In this episode of “Travels with a Curator,” we travel to Warsaw, Poland, with Xavier F. Salomon, Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator. Xavier enchants us with the romantic Łazienki Park and Palace, also known as the Palace on the Isle. The idyllic gardens and ornately decorated interior spaces are similar in many ways to our own Frick mansion. One of the Frick’s Rembrandt paintings, “The Polish Rider,” once hung in the royal apartments on the second floor.
Category Archives: Art
Art Podcasts: Six Top U.S. Museum Directors Discuss Closures, Reopening & Role In Society (The Getty)
In this two-part series, six US museum directors discuss the pandemic and its repercussions for their institutions. These candid, insightful conversations address wide-ranging topics, from the logistical challenges of when to close and how to reopen to philosophical exchanges about the role of museums in society.
This first episode features Max Hollein of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Kaywin Feldman of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and James Rondeau of the Art Institute of Chicago.
This second episode features Matthew Teitelbaum of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Ann Philbin of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and Timothy Potts of the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Abstract Art Profiles: “City Landscape – 1955” By Joan Mitchell (1925-1992)
Joan Mitchell, City Landscape, 1955, oil on linen, 203.2 × 203.2 cm (Art Institute of Chicago 1958.193, ©The Estate of Joan Mitchell), a Seeing America video
Speakers: Sarah Alvarez, Director of School Programs, Art Institute of Chicago, Beth Harris, and Steven Zucker
New Books: “The Louvre – The Many Lives Of The World’s Most Famous Museum” (James Gardner)
The fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world’s greatest art museum.
Some ten million people from all over the world flock to the Louvre each year to enjoy its incomparable art collection. Yet few of them are aware of the remarkable history of that place and of the buildings themselves―a fascinating story that historian James Gardner elegantly chronicles in the first full-length history of the Louvre in English.
More than 7,000 years ago, men and women camped on a spot called le Louvre for reasons unknown; a clay quarry and a vineyard supported a society there in the first centuries AD. A thousand years later, King Philippe Auguste of France constructed a fortress there in 1191, just outside the walls of a city far smaller than the Paris we know today. Intended to protect the capital against English soldiers stationed in Normandy, the fortress became a royal residence under Charles V two centuries later, and then the monarchy’s principal residence under the great Renaissance king François I in 1546.
It remained so until 1682, when Louis XIV moved his entire court to Versailles. Thereafter the fortunes of the Louvre languished until the tumultuous days of the French Revolution when, during the Reign of Terror in 1793, it first opened its doors to display the nation’s treasures. Ever since―through the Napoleonic era, the Commune, two World Wars, to the present―the Louvre has been a witness to French history, and expanded to become home to a legendary collection, including such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, whose often-complicated and mysterious origins form a spectacular narrative that rivals the building’s grand stature.
James Gardner
James Gardner is an American art critic and literary critic based in New York and Buenos Aires. He is the author of six books, including Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, and the British Spectator. He was the art critic at the New York Post and wrote architecture criticism for the New York Observer, before serving as the architecture critic at the New York Sun. He is now a contributing editor at The Magazine Antiques.
Top New Art Magazines: “Apollo – May 2020” Issue
| INSIDE THE ISSUE |
| FEATURES | Julio Le Parc interviewed by Gabrielle Schwarz; Glenn Adamson on the MFA Boston at 150; Aaron Rosen on the Rothko Chapel in Houston; Valeria Costa-Kostritsky on rebuilding Notre-Dame |
| REVIEWS | Morgan Falconer on Donald Judd at MoMA; Edward J. Sullivan on Mexican muralism at the Whitney; Maichol Clemente on Renaissance terracottas in Padua; Susan Owens on ghosts in ancient Rome; Craig Burnett on Philip Guston; Stephen Patience on Blake Gopnik’s biography of Andy Warhol; Thomas Marks on F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist Cookbook |
| MARKET | Gareth Harris on online viewing rooms; and the latest art market columns from Susan Moore and Emma Crichton-Miller |
| PLUS | Thomas Campbell and Adam Koszary debate the role of the digital museum; James Wilkes on trompe-l’oeil and artistic trickery; Kathryn Hughes on the image of Florence Nightingale; Timothy Brittain-Catlin on contemporary architectural follies; Thomas Marks in search of art during lockdown; Robert O’Byrne on an exceptional collection of Chinese art |
Artists: Watercolor Painter Alex Hillkurtz
Alex Hillkurtz was born in England and grew up in California where he is a renowned storyboard artist for feature films, television, and commercials. His film credits include “Argo”, “Almost Famous”, “It’s Complicated”, and many others.
Alex currently lives in Paris with his film editor wife, Tiffany, and enjoys discovering the hidden corners of the city that sketching and plein air painting allow. He uses the language of cinema to inform his images, moving beyond what one sees, and depicting what he wants others to see. He believes that in our too-crowded lives, sketching and plein air painting invite us to move at a more deliberate pace… a true sense of place, and sometimes unexpected stories are revealed.
Fine Arts: “The Burlington Magazine May 2020” – The Best Of Art & Its History
Raphael and his cult
There is an unhappy irony in the fact that five hundred years after Raphael died of a fever at the age of only thirty-seven, the global covid-19 pandemic has brought to a premature end so many of the exhibitions that have been staged to mark the anniversary.
READ DIGITAL ONLINE ISSUE – MAY 2020
VIRTUAL TRAVEL: 4K VIDEO TOUR OF THE VAN GOGH MUSEUM – “A COMPILATION”
Van Gogh Museum Tour in 4K: COMPILATION
Art: Modern Discoveries About Titian’s ‘Poesie’ (National Gallery Video)
A look ‘beneath’ Titian’s canvases reveals the tweaks and changes he made as he worked over four hundred years ago. Find out more with Restorer Jill Dunkerton.
Art: “An Introduction To Young Rembrandt” (Ashmolean Museum)
The Ashmolean’s 2020 Young Rembrandt exhibition is currently closed, but you can still visit virtually. Watch this introduction from exhibition curator An Van Camp, and explore the exhibition section by section at ashmolean.org
The Young Rembrandt exhibition charts the astonishing transformation of the Dutch master Rembrandt. Spanning the years 1624 to 1634, it traces how a young and unremarkable artist from Leiden became the superstar of 17th-century Amsterdam and one of the greatest artists of all time.
Boomers Daily 