Peter Jonathan Bell and Kristi A. NelsonWith contributions by Tanja Bernsau, Kathryn Griffith, Neville Rowley, and Nancy Yeide As the Allies advanced into Germany in April 1945, General Patton’s Third Army discovered the collections of the Berlin State Museums hidden in a salt mine 2,100 feet ...
Continue reading ...The German Lost Art Foundation, in cooperation with Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung e. V., Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung und Restitution – Bibliotheken, Deutscher Bibliotheksverband e. V., Deutscher Museumsbund e. V., and ICOM Deutschland e....
Continue reading ...Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, FRANCE 13-15 November 2019 Les femmes ont occupé une place majeure dans la modernisation du métier de marchand d'art, progressivement remplacé par celui de galeriste. Laboratoires des avant-gardes, les enseignes dirigées par des femmes œuvrèrent à la déc...
Continue reading ...The Centre de recherche du château de Versailles has launched the Visiteurs Database listing the accounts of foreign visitors to the domain, the Palace and the Court of Versailles, between the second half of the 17th century and the end of the 19th century. The database is part of the resear...
Continue reading ...The Sam Francis: Online Catalogue Raisonné Project is a scholarly resource dedicated to the life and oeuvre of the American-born abstract expressionist Sam Francis (1923–1994). The first installment documents all currently known unique works on paper and canvas and panel paintings attributed to ...
Continue reading ...In spite of the huge number of paintings by this artist in the Prado, Luca Giordano (Naples, 1634–1705) is seldom studied and is therefore little known to the public, who often do not see beyond the cliché of his prodigious speed of execution. The present volume sets out to remedy this lack of kn...
Continue reading ...By Elizabeth Angelicoussis Begun by Gavin Hamilton (1723–98), one of the most prominent British explorers of classical sites of the eighteenth century, the Lansdowne Collection came to hold more than one hundred stellar examples of classical statuary, displayed in a specially designed gallery i...
Continue reading ...Exhibition: 23 September-31 December 2017 Conference: 10-11 November 2017 Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, USA Nearly 100 years ago, the Wadsworth Atheneum received an extraordinary gift of more than 1,350 works of art from the collection of financier J. Pierpont Morgan. These objects, an arra...
Continue reading ...The British School at Rome (via A. Gramsci, 61) 22 June 2017 A cura di Francesca Parrilla e Matteo Borchia I sezione Linda Borean (Università di Udine): L’artista nel ruolo di collezionista nella Venezia barocca Cecilia Vicentini (Università eCampus/Università di Ferrara): Invent...
Continue reading ...Edited by Joanna Marschner with the assistance of David Bindman and Lisa L. Ford With essays by Glenn Adamson, A. Cassandra Albinson, Robyn Asleson, Wolf Burchard, Donald Burrows, Lisa L. Ford, Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, Florence Grant, Tyler Griffith, Mark Hallet, Craig Ashley Hanson, Samantha Howard,...
Continue reading ...University of Leeds, UK 30–31 March 2017 The Centre for the Study of the Art and Antiques Market at the University of Leeds announces the international two-day conference exploring the relationship between the ‘private’ and ‘public’ spheres of the art market and the museum. This interd...
Continue reading ...Center for the History of Collecting, Frick Art Reference Library, NY, USA 3-4 March 2017 This two-day symposium focuses on collections of American art formed during the late eighteenth century through the early twentieth century and concludes with a conversation with Alice Walton, the greatest ...
Continue reading ...Editors: Johanna Ilmakunnas (University of Helsinki, Finland) and Jon Stobart (University of Northampton, UK) Jon Stobart and Johanna Ilmakunnas bring together a range of scholars from across mainland Europe and the UK to examine luxury and taste in early modern Europe. In the 18th century, de...
Continue reading ...13-15 October 2016 Bauakademie am Schinkelplatz, Berlin, GERMANY In the wake of the Western expansion, a fast growing number of non-European artefacts entered the European market. They initially made their way into princely cabinets of curiosities. Made possible by the forced opening and exploit...
Continue reading ...Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, FRANCE 20-21 October 2016 The focus of the conference is to explore the changing and complex nature of the role of agent in the art market during the Early Modern Period. Papers will explore shifts in the dynamics of the market, the changing...
Continue reading ...Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, UK 7 October 2016 This conference is the first in a series associated with the Paul Mellon Centre’s flagship research project Art in the British Country House: Collecting and Display, which investigates the collection and display of works ...
Continue reading ...The Frick Center for the History of Collecting in America, New York, NY, USA, 28 June 2016 American collectors at the turn of the 20th century eagerly sought out Medieval and Renaissance art once held in the collection of the notorious art dealer Frédéric Spitzer, 1816–1890. Paola Cordera,...
Continue reading ...By Catherine Hickley In February 2012, in a Munich flat belonging to an elderly recluse, German customs authorities seized 1,280 paintings, drawings and prints by artists including Picasso, Monet, Matisse, Chagall, Otto Dix and Paul Klee. Former Bloomberg arts reporter Catherine Hickley has de...
Continue reading ...Antonio Naval Más Esta publicación ha sido concebida en la misma línea del anteriormente publicado Patrimonio Emigrado, del que es complemento. Se trata de un estudio de diversas obras de procedencia aragonesa –centrándose en obras medievales y del sigo XVI- basándose en el trabajo de camp...
Continue reading ...5–7 November 2015 Lorenzo de' Medici, Florence, ITALY While individual empires have been studied extensively, it is only in recent decades that they have been examined from comparative political, social and cultural perspectives. It is also only recently that scholarship in history of collecti...
Continue reading ...St Johns College, Oxford and the Ashmolean Museum, UK 23-24 October 2015 A two-day conference is to be held at St Johns College, Oxford and the Ashmolean Museum to explore the work of art historian Francis Haskell (1928-2000). Writing at the intersection of cultural history, art history and the ...
Continue reading ...21 - 22 October 2015 The Convent of St. Agnes of Bohemia in Prague 6th international conference on the confiscation, thefts and transfers of works of art as a result of Nazi rule over Czechoslovakia and Europe during the Second World War and in the post-war period organized by Documentation Cent...
Continue reading ...By Edgar Peters Bowron This meticulously researched catalogue presents an authoritative assessment of the works of Pompeo Batoni (1708–1787), one of the 18th century’s most celebrated painters. Born in Lucca, Batoni established himself in Rome and received commissions from popes, princes, and...
Continue reading ...By Joan Coutu In the mid-eighteenth century, English gentlemen filled their houses with copies and casts of classical statuary while the following generation preferred authentic antique originals. By charting this changing preference within a broader study of material culture, Joan Coutu examines...
Continue reading ...Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe GERMANY 30 May — 6 September 2015 The centrepiece of the show will be the presentation of Karoline Luise’s Mahlerey Cabinet, a collection that once boasted more than 200 paintings, most of which are still preserved in the Kunsthalle today. Her original collect...
Continue reading ...Italian cabinets and tables decorated with inlaid semi-precious stones known as ‘pietre dure’ were a ‘must-have’ for English milords returning from their Grand Tours. The finest example is perhaps the Sixtus V cabinet at Stourhead, in Wiltshire, which has just been written up in a thorough,...
Continue reading ...The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Watson Library Digitization Initiative has digitized 898 catalogs and checklists published by Knoedler between 1869 and 1946. Knoedler & Company, established in 1857, was among the most important art dealers in New York City. Representing artists with an inter...
Continue reading ...Edited by Inge Reist, The Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library Series: The Histories of Material Culture and Collecting, 1700–1950 14 essays examine points of similarity and difference in the approaches to art collecting practiced in Britain and the United States. Unlike most of th...
Continue reading ...Giles Waterfield This innovative history of British art museums begins in the early 19th century. The National Gallery and the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) in London may have been at the center of activity, but museums in cities such as Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, M...
Continue reading ...National Gallery, London, UK 5 March 2015 This one-day scholarly conference encourages fresh thinking about 18th-century country houses as environments that were always evolving, animated by interactions between objects and people. Organised by the National Gallery, Birkbeck (University of ...
Continue reading ...Maureen McCue Series : Studies in Art Historiography As a result of Napoleon’s campaigns in Italy, Old Master art flooded into Britain and its acquisition became an index of national prestige. Maureen McCue argues that their responses to these works informed the writing of Romantic period auth...
Continue reading ...Kristel Smentek Series : Studies in Art Historiography Celebrated connoisseur, drawings collector, print dealer, book publisher and authority on the art of antiquity, Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694-1774) was a pivotal figure in the eighteenth-century European art world. Focusing on the trajectory of...
Continue reading ...The Paintings of Paul Cézanne, an online catalogue raisonné is the first installment of the artist’s complete works. It capitalizes on the versatility of digital technology and takes Cézanne scholarship in a new direction. The online catalogue is interactive and will be updated on a regular bas...
Continue reading ...Ruth Guilding In a lively re-examination of the British collectors who bankrupted themselves to possess antique marble statues, Owning the Past chronicles a story of pride, rivalry, snobbery, and myopic obsession with posterity and possession. Analyzing the motives that drove “Marble Mania” ...
Continue reading ...Edited by Christoph Vogtherr, Wallace Collection, UK and Monica Preti and Guillaume Faroult, Musée du Louvre, France The history of collecting is a topic of central importance to many academic disciplines, and shows no sign of abating in popularity. As such, scholars will welcome this collection...
Continue reading ...The Richard Wilson Online catalogue raisonné has been compiled by Dr Paul Spencer-Longhurst (Senior Research Fellow) with the collaboration of Professor David Solkin (Curator of the exhibition, Richard Wilson: The Landscape of Reaction, 1982-83) and Kate Lowry (formerly Chief Conservator at the Na...
Continue reading ...Editors: Patrick Eyres and James Lomax Lord Raby’s celebrated silver wine cistern was saved for the nation after a major appeal in 2011. It was part of the spectacular group of silver provided by the government for his important embassy to Berlin (1705-1711). He received even more silver as ambas...
Continue reading ...Now online: The official website for the American artist Morris Louis (1912-1962), developed and authorized by The Estate of Morris Louis, The Marcella Brenner Revocable Trust, The Morris Louis Art Trust, The Estate of Marcella Brenner, and Diane Upright Fine Arts, LLC, the exclusive Agent for T...
Continue reading ...The influential intercontinental art dealer Alexander Iolas, active between 1945 and 1987, has been called the “proto-Gagosian” of his day because he had galleries in Athens, Rome, Geneva, Madrid, Milan, New York, and Paris. A former ballet dancer and a grand eccentric, he was passionate about a...
Continue reading ...As a regent he gave the young kingdom of Württemberg a historical identity; his multifarious initiatives as a collector and patron, however, have all but sunk into oblivion. The holdings of the Staatsgalerie, which opened in 1843, were expanded by artworks in royal ownership as well as by personal ...
Continue reading ...Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, GERMANY 10–12 September 2014 Caroline Louise of Baden (1723–1783) shaped the art collection of the margraves of Baden more than any other before or since. Her original collection included Dutch masterpieces of the 17th century and great works of French painti...
Continue reading ...Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, ITALY 24 June-8 December 2014 This exhibition proposes to offer a critical-bibliographic picture of this very important cultural phenomenon concerning the history of taste and collecting in Italy between the late XVIII century and early XIX century. Among othe...
Continue reading ...Mapping Titian allows users to visualize one of the most fundamental concerns of the discipline of Art History: the interrelationship between an artwork and its changing historical context. Focusing on the paintings executed by the Venetian Renaissance artist, Titian (ca. 1488-1576), this site offer...
Continue reading ...Olaf Peters (Editor) With contributions from Olaf Peters, Mario von Lüttichau, Ines Schlenker, Karsten Müller, Aya Soika, Bernhard Fulda, Karl Stamm, Ernst Ploil and Ruth Heftrig This book accompanies the exhibition at Neue Galerie New York, devoted to a reconstruction of the infamous Nazi dis...
Continue reading ...Olympia International Art & Antiques Fair, London, UK 6 June 2014 Great Collectors of Our Time. The title of James Stourton’s fascinating survey of art collecting since the Second World War sounds comprehensive and assured, and rightly so. The second half of the 20th century saw the formation ...
Continue reading ...Diana Scarisbrick Benjamin Zucker Elihu Yale (1649–1721) is famous for the name of Yale University, of which he was an early benefactor. He made his fortune in India, trading in diamonds. Arriving there in 1672, he rose through the East India Company from clerk to governor. When he returned to...
Continue reading ...Vortragsreihe am Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Leipzig, GERMANY Juni-Juli 2014 Durch das plötzliche Auftauchen der Sammlung Cornelius Gurlitt sowie durch den von George Clooney produzierten Hollywoodfilm Monument Men sind in jüngster Zeit wieder Themenfelder in die allgemeine ...
Continue reading ...Schwaben Akademie, Kloster Irsee, GERMANY 13-16 June 2014 Cabinets of prints and drawings belong to the earliest art collections of Early Modern Europe. Some of them achieved astounding longevity such as the Florentine Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe at the Uffizi. The fame which they acquired then d...
Continue reading ...The Institute of Historical Research and The Wallace Collection, London, UK 1 & 2 July 2014 With the developing interest in the history of collecting, this two-day workshop aims to bring out new research in the area of collecting and art markets in the early modern era 1700-1900. The...
Continue reading ...Paul Mellon British Centre for Studies in British Art, London, UK 2 May 2014 This one-day conference will address the issue of connoisseurship in relation to historic, modern and contemporary British art studies. Speakers from different sphere - art dealers, museum curators, conservators, art...
Continue reading ...Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, USA August 10, 2013 – February 24, 2014 European art of the 18th century increasingly emphasized civility, elegance, comfort, and informality. During the first half of the century, the Rococo style of art and decoration, characterized by lightnes...
Continue reading ...Guido Cornini and Claudia Lega Catalogue for the exhibition held at Sala delle Nozze Aldobrandini, Musei Vaticani, Rome. This exhibition will bring back to life in the Vatican the charm of the eighteenth-century collections of the Profane Museums at the time of Pius VI, before the Napoleonic r...
Continue reading ...P. Humfrey (ed.) This volume comprises sixteen essays on the reception of Titian by British painters, collectors and critics in the long nineteenth century. The main focus falls on the first three decades of the century, in the aftermath of the exhibition of the celebrated Orléans collection in ...
Continue reading ...Les sœurs de Napoléon Ier, Élisa, Pauline et Caroline, eurent toutes trois un destin italien : la première fut élevée par son frère au rang de princesse de Lucques, puis de grande-duchesse de Toscane, représentante de l’Empereur en Italie. La deuxième épousa un prince romain, Camille Bor...
Continue reading ...Stéphane Castelluccio This beautifully illustrated volume traces the changing market for Chinese and Japanese porcelain in Paris from the early years of the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715) through the eighteenth century. The increase in the quantity and variety of East Asian wares imported duri...
Continue reading ...Alexandra Stara, Kingston University, UK Series : The Histories of Material Culture and Collecting, 1700–1950 The first volume in two centuries on Alexandre Lenoir's Museum of French Monuments in Paris, this study presents a comprehensive picture of a seminal project of French Revolutionary ...
Continue reading ...Edited by Richard Aste A critical contribution to the burgeoning field of Spanish colonial art, Behind Closed Doors reveals how art and luxury goods together signaled the identity and status of Spanish Americans struggling to claim their place in a fluid New World hierarchy. By the early sixteen...
Continue reading ...Samuel Quiccheberg Introduction by Mark A. Meadow Translation by Mark A. Meadow and Bruce Robertson Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones, first published in Latin in 1565, is an ambitious effort to demonstrate the pragmatic value of curiosity cabinets, or Wunderkammern, to princely collectors i...
Continue reading ...Ting Chang, University of Nottingham, UK Series : The Histories of Material Culture and Collecting, 1700–1950 Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris examines a history of contact between modern Europe and East Asia through three collectors: Henri Cernuschi, ...
Continue reading ...The Wallace Collection, London, UNITED KINGDOM 26 June 2013 Cranfield University, Lauréat de la Bourse Annette Giacometti , is proud to host its first public seminar event ‘Art Meets Science: The Detection of Fakes and Forgeries’. The seminar will feature international speakers from the wo...
Continue reading ...The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA 18 June–8 September 2013 This exhibition highlights the ingenuity, beauty, and wit often found in designs for the decorative arts, and follows the dynamic development of shapes, ornaments, and materials alternately governed by issues of comfort...
Continue reading ...Gallery at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, New York, NY, USA 4 April-11 August 2013 The exhibition features more than 200 objects of primarily medieval art and French eighteenth-century paneling, furniture, metalwork, textiles, paintings, and scu...
Continue reading ...The ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E., drew international attention when excavations commenced in the 1730s. As a result, the nearby city of Naples became a nexus of scholarship, cultural diplomacy, and tourism. This fascinating book...
Continue reading ...Sperone Westwater, New York, NY, USA 10 January-23 February 2013 The exhibition aims to evoke the manner in which collections – known as quadrerie – were formed in Italy in the 18th and 19th Centuries, as well as the way in which they were displayed, covering entire walls of the palazzo that...
Continue reading ...The exhibition traces the development of illustrated catalogues of cabinets of curiosities. In the 16th century, European collectors filled special rooms or cabinets with miscellaneous conglomerations of items, including paintings and drawings; plant specimens (especially those with medicinal pro...
Continue reading ...Picasso could be capricious when it came to authenticating his own work. On one occasion, he refused to sign a canvas he knew he had painted, saying, “I can paint false Picassos just as well as anybody.” On another, he refused to sign an authentic painting, explaining to the woman who had brough...
Continue reading ...University of York, UK 8 December 2012 Travel for pleasure or health in Britain and Ireland first became widely available to the affluent middling classes in the eighteenth century. For much of the period 1700-1830 Britain was at war with at least one of its continental neighbours; possibilities...
Continue reading ...L'exposition réunit deux cents œuvres, sculptures, peintures, dessins, gravures, tapisseries, pièces de mobilier et objets d’art, provenant principalement du musée du Louvre et du château de Versailles. La scénographie, conçue par le metteur en scène Pier Luigi Pizzi, tend à créer la ...
Continue reading ...Italy's specialist art theft police have tracked down and brought home a 400-year-old copy of a lost Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece - an incomplete fresco painting of the Battle of Anghiari. It once decorated a wall of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, the Tuscan city's monumental town hall. The...
Continue reading ...Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, UK 15-16 June 2012 In 1615, Vincenzo Scamozzi highlighted the importance in Venice of the merchant-collectors Bartolomeo dalla Nave and Daniel Nijs by including descriptions of their collections in his L’Idea della architettura universale. Scholarship ...
Continue reading ...The Gallery of Lost Art is an immersive, online exhibition that tells the fascinating stories of artworks that have disappeared. Destroyed, stolen, discarded, rejected, erased, ephemeral – some of the most significant artworks of the last 100 years have been lost and can no longer be seen. Vis...
Continue reading ...What is art worth? How can a work by Pablo Picasso be sold for more than $100,000,000? This fascinating book explains the market for art—and art’s value for all of us. In straightforward prose that doesn’t mystify art or deny its special allure, prominent art dealer and market expert Michae...
Continue reading ...Giorgione is notorious for his elusiveness in the written records of his day. We have not even known his surname. But a remarkable recent discovery has opened a small window onto his private life. Thanks to the rich holdings of Venice’s Archivio di Stato (state archive), and the alertness of the h...
Continue reading ...Symposium presented by Christie's and Union Union Internationale des Avocats, Milano, ITALY 23 June 2011 Christie’s, the World’s Leading Art Business,and the Art Law Commission of the Union Internationale des Avocats (UIA) are pleased to announce the presentation of “Holocaust Art Looting ...
Continue reading ...Le propos de cet ouvrage porte sur les collectionneurs de la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle, et son enjeu consiste à cerner la spécificité d'un collectionneur par rapport aux formes anciennes et contemporaines de la collection. Si Jean de Jullienne demeure la figure privilégiée de ce trava...
Continue reading ...Institut national d'histoire de l'art, Paris, FRANCE 31 May-1 June 2011 Collectionner, étudier, restaurer : trop souvent dissociées dans les travaux consacrés au devenir moderne de l’antique, ces trois pratiques étroitement liées au cours du temps n’ont cessé de s’influencer et de se...
Continue reading ...6-7 May 2011 United States National Archives Washington, DC, USA Sponsored by AAM, the National Archives, the American Association of Art Museum Directors and the Smithsonian Institution, with additional support provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. This two-day seminar presents new resourc...
Continue reading ...The Frick Center for the History of Collecting in America, New York, NY, USA 6-7 May 2011 Fifteen speakers examine British collecting practices during the nineteenth century and discussed how subsequent generations of American collectors embraced the British tradition while developing their own ...
Continue reading ...Universally recognized as a brilliant and gifted 18th-century artist, Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) was regarded by Horace Walpole as one of the three greatest painters in England, along with his friends Reynolds and Gainsborough. Yet he has remained without a detailed study of his life and works, owing...
Continue reading ...The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA 30 April-10 July 2011 Though Renaissance-era prints are typically kept out of sight in museum vaults today, these decorative objects were once a central part of everyday life—used, abused, adored, and adorned by their owners. Through over 100 objects, this...
Continue reading ...10 April-31 July 2011 Centrum Judaicum Berlin, 10 April-31 July 2011 Depicting the development of 14 art dealerships and galleries in Berlin, the exhibition explores the way the Nazis took over this formerly independent sector of life. Among these 14 art dealerships are big, well known busine...
Continue reading ...Specific Object/David Platzker, New York, NY, USA 28 February-29 April 2011 The exhibition celebrates two unique books: Sammlung Ludwig : Art of the Sixties and Hans Haacke’s The Chocolate Master / Der Pralinenmeister.The amalgam of these two publications not only reflect on the economics and ...
Continue reading ...National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA 20 February-30 May 2011 Venice inspired a school of competitive view painters whose achievements are among the most brilliant in 18th-century art. The exhibition celebrates the rich variety of these Venetian views, known as vedute, through some 20 mast...
Continue reading ...The Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA 23 January-24 April 2011 The only remaining set of codices from the Sacristy of the Sistine Chapel will be on display at the Meadows Museum as part of the exhibition The Lost Manuscripts from the Sistine Chapel: An Epic Journey f...
Continue reading ...Alan Riding is an esteemed journalist, long a European cultural correspondent for the New York Times and, before that, the author of what is still the best modern introduction to Mexico, Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans. Since 1985 the book has sold nearly half a million copies. And the...
Continue reading ...When it comes to art, “private” and “public” take on confused, tangled meanings. In Lost Lives, Lost Art: Jewish Collectors, Nazi Art Theft, and the Quest for Justice, Melissa Müller and Monika Tatzkow show the extent to which European museums profited from the chaos following World War II....
Continue reading ...The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA 12 October 2010-2 January 2011 In the 18th century, privileged Europeans embarked on the Grand Tour, traveling principally to sites in Italy, where they visited cherished ruins of the ancient world and the splendid architecture of the Renaissance...
Continue reading ...Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, SWEDEN 30 September 2010-23 January 2011 Featuring a wealth of historical artifacts and fine artisan wares, the exhibition is all about the art of governing through art. In all, some 410 artifacts will be on show – a splendid selection of portraits, costumes, jewelle...
Continue reading ...Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, USA 14 September 2010-9 January 2011 Never before seen by the public, the contents of an Emperor’s private retreat deep within the Forbidden City will be revealed for the first time at the Peabody Essex Museum. (...more at PEM website...)...
Continue reading ...Beginning in 1933, Jewish collectors were under extraordinary pressure from German officials to surrender their treasures - paintings, manuscripts, musical instruments, and all manner of objets d'art. Collectors reluctantly agreed to one-sided sales of masterpieces at ludicrously low prices in excha...
Continue reading ...Founded in 1872, the Munich based Galerie Heinemann was one of the most important German art dealing companies until it got "aryanized" by the National Socialists in 1938. In 1972, the Heinemann family gave the remaining business records of the gallery to the Deutsches Kunstarchiv at the Germanis...
Continue reading ...National Gallery, London, UNITED KINGDOM 30 June-12 December 2010 The exhibition will showcase some of the most intriguing stories behind paintings in the National Gallery, as it explores the ways in which advances in scholarship and technology can reveal the misconceptions of the past. Working ...
Continue reading ...Château des ducs de Bretagne, Nantes, FRANCE 26 June-7 November 2010 En octobre 1700, L’Amphitrite, premier navire français à commercer avec la Chine, revient en France et c’est à Nantes, grand port de commerce colonial, qu’il vend sa cargaison : thé, soie, porcelaine, nacre, ivoire, ...
Continue reading ...Das Gesamtverzeichnis der 1937/38 in deutschen Museen beschlagnahmten Werke "entarteter Kunst" wird ab April 2010 kontinuierlich komplexweise nach nochmaliger Überprüfung der Einträge ins Netz gestellt. Es kann nur nach Künstlern und Werken befragt werden, soweit sie bereits für das Netz freige...
Continue reading ...Commission for Art Recovery 4-5 March 2010 New York, New York Austrian Consulate Art Restitution in Austria (Restitutions from the Federal Collections) (...more at the Commission for Art Recovery website...)...
Continue reading ...Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, USA 24 June-19 September 1010 In 1829, the young artist John Scarlett Davis sought to make a splash on the London art scene with his painting The Interior of the British Institution Gallery. An image of an art exhibition, the painting is also an elabor...
Continue reading ...Leo Castelli was called generous, shrewd, tireless, mercurial, magical, and charmingly cagey; a constant whirlwind of invention; a man with Old World charm, courage, audacity, dedication; and always a gentleman “in a business where it is sometimes rather difficult to be anything of the sort.” ...
Continue reading ...Getty Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA 2-3 December 2010 Rome—with its cardinals and international ambassadors to the papal court, its ancient barons and its newcomers trying to appear as if they descended from Caesar, all building, expanding, remodeling, and furnishing magnificent palaces, or try...
Continue reading ...National Portrait Gallery and The Courtauld Institute of Art 2-4 December 2010 Session of note: Section 3: Patronage for portraiture and the use of documentary and technical evidence [Frederick Hepburn (Independent Scholar): The earliest evidence for portaiture at the court of Henry VII; Tarn...
Continue reading ...Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK 18 October 2010 Session of note: Jenkins, Senior Curator, English Heritage (chair): Afternoon Session I [Cinzia Maria Sicca, Associate Professor of the History of European Art, University of Pisa: 'One of the most excellent Masters that Italy has produced i...
Continue reading ...In Room 38 of the Louvre’s Richelieu Wing hangs “The Astronomer” by the Dutch master Jan Vermeer. It is an exquisite painting. The stargazer sits before a celestial globe, his fingers spanning the constellation Pegasus. He wears a teal Japanese silk robe, a style favored by Dutch burghers in t...
Continue reading ...Getty Villa, Pacific Palisades, CA, USA 16 October 2010 Years before he became a collector of ancient art, J. Paul Getty visited William Randolph Hearst at his San Simeon estate. Hearst Castle historian Victoria Kastner explores the relationship between these two iconic California collectors, pa...
Continue reading ...Getty Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA 7 October 2010 Dagmar Eichberger, professor of European art history at the University of Heidelberg, investigates how illustrated manuscripts enriched the lives of female patrons around 1500. Focusing on Margaret of York and Margaret of Austria, Eichberger expl...
Continue reading ...The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), the “Special Task Force” headed by Adolf Hitler’s leading ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, was one of the main Nazi agencies engaged in the plunder of cultural valuables in Nazi-occupied countries during the Second World War. A particularly notorious op...
Continue reading ...A dozen years ago the art dealer Richard L. Feigen attended an auction of European paintings at Sotheby’s in London and found a picture he liked: a richly colored scene of a religious vision, with a hovering saint and four angels, all topped by shimmering gold halos, that was attributed to a minor...
Continue reading ...Bernhard A. Böhmer (1892–1945) gehörte zu den vier Kunsthändlern, die mit dem Verkauf der 1937 in deutschen Museen als "entartet" beschlagnahmten Kunstwerke beauftragt waren. Dokumente weisen jedoch darauf hin, dass bei Böhmer in Güstrow nicht nur die offiziell über ihn "verwerteten" Kunstwe...
Continue reading ...In most exhibitions in the Sainsbury Wing the pictures are dominant, the words on the walls discreet. In Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries the words are large and insistent. It is as though the pictures are being publicly shamed, like criminals paraded with their offences written on...
Continue reading ...Centre Allemand d'Histoire de l'Art, Paris, FRANCE 25-26 June 2010 A l'aube du XIXème siècle, un nombre croissant de collectionneurs d'art s'intéressent en France et en Allemagne à une période de la peinture jusqu'alors largement laissée dans l'ombre : celle des primitifs italiens. Des c...
Continue reading ...This catalogue records an exhibition that pays tribute to the Prince Eugene of Savoy’s many achievements. It is held in the lower half of the Belvedere in Vienna, a two-part palace that is a contender for the title of the most imposing townhouse ever built, and which Eugene spent over a decade com...
Continue reading ...Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, THE NETHERLANDS 12 May-22 August 2010 Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen presents ‘Van Meegeren’s Fake Vermeers’, an exhibition of the famous forgeries of Han van Meegeren. Van Meegeren craftily exploited art historians’ desire to discover early works...
Continue reading ...Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK 15-16 April 2010 A conference organized by Birkbeck, University of London; the Victoria & Albert Museum; the Yale Center for British Art; the Lewis Walpole Library. Supported by the Paul Mellon Centre. This conference brings together academic a...
Continue reading ...Acquavella Galleries, New York, NY, USA 13 April-27 May 2010 The exhibition documents the amazing, unerring eye and acquisitive passion of the colorful New York couple who dominated the contemporary art world in the 1960s and early 1970s. (...more at Acquavella Galleries website...)...
Continue reading ...Jacques Seligmann & Co., Inc., was counted among the foremost French and American art dealers in antiquities and decorative arts and was among the first to foster and support the growth and appreciation for collecting in the field of contemporary European art. The company's clients included most...
Continue reading ...Mauritshuis, The Hague, THE NETHERLANDS 25 March-27 June 2010 The exhibition will focus on a unique genre of painting: cabinet pictures known as ‘kunstkamers’. This genre originated in Antwerp, and the paintings depict rooms filled to the brim with artworks, like tiny fanciful museums. Three...
Continue reading ...Hotel Albuquerque, NM, USA 18-21 March 2010 Session of note: Wendy Wassyng Roworth (chair): Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture New Scholars Session [Rose Logie: The Artful Voyeur: Watteau, Drawing, and Spectatorship; Anne-Louise G. Fonesca: Mythological Painting in Eighteen...
Continue reading ...Meadows Museum, Dallas, TX, USA 7 March-18 July 2010 Royal Splendor is the world's first major exhibition to showcase the exceptional art collection of King Charles IV of Spain (1748-1819). The exhibition, for which the Meadows Museum will be the exclusive venue outside of Spain, offers visitors...
Continue reading ...The Montias database, compiled by late Yale University Professor John Michael Montias, contains information from 1,280 inventories of goods (paintings, prints, sculpture, furniture, etc.) owned by people living in 17th century Amsterdam. Drawn from the Gemeentearchief (now known as the Stadsarchief,...
Continue reading ...From the weekly shopping list to the Ten Commandments, our lives are shaped by lists. Whether dashed off as a quick reminder, or carefully constructed as an inventory, this humble form of documentation provides insight into its maker's personal habits and decision-making processes. This is especiall...
Continue reading ...Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UNITED KINGDOM 6 March-4 July 2010 Over a period of some 40 years (1747–90) Walpole turned the 17th-century house at Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, Surrey, into what he called 'a little Gothic Castle'. It quickly became a famous tourist attraction. Walpole h...
Continue reading ...The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA 2 March-13 June 2010 The Belles Heures (1405–1408/9) of Jean de Berry, a treasure of The Cloisters collection, is one of the most celebrated and lavishly illustrated manuscripts in this country. Because it is currently unbound, it is possible t...
Continue reading ...Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, NY, USA 5 March 2010 With the art restitution law of 1998 and the amendment of 2009 respectively the Republic of Austria established the possibility to restitute artworks, which had been looted during the Nazi era and which can be found in federal museums and c...
Continue reading ...The European expansion to Asia was driven by the desire for spices and Asian luxury products. Its results, however, exceeded the mere exchange of commodities and precious metals. The meeting of Asia and Europe signaled not only the beginnings of a global market but also a change in taste and lifesty...
Continue reading ...Hyatt Regency Chicago, IL, USA 10-13 February 2010 Notable sessions include: Maureen Pelta (chair): Lost! [Kandice Rawlings: The Pull of the Unknown: Jan van Eyck's Saint Jerome; Arthur J. Di Furia: "Outstanding works ... shamefully destroyed": Maerten van Heemskerck's Lost Altarpieces and th...
Continue reading ...The binomial art-money, nowadays even obvious, existed in the past as well, although through partially different forms and mechanisms. Traditionally one of the centres of the pictorial market was Rome, favourite destination of artists and travellers coming from every part of the globe. The book reco...
Continue reading ...The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA 20 January-18 April 2010 This exhibition is the first ever dedicated to Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572), and presents nearly all the known drawings by or attributed to this leading Italian Mannerist artist, who was active primarily in Florence. A p...
Continue reading ...White Columns, New York, NY, USA 15 January-27 February 2010 The photographs are presented in the White Columns Bulletin Board project space as a part of an occasional and ongoing series of displays at White Columns of ‘found’ photographs. (...more at White Columns website...)...
Continue reading ...The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA 8 December 2009-28 February 2010 Telling the difference between drawings by Rembrandt and his pupils is a centuries-old problem. A popular teacher with more than 50 documented students, Rembrandt taught all of them to draw in his style. Together, th...
Continue reading ...James Graham & Sons, New York, NY, USA 20 November 2009 - 5 January 2010 These imagined maps—colored renderings made in painstaking detail—reflect the John Zinsser's longstanding interest in New York galleries and their role in recent art history. Here, they're presented installation-sty...
Continue reading ...The Louvre, as imagined by the French Revolution—it opened during the Reign of Terror—and then as realized by Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon under Napoleon, was the first encyclopedic public museum, dedicated to providing a new setting for art objects taken from their original location. They woul...
Continue reading ...Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires sur l'Allemagne, Paris, FRANCE 20 November 2009-18 June 2010 Le séminaire s’intéressera aux débats suscités par le déplacement des objets patrimoniaux et la circulation des œuvres d’art en divers contextes et périodes, dans une perspective nati...
Continue reading ...Musée national des Châteaux de Malmaison et Boix-Préau, Rueil-Malmaison, FRANCE 14 November 2009-8 March 2010 The idea for this exhibition came from the inventory drawn up after the death of the Empress Josephine which listed the contents of the cellar at Malmaison - over thirteen thousand bo...
Continue reading ...Fachtagung der Kulturinitiative Rhein-Main, Museum Wiesbaden, 11. November 2009 Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland hat sich durch Unterzeichnung der Washingtoner Erklärung des Jahres 1998 dazu verpfichtet, die Herkunft von möglicherweise beschlagnahmten Kulturgütern zu erforschen und gegebenenfall...
Continue reading ...Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UNITED KINGDOM 10 October 2009-17 January 2010 Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts re-examines the world of the maharajas and their extraordinarily rich culture. The exhibition spans the period from the beginning of the 18th century to the mid-20...
Continue reading ...Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva, SWITZERLAND 1 October 2009-29 August 2010 The exhibition will illustrate a consequential phenomenon that first emerged during the 17th and 18th centuries in the former Low Countries: the rapid expansion of the art market. (...more at Ville de Genève website.....
Continue reading ...Biblioteca Marucelliana, Florence, ITALY 1 October-12 November 2009 Il giorno 1 ottobre 2009 si inaugurerà alla Marucelliana di Firenze una mostra dedicata al più importante nucleo della collezione grafica della Biblioteca, quello dei disegni cinque-seicenteschi. Tali fogli (e in specie quel...
Continue reading ...A “smootherboy” (the self-congratulatory gang name adopted by public school- and Oxbridge-educated male staff at Sotheby’s), Richard Day entered the art world by putting together a small prints exhibition on Cork Street with the remaining £50 of his army earnings. As an evidently sociable...
Continue reading ...The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) makes the internet's largest Interactive Holocaust Collection available for the first time ever. Included among the National Archives records available online at are concentration camp registers and documents from Dachau, Mauthausen, Auschwitz,...
Continue reading ...The letters are the window to Van Gogh's universe. This edition, the product of 15 years of research at the Van Gogh Museum and Huygens ING, contains all Van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo, his artist friends, Paul Gauguin, Emile Bernard, and many others. (...more at Van Gogh Museum website.....
Continue reading ...L’opera, frutto di oltre dieci anni di ricerca, consiste nella catalogazione sistematica di tutti i pittori fiorentini od operanti per lungo tempo nel capoluogo toscano tra i primi del Seicento e la fine del Settecento. Insieme agli artisti già famosi, sui quali esistono studi monografici di vari...
Continue reading ...The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, in collaboration with the New York Historical Society, New York, NY, USA 18 September 2009-3 January 2010 Timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's sail into the New York bay, The World of Ma...
Continue reading ...Quantity took priority over quality in Hermann Goering’s sprawling art collection, much of it plundered from Jews. His gluttony for oil canvases becomes clear in Nancy Yeide’s Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection, the first comprehensive catalog of as many as 1,800 wor...
Continue reading ...During the darkest days of World War II, a ragtag band of British and American art scholars braved the battlefields of Europe to rescue thousands of cultural treasures from Nazi pillage and the collateral damage of armed conflict. These “monuments men’’ propped up collapsing buildings; repaire...
Continue reading ...Questa pubblicazione, la terza di una collana specificatamente dedicata al collezionismo artistico a Venezia in età moderna, prende in esame il Settecento, il secolo definito della "gloria" di Venezia, particolarmente ricco e articolato per l'evoluzione del gusto e degli orientamenti del fenomeno, ...
Continue reading ...