798 District Blog

Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878. Oil on canvas, overall: 89.5 x 129.8 cm (35 1/4 x 51 1/8 in.). National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.

WASHINGTON, DC.- Following a two-year renovation, the galleries devoted to impressionism and post-impressionism in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art reopened to the public on January 28, 2012. Among the greatest collections in the world of paintings by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin, the Gallery’s later 19th-century French paintings returned to public view in a freshly conceived installation design.

“The Gallery’s French impressionist and post-impressionist holdings, comprising nearly 400 paintings, are among the most prized in the collection, and rightly so,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. “While the appearance of these revered rooms has changed very little—preserving the conditions of light, the room proportions, and wall colors that make the Gallery one of the great places to view art in the world—the paintings themselves will be shown in a newly innovative arrangement.”

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Jan Matulka (1890–1972), Composition, c. 1930. Oil on canvas, 30 × 40 in. (76.2 × 101.6 cm). Collection of Bunty and Tom Armstrong©Estate of Jan Matulka. Photo: Joshua Nefsky.

PURCHASE, NY.- From the late 1920s to the early 1940s, many of America’s most inventive and important artists, including Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Adolph Gottlieb, forged their identities, dramatically transforming conceptions of what a painting or sculpture could be. A group linked by friendship and common aspirations, many had shared experiences in the classes of influential Czech Cubist Jan Matulka at the Art Students League and in the Federal Art Project during the Great Depression. Most significantly, they were all closely associated with John Graham (1887-1961), the enigmatic Russian-born artist, connoisseur, and theorist. They, along with others such as Jackson Pollock and David Smith, all drawn together by their common commitment to modernism and their eagerness to exchange ideas, played a critical role in developing and defining American modernism.

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Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Noah Leading the Animals into the Ark, c. 1655. Brush and oil paint, overall: 39.4 x 54.8 cm (15 1/2 x 21 9/16 in.) Partial Gift of Gilbert Butler, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art.

WASHINGTON (AP).- An exhibition at the National Gallery of Art will showcase its rich holdings of works on paper by the Italian baroque master Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–1664), as well as works by his contemporaries and followers. On view in the Gallery’s West Building from January 29 to July 8, 2012, The Baroque Genius of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione suggests, for the first time, the complex sources of his style such as Rembrandt van Rijn and Claude Lorrain, as well as its importance for later artists, from Giambattista Piranesi and the Tiepolo family to Antoine Watteau and François Boucher.

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A nineteenth century bilboes for an adult, typically found on slave ships, is displayed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History new exhibit: “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty,”, at the museum in Washington. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta.

By: Brett Zongker, Associated Press

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Danish Queen Margrethe poses during the opening of her exhibition ‘The Essence Of Colour’ at Arken Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, 25 January 2012. The exhibition, the largest so far of the art of Queen Margrethe, is showing 135 of the Queen’s works, exemplifying her artistic development over the past 35 years. It opens to the public on 28 January and runs to 01 July. EPA/KELD NAVNTOFT.

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Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar J. Kaufmann House, “Fallingwater”, Mill Run, PA, 1935.

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The early 1630s painting by Dutch master Frans Hals titled, “Portrait of a Man.” The portrait that once hung over the fireplace of Elizabeth Taylor’s Bel Air home – and only recently reattributed to Hals – is expected to fetch up to $1 million at auction Wednesday, Jan 25, 2012, at Christie’s in New York. AP Photo/Christie’s.

By: Ula Ilnytzky, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP).- A 17th century portrait that once hung over the fireplace of Elizabeth Taylor’s Bel Air home — and only recently reattributed to the Dutch master Frans Hals — is expected to fetch up to $1 million at auction.

“Portrait of a Man,” painted in the early 1630s, is being offered at Christie’s sale of Old Masters on Wednesday.

A Hals scholar, Seymour Slive, had listed the painting as a “doubtful” Hals in a 1974 catalog, based on a black and white photo of the work.

After Taylor hung it in her home in the 1950s, “It academically fell off the radar,” said Nicholas Hall, head of Christie’s Old Master paintings.

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As a scholar and curator James Holloway is probably best known for his work on Scottish art.

EDINBURGH.- The National Galleries of Scotland announced that James Holloway CBE will retire from his post as Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery at the end of January 2012.

James Holloway (b. 1948) began his career in Scotland back in 1972 as a Research Assistant and Assistant Keeper at the National Gallery of Scotland (Department of Prints and Drawings). After a period as Assistant Keeper at the National Museum of Wales from 1980-1983, he returned to Scotland, joining the Portrait Gallery as Deputy Keeper. In 1997 he followed Dr Duncan Thomson as Keeper of the PG, a position later re-titled as Director.

As a scholar and curator James Holloway is probably best known for his work on Scottish art. His major projects included the exhibitions The Discovery of Scotland and Patrons and Painters: Art in Scotland 1650-1760 and Speaking Likeness: the latter project integrated archival voice recordings with the Portrait Gallery’s collection. Holloway edited the National Galleries of Scotland’s series of booklets, Scottish Masters for which he wrote the volumes on James Tassie, Jacob More, William Aikman and the Norie family. He has published numerous articles and has lectured frequently on Scottish art and collections. Holloway led the highly successful project to refurbish and revitalize the SNPG which reopened on 1st December last year, on time and within budget. Since then over 80,000 visitors have flocked through the doors and the PG has attracted many favourable reviews both nationally and internationally.

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A mask of an old man is on display at the Roman-Germanic Museum in Cologne, Germany. The exhibition ‘Return of the Gods’ will run until 26 August 2012. EPA/OLIVER BERG.

COLOGNE.- Even today, the world of the ancient Greek gods has lost none of its fascination. Accounts of the deeds of mighty Zeus, his jealous wife Hera, the twins Apollo and Artemis, beautiful Aph-rodite, and Dionysos the god of wine, are as enthralling as ever after more than 2000 years.

Greek poets and artists conveyed a vivid picture of the world of these gods. Their work set creative precedents and were a source of inspiration; they also furnished models and a stim-ulus for new interpretations and original compositions by Roman writers and sculptors.

Over a period of more than three hundred years, the Brandenburg-Prussian Electors and Kings in Berlin collected antique works of art, which are now in the museums of the ‘Preußischer Kulturbesitz’ Foundation – the Pergamon Museum and the Collection of Antiqui-ties. For the first time in Cologne, in the exhibition The Return of the Gods, the Olympian world of the Greek gods is recreated with marble statues, stone reliefs, bronzes and luxurious vases from the Berlin collections – a cross section of outstanding European art from early Greek times to the imperial Roman period.

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