| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Sunday, April 5, 2020 |
| | | Paintings discovered inside the coffin of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy | |
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Perhaps the most exciting development is the discovery of painted figures on the internal and external bases of the trough. Both figures are representations of the Egyptian goddess, Amentet or Imentet, known as the She of the West or sometimes as Lady of the West. The West here may be a geographical allusion but it is primarily a mythological, supernatural reference.
PERTH.- Conservation of the Perth Mummy, Ta-Kr-Hb, is now well underway in Perth Museum & Art Gallery. This work is an essential part of the conservation preparation ahead of the collections redisplay in the new City Hall Museum currently being developed for Perth. For the first time in over 100 years, Ta-Kr-Hb has been lifted out of her coffin so that she can be fully assessed. The lower part of the coffin (the trough) is a forensically rich environment that features soils, plants, and insects. The conservation team at the museum are confident that the scientific analysis of this material, and also of the resin used to cover the bandages, will reveal more details about the mummification of Ta-Kr-Hb and the places her body was kept in. Perhaps the most exciting development is the discovery of painted figures on the internal and external bases of the ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day San Francisco City Hall is lit up red, white and blue on April 02, 2020 in San Francisco, California. Officials in seven San Francisco Bay Area counties have extend the shelter in place order until May 1 due to coronavirus concerns. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/AFP
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| | New book offers the ultimate overview of the treatment of Van Eyck's The Ghent Altarpiece | | Suellen Rocca, founding member of the Hairy Who, dies at 76 | | David Driskell, artist and scholar, dies at 88 |
The course of the treatment of the paintings themselves is explained in detail.
BRUSSELS.- For four years, a multidisciplinary team from the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA, Brussels) worked on the research and conservation-restoration of the exterior of the Ghent Altarpiece by the Van Eyck brothers (1432). The re-discovery of their original creation, hidden for centuries under extensive overpaints, not only led to an unexpected visual revelation. Thanks to the accompanying research, knowledge about the iconic masterpiece is now taking a giant leap. In the reference work The Ghent Altarpiece. Research and Conservation of the Exterior, published by the KIK-IRPA, the restoration team presents its recent work, while bundling the broad findings of the multidisciplinary research. Richly illustrated, it includes a unique selection of photos, scientific imaging and explanatory diagrams. As the most striking realization, the course of the treatment of the ... More | |
Suellen Rocca with her work Curly Head at an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1967. Matthew Marks Gallery via The New York Times.
by Randy Kennedy
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Suellen Rocca, a founding member of the short-lived but influential 1960s Chicago art group the Hairy Who and a fiercely original artist whose hieroglyphic, phantasmagoric work poked a finger in the eye of late-20th-century modernist purities, died on March 26 at a hospice in Naperville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She was 76. Matthew Marks Gallery in New York, which represents her, said the cause was pancreatic cancer. At a time when the deadpan consumer imagery of pop art was giving way to the restraint of minimalism and conceptualism, Rocca and five former classmates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago came together under the sway of influences as disparate as Dubuffet, Native American art, hand-painted store ... More | |
David Driskell. Courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.
NEW YORK, NY.- David Driskell died April 1, 2020 in the late afternoon in a hospital outside of Hyattsville, MD, where he lived with his wife, Thelma Driskell. The cause was double pneumonia due to complications of the coronavirus. This is a profound loss to so many, as Dr. Driskell was an artist, curator, and scholar whose work over six decades has influenced the public and generations of other artists, historians, and curators. Dr. Driskell was one of the worlds authorities on the subject of African American Art, a teacher of great renown, and an artist of immense depth and passion. His contributions have changed the way we think about American art; his paintings and collages unite a strong modernist impulse with his personal vision and memory. A retrospective of his work is to be shown at the High Museum in Atlanta, GA, the Portland Museum of Art, ME, and The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, in 2021. John Yau wrote in 2019: Driskell is that increasingly ... More |
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| | Sotheby's London teams up with Margherita Missoni on this season's 'Contemporary Curated' | | Hindman's Essential Jewelry auction delivers top results online | | Marc Straus now represents Marie Watt |
Margherita Missoni.
LONDON.- This spring, Sothebys is teaming up with fashion aficionado Margherita Maccapani Missoni to handpick a personal edit of artworks for Contemporary Curated, an online-only sale of contemporary art. Hailing from a family whose surname has become synonymous with colourfully zigzagged and space-dyed knits, Margherita recently took over as creative director of M Missoni a younger offshoot of her familys famed fashion house. Re-use, remix and respect are the cornerstones of M Missoni. Old advertisements have been pillaged for clothing prints, traditional logos and archive prints have been rewritten with a contemporary twist, and the labels tried and trusty patchwork is reimagined in new prints. Applauded for embracing sustainable heritage, finger-on-the-pulse instincts and a playful, experiential approach, Margherita stands at the forefront ... More | |
Seaman Schepps,Shell Earclips. Containing two shells accented with four round cabochon cut dyed green chalcedony. Mounted in yellow gold. Stamp: P.S.V. OF SEAMAN SCHEPPS. Clip back stamp: 14K. 11.65 dwt. Estimate: $700-900. Price Realized: $4,807.
CHICAGO, IL.- Internationally recognized art auction house " target="_blank">Hindman Auctions realized top prices on Tuesday, March 31st during the Essential Jewelry sale. Sourced from private collections and estates from across the country, the online auction sold over 90% of the 444 lots of contemporary, period and antique jewelry offered for sale. Securing over $423,000 in total sales, against a pre-sale estimate of just over $368,000, Tuesdays auction confirmed online bidding continues to be a powerful avenue for selling jewelry. Signed, wearable pieces yielded strong results including a pair of Lalaounis, Yellow Gold Octopus Earclips which realized $2,530 against an auction estimate of $700-900. ... More | |
Blanket Stories: Beacon, Marker, Ohi-yo, 2016, folded blankets, steel, 240 x 108 x 48 inches (609.6 x 274.3 x 121.9 cm).
NEW YORK, NY.- Marc Straus announced the representation of Marie Watt. Marie Watt uses powerful symbolism, text and group activity to create impassioned sculptural works. Her work is timely, synthesizing mythologies and history from her Native American heritage seamlessly interwoven with current international issues. In her work images of wolves and dogs reference animals as the First Teachers within Iroquois oral tradition and La Lupa Capitolina, the Etruscan she-wolf nursing of the mythological founders of Rome. Watts sculptures of stacked woolen blankets invoke their daily domestic use as much as art historical pillars like Trajans Column, Brancusis pedestals, and the great totem poles of the Northwest US. Watt is an artist and citizen of the Seneca Nation ... More |
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| | Ogunquit Museum of American Art announces new Executive Director | | Save LACMA files ballot measure initiative with L.A. County Clerk's office | | Michael McKinnell, 84, dies; Architect of a monumental city hall |
Dr. Lahikainen is currently Chair of the Art Department and a tenured Associate Professor of Art History at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she oversees the art gallery.
OGUNQUIT, ME.- David Mallen, President of the Board of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art announced today that Amanda Lahikainen, PhD, has been appointed as the museums new Executive Director, effective May 1, 2020. The board unanimously approved the appointment on March 23, 2020. Dr. Lahikainen is currently Chair of the Art Department and a tenured Associate Professor of Art History at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she oversees the art gallery. Mallen said, After a nationwide search, we are delighted to have selected Amanda as our next Executive Director. She is a gifted administrator and scholar. Dr. Lahikainen holds a PhD in art history from Brown University and a BA from Wellesley College. She oversaw and co-curated exhibitions at her college gallery and the Bell Gallery at Brown University, and has worked with local museums in Grand Rapids including the Grand Rapids Art Museum and the Meijer Gar ... More | |
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, William Pereira, ca 1963-65.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Rob Hollman, Board Chair of Save LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), has announced that the organization successfully filed a ballot measure initiative with the Los Angeles County Clerks office, which calls for much greater accountability with museum leadership and the L.A. Board of Supervisors, which has approved a controversial plan to demolish the existing museum complex and replace it with a $750 million building, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The filing took place on Tuesday, March 31st. The measure contains four addendum items for the L.A. County Municipal Code as it relates to LACMA, including allowing public representation on the museums private Board of Trustees; limiting the amount of L.A. County funds to 20% of the total estimated and real costs(s) for the museums present and future building construction projects; holding an open design competition to be reviewed and approved by both the museums board and other design professionals; ... More | |
Boston City Hall. Photo: Daniel Schwen.
by Joseph Giovannini
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Michael McKinnell, whose heroically sculptural and democratically open design for Boston City Hall catalyzed the citys urban revival in the late 1960s and embodied the eras idealism and civic activism, died on March 27 in Beverly, Massachusetts. He was 84. His wife and architectural partner, Stephanie Mallis, said the cause was the coronavirus. In 1962, the British-born McKinnell was a 26-year-old graduate student in architecture at Columbia University working as a teaching assistant to the German-born architect Gerhard Kallmann when, almost on a lark, the two entered a competition to design a new Boston City Hall. Vying with 255 other submissions, they won. They were as amazed as anyone that they prevailed, Mallis said. Neither had ever built anything. Except for fellow architects, few Americans had seen anything quite like the winning proposal certainly not the citys mayor, John F. Collins, who reportedly exclaimed on first seeing the design, ... More |
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| | New book presents the many facets of photographer Balthasar Burkhard | | Why birds are the world's best engineers | | The Rubin Museum of Art launches digital initiatives for navigating change |
Balthasar Burkhard. Text by: Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Tom Holert, Martin Gasser, Thomas Seelig, Florian Ebner.
NEW YORK, NY.- This book presents the many facets of photographer Balthasar Burkhard (19442010), showing his self-invention as an artist and tracing the trajectory of the medium of photography in the later half of the twentieth century. Burkhards work combines a sensitive understanding of the body as sculpture and the photographic image as a canvas, making him one of the pioneers in translating photography as a monumental tableau into contemporary art. This comprehensive book coalesces Burkhards early role as a chronicler of the contemporary art of his time, especially as the main photographer for Swiss curator Harald Szeemann, his conceptual redefinition of photography together with other artists, and finally his emancipation as a photo artist. It accompanies a major retrospective organized by Museum Folkwang in Essen, Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung ... More | |
The aviary at the Akron Zoo in Ohio, Feb. 24, 2020. A nest is a disordered stick bomb, resilient in ways that humans have hardly begun to understand, much less emulate. Andrew Spear/The New York Times.
by Siobhan Roberts
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The term birds nest has come to describe a messy hairdo, tangled fishing line and other unspeakably knotty conundrums. But that does birds an injustice. Their tiny brains, dense with neurons, produce marvels that have long captured scientific interest as naturally selected engineering solutions yet nests are still not well understood. One effort to disentangle the structural dynamics of the nest is underway in the sunny yellow lab the Mechanical Biomimetics and Open Design Lab of Hunter King, an experimental soft-matter physicist at the University of Akron in Ohio. We hypothesize that a bird nest might effectively be a disordered stick bomb, with just enough stored energy to keep it rigid, King said. He is the principal investigator of an ... More | |
The Shrine Room. Photo: David de Armas, courtesy of the Rubin Museum of Art.
NEW YORK, NY.- In response to this time of great instability, the Rubin Museum of Art has created a series of digital initiatives to help its global community feel inspired, connected, and uplifted. Today the Museum launched The Rubin Daily Offering, a new video program featuring art, ideas, and practices inspired by the Rubin Museums collection to help achieve greater balance. Thursday through Monday at noon on the Rubin Museums Instagram IGTV feed, practitioners, artists, teachers, and experts alike share 10 minutes of insights and tools that can help open a window into our inner worlds so we can better navigate the outer one. Each week a new speaker joins a Rubin staff member who introduces an artwork, which in turn serves as the inspiration for the offering. In week one, celebrated meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg guides viewers through a grounding mindfulness practice inspired by the revered Tibetan Buddhist deity ... More |
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Ida Kohlmeyer: Cloistered | Berry Campbell, New York | Gallery Walkthrough
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Parrish Art Museum launches free live-stream workshops direct from the artist's studio
WATER MILL, NY.- The Education Department of the Parrish Art Museum has created Live from the Studio, a new series of FREE live-streamed art workshops every Wednesday morning, featuring a rotating roster of Parrish teaching artists. The series kicks off Wednesday, April 8, from 11 11:45am with painter Barbara Thomas, who will lead a Still Life Flower Painting class, inspired by selections from the Parrish collection and her own works. The class is open to all participants, adults and families, at any skill level. "The artists who teach at the Parrish each have their own expertise and following. They have volunteered to share workshops from their studios to connect with students from home, said Cara Conklin-Wingfield, Parrish Education Director. We all need art right now and Barbara and the other artists are generously sharing their time to bring ... More
Together In Art we stand: Art Gallery of New South Wales shares a daily boost of art with the world
SYDNEY.- The Art Gallery of New South Wales announced Together In Art, a new online social project providing meaningful encounters with art through an open platform of imagination, inspiration and creativity during the temporary closure of the Gallery. Featuring new commissions, pocket exhibitions, artist projects, innovative performances, talks, interviews, virtual visits to artists studios, behind-the-scenes tours, inspiring artmaking workshops and activities for children and adults, and more, Together In Art brings together the diverse and vibrant voices of artists, performers, staff, community partners and the Gallerys audience and affirms the power of art to connect people in difficult times. Delivering surprises and fresh developments on a daily basis, Together In Art dives into the riches of the Gallerys collection and brings to life current exhibitions ... More
At Margaret Atwood's prompting, Canada launches virtual book tours
OTTAWA (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Margaret Atwood is launching an online series that she hopes will help Canadas writers sell books to a nation of shut-ins. But even she has not been immune to the headaches plaguing many people as they attempt to communicate during the global pandemic. One came half an hour into a conversation about upcoming books with Adrienne Clarkson, a friend and fellow author, hosted by the National Arts Centre on Facebook Live. Atwoods image froze. Come back, come back, Clarkson said. Was it anything I said? After a few minutes, Atwood did reappear, in a different room of her house with a superior internet connection. The two women continued to go through a list of books they acknowledged that, for the most part, they hadnt even seen, let alone read, but were written by authors whose earlier works ... More
Historic 1858 Proof Liberty Eagle gold coin leads Central States offerings April 23-26
DALLAS, TX.- The convention might be canceled, but Heritage Auctions presentation of nearly 3,000 lots of U.S. Coins is right on schedule for the Central States Numismatic Society (CSNS) auctions, 23-24 & 26. Heritage is hosting the sales at its Dallas headquarters and worldwide on HA.com. CSNS organizers canceled what would have been the conventions 81st anniversary event because of the COVID-10 virus pandemic sweeping across the nation. Heritage is the conventions official auctioneer. CSNS is one of the highlight auction events our clients look forward to every year, said Jim Halperin, Co-founder of Heritage Auctions. We worked with convention organizers to make sure the truly stellar offerings are still offered despite the cancellation. A selection of scarce gold may claim top-lot honors among the sales. An 1858 Liberty Eagle, one ... More
Holabird Western Americana Collections' four-day Big Tent auction will be online-only
RENO, NEV.- A huge, four-day, online-only Big Tent Auction packed with nearly 3,100 lots of philatelic and numismatic (stamps and coins), mining, Americana, railroad collectibles and more will be held Thursday thru Sunday, April 16-19, by Holabird Western Americana Collections, LLC, starting at 8 am Pacific time each day. There will be no live in-gallery bidding for this sale. Online bidding will be facilitated by iCollector.com, LiveAuctioneers.com, Invaluable.com, AuctionMobility.com and Auctionzip.com. On Day 3 only, people will also be able to bid at www.StampAuctionNetwork.com. Telephone and absentee bids will also be accepted. The number to call for phone bidders is 775-851-1859. For details, please visit www.fhwac.com. Our Reno facility is currently closed and will not be open to in-person attendees, but the vast majority of the bidding ... More
60s icon Marianne Faithfull treated for COVID-19
LONDON (AFP).- British singer Marianne Faithfull has tested positive for coronavirus and is being treated in hospital, her publicists said on Saturday. "Marianne Faithfull's manager... has confirmed that Marianne is being treated for COVID-19 in hospital in London," music industry publicists Republic Media tweeted. "She is stable and responding to treatment. We wish her well and a full and speedy recovery." Faithfull's friend, the US avant-garde performer Penny Arcade, wrote on her Facebook page that the singer went into hospital on Tuesday, reportedly after developing a cold while self-isolating. "She has withstood and survived so much in her life -- including being Marianne Faithful, that to be taken down by a virus would be such a tragedy," wrote Arcade, whose real name is Susana Ventura. Faithfull, 73, was one of the icons of the 1960s ... More
How Bill Withers defined soulful selflessness
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The music of Bill Withers radiated a quality thats rare in pop songs and, really, anywhere else: selflessness. Its in the subjects that Withers, who died Monday, chose to sing about: his grandmothers hard-won wisdom in Grandmas Hands, the suicidal regrets of a failed husband in Better Off Dead, and in one of his most indelible songs, Lean on Me, a churchy pledge of unconditional help and compassion. Perhaps it was because Withers was already a grown-up, in his early 30s, when his recording career started. He was raised in a large family in West Virginia coal country, served in the Navy and worked factory jobs before getting the chance to record. He hadnt been sheltered from the everyday lives that he would write about. Withers most triumphant years, the early 1970s, were also an idealistic time ... More
Edinburgh comedy club goes online to beat lockdown
EDINBURGH (AFP).- When the British government ordered a three-week public lockdown to reduce the spread of coronavirus, Anthony Dorman knew his Edinburgh comedy club was in danger of shutting for good. The 160-seater basement venue, The Stand, operates on tight profit margins from ticket sales at the door and drinks from the bar. Without customers, the Edinburgh institution faced certain closure. But to stay open, management decided to test out a live-streamed show with an option for the audience to make donations. Demand for tickets at The Stand is usually high but Dorman was unprepared for the online response, as more than 100,000 people logged on to watch the first two shows on YouTube. "The first show reached more than 34,000 viewers and we received more than 2,000 donations," he told AFP. But the second show was an ... More
For a scientist turned novelist, an experiment pays off
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- When he set out to write a novel, Brandon Taylor, a former doctoral student in biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin, approached it like a scientist. I have this very technical approach to almost everything, he said during a video interview from Iowa, where he now lives. If there is a problem, I first determine the parameters of the problem, and then I try to lay out a very systematic way of doing it. He started with a series of lists: Reasons he had failed to write a novel (too concerned with inventing everything, problems with setting and time frame). Things he considered himself good at (tone, dialogue). Scenes he wanted in the book (a tennis match, a dinner party). He gave himself rules, setting a goal to write 10,000 words a day. It began in this very mercenary place, he said, but it moved to a ... More
Norval Foundation presents #60SecondArt: Experience culture from the comfort of your home
CAPE TOWN.- As South Africa joins the ranks of countries in lock down, Norval Foundation, soon to be on Google Art and Culture platform, decided to commit to provide inspiration beyond the isolation, by offering #60SecondArt digital stories via You Tube, Instagram and Facebook as well as virtual 360 virtual walkabout tours, giving art lovers not only access to the museum spaces but bit-size knowledge clips on a specific artist, painting, or sculpture. We believe that art has the power to enrich our lives and that artists contribute to our communities in a profound way, so in these dystopian times, Norval Foundation will celebrate art and artists by releasing 60 second stories about one artwork or one artist, once or twice a day each day, says Norval Foundations Chief Executive Elana Brundyn. The art being discussed either forms part of the ... More
CCA Wattis Institute launches free online platform for artist videos, lectures, and essays
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts introduces the Wattis Library (wattis.org/library), a free online platform for videos, lectures, and essays that provides in-depth access and proximity to many of the artists and thinkers of our time, including Abbas Akhavan, Vincent Fecteau, Joan Jonas, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Cinthia Marcelle, and Rosha Yaghmai, among others. Produced and edited by curatorial fellows, gallery assistants, and interns, the Wattis Library was created with one of the central questions that drive the Wattis Institutes work in mind: What can we learn from artists? The Librarywhich will continue to expand with new dynamic content related to the Wattis Institutes future exhibitions, events, and research seasonsruns alongside past exhibitions and events and gives visitors direct access to many ... More
Join a musical meditation bringing together hundreds worldwide
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- As I entered the Zoom session last Saturday, I recognized some faces. The flutist Claire Chase. The pianist Conrad Tao. The violinist Carla Kihlstedt. The vocalist Gelsey Bell. Over the years, I had reviewed all these musicians from my critics perch in darkened concert halls and underground music clubs. But this time I was joining them. We and about 600 other people had come together in cyberspace for The World Wide Tuning Meditation, a new twist on an old piece by composer Pauline Oliveros, who died in 2016. Each of us was a tile in an onscreen mosaic of amateurishly lit humans gazing out from home offices and bedrooms. The chat window flashed greetings from around the globe: Madrid, Sydney, Hawaii. Then we began. Organized by Raquel Acevedo Klein; led by Chase and performance ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Franz Klainsek
Niclas Riepshoff
Charles Atlas
Viktor Wynd
Flashback On a day like today, German painter Franz Pforr was born April 05, 1788. Franz Pforr (5 April 1788 - 16 June 1812) was a painter of the German Nazarene movement. Pforr did not live long enough to see his art acknowledged. He died of tuberculosis in Albano Laziale, Rome at age 24. In this image: Portrait by Johann Friedrich Overbeck, 1810.
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