SMU’s Meadows Museum has Art Nazis’ Stolen in World War II

DALLAS, TX (AP).- Southern Methodist University’s Meadow’s Museum has learned that three of its well-known paintings were among the millions of artworks Nazis Germany stole from Jewish families more than 65 years ago. The founder of the Dallas-based Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art discovered the paintings’ connection to World War II plunder while doing research for two books. Robert Edsel said he came across a black and white photo shot in Germany in 1945 that showed a [...]

Cleveland Museum of Art’s Renowned Antiquities Collections Return to View

CLEVELAND, OH.- After a five-year hiatus, the Cleveland Museum of Art’s (CMA) collections from the ancient Near East, Greece, Rome, Egypt and Africa, as well as works from Late Antiquity, the Byzantine Empire and the European Middle Ages, will return to public view on June 26. The new presentation will trace the evolution of the visual and cultural traditions at the roots of Western civilization and foster an understanding of the ritual, social and historical contexts within which these works [...]

Morgan Library’s McKim Building to Undergo Restoration

NEW YORK, NY.- Beginning in June 2010, The Morgan Library & Museum‘s iconic McKim building will undergo the most extensive restoration of its interior spaces since its construction more than one hundred years ago. Providing new and expanded exhibition space for the institution, the project will enable the Morgan to share more treasures from its world-renowned permanent collection with the public. The building, designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White, was once the private study and library of [...]

MoMA Acquires Matthew Barney’s “Drawing Restraint” Series

NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art, in conjunction with the Laurenz Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, has acquired the complete archive of Matthew Barney’s epic Drawing Restraint series, an ongoing project the artist started twenty years ago while an undergraduate at Yale University, Director Glenn D. Lowry announced today. The acquisition was a joint purchase by MoMA and the Laurenz Foundation and the two organizations will share equal ownership of the work. With Drawing Restraint, Barney pursues the idea [...]

Huntington Acquires Newly Identified Portrait by Major French Artist

SAN MARINO, CA.- The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens has added to its holdings a newly identified painting by prominent 17th-century French painter Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674). Selected for acquisition by The Huntington’s Art Collectors’ Council at its spring meeting, Portrait of Jean de Thévenot (1633–1667), painted between 1660 and 1663, had been misattributed to Dutch artist Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (1621–1674), but with the discovery in 1990 of a related painting in a private collection, it was [...]

International Center of Photography Acquires Roman Vishniac Archive

NEW YORK, NY.- The International Center of Photography today announced the acquisition of the entire archive of work by renowned photographer Roman Vishniac. The Vishniac archive provides a comprehensive record of his photographs, including prints of many celebrated images of Eastern and Central European Jewish life before the Holocaust, thousands of others never-before-seen, as well as his noted microphotographic imagery. The archive was donated to ICP by Vishniac’s daughter, Mara Vishniac Kohn, in recognition of her father’s long-standing friendship with [...]

France’s Pompidou Centre opens regional art hub

METZ, France (AFP) – A sparkling new branch of one of the world’s top modern art museums, Paris’s Pompidou Centre, opens in northern France on Wednesday with hundreds of rarely seen treasures on its walls. On former wasteland in Metz, the undulating white teflon roof encloses a space to free up some of the 65,000 works trapped in storage at the Paris museum — and to breath new life into a city seen as a forgotten gem. Planting the huge [...]

Smithsonian Develops Haitian Cultural Recovery Project

Haiti. – The Smithsonian is leading a team of cultural organizations to help the Haitian government assess, recover and restore Haiti’s cultural materials damaged by the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. A building in Port-au-Prince that once housed the United Nations Development Programme will be leased by the Smithsonian. The 7,500-square-foot, three-story building will serve as a temporary conservation site where objects retrieved from the rubble can be assessed, conserved and stored. It will also be the training center for Haitians [...]

Tate Modern is 10: Tate Reaches Across the World with Works Acquired

NEW YORK, NY.- Tate Modern is extending its reach across the world by expanding its Collection to areas outside Europe and North America, including the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa. The recent acquisitions include thirteen contemporary works of art by artists from the Middle East and North Africa region. The works are by ten artists from Algeria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran and Egypt. None of these artists has been represented in the Collection before and the acquisitions will significantly [...]

Noguchi Museum Celebrates 25th Anniversary with Annual Benefit

LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- In celebration of its 25th anniversary this year, The Noguchi Museum, in Long Island City, Queens, held its Annual Benefit Concert and Dinner, on May 4, 2010. This year, the Museum honored its six founding trustees: Donald H. Elliott, Hugh Hardy, Richard S. Lanier, Priscilla Morgan, Shoji Sadao, and Isaac Shapiro. They—along with the late Sherman Lee—worked alongside the artist over two decades ago to establish the foundation that became The Noguchi Museum. Their ongoing leadership [...]

Berlin’s Jewish Museum Expanding

BERLIN (AP).- Berlin’s Jewish Museum says it is expanding to meet increasing demand for research and education. The museum said Tuesday it will group its archives, library and education center under one roof across the street from the zigzag-shaped main building designed by architect Daniel Libeskind. The new building, built in the 19th century as a flower market, will undergo a euro10 million ($12.7 million) renovation under Libeskind’s guidance that is expected to be done by the fall of 2011. [...]

The San Diego Museum of Art Earns Major Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts

SAN DIEGO, CA.- The San Diego Museum of Art is the recipient of a $75,000 Access to Artistic Excellence grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the largest annual funder of the arts in the United States. It is also the only museum in the San Diego region receiving an award of this magnitude in this grant cycle. The grant will support the research, writing, and publication of The San Diego Museum of Art’s first comprehensive scholarly catalogue of [...]

At New Pompidou Center Designed by Shigeru Ban, the Building Steals the Show

METZ, FRANCE (AP).- It’s France’s newest architectural wonder, and it looks something like an enormous white floppy sun hat. Or a giant swimming manta ray, or maybe an alien spacecraft. The new Pompidou Center art museum in the eastern French city of Metz has generated a big buzz in the architecture world, largely for its complex free-form roof. When it opens to the public this week, the strange and arresting building will likely overshadow the Picassos, Dalis and Warhols it [...]

‘Museums at Night’ Announced at the National Gallery on May 14

LONDON.- An evening of special events will take place at the National Gallery on Friday 14 May as part of Museums at Night celebrations. The Gallery will be open until 9pm, including current exhibitions Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey and Christen Købke: Danish Master of Light. There will be live music, special talks and guided tours programmed exclusively for the evening. The Danish writer Carsten Jensen will be discussing Christen Købke’s paintings. After his talk the author will [...]

Huge Mural of Spain Returns to Renovated NY Museum

NEW YORK, NY.- A huge mural, the largest-ever of Spain in modern history, returns this week to a long-neglected Manhattan museum that has been renovated with grants from Spain. “Vision of Spain,” which consists of 14 panels that together measure 230 feet by 11.5 feet was painted nearly a century ago by Joaquin Sorolla, Spain’s pre-eminent painter of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The 14 panels, which showcase 10 regions of Spain and include large brush strokes painted [...]