My new favorite Super Bowl tradition

Art bets!

Like last year, the Super Bowl contenders' home town museums have made a friendly wager over the outcome of the game. The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh has bet Renoir's Bathers with Crab that the Steelers will win Sunday. In return, The Milwaukee Art Museum has bet one of their star works, Caillebotte's Boating on the Yerres. As usual, my favorite part is the trash-talking going on between museum directors. I'll throw in my two-cents and say that being a Bears fan, I can't root for the Packers in good conscience, so go Steelers!

You can read more about the bets here.

Google Art Project launch

Just a quick heads-up: Google launched its brand-new Art Project today. In collaboration with some of the world's premier museums (including the Frick Collection, MoMA and the Uffizi Gallery, among several others), you can take a Google Street View-style walk around parts of each museum, and select from a list of works available to view individually at high-res and with pretty sweet zoom capabilities.

You can check out Google Art Project at www.googleartproject.com

Of course, it's not perfect. Each museum only chose certain galleries to include, so the selection of works included is fairly limited. Also, some of the works seen in the "Street View" of the museum interiors are blurred out due to copyright issues. Hopefully some of these issues can be resolved and the project expanded to include more galleries and more museums, but you can certainly enjoy a digital walk through Versailles while you wait!

A Profusion of Picasso

If you like Picasso and live in New York, you are very lucky. Everyone seems to be putting on a Picasso show lately, the Met and MoMA dipping into their permanent collections to do so.

Currently on are two shows devoted exclusively to Picasso's prints. The Marlborough Gallery is showing Celebrating the Muse: Women in Picasso’s Prints From 1905-1968, featuring a parade of Picasso's wives and mistresses. The exhibition runs until May 1st at the gallery's location on 57th St. here in New York.

The Museum of Modern Art presents Picasso: Themes and Variations, an exhibit featuring works from the museum's permanent prints collection. The MoMA show has a wider scope, and presents prints dealing with many of Picasso's most famous themes. Check out the New York Times review of these shows here.

Later this month, the Met gets in on the Picasso action when it opens Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which presents everything by Picasso in the museums permanent collection, including everything from paintings to ceramics. This exhibition marks the first time all of these objects have been seen together; the Met's large number of Picasso holdings helps to illustrate his prolific artistic career while also providing an expansive look at his thematic interests, evolving techniques, and what the Met calls his "multi-sided genius."

Putting up Picasso shows seems like a no-brainer, especially for these museums that have access to huge numbers of Picasso works in their permanent collection. A marquee name and relatively straightforward content now at the beginning of summer (and the tourist season in New York) should make for extremely well-attended shows. Get your Picasso fix while you can!

Update: Holland Cotter of the New York Times calls the Met's Picasso collection "stodgy and almost bizarrely lopsided," mostly due to the Met's reluctance to acquire new art. Check out his review here.

Art Accidents

I'm sure everyone has heard about this already, but someone fell into a Picasso at the Met last week. This incident seems to have captured everyone's attention, though we can rest assured that the Met's conservation department will be able to fix the 6-inch tear without a problem. It's even expected to be back up in time for the Picasso show (one of many, many Picasso shows opening this year).

The Times posted a related article this morning that details other horrifying and cringe-worthy art-related accidents. I'm especially interested in the MoMA spokeswoman's comments that "incidents happen" but that there are "no incidents we can discuss in the press." Cryptic.

Met tidbits

This made the front page of the NYT online edition this morning: The Metropolitan Museum's "Portrait of a Man" that had been displayed as by the workshop of Velazquez has been reattributed to the master himself, after a recent conservation.

Keith Christiansen, chairman of European paintings and the country's leading Velazquez scholar, Jonathan Brown, are in agreement about the attribution, which basically comes down to a few individual brushstrokes on the man's collar (art history at it's finest!). Debate continues over whether or not this work may be a self-portrait.

In other Met news, the museum announced that it will show fewer exhibitions of major loans, and will instead focus on changing the presentation of the permanent collection, which I think is what we're seeing now with these small, single-painting shows. I've got my money on a "Portrait of a Man" show in the upcoming months!

how do we "look" at art today?

I just had to blog this article when I saw it this morning in the Times. Mainly because I spend a lot of time in museums, and one of my favorite things to do is watch other people look at art. Since the completion of the new Greek and Roman galleries at the Met, one of my favorite spots is the marble courtyard arranged around a fountain with a spectacular arrangement of Greek sculpture. Reactions range from shock regarding the statues' state of general undress to some people who took a picture of each other in front of literally every piece in the room.

I've often been struck by the urge to "collect" pictures of pictures. As if taking a picture of the Mona Lisa or Starry Night means that you earn some amount of invisible art points for having been to the museum it resides in, pushed your way to the front of the crowd, and snapped a badly-lit, off-center digital photograph of it.

What do you think? How do you look at art?

Art Links

-First, the Louvre is launching an English version of their online database, Atlas, today. I think I'm probably going to spend the rest of the day just browsing the high-res images.

-The Courtauld Institute in London is considering some major cost-cutting strategies that will affect 3 of their image archives, almost cutting off access to them completely and ceasing to collect new items.

-The Hague's Gemeentemuseum is commencing their restoration plans for their collection of Mondrian paintings.

Art Links

-A new show of paintings by modernist Belgian artist James Ensor in the creatively titled James Ensor at MoMA.

-A show of objects from the National Museum in Kabul, Afghanistan at the Met, which was previously at the National Gallery in Washington. Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul is on through September.

-Sotheby's has done pretty well in the last few days, with solid modern and contemporary sales, with Picasso and Giacometti selling well at the modern sale and contemporary standbys Warhol and Calder selling well yesterday, though American art is not doing well at either house.

-LACMA, in a somewhat surprising but still totally predictable move, sold off their old master paintings at Sotheby's. I guess they didn't get the memo about older art being a consistently good investment.

-The new Acropolis Museum in Athens is awesome, which has sparked debate over who really owns the Elgin marbles, currently housed at the British Museum in London.

Art Theft: Picasso Notebook

Recent Art Theft: Picasso Notebook stolen from the Picasso Museum in Paris 2 weeks ago

From the Art Loss Register:
A notebook of sketches by Pablo Picasso was stolen from the Picasso Museum in Paris between June 8-9, 2009. The notebook was taken from a locked case within the museum, and consists of 33 drawings in pencil that were made between 1917 and 1924. The notebook is valued at several million Euros.

Experts fear that the notebook may be broken up by the thieves in an attempt to maximize the value. However, the real value of the notebook is the historical documentation it preserves for scholars of the artist's work. Since the individual sketches are unsigned, there would be little market value if the notebook were divided.

The notebook is approximately 6 by 10 inches and has a distinctive shiny red cover, with the word "album" printed in gold on the cover.

The Art Loss Register also notes that Picasso is its number one most stolen artist. For more information, visit their website.

New Exhibition: It’s About Time: 244 Years at the Morris-Jumel Mansion

Sometimes, when you think about New York, you forget the long and tumultuous history the city has. The history of a city is usually evident in its buildings, though buildings get torn down and built back up again in New York so often that a lot of that history gets erased. Not so at the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights.

The 244-year old house was George Washington's headquarters during the doomed defense of New York in 1776 at the beginning of the Revolutionary War (I just learned all this from the excellent tome Gotham: A History of New York to 1898). The mansion now functions as a museum with fully restored interior and antique furnishings, and is part of The Historic House Trust of New York City.

The new show at the mansion, It's About Time: 244 Years at the Morris-Jumel Mansion, curated by education director Carol Ward, juxtaposes historical photographs from the house's history with work by modern photographers. The show provides a unique peek into New York's living, but often forgotten, past. Check out the write-up and excellent slide show in Times' CityRoom blog today.

For more information on The Historic House Trust, other historic houses in and around New York City, and the ongoing efforts to preserve and protect them, go here.

Medieval Friday

Medieval Fridays are the best kind of Fridays, right?

-The NYT review of Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages makes me want to go back and see it again.

-The must-see exhibit at the Morgan Library, Pages of Gold, consists entirely of "orphan" leaves--pages removed from their original manuscripts. The show looks at the market for and the individuals who collected such single leaves and (delightfully) ends with a few forgeries. The show covers not only medieval issues of illumination, but a glimpse of the unique medieval art market as well.

-St. Anthony Tormented by Demons, the so-called "first painting" of Michelangelo is now on display at the Met. The small exhibit is made up of the actual painting accompanied by the evidence for its authenticity. An interesting exercise in art historical analysis--now in exhibition form!

-Meanwhile, the Walters Art Museum has a show called Prayers in Code, which presents a selection of unusual Books of Hours and explores artistic patronage at the court of King Francis I (1494-1547). The exhibit centers around the unexpected relationship between images and text in Books of Hours at this time.

New Exhibition: Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages

Over the weekend I went to the Met to check out the new medieval show, Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages, and also caught a lecture on the topic of drawing the Middle Ages by Dr. Jonathan Alexander of the Institute of Fine Arts.

This show is one of the first of its kind to treat drawing as a separate and distinct art form in the Middle Ages. Installed in the special exhibition space in the drawings and prints department, the show features over 50 examples of medieval drawings, from line drawings done for early 9th and 10th century manuscripts similar to the Utrecht Psalter, to late 14th century pattern books, maps, and cosmological charts. Dr. Alexander spoke about the common conception of drawing as something of a lesser medium than painting, more preparatory than final, and what this show does to dispel that popular opinion.

One thing I found intriguing while looking at the various examples was the play between line and color, and the interaction of the two in extremely interesting ways. In several examples, line drawings are executed in various colored lines, creating masterful scenes evocative of fully colored manuscript miniatures, but with a special and different aesthetic. In some cases color is used to highlight only a few objects in a miniature, like the warriors shields in the example from the early 10th century Book of Maccabees from St. Gall (pictured above). In many cases, color and line work together to create extremely sophisticated compositions.

Other interesting objects include early maps, medical treatises, teaching scrolls, constellation charts and cosmological texts, genealogical charts, and of course the familiar psalters and Books of Hours (the lovely Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux are also included). Many of the books' pages will be turned periodically at the beginning of each month until the show closes in August, offering an ever-changing variety of images.

Overall the show offers a glimpse into a little-studied field, and presents objects from some of the most famous libraries (including the Vatican Library) around the world. Many of these texts will probably not be seen again soon in any exhibition, so I suggest you get to the Met and see them before they get locked away again, only to be seen by the most intrepid (and persistent) scholars of the book arts.

Quick note: The Met is doing a new thing where each exhibition has its own blog, where visitors can participate in the discussion. Check out the blog for the Pen and Parchment show here, where you can find information on the show, medieval drawing techniques, and read commentary from the show's curators.

Tim Burton at MoMA

In what is possibly the coolest retrospective ever planned, Tim Burton will be featured at MoMA beginning November 22nd, later this year.

The show will feature, among other things, drawings, costumes, and puppets, mostly from his various film projects. It will also include "artifacts" from Burton's college film projects, early career, and unrealized projects. Best of all, the exhibition will be accompanied by a film series.

For other happenings at MoMA, check out this weirdly difficult to understand exhibition calendar.

The Ara Pacis Museum in Rome Vandalized

Vandals defaced the outside of the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome with paint-filled balloons of red and green, creating an Italian flag of sorts on the white wall. The vandals also left a porcelain toilet and a few rolls of toilet paper next to the building, in a brilliantly simple comment on the building's design.

Designed by Richard Meier, and opened in Rome in 2006, the Ara Pacis Museum was built to house the Ara Pacis, or "Altar of Peace" commissioned by Emperor Augustus in 13 BC. The massive stone structure was rapidly deteriorating from exposure to the elements, and the new complex was built to protect it, though it's contemporary design has been the subject of much criticism.

I was just at the Ara Pacis Museum last week, and while it is a nice museum, sun-filled, with seating, serves its designated purpose of protecting the Ara Pacis (and is a fantastic air-conditioned respite from the sweltering Roman sun), it's totally out of sync with Rome as a city, and classical Roman architecture. It feels completely out of place, and doesn't really complement the Ara Pacis so much as it simply seems to rise out of the ground around it.

Any thoughts about the recent vandalism, or about the Ara Pacis Museum in general?

Met News

-The Met has secured a loan from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam of Vermeer's Milkmaid for their fall show of Dutch art that will feature all 5 of the Vermeers from the Met's permanent collection, as well as other 17th century Dutch works.

-A very unique show on medieval drawings entitled Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages opens next week, June 2nd. I've been looking forward to this for months, so stay tuned for a review.

-Things to see now include the opening of the new American wing period rooms, and Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion at the Costume Institute if you just can't get enough of Kate Moss.

Art Links

Some art on this beautiful Friday, shall we?

-A review of the new shows up at the Whitney using parts of the permanent collection: Claes Oldenburg: Early Sculpture, Drawings, and Happenings Films and Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen: The Music Room, both of which are up all summer.

-A really fantastic project to digitize ancient manuscripts. I'm such a huge fan of manuscript digitization, and this is the wave of the future, though maybe nothing can compare to seeing a several-hundred year old manuscript in person.

-Christie's has won this battle, but who will win the war? (Did anyone else love that Giacometti cat sculpture at Sotheby's as much as I do? I'm sad it didn't sell.)

-Also, Dolly Parton just got her Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee. Honorary degrees are the way to do it, I'm thinking.

I'm headed to Philadelphia to see the Cezanne and Beyond show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I'll be back on Monday with some pictures and my official review!

Art Links

Hey everyone! I'm back with your Art Links this beautiful Friday:

-Those Hitler paintings that were up at auction recently sold for a lot more than people thought they would, coming in at around $143,000.

-I wish I was able to go to London to see this show at the Tate Britain, Van Dyck and Britain.

-This Leonardo mystery sounds like a case for Dan Brown! Oh wait, Gary Radke's work for the show Leonardo da Vinci: Hand of Genius actually sounds like art history at its finest. Dan Brown could learn something.

-An interesting interview with graffiti artist Sixeart.

-Depressing news: the dire market for academics gets even more dire.

Art Links

I'll be on blog-hiatus for the next 2 weeks or so, as I'll be on a fabulous Australian vacation. Here are some links to tide you over:

-Some sad news today: in addition to the loss of human life in the recent earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy, it also caused "significant" damage to historic buildings and works of art. Among the damages include portions of medieval towns, Santa Maria di Collemaggio (Romanesque, but heavily restored in the 20th century), and parts of the National Museum of Abruzzo.

-Pack the Bronze Duckling, previously stolen from his installation behind Mrs. Mallard at a Boston public garden, has been recovered.

-Art Dubai is getting better, but selling less.

-The Newark Museum celebrates its 100th anniversary with a new exhibition featuring work by living artists acquired in the last 15 years called Unbounded: New Art for a New Century.

-John D. Rockefeller's bedroom furniture from his west 54th St. townhouse are being relocated to some even fancier digs.

-The Michelle Obama/Carla Bruni Sarkozy/omg-what-are-they-wearing-today analysis is getting serious. Ladies and gentlement, the end of "wife wear."

-In especially cool medieval news, experts are close to archiving and translating all 10,000 of the inscriptions on the walls of Al Hambra palace in Spain.

Art Links

-Etruscan treasures in Dallas are on view at the Southern Methodist University Meadows Museum, and is supposedly the largest exhibition of Etruscan artifacts in the United States.

-The St. Louis Museum has Power and Glory: The Court Arts of China's Ming Dynasty on view through May 17th. Interestingly, the show is organized chronologically instead of thematically, which I think is a great way to view the arts of an entire dynasty.

-In case you were wondering, the stats on the most visited museums last year are out.

-A group of 13 paintings with questionable authenticity, supposedly by Adolf Hitler are scheduled to be auctioned at a British sale in April.

-And finally, is journalism (or more specifically, is photojournalism) art? Mannie Garcia's photo of President Obama, on which Shepard Fairey's iconic "Hope" poster is based, is on sale in a limited edition of 200 at a Chelsea gallery. J-art?

Art Links

-Shamed Upper East Side art dealer, Larry Salander, has been indicted on charges including grand larceny and falsifying business records. His gallery, Salander-O’Reilly, was known for both American contemporary art and Old Masters.

-A group of late Picasso works are on sale at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. I suppose it's to be expected from Picasso's biographer, John Richardson, but he psychoanalyzes the works in a way I'm not entirely, art historically comfortable with.

-Yale University filed a suit this week to assert its ownership of van Gogh's The Night Cafe, after the descendent of the previous owner decided that it was rightfully his.