U.S. Firm Ordered to Turn $500 Million Treasure Over to Spain

MIAMI, FL.- A Florida treasure-hunting firm must hand over to Spain the $500 million in gold and silver coins the company salvaged more than two years ago from the bottom of the Atlantic, U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday ruled. The judge rejected the arguments offered by Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. to support its claim to the treasure. While giving Odyssey 10 days to turn over the hoard, Merryday left the door open to extending that deadline to accommodate a [...]

5th Edition of Art Madrid will Receive 64 National and International Art Galleries

MADRID.- From 16th to 21st February 2010, Art Madrid will produce its 5th Edition at the Pabellón de Cristal de la Casa de Campo in Madrid. The fair is scheduled for 64 galleries selected among the most prestigious names of the national and international scene, and will show the work made by major contemporary artists. The 64 galleries are selected by a new committee and will show works by leading contemporary artists. Among the Spanish galleries, excels the presence of [...]

Powerhouse Books Publishes Harry Benson: Photographs

BROOKLYN, NY.- Immortalizing the people and moments that have defined the past 60 years, world-renowned photojournalist Harry Benson has become as much a part of history as the photographs themselves. The scope of his accomplishments as a photojournalist is nothing short of remarkable: he has photographed every US president since Eisenhower, as well as Robert F. Kennedy on the night he was assassinated, and Martin Luther King Jr. at his funeral; he has shot stars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Mick [...]

Nordstrom Announces Plans to Lease Space at Seattle Art Museum Building

SEATTLE, WA.- Nordstrom, Inc. announced today it has signed a Letter of Intent to lease approximately 265,000 square feet of space in the combined Russell Investments Center / Seattle Art Museum (SAM) building in downtown Seattle, of which approximately 182,000 square feet is from SAM and approximately 83,000 square feet is from Russell Investments Center. The Letter of Intent is to lease floors 7 through 12 and part of floor 5, with an option to lease additional space in the [...]

Alexander Rodchenko’s Revolution in Photography Opens in Amsterdam

AMSTERDAM.- Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam and Moscow House of Photography present an unique retrospective of the world-famous Russian avant-garde artist Alexander Rodchenko. The exhibition will contain more then 200 vintage photographs some of which have never been exhibited in the West before. Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) is one of the great innovators of twentieth-century avant-garde art and one of its most versatile practitioners. Having first gained international acclaim as a painter, sculptor and graphic designer, Rodchenko took up the practice of photography in [...]

200 Photographs by W. Eugene Smith Included in Exhibition at La Lonja in Zaragoza

ZARAGOZA.- The exhibition includes over 200 images from the most emblematic series taken for Life magazine in the 1940’s and 1950’s and the projects Pittsburgh and Minamata. A full review of the series Country Doctor, Nurse Midwife, A man of Mercy and Spanish Village is made. W. Eugene Smith is one of the main figures in humanist photography and his career centred on his obsession with the truth, resulting in passionate, idealistic, sensitive and optimistic images. As a photojournalist, between [...]

Van Gogh Museum Concludes 2009 Successfully with 1.45 Million Visitors

AMSTERDAM.- The Van Gogh Museum welcomed almost 1,450,000 visitors in 2009. This positive result is credited in part to the exhibitions Van Gogh and the colours of the night and Van Gogh’s letters: The artist speaks (which runs through 3 January 2010). The former exhibition is part of the Letters project launched in October, which attracted considerable media attention around the world. During the first two months of this year visitor numbers were down on 2008, bringing home the impact [...]

The Red Line: A Selection of Spanish Abstract Art in the IVAM’s Collection

VALENCIA.- The historiography of art accustoms us to assign the various manifestations of art – and their corresponding developments in space and time – to rigid conceptual demarcations which ultimately make it hard to understand the true dimension and complexity of the artistic phenomena of modernity. Although this exhibition sets out from one of the classic conceptual devices of historiography, abstraction, it nevertheless seeks to underline the many points of convergence that have appeared (and are still appearing) between the [...]

National Galleries of Scotland Announce Overview of Surrealist Movement

EDINBURGH.- A comprehensive survey of Surrealist art, which will bring together masterpieces by Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti and Joan Miró, will be the major summer exhibition at the Dean Gallery in 2010. Another World, which will be the centrepiece of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s 50th anniversary celebrations, will offer a fascinating overview of arguably the most important art movement of the twentieth century. The exhibition will include major loans from public and private [...]

Maritime Paintings by John Millei on View at Ace Gallery

LOS ANGELES, CA.- For the past nine years, John Millei has undertaken diverse series engaged with nautical and aqueous themes, culminating in the most recently completed large-scale Maritime paintings titled Queen Anne’s Revenge. Addressing the history of painting by looking at disparate historical ideas and combining them, his references to seafaring explore various themes in this extended group of paintings: the ocean’s apocalyptic power, the abstract and complex majesty of a ship’s rigging, or the deceptive calm before a storm [...]

Artist Rosalyn A. Engelman Wins Gold At The Florence Bienniale

FLORENCE.- Out of 800 artists from 80 countries, exhibiting more than 2,500 works, with a career far from over, New Yorker Rosalyn A. Engelman received a “Career Achievement in Art” Award at the 2009 Biennale Internazionale Dell’ Arte Contemporanea di Firenze. The award-certificate is accompanied by a gold medal, which bears the portrait of Lorenzo di Medici, Il Magnifico. The Biennale is under the auspices of the Italian government, with “High Patronage of the President of the Italian Republic.” Rosalyn [...]

Mayas to Have a Palace in Southeast Mexico

YAXCABA, MEXICO.- The Maya culture, which reached its peak more than a thousand years ago, will soon have a new and enormous museum in the jungles of Mexico divulging its secrets, authorities of the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatan said. Construction of the Palace of the Maya Civilization began Monday, coinciding with the beginning of the winter solstice, on 400 hectares (988 acres) of land in the municipality of Yaxcaba. Yucatan Gov. Ivonne Ortega laid the cornerstone for the project, [...]

Schirn to Present First Survey in Germany of Georges Seurat’s Work

FRANKFURT.- The French Neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat (1859–1891) is considered to be one of the icons of nineteenth-century art and the most important exponent of Pointillism, a style of painting he developed. With about sixty paintings, oil studies, and drawings from public and private collections in London, Paris, Zurich, New York, San Francisco, a.o., the exhibition in the Schirn Kunsthalle offers a representative survey and, at the same time, focuses on a crucial aspect of Seurat’s oeuvre: the figure in space. [...]

Design 1880-1980 Includes Visionary Objects from MoMA’s Design Collection

NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art has reinstalled the modern design section of The Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries on the third floor. Shaping Modernity: Design 1880–1980, on view from December 23, 2009, to July of 2010, features a selection of visionary objects, graphics, architectural fragments, and textiles from the Museum’s collection that reveal the attempts of successive generations to shape their experience of living in the modern world. The installation features 300 works organized into five [...]

MFA, Boston Appoints Jen Mergel as Senior Curator of Contemporary Art

BOSTON, MA.- Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), has announced the appointment of Jen Mergel as the MFA’s Beal Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art. Mergel, who will join the Museum in February 2010, is presently associate curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, where she has worked since 2005. “Jen Mergel will play a key role in enhancing the appreciation of contemporary art within the context of [...]