The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Tuesday, January 23, 2024


 
A leading land art installation is imperiled. By its patron.

An image from Judith Eastburn, via The Cultural Landscape Foundation shows a 1996 view of “Greenwood Pond-Double Site” in Des Moines, Iowa. A wooden boardwalk with concrete walkways that curves along the edge of the pond invites passers-by to explore the landscape. (Judith Eastburn, via The Cultural Landscape Foundation via The New York Times)

by Julia Halperin


NEW YORK, NY.- American land artist and designer Mary Miss was traveling in Europe in October when she received the kind of news that no one in her line of work wants to hear. One of her most significant artworks, owned by an Iowa museum, would need to be closed to the public because it had fallen into disrepair and parts of it were at risk of collapsing Six weeks later, Miss heard from the Des Moines Art Center that her environmental installation would be dismantled entirely. The word came from the art center’s new director, Kelly Baum, who said it would cost $2.7 million to repair the project, leaving the museum no choice. Created between 1989 and 1996, “Greenwood Pond: Double Site” is one of the very few environmental installations in the collection of any American museum and is considered to be the first urban wetland project in the country. Its imminent demolition has angered landscape architecture advocates and upset Miss, who is part of a generation of pioneering female land art ... More


The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
Installation view of Tia-Thuy Nguyen, Sparkle in the vastness January 11 to February 24, 2024, Almine Rech Matignon & Showroom, Turenne. Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech - Photo: Ana Drittanti.





Louis K. Meisel Gallery opens an exhibition curated to complement Franz Schubert's vocal and chamber masterpieces   Toledo Museum of Art places Caravaggio's work alongside artists who emulated his style   Sworders to auction property of celebrated British antiques dealer Dick Turpin


Johannes Mueller-Franken, Blaues Land, 2019, acrylic on board, 11 3/4 x 10 3/4 inches.

NEW YORK, NY.- Louis K. Meisel Gallery is presenting Visualizing Schubert, an exhibition curated to complement Franz Schubert’s vocal and chamber masterpieces. Presented in conjunction with a performance by Pegasus the Orchestra on February 28th, 2024, the exhibition explores the environmental inspirations and musings of this great composer through the lens of Contemporary Realism. Featuring artists that include Ben Schonzeit, Harry Holland, Robert Neffson and Johannes Müller-Franken, the selected works evoke Schubert’s lovely melodies and the Romantic sensibilities of the era. Conceptualized by Karén Hakobyan, the artistic director of Pegasus the Orchestra, the paired exhibition and performance celebrate Schubert’s renowned Piano Quintet “The Trout”. “The Trout” was composed during Schubert’s summer stay in the bucolic Austrian Alps in 1819, where he lived in a household filled with lovely young girl ... More
 

Artemisia Gentileschi, “Lot and his Daughters” about 1636-1638. Oil on canvas. 90 3/4 x 72 in. (230.5 x 182.9 cm). Clarence Brown Fund.

TOLEDO, OHIO.- The Toledo Museum of Art will bring to light Caravaggio’s far-reaching impact with “The Brilliance of Caravaggio: Four Paintings in Focus,” on view Jan. 20-April 14, 2024. The landmark exhibition pairs four theatrical paintings by the renowned Italian artist with four works by Italian, French, Dutch and Spanish artists in TMA’s collection who found inspiration in his technique and subject matter. The exhibition assembles four Caravaggio paintings in the United States for the first time in more than a decade and marks just the second showing ever of the artist’s work at the Toledo Museum of Art. “The Toledo Museum of Art endeavors to present the full scope of art history through its exhibitions,” said Adam Levine, the Toledo Museum of Art’s Edward Drummond and Florence Scott Libbey director. “‘The Brilliance of Caravaggio: Four Paintings in Focus’ brings European masterworks ... More
 

Pair of George III Derbyshire Blue John and ormolu ‘Cleopatra’ candle vases, circa 1771, attributed to Matthew Boulton. Estimate £2,000-£4,000 ($2,540-$5,080). Sworders image.

STANSTED MOUNTFITCHET.- On January 25, 2024, the British fine art and antiques auction house Sworders will conduct a single-owner sale devoted to the contents of the Barons Court, West London, flat of Maurice Turpin (1928-2005). Known throughout the trade as “Dick,” Turpin was one of Britain’s foremost antiques dealers of the second half of the 20th century, achieving near-legendary status over a 50-year career. Born in Bow in 1928, the son of an East End fruit seller, Turpin originally trained as a sound engineer for the BBC, before taking work as an “runner” in the summer of 1948. He began searching provincial shops and markets for objects he could sell to the London antiques trade before opening his own small premises on Portobello Road. During the “golden age” of the antique furniture business, Turpin was a familiar sight at regional UK salerooms ... More


Milwaukee Art Museum commences new winter series with immersive work by Larry Bell   Now open: Andy Holden 'What I was for what I am becoming' at Charles Moffett, New York   Why India's new Ram Temple is so important


Larry Bell, Iceberg, 2020. Cornflower Blue, Spa, Blush, and Lagoon laminated glass. Dimensions variable; 4parts (each): 96 x 170 x 43 in. (243.8 x431.8 x 109.2 cm). © Larry Bell. Photo by Cleber Bonato courtesy of the Milwaukee Art Museum.

MILWAUKEE, WI.- The Milwaukee Art Museum commences its new Winter Series with the installation of Iceberg (2020) by Larry Bell. Open to the public with free admission during Museum hours, the monumental sculpture will be on view in Windhover Hall through March 10, 2024. The Winter Series is a new annual exhibition series that brings color and joy to the coldest, dreariest months of the year. Each year between December and March, the light-filled, 90-foot- high Windhover Hall will showcase a large-scale installation by a renowned or up-and-coming artist whose work reflects a profound meditation on nature. Open to all with free admission, this series invites visitors to experience an intriguing and often colorful alternative to the winter beyond the windows and affords artists an opportunity to reflect upon nature ... More
 

Andy Holden, Uchronian Self-Portrait - Rock, 2024. Hand painted 3D printed sculpture, 18 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 13 inches (47 x 26.7 x 33 cm).

NEW YORK, NY.- Charles Moffett is presenting 'What I was for what I am becoming', British artist Andy Holden’s first solo exhibition in the U.S. The artist, who works across sculpture, film, painting, installation and music, is known for his intensely personal, eclectic work, often involving cartoon representations of himself and an oscillation between irony and sincerity. Deftly deploying a powerful vulnerability, Holden’s work takes these idiosyncratic starting points to reach towards larger abstract philosophical questions on the nature of memory and our universal striving to understand the visible and invisible structures that shape our world. A focused survey spanning both of Charles Moffett’s Tribeca galleries, the show will provide an entry into the artist's thinking and the philosophy underpinning much of his work over the past twenty years. At 431 Washington Street is an installation of Holden’s ... More
 

Worshipers at the Hanuman Garhi temple in Ayodhya, India, Dec. 29, 2023. (Atul Loke/The New York Times)

by Alex Travelli and Hari Kumar


NEW DELHI.- Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a gigantic new temple in the Indian city of Ayodhya on Monday, concluding a long campaign in which Hindu nationalists tore down a centuries-old mosque and replaced it with a structure devoted to the Hindu deity Ram. Leading up to the temple’s consecration, public spaces around India were thrumming with excitement. Ram is one of the most revered gods among India’s Hindus, who make up about 80% of a total population of 1.4 billion. As the hero of the Ramayana epic, he is a king and a paragon of virtue, exiled from his native Ayodhya, who comes home for a jubilant coronation. Islam does not appear in the Ramayana, having arrived in India only 1,000 years ago. But it is cast as the primary villain in the Hindu-nationalist telling of India’s history. Now, with a kind of spiritual and political homecoming for Modi, the ... More



The Brooklyn Museum to open new Toby Devan Lewis Education Center on January 27   Ahlers & Ogletree 2024, 2-day, 2-session new year's signature estates & collections auction grosses $737,374   The chorus girl who married two of Hollywood's biggest stars and ended her life as a princess


Toby Devan Education Center. Photo: Alexander Severin.

BROOKLYN, NY.- On January 27, 2024, the Brooklyn Museum will welcome visitors to its newly renovated Education Center, named in honor of philanthropist, collector, and curator Toby Devan Lewis and her tremendous contributions to the art world. The revamped 9,500-square-foot space will allow the Museum to better serve the more than 50,000 visitors who participate in our education programs each year, including early childhood learners, school groups, teen audiences, college graduates, older visitors, and visitors with disabilities. The reopening will also celebrate expanded and reimagined educational programming, with new offerings on weekends for families and a permanent gallery for installations by renowned artists, students, and the community. The Education Center will serve and support engagement among visitors across age groups, as research shows that intergenerational relationships are foundational for community building and connectivity ... More
 

German music box: Circa 1890 German coin-op music-box (or polyphon), likely made by Paul Ehrlich, having a Renaissance Revival upright walnut and burl veneer case in two pieces ($8,470).

ATLANTA, GA.- A 2002 Steinway ebony baby grand piano with a tufted bench played a sweet tune for $27,225, an oil on panel late night river bank scene by Aert Van Der Neer (Dutch, 1603-1677) went for $16,940, and a 19th century five-panel Scottish hunt scene by English artist R. R. Cole finished at $10,890 in Ahlers & Ogletree’s two-day Signature Estates & Collections auction held January 11-12. The auction was held online and live in the Ahlers & Ogletree gallery located at 1788 Ellsworth Industrial Boulevard NW in Atlanta. The January 11th session featured fine art, furniture, and decorative arts from England and the Americas, including seven Tiffany Studios lamps, plus over sixty lots of silver by Tiffany, Gorham, and Reed & Barton, and other wonderful objects. Session 2, on January 12th, also featured a selection of fine art, furniture and decorative arts from ... More
 

Cecil Beaton’s (1904-1980) pen and ink portrait sketch of Lady Sylvia Ashley, 30 x 20cm, for sale at Ewbank’s. The estimate is £500-800.

LONDON.- Cecil Beaton's sketch of Sylvia Ashley comes to auction, recalling the doorman’s daughter who captured Douglas Fairbanks Snr and Clark Gable. She was a lingerie model and dancer born to the wife of a London porter and doorman. But by the time she died of cancer in her seventies, she had married into the English peerage, been the widow of Douglas Fairbanks, divorced Clark Gable and become a princess after marrying a Georgian nobleman. Now the largely forgotten socialite Sylvia Ashley has stepped back into the limelight as Cecil Beaton’s sketch of her comes to auction in Ewbank’s Contemporary Art & Editions sale on January 25. Born Edith Louisa Hawkes, the self-styled Sylvia (1904-77) had been a chorus girl and actress when she and her paramour, the heir to the Earldom of Shaftesbury, had married in February 1927. The wedding shocked London Society, as did the divorce seven years ... More


Hunterdon Art Museum starts 2024 with three new exhibitions   MARC STRAUS welcomes Sean Horton and Parker Jones   Mass Studies selected for 23rd Serpentine Pavilion


Kate Dodd, Words Have Weight, 2023. Repurposed reference book, 8” x 12” x 4”.

CLINTON, NJ.- The Hunterdon Art Museum has introduced three new exhibitions, presenting the works of artists Cynthia Carlson, Kate Dodd, and Ellen Siegel. The exhibitions, now open to the public, feature a dynamic range of art from Carlson's vibrant color and form explorations, Dodd's environmentally conscious installations, to Siegel's narrative assemblages. "Serious Play," an exhibition curated by Mary Birmingham, is a focused exploration of Cynthia Carlson’s work from the last twenty years. Carlson, a dynamic force in the art world for over sixty years, is renowned for her adventurous spirit and boundary-pushing techniques. A key figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s, she has been celebrated for her immersive installations and large-scale paintings, characterized by thickly painted swirls applied with a cake decorating ... More
 

Sean Horton will be joining MARC STRAUS as a Senior Director, focused on sales and new opportunities.

NEW YORK, NY.- MARC STRAUS Gallery welcomes two new senior team members to the gallery: Sean Horton and Parker Jones. Sean Horton will be joining MARC STRAUS as a Senior Director, focused on sales and new opportunities. Sean has 17 years of experience running his gallery in New York City. At Horton Gallery, he has worked directly with artists to present 250+ exhibitions in the Chelsea, Chinatown, Rose Hill, and Upper East Side neighborhoods of New York City. He was also responsible for acquiring 100+ artworks for the permanent collection of Soho House globally. Parker Jones will be the gallery’s new Managing Director, focused on business management and strategy. Parker has two decades of experience in art sales and business development, largely in Los Angeles. He was a partner and director of ... More
 

Minsuk Cho, Mass Studies © Photo by Mok Jungwook.

LONDON.- Serpentine announced that Seoul-based Korean architect Minsuk Cho and his firm Mass Studies have been selected to design the 23rd Pavilion. Mass Studies’ Pavilion will be unveiled at Serpentine South on 5th June 2024 with Goldman Sachs supporting the annual project for the 10th consecutive year. This innovative commission, which began in 2000 with Dame Zaha Hadid, has presented the first completed UK structures by some of the most significant names and emerging talents in international architecture. The Pavilion has evolved over the years as a participatory public and artistic platform for the Serpentine’s pioneering, interdisciplinary, community and education programmes. Titled Archipelagic Void, the Pavilion will consist of five “islands” designed around an open space. Mass Studies envisions a void defined by a series of smaller, adaptable structures located at its periphery, intertwining with the pa ... More




Talk - Doug Argue: My Life in Paintings



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Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor present "Cosmic Realism" at Eye Filmmuseum
AMSTERDAM.- Eye Filmmuseum is presenting the exhibition Cosmic Realism, the first retrospective of work by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. Both originally educated as anthropologists, they create films at the intersection of anthropology, documentary and visual art. Paravel and Castaing-Taylor are constantly searching for a new cinematic language that emphasises the sensory. This allows them to turn away from the human centred approach within classical anthropology and view the world from a non-human perspective, albeit a sometimes confrontational one. For Paravel and Castaing-Taylor, filming means researching: they shoot while researching and vice versa. The camera serves as a research tool, and the makers do not hesitate from getting very close to, or even inside, their subjects. For the film De ... More

National Gallery launches inaugural podcast series with Jennifer Higgie
CANBERRA.- The National Gallery has launched Artists’ Artists, a podcast series connecting audiences with works of art from the national collection through the lens of contemporary artists Julie Rrap, Danie Mellor, Bridget Riley, Janet Laurence and Albert Yonathan Setyawan. The five-part series invites audiences to learn more about some of the treasures and lesser-known works of art in the national collection, as well as gain insight into the personal life experiences and stories of Australian and international artists. Artists’ Artists is hosted by Jennifer Higgie, an Australian writer and the former editor of the London-based arts magazine, frieze. Higgie's recent books include The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World and The Mirror and the Palette: 500 Years of Women's Self Portraits. She is also ... More

Galerie Eva Presenhuber opens a solo exhibition with the Swiss artist Jean-Frédéric Schnyder
ZURICH.- Galerie Eva Presenhuber is presenting ŒL AUF LEINWAND, its ninth solo exhibition with the Swiss artist Jean-Frédéric Schnyder. Two new publications accompany the exhibition: Œl auf Leinwand: 1982 - 2023 and Objekte + Skulpturen: 1967 - 2023. The 67 paintings on display and the 161-part series Billige Bilder (“Cheap Pictures”) provide an overview of Schnyder’s extensive painterly oeuvre from 1982 to the present day and reveal his most important traits, namely seriality, the tension between similarity and dissimilarity, as well as a great interest in the everyday ordinary. They are permeated by his typical motifs and concepts, for example landscapes, letter paintings, and still lifes. In the juxtaposition of paintings such as 3 Blumen, which shows three flowers in a coarse, pixel-like colour grid, and work groups, such as Abend am ... More

Julien's brings the power of "Street Art" to auction
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Julien’s Auctions presents “Street Art” a curated collection of some of the most important and revolutionary works created originally in the shadows, on the streets and walls of urban public spaces that display the power of this genre will be offered. The most talked about and controversial artists of our time whose works have changed the world and established the Street Art phenomenon including Banksy, Invader, RETNA, Jamie Reid, Billy Morrison, Louis Waldon, Jeff Hamilton, and Jorge Jimenez-Deredia and many others will be held Thursday, February 15th, 2024 live and online in an evening session at Julien's Auctions. Iconic works of the renowned and enigmatic British artist known as Banksy will headline this auction event: “Gangsta Rat Live,” an original aerosol on metal door - mounted in an acrylic shadowbox frame ... More

'The New Transcendence Curated By Glenn Adamson' is now on view at Friedman Benda
NEW YORK, NY.- The New Transcendence, the last in a series of three pace-setting exhibitions curated by Glenn Adamson for Friedman Benda, will explore the place of the spiritual in contemporary design today. The works on view are infused with profound significance, whether asrelics, ritual tools, or representations. The New Transcendenceis not an exhibition about religion in the organized, traditional, or dogmatic sense. Rather, it aims to discover how design can serve as a vehicle for personal and societal transcendence. The exhibition includes work by six designers: Ini Archibong, Andrea Branzi, Stephen Burks, Najla El Zein, Courtney Leonard, and Samuel Ross. Each of the participants has their own perspective, yet one thing unites them: the impetus to provide an objective, material anchor for the subjective and ultimately ... More

New temporary exhibition on provenance research, opens its doors at the AfricaMuseum
TERVUREN.- ReThinking Collections is a new temporary exhibition on provenance research. Most of the collections in the AfricaMuseum were acquired during the colonial era, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Provenance research and the related theme of restitution are increasingly the subject of current social and political debate. But how can we trace the origins of collections? What new insights does this knowledge provide? And what should become of these collections, within and beyond museum walls? The exhibition highlights the challenges of and varying approaches to provenance research. It presents a range of varied and occasionally unexpected collections. ReThinking Collections broaches relevant questions on contested heritage and explores new perspectives on the future of colonial ... More

An Italian town full of the elderly wants to feel young again
SAN GIOVANNI LIPIONI.- As the traveling brass band ended San Giovanni Lipioni’s annual holiday concert with a rendition of Wham’s “Last Christmas,” the gray-haired villagers seated in the old church of the central Italian hill town gazed dotingly at the few young children clapping to the music. “Today there is a little movement,” Cesarina Falasco, 73, said from the back pew. “It’s lovely. It’s different.” San Giovanni Lipioni used to be known — if at all — for the discovery in its countryside of a third-century B.C. Samnite bronze head, a rare Waldesian Evangelical community and an ancient annual pageant with pagan roots that venerates a circular cane garlanded in wild cyclamen flowers. (“It represents the female genital organ,” said a tourism official, Mattia Rossi.) But decades of emigration have shrunk the population to 137 full-time residents, ... More

Private view today of Marisa Merz at Thomas Dane Gallery
NAPLES.- There seems to be no better union than the work of Marisa Merz and the city of Naples. It is as if her byzantine realm of elemental materials - clay, copper, gold, bronze, wax… - had been created to inhabit and settle into the meandering streets and the corner shrines of the great city. Or is it maybe that Naples itself was somehow built and rebuilt to host Merz’s work? From the black volcanic rock slabs that line its streets, to the yellow, porous tufo - a stone formed from the Phlegraean Fields, a large volcanic caldera to the west of Naples that makes most of the buildings here - the Neapolitans used what was immediately at their feet to construct their city. Much in the same way Merz reached for what was immediately around her; transforming “humble” or “everyday” materials and objects into rituals and talismans. Thomas Dane Gallery will ... More

National Building Museum announces the opening date for 'Building Stories'
WASHINGTON, DC.- On Sunday, January 21, 2024, the National Building Museum opened its landmark new, multigenerational exhibition Building Stories. Building Stories is a new long-term exhibition that brings kids and adults alike on an immersive exploration of the world of architecture, engineering, construction, and design found in the pages of children’s books. Occupying 4,000 square feet of prominent exhibition space on the Museum’s ground floor, Building Stories is the most ambitious exhibition ever undertaken by the Museum and will be on display for ten years. Partnering with curator Leonard Marcus, the nation’s leading expert on children’s literature, and Portland, OR-based exhibition and experiential design studio Plus And Greater Than, Building Stories provides a portal into the wonder of the built environment through ... More


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Flashback
On a day like today, French painter Édouard Manet was born
January 23, 1832. Édouard Manet (23 January 1832 - 30 April 1883) was a French painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, and a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. In this image: Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Le Printemps oil on canvas, 29 1/8 x 20 1/4 in. (74 x 51.5 cm.), painted in 1881 Estimate: $25-35 million. Photo: Christie's Images Ltd 2014.

  
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