Archives for November 2009

The George Eastman House needs you! Maybe.

Last April, it announced the creation of The Center for the Legacy of Photography, as well as Notes On Photographs, a collaborative wiki website at which curators, conservators, collectors and the general public would be able to share knowledge about photographic prints — the camera, the process, the inscriptions, the age, and so on.

I wrote about it all then, and now there’s more to report. A recent Eastman House newsletter announced that the site, “dedicated to illustrating key aspects of a photographer’s work,” is now available.

In truth, the site needs much more content. Emily Welch, the project’s manager, tells me that the pages for Alvin Langdon Coburn, Lewis Wickes Hine, and Frederick Henry Evans (his Lincoln Cathedral, 1895, is at right) are “well-populated.” Have a look.

But this is where you may come in — at three possible levels. Those pages are curated, by “invited” curators with proven expertise who volunteer to take responsibility for an article or topic. The curator assesses contributed information and revises a page as appropriate. It’s all archived in the wiki histories, so everyone can see decisions about content.

Say you’re not in that category.

[Read more…] about Notes On Photographs Comes To Life: A Wiki

It’s been a long road, but the Museum for African Art is really coming into its own: the opening of its new building, on Fifth Avenue and Central Park North in New York, a year or so from now, will be transformative.

I had a chance to take a hard-hat tour of the premises the other day — not to mention to see it from the nearby, lakeside Dana Discovery Center in Central Park, a glorious spot on that sunny fall day — and to hear the plans of director Elsie McCabe Thompson and chief curator Enid Schildkrout. They, and their trustees and staff, seem to have taken care of all the details, big and small. For example, on the small (but important) side, the restaurant and theater will have separate entrances, so that they may be used when the museum is closed — but visitors will still see some African art as they enter.

On the big side, it will have more ambitous exhibits — one of the inaugural shows, Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria (photo above shows one piece), is co-organized by the British Museum and the Fundación Marcelino Botín; there are three more to fill 16,000 sq. ft. of galleries.

In contemporary art, one inaugural exhibition is Ibrahim El Salahi: A Visionary Modernist, the first museum retrospective of Ibrahim El Salahi, a pioneer of the “Khartoum School” who’s known as the godfather of African modernism. (Who knew?) 

The new building, designed by Robert A.M. Stern, also allows the museum to collect art, instead of just exhibit it, for the first time (that’s why it’s name used “for,” instead of “of”). It is actively seeking gifts.  

McCabe is building something more akin to the Asia Society than to a traditional museum, with a range of programs.

[Read more…] about The New Museum For African Art Is Rising

A few developments that need no comment:

• The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, can rest easy: A jury has rejected the attempt by Alfred C. Glassell Jr.’s daughter to break his will, which left half of his fortune to the MFA.
• Cindy Sherman won the Jewish Museum’s Man Ray Award, and the JM also restored some opening hours it had cut.
• The New York Sun, which I wrote about here last spring, is rising again.
• ArtPrize set the dates for next year’s contest.
• The Art Loss Register is seeking help in locating the owner of a group of stolen civil war era books, including:

Nehemiah Adams, South-Side View of Slavery (1855)
Albert Barnes, The Church and Slavery (1857)
Silas Casey, Infantry Tactics (1862)
Dean Dudley, Officers of our Union Army and Navy (1862)
William J. Hardee, Rifle and Infantry Tactics (1863)
Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South (1860)
Frederick Law Olmstead, The Cotton Kingdom, 2 vol. (1861)
James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown (1860)
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 2 vol. (1862)

Contact Detective Michael McFadden of the NYPD at michael.mcfadden@nypd.org or the Art Loss Register at stolen@alrny.com.

 

Several days back, I began a post about art theft by saying that it boggles the mind in general. I just learned something even more startling — the identity of the most stolen work of art in recorded history.

The subject came up in a talk given last week (which I just learned about) at Yale University by art historian Noah Charney (right). Last spring, he taught a course there called “Art Crime,” according to the Yale Daily News, and on Nov. 12, he gave a lecture entitled “Stealing the Mystic Lamb: A True Story of the World’s Most Frequently Stolen Masterpiece.”

In a different article, published on Oct. 26, Charney told The New Criminologist:

It was involved in 13 crimes over its 600-year lifespan, including seven separate thefts, culminating in its theft to be the centerpiece of Hitler’s planned Supermuseum during the Second World War. It was an incredible, unlikely rescue, thanks to a team of Monuments Men, a fortuitous toothache, and the courage of an Austrian double-agent.  Sounds like a film preview, but it’s all true.

Can you guess what the work is? Think before you continue reading…

[Read more…] about What Is The Most Stolen Art Work? Try To Guess

Among the many reasons I wish I were in Italy right now is Art and Illusions: Masterpieces of Trompe-l’oeil From Antiquity To The Present, which is on view at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence until Jan. 24. (It started last month.) The poster picture (left) is a pretty good indication of why — doesn’t Pere Borrell Del Caso’s Escaping Criticism make you smile?

The show is reminiscent of the National Gallery of Art’s Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe-l’Oeil Painting, which was on view in late 2002 and early 2003, and didn’t travel.

But the Palazzo Strozzi’s is larger: 200 works (vs. 116 at the NGA), including — the website describes it — “sculpture, intarsia, scagliola, pietre dure, porcelain, etc. Examples exhibited include faux armoirs, half-open, with books inside, wood intarsia of small Renaissance studios, scagliola tabletops and stones portraying seemingly prehensile objects, soup tureens and table furnishings in the shape of vegetables, anatomical and botanical wax models.”

The exhibit also gives Europeans their first look at works by American artists specializing in trompe-l’Å“il — such as Peto, Kaye, Harnett and Haberle.

Bet Otis Kaye’s D’-jia-vu? (The Stock Market), at right, is a hit, as it usually is here when the market is causing pain. It was painted in 1937.

The show in Florence has ten sections, with titles like “Still Life or Trompe-l’Oeil?” “Paperwork” and “Figures Caught Between Real And Illusory Space.” Each is explained and illustrated on the website here.

The exhibit also has a scientific side.

[Read more…] about Prepare To Be Amused: A Sustained Look At Trompe-l’Oeil