ARTFIXdaily News Feed - Breaking News from the Art World

$150 million expansion illuminates VMFA collections

Daily Press / May 5th, 2010

The venerable Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has added 165,000-square-feet in order to properly display its immense holdings.  Emerging from the vaults to new galleries will be the museum's Pre-Colombian and Native American collections. Permanent collection galleries will increase 50% in ...

Keno Auctions debuts with record-smashing Chippendale chest

Antiques and the Arts / May 4th, 2010

A record price for New York furniture was set at Leigh Keno's inaugral auction last weekend. The James Beekman Chippendale carved mahogany chest of drawers from the shop of Thomas Brookman, with carving attributed to Henry Hardcastle, circa 1752, estimated at $200/600,000, sold for ...

May madness art sales begin

Wall Street Journal / May 3rd, 2010

The media has widely reported that an art market rebound is in the cards this May when Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips de Pury hold their major Impressionist, modern and contemporary art auctions in New York. Beginning today, a two-week series of sales at these three auction houses alone ...

“Robert Vonnoh, American Impressionist”

Vindy / May 3rd, 2010

A vibrant oil-on-canvas painted by Robert W. Vonnoh (1858-1933), widely considered one of the pioneers of American Impressionism, is the centerpiece of a traveling exhibition. “In Flanders Field, Where Soldiers Sleep and Poppies Grow,” evokes innocence, with a young woman in the foreground ...

A-list office art in Iowa exhibition

Des Moines Register / May 3rd, 2010

Since the 1960s, the John Deere Company has decked out their Eero Saarinen-designed headquarters in Moline, Ill., with works by international A-listers such as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Marc Chagall and the Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz. Their focus expanded to include a wide swath of ...

Oakland Museum of California reopens

LA Times blog / April 30th, 2010

Closed 28 months ago for a $58-million renovation and reinstallation, the Oakland Museum of California reopened its art and history galleries Saturday. The museum is an ode to California and its "People," "Landscape" and "Creativity." The first room opens to Thomas Hill's monumental painting, ...

Clars' browse-worthy May auction

Auction Central News / April 29th, 2010

Bolstered by four big estates, Clars' May 15-16 auction includes some important 17th and 18th century furnishings and a fine selection of art from Old Masters to contemporary artists. Asian art and jewelry round out the Oakland, Calif. firm's sale. Top-notch Western artists represented ...

Remembering abstract painter Robert Natkin

New York Times / April 28th, 2010

Robert Natkin (b. 1930), whose bold paintings expertly melded the abstract style of artists like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky with vibrant post-impressionist colors reminiscent of Henri Matisse, passed away in Connecticut on April 20. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Chicago-born Natkin rose to ...

When art museums become a brand

The Atlantic / April 27th, 2010

Mega-cafes and gift shops. Massive new spaces. Brand building and franchising. Kyle Chayka writes in The Atlantic, "Are Fine Art Museums the Next Starbucks?" "Institutions as diverse as New York's Whitney and Museum of Modern Art, DC's Corcoran and National Gallery and Philadelphia's Barnes ...

Can Art Chicago keep up with the Basels?

Chicago Tribune / April 25th, 2010

Global and year-round competition from modern and contemporary art fairs like upstart Art Basel Miami have thrown a monkey wrench in Art Chicago's ability to attract gallery exhibitors and collectors. Thirty years after the birth of this once-dominant world art fair, Art Chicago, which opens ...

Dutch Utopia hits Midwest museum

Cincinnati.com / April 25th, 2010

Taft Museum in Cincinnati is the second stop of the travelling exhibition, Dutch Utopia. This landmark show centers on American artists in The Netherlands, working, studying and painting during the years 1880 to 1914. There are nearly 40 American artists represented: George Hitchcock, Gari ...

Houston dealer unveils Vollard's Cassatt cache

Culture Map / April 24th, 2010

Mary Cassatt: Works on Paper was revealed last week at Houston's Meredith Long & Company. Fresh to the market are 41 significant prints and drawings that until very recently have remained hidden in the seemingly long-lost collection of Ambroise Vollard, the friend and Parisian art dealer of ...

Consignor demands $560K for W.T. Richards painting

Courthouse News Service / April 23rd, 2010

Rhode Island art dealer William Vareika sold a 19th century landscape by William Trost Richards for $700,000 but paid the owner only $140,000, the consignor claims in New York County Court. Universe Antiques sued William Vareika and William Vareika Fine Arts over "The Rainbow," also titled ...

Prendergast in Italy

Antiques and the Arts / April 20th, 2010

Stephen May writes of the travelling Maurice Prendergast exhibition featuring the influential American modernist's most dazzling watercolors of Italy. Prendergast soaked in the Renaissance masters on his first trip to Italy in 1898–1899. Fresh from Paris, where he experienced powerfully-hued ...

LACMA committee steps up for new acquisitions

LA Times / April 19th, 2010

More than six dozen couples helped raise $1.8 million for new acquistions to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art collections over the weekend. The Annual Collectors Committee Weekend has been likenend to an "American Idol" competition with several curators taking stage to passionately promote ...

Art pottery in the spotlight nationwide

News-Herald / April 19th, 2010

Rookwood, Weller, Grueby and Roseville---art pottery is the focus of a convention in Ohio this week. The American Art Pottery Association event attracts die-hard collectors who will be gathering for a 350-lot auction and two-day sale with 45 dealers. Even with the credit crisis-era depressing ...

John Deere art collection revealed

Quad Cities Online (PR) / April 19th, 2010

Coming to public view for the first time, the John Deere company's art collection will be unveiled April 24, in Davenport, Iowa, at the David Chipperfield-designed Figge Art Museum. Begun in 1965, the collection includes works by such artists as Grant Wood, Edward Curtis, Joan Miro, Henri de ...

Calder's Spunk of the Monk priced at $25 million

Bloomberg / April 18th, 2010

In 1964, a Midwestern executive paid $35,000 for a sculpture by Alexander Calder (1898-1976), called “Spunk of the Monk.” The painted-steel work consists of three massive interconnected arcs on seven legs and stood for years in the courtyard of American Republic Insurance Co. in Des Moines, ...

Fairfield Porter: Raw/The Creative Process of an American Master

New York Times / April 18th, 2010

The New York Times reviews an exhibition of works---unvarnished, unfinished or in progress---painted by Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) on Long Island from the 1940s until his death. On view at Southampton's Parrish Museum, the show looks at how Porter adeptly blurred the lines between abstraction ...

A fight to preserve Edward Hopper's landscape

Cape Cod Times / April 15th, 2010

A Massachusetts land court judge has ordered construction to cease on a large house that neighbors say spoils the Cape Cod coastline views that inspired American painter Edward Hopper. Property owners near the planned 8,333-sq.-ft. mansion, assessed at $4.5 million, instigated a lawsuit when ...