in September 2021, taking inspiration from Jean Genets 1957 play, The Balcony, a work fraught with explorations of power and desire. Concurrent with the exhibition, Hundley will unveil a new 40-ft mural as part ... More | |
Ernest Howard Shepard (British, 1879-1976) It Appears You have Eaten a Bee, The House at Pooh Corner interior book illustration, 1928 (detail). Ink on board, 3 x 7-1/2 inches. Estimate: $30,000 - $50,000.
DALLAS, TX.- A 93-year-old Winnie the Pooh illustration, Chas Addams cartoons, all three original trilogy Star Wars video cassette covers and an array of pulp covers from Norman Saunders and Virgil Finlay are among the top highlights in Heritage Auctions Illustration auction April 30. This is a well-balanced sale that will appeal to collectors of widely varying tastes, with images that will take us all back to earlier years, Heritage Auctions Senior Vice President Ed Jaster said. Ernest Howard Shepards ink drawing perfectly captures the characters from Winnie the Pooh, which just about everyone would list as a childhood favorite: Alberto Vargas for the elite pin-up art collectors, Norman Saunders for pulp enthusiasts, and Star Wars and Star Trek images that are iconic to generations ... More | |
Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 2019. Cotton, wool, acrylic, cotton mercurisé, and polyester cotton woven together, 281.9 à 218.4 cm. 111 à 86 inches © Cindy Sherman. Courtesy Sprüth Magers and Metro Pictures, New York Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers opened the first solo exhibition at the Los Angeles gallery by internationally renowned artist Cindy Sherman, who has been associated with Sprüth Magers since the 1980s. In the latest series on view, Sherman explores her first non photographic medium in a career spanning over 40 years: Tapestry. Featuring a dozen examples of her new and recent tapestries, the exhibition marks the début of these works as a coherent body of work. In line with Shermans long-term photographic investigation into the construction of identity and the nature of representation, the images are based on pictures posted on the artists personal Instagram account, which she creates using widely available ... More |
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| Smithsonian names Ellen Stofan Under Secretary for Science and Research | | Christie's announces two live auctions of post-war and contemporary art | | Thomas Hirschhorn turns GL STRAND into an anti-architectural space |
Ellen Stofan is currently director of the Smithsonians National Air and Space Museum. Photo by Jim Preston, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
WASHINGTON, DC.- Ellen Stofan, director of the Smithsonians National Air and Space Museum, has been named the Smithsonians Under Secretary for Science and Research, effective March 14. In this role, Stofan will lead the Institutions collective scientific efforts and commitment to research. The position oversees the Smithsonians science museums, science research centers and Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. This includes the National Museum of Natural History, the National Zoo and Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, the Museum Conservation Institute, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Stofan will report to Meroe Park, Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer. Stofan has served as the John and Adrienne Mars Director of the National ... More | |
Gerhard Richter, Frau mit kind (Woman with Child). Frequency modulated offset print in colors, on white cardboard, 2005. Image: 51 x 43 ¼ in. Estimate: $40,000-60,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2021.
NEW YORK, NY.- This March, Christies presents two live auctions dedicated to shining a spotlight onto the defining voices of Post-War and Contemporary art. The Post-War to Present sale opens the week on March 9 with stellar examples by Matthew Wong, Emily Mae Smith, Derrick Adams, Kenneth Noland, Elaine de Kooning and Ruth Asawa while the March 10 Contemporary Edition sale features nearly 200 striking prints and multiples from leading names such as Frank Stella, Jasper Johns and Alex Katz and important contemporary artists such as KAWS and Damien Hirst, with estimates starting at under $1,000. In addition to the live auctions, Christies is hosting four complementary online-only sales of Post-War and Contemporary Art. Please click here for more information on the full offering. Preview exhibitions are available to view online, and may be visited at our Rockefeller ... More | |
Thomas Hirschhorn, Community of Fragments. Photo: David Stjernholm.
COPENHAGEN.- GL STRAND marks the new year with this ambitious new work by the internationally recognized Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn, whose exhibition 'Community of Fragments' turns GL STRAND into an anti-architectural space. The exhibition is created as a site-specific free access project on two floors and transforms the whole architecture of GL STRAND. Right from the main stairway that leads up through the gallery spaces, Hirschhorn lets the fake cave or abandoned mine take over from floor to ceiling. All visitors are invited to participate in the reconstruction of GL STRAND in a workshop centered in the middle of the exhibition. Here one can among other things create sculptures and two-dimensional works that contribute to the exhibition; but one can also use the workshop for dialogue and debate. With the exhibition Thomas Hirschhorn creates an artistic space that we are invited to occupy again and again if you like. For the same reas ... More |
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Alice Neel: People Come First
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Mary Ellen Mark exhibition at National Museum of Women in the Arts explores girlhood
WASHINGTON, DC.- The National Museum of Women in the Arts opened Mary Ellen Mark: Girlhood, a new exhibition of works by one of the most prolific documentary and portrait photographers of her generation. The exhibition features approximately 30 images that span Mary Ellen Marks 50-year-career, depicting girls and young women living in a variety of circumstances all over the globe. Mary Ellen Mark: Girlhood is open through July 11, 2021. Mary Ellen Mark (19402015) is known for her compassionate and candid depictions of subjects living outside of mainstream society. Over the course of her career, Mark traveled extensively, creating bodies of work in diverse communities in the United States as well as India, Mexico, the former Soviet Union and other countries. While Mark photographed people of all ages and from all walks of life, she was ... More
Mihnea Mircan and Kasia Redzisz appointed curators of the fourth edition of the Art Encounters Biennial
TIMIșOARA.- The Art Encounters Biennial has announced that Mihnea Mircan and Kasia Redzisz will curate its fourth edition, to be held in Timișoara, Romania, on 1 October-14 November 2021. Under the title of Our Other Us, the 2021 edition of the Art Encounters Biennial responds to the current global context by presenting two curatorial projects that explore empathy and responsibility as values that drive our existence. The curators investigate various modes of collectivity as alternative ways of being in the world, while simultaneously concentrating on the transformations that influence the act of self-perception. The ideas embedded in their exhibitions find their translation in the Biennials ongoing engagement with local institutions, organisations, and in initiatives aimed at establishing new partnerships and collaborations. The Biennials ... More
MACRO opens the first major solo show by Nathalie Du Pasquier in an Italian museum
ROME.- In the SOLO/MULTI feature, the column of Museum for Preventive Imagination, dedicated to exploring new approaches to the exhibition as a medium, MACRO presents the first major solo show by Nathalie Du Pasquier in an Italian museum. The French artist and designer has approached this show as a Gesamtkunstwerka silent symphony as the artist sayscomprised of a body of more than a hundred works produced from the 1980s to the present. Nathalie Du Pasquier looks at reality as a catalogue from which we can take everythingshe assertsand transform it into another world. She has always been intrigued by the relationship between objects and the space in which they exist. Over the years, this process of investigation has taken form in paintings, sculptures, drawings, models, constructions, carpets, books and ceramicsalways ... More
Battle of Goliad Map brings $250K to lead $1.7 million Heritage Americana & Political Auction
DALLAS, TX.- One of the earliest and most important contemporary printed records of the Texas Revolution, unseen since 1966, soared to $250,000 to lead Heritage Auctions Feb. 27-28 Americana & Political Auction to $1,695,964 in total sales. The two-day event boasted sell-through rates of 98.1% by lots sold, and 95.9% by value sold, and drew an impressive 1,669 bidders. One of the earliest and most important contemporary printed records of the Texas Revolution, Fort Defiance: 1836 Joseph Chadwick Map of Col. James Fannin's Defenses at the Historic Site of the Battle of Goliad raced past its pre-auction estimate of $100,000 before finishing at $250,000. The map drawn by Fannin's adjutant, Joseph Chadwick and sent to Chadwick's mother shortly before the pair died. The story of the Texas Revolution became the stuff of legend, and the tragic ... More
Steidl to publish 'Photographs: 1980s to now' by Jo Ractliffe
NEW YORK, NY.- Co-published with The Walther Collection, this book is the first to present a comprehensive selection of the work of South African photographer Jo Ractliffe. Looking back over the past 35 years, it brings together images from major photo-essays, as well as early works that have not been seen before. Described by Okwui Enwezor as one of the most accomplished and under-rated photographers of her generation, Ractliffe started working in the early 1980s, and her photographs continue to reflect her preoccupation with the South African landscape and the ways in which it figures in the countrys imaginaryparticularly the violent legacies of apartheid. In 2007 she extended her interests to the war in Angola and published three photobooks on the aftermath of that conflict and its manifestations in the South African landscape: ... More
The first Daimler Double Six VDP off the production line for sale with H&H Classics
LONDON.- Once in a while something really special comes along that need the love of a new owner to restore it to past glory. Just such a car is Chassis Number One, the very first Daimler Double Six Vanden Plas LWB Saloon made. It will be sold at No Reserve by H&H Classics on March 24 in a live auction online. Matching Chassis and Engine Numbers. Reputedly its sister car was gifted to HM The Queen Mother by the Daimler company. John Markey of H&H Classics says: This car is a gilt edged part of British motoring history the first Daimler Double Six VDP off the production line which today is a restoration project. The car pleasingly retains its original factory-fitted 5.3 litre V12. This Daimler surely belongs in a marque collection or museum. Once the pride of Browns Lane, this historic Daimler Double Six Vanden Plas LWB has the distinction of having ... More
Six Seuss books bore a bias
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- As a child, I was led to believe that Blackness was inferior. And I was not alone. The Black society into which I was born was riddled with these beliefs. It wasnt something that most if any would articulate in that way, let alone knowingly propagate. Rather, it was in the air, in the culture. We had been trained in it, bathed in it, acculturated to hate ourselves. It happened for children in the most inconspicuous of ways: It was relayed through toys and dolls, cartoons and childrens shows, fairy tales and childrens books. At every turn, at every moment, I was being baptized in the narrative that everything white was right, good, noble and beautiful, and everything Black was the opposite. The first book I ever bought was a childrens book about Job from the Bible. Job was the whitest of white men in the book ... More
Exhibition showcases the talents of four Harlem-based photographers
NEW YORK, NY.- Claire Oliver Gallery is presenting Love Letters for Harlem an exhibition of photographs by John Pinderhughes, Ruben Natal-San Miguel, Jeffrey Henson Scales and Shawn Walker. Love Letters for Harlem showcases the talents of these four Harlem-based photographers and their work that celebrates the lives and culture of Harlem. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Harlem Community Relief Fund, an initiative of the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce (GHCC), who in concert with Harlem Week, ReThink Food NY, NY State Assemblywoman Inez Dickens, CCNY, NAACP are working together to combat food insecurity in Harlem. The exhibition will be on view by appointment February 22 April 3, 2021. As longtime residents of Harlem, we are inspired by the rich cultural lineage of our neighborhood, states gallerist Claire ... More
Moufida Tlatli, groundbreaker in Arab film, dies at 78
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Moufida Tlatli, the Tunisian director whose 1994 film The Silences of the Palace became the first international hit for a female filmmaker from the Arab world, died Feb. 7 in Tunis. She was 78. Her daughter, Selima Chaffai, said the cause was COVID-19. The Silences of the Palace, which Tlatli directed and co-wrote with Nouri Bouzid, is set in the mid-1960s but consists largely of flashbacks to a decade earlier, before Tunisia achieved independence from France. The protagonist, a young woman named Alia (played by Hend Sabri), reflects on the powerlessness of women in that prior era, including her mother, Khedija (Amel Hedhili), a servant in the palace of Tunisian princes. Alias memories prompt a revelation that she has not achieved true autonomy even in the more liberated milieu of her own time. Silences ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Mental Escapology, St. Moritz
TIM VAN LAERE GALLERY
Madelynn Green
Patrick Angus
Flashback On a day like today, Italian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was born March 05, 1696. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (March 5, 1696 - March 27, 1770), also known as Giambattista (or Gianbattista) Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice who painted in the Rococo style. He was prolific, and worked not only in Italy, but also in Germany and Spain. Giovan Battista Tiepolo, together with Giambattista Pittoni, Canaletto, Giovan Battista Piazzetta, Giuseppe Maria Crespi and Francesco Guardi are considered the traditional Old Masters of that period. In this image: View of the ceiling of the Imperial Hall in the Wurzburg Residenz.
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