1900s

Current Exhibition: Beijing: Contemporary and Imperial ~ Photographs by Lois Conner

“Beijing: Contemporary and Imperial ~ Photographs by Lois Conner”

Solitary Arch, Changchun Yuan, Yuanming Yuan (Garden of Extended Spring, Garden of Perfect Brightness), 1998, printed 2013. Lois Conner

Who: Cleveland Museum of Art

When: Mar. 30, 2014 – June 29, 2014 (Mon-Sat. 10 a.m. – 9 p.m.)

Where:

Cleveland Museum of Art
11150 East Boulevard
Cleveland, OH 44106

How Much: Generally Free, some special exhibits require a ticket.

More Information: Here.

“Magical, miraculous, and often times dangerous is how photographer Lois Conner has described some of her experiences capturing the images included in Beijing: Contemporary and Imperial: Photographs by Lois Conner.Opening at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday, March 30 alongside Conner’s in-person Artist Talk that afternoon, the exhibition features a vast visual tour of historic and contemporary Beijing, inviting the viewer to reflect on China’s rising power in the context of its history and cultural landscape. The sites depicted span three centuries, embracing the dynastic glory of the Qing and its decline, the revolutionary 20th century, and the post-imperial and post-socialist story of Beijing and China today.

“Conner has said that the subject of her photography is landscape as culture,” comments Barbara Tannenbaum, the museum’s Curator of Photography. “The designs of public squares, city streets, gardens, palaces, humble homes, and office buildings directly impact the lives and emotions of those who occupy them. Those spaces also reveal the intentions of their creators, whether it is to demonstrate political, religious, or social power; offer a soothing respite from urban bustle; or burnish the beauty of nature.” . . .

Current Exhibition: “Museum of Russian Icons Peeks into Romanov Cupboards”

“Museum of Russian Icons Peeks into Romanov Cupboards”

by Sebastian Smee via “Boston Globe”

WHAT:

“The Tsar’s Cabinet: Two Hundred Years of Russian Decorative Arts Under the Romanovs”

WHERE:

“Museum of Russian Icons.”

203 Union St.

Clinton, MA 01510

Hours:

Tues.-Fri. ~ 11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Sat. ~ 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

WHEN:

March 27, 2014 – May 24, 2014

HOW MUCH:

Generally:

Adults: $9

Seniors: $5

Students: $2

Children: $2

Children (under 3): Free

Special Free Admission: Varies, for more details, see here.

DETAILS:

“CLINTON — The romance of the Romanov dynasty — in odor so like certain over-evolved orchids — has been affiliated, aptly enough, with fragile accessories forever. One thinks, above all, of the products of the House of Fabergé, but more generally of the decorative arts (particularly porcelain) produced specifically for the Romanovs between the 18th and early 20th centuries, when the dynasty came to its bloody and unambiguous end.

The Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton is currently hosting a show called “The Tsar’s Cabinet: Two Hundred Years of Russian Decorative Arts Under the Romanovs” that’s filled with porcelain, as well as glass, lacquer, enamel, and other luxury materials.

Drawn from the private collection of consultant Kathleen Durdin (who, according to a biographical note in the show’s catalog, used to collect magazine advertisements that featured the Forbes Fabergé collection), the show summons the rich history of Romanov rule.

It comes to Clinton at the end of a five-venue tour of Canada and the United States. It was organized by the Muscarelle Museum of Art, which is on the campus of the College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Va., in collaboration with International Arts and Artists, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. . . . .

“New York’s Four Seasons Restaurant Sued over Plan to move Picasso Painting”

This actually could be quite the issue. On the one hand, the question arises as to the circumstances surrounding the Four Season’s acquiring the painting. What was the contractual agreement–that they would maintain the painting, that it would stay in the same spot indefinitely, that it had to always be available to the public. Did they not make any provisions for this type of situation? I’m guessing that the case is going to hinge upon how significant the damage to the wall is, how much more damage would postponing the repair cause, and can they move the painting safely out and back. Maybe they could just cut the wall out with the painting, rebuild behind it, shore it up, then just replacing it in some artsy way? Or carefully slide boards behind it and lay it down to remove it? Either way, it’s important to give the owner his rights, but landowner rights are vital too. Plus, if the wall damage causes harm to someone later, who is liable for the injury? ** DB

“New York’s Four Seasons Restaurant Sued over Plan to move Picasso Painting”

Via FoxNews

“NEW YORK – New York’s storied Four Seasons restaurant has for decades harbored one of the city’s more unusual artworks: the largest Pablo Picasso painting in the United States. But a plan to move it has touched off a spat as sharply drawn as the bullfight crowd the canvas depicts.

Pitting a prominent preservation group against an art-loving real estate magnate, the dispute has unleashed an outcry from culture commentators and a lawsuit featuring dueling squads of art experts.

The building’s owner says Picasso’s “Le Tricorne,” a 19-by-20-foot painted stage curtain, has to be moved from the restaurant to make way for repairs to the wall behind it.

But the Landmarks Conservancy, a nonprofit that owns the curtain, is suing to stop the move. The group says the wall damage isn’t dire and taking down the brittle curtain could destroy it — and, with it, an integral aspect of the Four Seasons’ landmarked interior.

“We’re just trying to do our duty and trying to keep a lovely interior landmark intact,” says Peg Breen, president of the conservancy.

The landlord, RFR Holding Corp., a company co-founded by state Council on the Arts Chairman Aby Rosen, says a structural necessity is being spun into an art crusade.

“This case is not about Picasso,” RFR lawyer Andrew Kratenstein said in court papers. Rather, he wrote, it is about whether an art owner can insist that a private landlord hang a work indefinitely, the building’s needs be damned. “The answer to that question is plainly no.” . . . .”

“Cornelius Gurlitt and the complexities of rehoming Nazi-looted art”

by Rita Lobo via “European CEO“

A priceless haul of invaluable art thought to have been destroyed by the Nazi’s has recently been uncovered in Germany, raising questions about if and how artefacts are returned to their rightful owners or their heirs

“A priceless haul of invaluable art thought to have been destroyed by the Nazi’s has recently been uncovered in Germany, raising questions about if and how artefacts are returned to their rightful owners or their heirs

When the Bavarian customs officer searched Cornelius Gurlitt aboard a train crossing the Lindau Border in 2010, he had no way of knowing that he was about to reignite one of the fiercest cultural debates in European history. Gurlitt, the son of an important German art curator during World War II, turned out to be sitting on a veritable trove of priceless works of art thought to have been lost during or shortly after the war – a fact only discovered because police raided his home on suspicions of tax evasion.

An elderly recluse living in an affluent neighbourhood of Munich, Gurlitt had inherited from his father, Hildebrand, over 1,200 pieces the curator had acquired during the war. The story of how Hildebrand Gurlitt came to be in possession of such an array of what the Nazi’s had labelled ‘degenerate art’ – during a time when collectors were fleeing Europe in droves – is murky at best. But because Germany does not have a law preventing anyone or any institutions from owning looted art, it is unlikely that the provenance of Gurlitt’s collection matters very much, should he wish to retain it.

There is no evidence that Hildebrand, who was part Jewish, stole any . . . .”

New Deal Treasure: Government Searches For Long-Lost Art

“New Deal Treasure: Government Searches For Long-Lost Art”

by Brian Naylor via “NPR“

John Sloan's Fourteenth Street at Sixth Avenue hung in the office of Sen. Royal Copeland until his death in 1938. After that, the painting was lost until 2003.

“At the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt enacted a raft of New Deal programs aimed at giving jobs to millions of unemployed Americans; programs for construction workers and farmers — and programs for writers and artists.

“Paintings and sculpture were produced, murals were produced and literally thousands of prints,” says Virginia Mecklenburg, chief curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The GSA recovered Anne Fletcher’s Iris Garden after its then-owner watched an episode of PBS’s Antiques Roadshow and realized the painting was actually a WPA piece.

Courtesy of the U.S. GSA Fine Arts Program

In all, hundreds of thousands of works were produced by as many as 10,000 artists. But in the decades since, many of those works have gone missing — lost or stolen, they’re now scattered across the country.

A Transformative Time For American Artists

The biggest New Deal art program was the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. Artists could earn up to $42 a week, as long as they produced something.

Mecklenburg says it was a transformative time for the artists: “The idea for an artist to be able to work through a problem, to work through ideas, you know, that’s golden. So it was a very special moment, and one that really has not ever been repeated.”

To qualify for the work, however, you had to prove yourself as an artist and you had to show you were poor. Mecklenburg spoke to two brothers-in-law who were in the program.

She says, “One of them was saying, you know, you had to prove you were penniless — he said it hurt your dignity. And the other one was so cavalier and devil-may-care about it. He said: Oh, you know, if you thought the relief worker was coming to check out if you had an iron, or anything else that looked like it was of value, you just ran it over to the neighbor’s apartment so it looked like you didn’t have any possessions at all. It’s about as human a story as we’ve ever come up with in the art world.”