Milwaukee Art Museum acquires masterpiece of American art by John Singleton Copley

MILWAUKEE, WIS.- The Milwaukee Art Museum has acquired the portrait Alice Hooper, a major colonial American painting by John Singleton Copley (1738–1815). Copley is recognized as one of the great American artists of the day—and one of the first native-born painters to achieve success both at home and abroad. Alice Hooper, painted by Copley around 1763, depicts the seventeen-year-old daughter of the wealthiest man in Marblehead, Massachusetts, Robert “King” Hooper. Alice’s father commissioned this portrait to mark his daughter’s engagement to Jacob [...]

Exquisite Charles Willson Peale miniature portraits for sale at Heritage Auctions

BEVERLY HILLS, CA.- Nine original portrait miniatures by Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), known as “The Artist of the American Revolution,” along with five more attributed “in the manner of” Peale, are currently on display and available for private treaty purchase at Heritage Auctions Beverly Hills. They will remain on display until the end of September. “We believe this is the largest, and certainly one of the finest collections of Peale miniatures that currently exists in private hands,” said Jim Halperin, Co-Chairman of Heritage [...]

Four new exhibitions celebrate Krannert Art Museum’s 50th anniversary

CHAMPAIGN, IL.- New exhibitions kick off Krannert Art Museum’s 50th Anniversary celebration, two of which highlight the breadth of KAM’s permanent collection. At Fifty: Krannert Art Museum, 1961–2011 (August 26 through October 23, 2011) celebrates the extraordinary range of KAM’s collection. In a unique, interactive architectural space, sculpture, painting, video, photography, decorative objects, and drawings co-mingle. Objects from ancient Greece and Latin America are featured in dialogue with nineteenth century European paintings and twentieth century video; realism sits astride abstraction; photography and [...]

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts Unveils New $504 Million Art of the Americas Wing

BOSTON (REUTERS).- When redecorating his home some years ago, financier Henry Kravis sold a painting by John Singer Sargent to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting — “Charles Stewart Sixth Marquess of Londonderry, Carrying the Great Sword of State at the Coronation of King Edward V11 August 1902, and Mr. W.C. Beaumont, his Page on That Occasion” — is one of thousands of works that will now be displayed at the museum’s new Art of the Americas [...]

Georgia Museum of Art Acquires Two Paintings from West Foundation Collection

ATHENS, GA.- The Georgia Museum of Art (GMOA), located on the University of Georgia (UGA) campus, recently acquired two significant American paintings from the West Foundation Collection of Atlanta, Ga. The foundation gave Benjamin West’s Portrait of Captain Christopher Codrington Bethell (1769) and John Linton Chapman’s Via Appia (1867) to the museum in honor of GMOA director, William U. Eiland, and in anticipation of the museum’s reopening this winter. A native of Springfield, Pa., Benjamin West was appointed historical painter [...]

Crystal Bridges Announces Work by Leading Landscape, Pop Artists

BENTONVILLE, ARK.- Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has announced two distinctive contemporary works. Enassamishhinjijweian (2009), a tour-de-force landscape by Tom Uttech, builds on the collection’s strength in American landscapes, supplementing Asher B. Durand’s Kindred Spirits, Thomas Moran’s Autumn Landscape and Marsden Hartley’s Hall of the Mountain King, among other works. The second announced painting is Wayne Thiebaud’s Supine Woman (1963), a psychologically ambiguous portrait of a tense, prone woman. This work joins the museum’s growing body of works representing [...]

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Announces Portrait, Sculpture

BENTONVILLE, ARK.- The beauty of glorious attire and what it communicates to others is celebrated in two works of art announced by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Mrs. Theodore Atkinson, Jr. (1765), an oil portrait by John Singleton Copley, considered one of the most influential painters in colonial America, augments an exceptional collection of portraits by Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent. Dress Impression with Wrinkled Cowl (2007) by Karen LaMonte, a leading figure among American artists [...]

LACMA Presents 150 Years of American Masterpieces

LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915, a major exhibition highlighting the variety and strength of American artistic achievement during an epochal century and a half, from the colonial era through the period leading to World War I. American Stories—the first survey of American narrative painting in more than thirty-five years—features over seventy works, including loans from leading museums and private collections, as well as key works from [...]