Category Archives: Museums

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, News, Podcasts, Stories

Reviews: The Week In Art

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This week: our associate editor, Kabir Jhala, and editor-at-large, Jane Morris, have been in Kassel, Germany, to see Documenta, the quinquennial international art exhibition.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ywTATTJSsTvBVnPgFiaMB

They review the show and respond to the escalation of a long-running row over antisemitism and broader racism, which has resulted in a work being removed from the exhibition. Virginia Rutledge, an art historian and lawyer, discusses the dispute over Andy Warhol’s appropriation of a photograph by Lynn Goldsmith of the pop icon Prince. The case will be heard in the US Supreme Court this autumn and has potentially huge implications for artistic freedom. And this episode’s Work of the Week is An Outpost of Progress (1992), a drawing by the late Spanish artist Juan Muñoz, inspired by Joseph Conrad’s short story of the same name.

Documenta 15, Kassel, Germany, until 25 September.

Juan Muñoz: Drawings 1982-2000, Centro Botín, Santander, Spain, 25 June-16 October.

Art, Culture, Magazines, Museums, Photography, Previews, Stories

Previews: American Indian Magazine – Summer 2022

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"Recon Watchman" character

American Indian Magazine – Summer 2022

Highlights:

Watching Over the Past: Virgil Ortiz’s Futuristic Creations Are Perpetuating Cochiti Pueblo Pottery-Making Traditions

Virgil Ortiz still remembers the outings he took as a 6-year-old boy with his mother to creeks throughout their Pueblo of Cochiti in New Mexico. There, they would gather clay to mold into pots and storytellers—seated comical human or animal figures. His father was a drum maker and his mother and grandmother were both potters. He remembers giving prayers of thanks to Mother Earth for providing clay, a medium through which they could express themselves. “I was surrounded by art every day,” says Ortiz.

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Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Tours, Videos, Views

Views: The New National Museum Of Norway, Oslo

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The Norwegian capital Oslo is getting a new national museum for classical and modern art, architecture and design. The museum’s collection includes around 100,000 objects, ranging from medieval tapestries to modern design classics and contemporary artworks.

There will be rooms dedicated to, among others, the works of Edvard Munch , including “The Scream,” 19th-century landscape painting, royal robes worn by the Norwegian queens, as well as works by prominent artists, such as Gustav Vigeland, Hannah Ryggen, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh and Ida Ekblad.

Art, Arts & Literature, History, Museums, Short Films, Stories, Videos

Ceramics: Ancient Athens Red-Figure Vase Painting

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In this five-minute animated video, journey back to the 6th-century BCE workshop of the Athenian master Andokides and witness an ancient artist’s moment of creative ingenuity. For generations Athenian vase painters had employed black-figure technique, in which the figure is painted in a mixture of clay and water called slip and details are incised with a sharp tool.

At some point—we don’t know precisely when or why—a vase painter had the idea to reverse the scheme, leaving the figures the color of the clay and painting details with a brush. We now call this red-figure technique. Learn how ancient vase painters created vases in both styles and marvel at the technical virtuosity of the multi-step firing process that contributed to their distinctive, high-contrast look.

Art, Exhibitions, Museums, Podcasts, Reviews, Stories

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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We talk to the writer and critic Amy Castor about what effect the tumbling crypto markets might have on the until-now booming world of non-fungible tokens or NFTs. 

As Norway’s vast new National Museum opens, we speak to its director Karin Hindsbo. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Folding Screen with Indian Wedding, Mitote, and Flying Pole, made in Mexico in the late 17th century. It is one of the major pieces in a new show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, called Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. Ilona Katzew, the curator of the exhibition, talks in depth about the meanings and purpose of the work.

You can read Amy Castor’s thoughts on crypto and NFTs at amycastor.com.

The National Museum in Oslo opens on 11 June.

Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 12 June-30 October.

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Reviews, Stories

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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This week, Picasso and the Old Masters: as shows pairing the Spaniard with Ingres and El Greco open in London and Basel respectively.

Ben Luke talks to Christopher Riopelle (curator of Picasso Ingres: Face to Face at the National Gallery) and Carmen Giménez (curator of Picasso-El Greco at the Kunstmuseum in Basel) about the profound influence of historic artists on Picasso’s rupturing of tradition. In this episode’s Work of the Week, The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, Louisa Buck, talks to Chris Levine, the creator of Lightness of Being, one of the best known recent portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, as the British monarch celebrates 70 years on the throne. And as the Polish government replaces yet another museum director, what can be done about political interference in museum governance? Ben talks to Goranka Horjan, director of Intercom, the International Committee for Museum Management, and Bart De Baere, chair of the Museum Watch programme at the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (Cimam).

Picasso Ingres: Face to Face, National Gallery, London, until 9 October. Picasso-El Greco, Kunstmuseum, Basel, 11 June-25 September.

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Tours, Videos, Views

Exhibits: ‘Antoni Gaudí’ At The Musée d’Orsay In Paris

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The Musée d’Orsay is hosting the first major exhibition devoted to Antoni Gaudí organized in France in Paris in fifty years. In an immersive museographic experience, it will show the spectacular creations of this unique artist, in particular, presenting sets of furniture never before exhibited in France. It will offer a new vision of the artist as a unique and singular figure, a non-isolated genius who practiced in a Catalonia in the midst of social, political and urbanistic upheaval.

Until July 17th, 2022

Projet pour l’église de la Colònia Güell, Antoni Gaudí
Antoni Gaudí, Projet pour l’église de la Colònia Güell
©Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona / Marc Vidal i Aparicio

The exhibition will focus on showing the architect’s creative process at a time of an exceptional local artistic profusion linked to “Modernism” or the Art Nouveau movement in Spain, supported by distinguished patrons, anxious to distinguish Catalonia, a land of Mediterranean identity. Gaudí’s workshop, his many collaborators, and his sophisticated working techniques will be the guiding line of the exhibition to make the public understand the extraordinary inventive capacity of the architect who defied all the creation of the moment.

Art, Museums, Tours, Travel, Videos, Views

Walking Tours: Musée Rodin In Paris, France

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The Musée Rodin in Paris, France, is a museum that was opened in 1919, primarily dedicated to the works of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. It has two sites: the Hôtel Biron and surrounding grounds in central Paris, as well as just outside Paris at Rodin’s old home, the Villa des Brillants at Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine. 

Archaeology, Exhibitions, History, Museums, Tours, Videos, Views

Louvre Exhibits: ‘Pharaoh Of The Two Lands, African Kings of Napata’ In Paris

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PHARAOH OF THE TWO LANDS – The African Story of the Kings of Napata

28 April – 25 July 2022

OVERVIEW

In the 8th century BC, a kingdom grew up around the Nubian capital, Napata. In about 730 BC, the Nubian king Piankhy conquered Egypt and founded the 25th Dynasty of Kushite kings, who ruled for more than fifty years over a kingdom stretching from the Nile Delta to the confluence of the White and Blue Niles. The most famous of those kings is the pharaoh Taharqa.

The exhibition highlights the importance of this vast kingdom, located in what is now northern Sudan. It is organised in connection with the Louvre’s archaeological campaign in Sudan, which focused for ten years on the site of Muweis before moving some 30 kilometres northwards to El-Hassa, not far from the pyramids of Meroe.

Art, Exhibitions, Museums, Podcasts, Reviews, Stories

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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This week: is heritage in Ukraine being attacked and looted, and what can be done to protect it?

Ben Luke talks to The Art Newspaper’s museums and heritage editor, Tom Seymour, who has been to the Ukrainian-Polish border with the International Council of Museums (ICOM), to witness museum materials being sent into Ukraine to help institutions there. Then, Tom talks to Sophie Delepierre, the head of heritage protection at ICOM, about the organisation’s efforts in Ukraine and elsewhere.

As a major exhibition of the work of Paul Cezanne opens at The Art Institute of Chicago, ahead of its journey to Tate Modern later in the year, Ben talks to Gloria Groom and Caitlin Haskell, the curators of the Chicago exhibition. And for this episode’s Work of the Week, our acting digital editor, Aimee Dawson, asks Oliver Lanzenberg, the grandson of the artist Nicola L., about his grandmother’s work Gold Femme Commode (1969/1993). The piece is part of a show at Alison Jacques, one of a number of exhibitions opening to coincide with the second edition of London Gallery Weekend.

Tom’s full report into ICOM’s work for Ukraine is in the next print edition of The Art Newspaper and online soon.

The organisation Sophie mentions is NEMO, the Network of European Museum Organisations, ne-mo.org.

Cezanne, The Art Institute of Chicago, 15 May-5 September; Tate Modern, London, 5 October-12 March 2023.

Nicola L., Alison Jacques, London, until 23 July.

London Gallery Weekend, 13-15 May.