Category: ARTviews
Friday, January 12, 2007
Museum visits without leaving home #2
As noted here before, a number of museums around the world have detailed, informative, and interactive websites that are almost as good as visiting the museum in person.
The Louvre in Paris, for example, has a marvelous site (with English version easily available) that offers visitors a real look inside, including virtual tours of the entire museum, “kaleidoscopes” of images on a variety of visual themes, and “spotlights” on some individual works of art, like the Mona Lisa.
All that’s missing is a glass of wine at a sidewalk cafe!
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Renovated home for art opens on Yale campus
In December 2006, Yale University Art Gallery celebrated the reopening of its 1953 Louis Kahn building, widely regarded as the architect’s first masterpiece. The renovation re-creates Kahn’s open spaces and natural light, and enhances visitor access to the Gallery’s extraordinary collection.
The Gallery was Louis Kahn’s first major commission. He had a vision of architecture that would be at the same time monumental and humanistic: not just a functional place for exhibiting works of art, but a communal space for creative exchange. With this recent renovation, the Gallery seeks to fulfill that aspect of Kahn’s design, with expanded educational initiatives and outreach to artists from both the university and the surrounding community.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Museum visits without leaving home #1
There is a wealth of museum sites on line, and all of them offer a wide variety of experiences. You can look at works in the permanent collection, read scholarly treatises about different periods in art history, or participate in a blog where you can post comments and talk to art specialists.
One example is the Tate group of museums in Britain. Their large website offers access to the collections at all four of their locations. Among the special features are iMap, a site for visually impaired visitors, and a link for sending free e-cards.
So, sit back and let your fingers do the walking through the Tate’s many galleries. More on-line museums will be discussed in future entries here.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Masterpieces come home to Washington, DC
The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, is hosting a party this weekend to welcome back 60 of its European masterworks by artists such as Renoir, Cezanne, and Degas. The paintings have been visiting other museums around the world while their home gallery was being renovated. There’s a story about it on the NPR website, where you can also see some of the most beloved paintings from this collection.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
A window on today’s Africa
The current exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York, “Snap Judgments”, is, according to the New York Times, “fantastic, stimulating, astringent, brimming with life”. The exhibition’s curator, Okwul Enwezor, wants to counter the “Afro-pessimism” that most of us feel when we see images of Africa on the evening news.
The works in this show, many of them produced since 2000, often feature conceptual art, documentary, and fashion photography. Through these works, contemporary artists and photographers introduce us to a new way to look at the Africa of today, in all its many variations.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
David Smith’s “Drawings in Space”
This year marks the centennial of the birth of David Smith, one of the most celebrated sculptors of the twentieth century. In celebration, the Guggenheim Museum in New York has mounted a special exhibition of his work.
In the spiral interior of the Guggenheim Museum, designed by another twentieth century giant, Frank Lloyd Wright, Smith’s dark metal sculptures look, as the exhibition curator says, like “drawings in space”.
In addition to introducing visitors to some of Smith’s less familiar works, the exhibition traces his life path, including souvenirs from his early travels in Europe, where he encountered the work of contemporary artists like Picasso, Giacometti, and Julio Gonzalez. In his early work, Smith incorporated found objects; but later his work became more and more influenced by nature and organic forms. Living in upstate New York, with lots of open space, his work took on the monumental scale that we associate with his most familiar sculptures.
This exhibition enables us to see the elements of grace and delicacy that inform Smith’s best work, and to better understand his place in American Modernism.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
2006—the “year of Cézanne”
The master painter Paul Cézanne, considered by many art critics to be the father of modern art, died 100 years ago at the age of 67. A native of Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France, he spent almost his whole life there, except for a few years when he lived in Paris and was part of a small circle of Impressionist painters.
In spite of Cézanne’s connection to Aix, and the fact that many of his works celebrated the surrounding landscape, the Aix Museum was slow to recognize the genius of this native son. The Museum banned his works for years, considering them too radical.
Of course, all is forgiven with the passage of time, and to celebrate the centenary of his death, a large retrospective exhibition will be held in Aix, along with many other related events.
The National Gallery in Washington, DC, will also host a large exhibition of Cézanne’s works, focusing on those depicting the landscape of Provence. While this exhbition will gather works by Cézanne from many private and public collections around the world, the National Gallery itself has an extensive Cézanne collection, and many images can be viewed on line.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Met Museum’s “Timeline” is a portal to the world of art history
Have you ever found yourself in front of a painting in a museum, wondering about the societal influences on the painter, or what was going on in his part of the world when he made that particular painting – or, in fact, what was going on in the rest of the world at that time? If so, the Metropolitan Museum of Art had you in mind when its Timeline of Art History was created.
The Timeline of Art History is a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world, as illustrated especially by the Metropolitan Museum’s collection. The Museum’s curatorial, conservation, and education staff—the largest team of art experts anywhere in the world—research and write the Timeline, which is an invaluable reference and research tool for students, educators, scholars, and anyone interested in the study of art history and related subjects. First launched in 2000, the Timeline now extends from prehistory to the present day.
The site is extensively indexed and cross-referenced. Say, for example, that you started with a time period: 1600 to 1800. Click on that period, and the first thing you’ll see is a map of the world with thumbnails of representative art from many different areas: a Vermeer from Europe, a gilt-painted screen from Japan, a Spanish-influenced Madonna from South America, wood tribal figures from Africa. Click on one of these, for example the Japanese screen, and now you have an expanded map of the area, with additional art examples from different cultures. Click on one of those, and now you have a more detailed timeline, with political background and historical highlights. You could happily wander forever, following a geographical path, a thematic path, a history path….whatever pleases you.
In addition, there are special topics in the Timeline which focus on specific themes in art history. They cover subjects such as artistic movements and periods, archaeological sites, empires and civilizations, recurrent themes and concepts, media such as painting, sculpture, and ceramics, and artists. Special Topics often demonstrate the cross-fertilization of civilizations and include additional maps, architectural site photography, and links to relevant websites. Each page has links to related themes and timelines.
The site is a garden of delights. You may never want to leave!
Thursday, November 03, 2005
“Drawing is the root of everything"--van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh’s career as an artist only lasted ten years, but in that time he created at least 1,100 drawings. He used his drawings to record his thoughts and impressions of everything he saw around him, from peasants and postmen to landscapes and interiors.
He used his drawings in many different ways. At first, he thought he should master black-and-white before working in color. Sometimes he couldn’t afford to buy paint and canvas; other times he drew just to explore subjects that interested him. Although he usually painted freehand, without prior drawing, there were times when he adapted a drawing to a painted subject, and other times when he just enjoyed working out a theme in different variations.
The exhibition, “Vincent van Gogh: the Drawings”, currently on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is a once-in-a-lifetime event. Works on paper are very delicate, and can only be exhibited for short periods of time. But even if you can’t visit the exhibition, visit the website. The educational presentation for children, “Van Gogh Makes his Mark”, is packed with fascinating interactive information for art lovers of all ages.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
What is Art and Why Does It Matter?
This provocative query is the title of an online magazine that was recently launched by the Yale University Art Gallery. The Gallery, the artistic heart of a world-renowned institution of higher learning, is home to a collection whose breadth and depth would be prized by many municipal and public museums. Not content to serve as simply a repository for great works of art, however, the Gallery seeks to take an active part in the artistic life of the University and its surrounding community.
This online magazine is intended as a forum for learning about art in many different forms, and for discussions on looking at art, understanding art, and making art a part of our everyday lives.
Questions are posed: Why is ugly beautiful? Why don’t people talk about art the way they talk about movies? New ideas about familiar works are encouraged. Both undergraduate and graduate students are invited to present illustrative talks about various aspects of art. And new collaborative works are created, using the Gallery’s collection as a starting point.
This is only a small sample of the options open to virtual visitors to the Yale Gallery, so come on in!
