Category: Exhibitions
Farnese Collection Digitising Sculptures
May 4 2021
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Farnese Collection in Naples are digitising several of their most important classical sculptures for a 3D virtual tour. More specifically, the scheme will involve the digital recreation of the Baths of Caracalla for a project entitled Rome Reborn. The project is in collaboration with the virtual tourism company Flyover Zone based in Bloomington, Indiana. They are planning to make the tour available for most digital devices, including for those who have their own VR gear at home.
Turner & Lowry Actor given First Solo Show
May 4 2021
Picture: Pontone Gallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Timothy Spall, who played both J.M.W. Turner and L.S. Lowry on the big screen, has been given his first ever solo show by the Pontone Gallery in London. Spall had received special tutelage from the painting consultant Tim Wright for a period of two years before the 2014 Turner biopic.
Spall is quoted as expressing:
“I started painting stuff that was based on very strong images that related to the mood and feelings that I had and then all of a sudden this thing started to happen,” he said.
Wright said Spall could have been a “very good pastiche artist” after he worked on a copy of a Turner painting in the buildup to the biopic, and although Spall’s own paintings are mostly landscapes, they’re a world away from Turner, Spall said. “They’re pretty good benchmarks to reach for, wherever you get one millimetre towards it or not.”
The show Out of the Storm will run from 18th June - 18 July 2021.
NPG Sends Shakespeare & Friends to Korea
April 30 2021
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Portrait Gallery in London has sent a selection of its significant paintings to Korea for a special exhibition entitled Icons and Identities. 78 works in total have been sent to the National Museum of Korea in Seoul including the Chandos Portrait of Shakespeare and Van Dyck's Self Portrait.
The press release images from Korea (pictured) show conservator Alexandra Gent supervising the installation of paintings via a video call. I wonder what the plan was in case something went wrong?
Nicola Grassi Exhibition in Pordenone
April 29 2021
Picture: giornalenordest.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
For fans of eighteenth-century Venetian painting, the Galleria Harry Bertoia in Pordenone, north-eastern Italy, will be opening an exhibition dedicated to Nicola Grassi (1682-1748) on 30th April 2021. The show will feature 80 paintings from both public and private collections, including works by his contemporaries such as Giambattista Tiepolo, Giambattista Piazzetta, Sebastiano Ricci and Gianantonio Guardi. The exhibition is curated by Enrico Lucchese, Professor of Art History at the University of Ljubljana.
Rembrandt in Amsterdam: Creativity and Competition
April 27 2021
Picture: National Gallery of Canada
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa will be opening their latest exhibition Rembrandt in Amsterdam: Creativity and Competition in May.
As the exhibition's website explains:
Curated by Stephanie Dickey, Rembrandt in Amsterdam is the first ever exhibition to chart the transformative central decades of the artist’s career within the context of the Amsterdam art market. It is also is the first major Rembrandt exhibition in Canada since 1969, and the first ever to be presented at the National Gallery of Canada.
The Dutch Republic of Rembrandt’s time had a very clear connection with the history of Turtle Island via contact between Indigenous peoples and Dutch settlers and through the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. A selection of works of contemporary and Indigenous art trace these connections and explore a wider perspective beyond a European focus, while contributions from Joana Joachim, Gerald McMaster and Rick Hill examine the impact of the Dutch colonial project on Black and Indigenous peoples.
Visitors will be able to visit the show from 14th May 2021 - 6th September 2021, depending on local lockdown restrictions. It will then travel to the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, with an opening scheduled for 6th October 2021.
Palladio and the Bridge
April 27 2021
Picture: arte.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
For those who enjoy paintings of elaborate architecture, the Civic Museums of Bassano del Grappa are opening their latest exhibition on 29th May 2021 entitled Palladio and the Bridge: Explaining the Myth. The show will explore the many curious designs the architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) made of bridges and the architectural imaginations of artists who responded to them. This includes the likes of Canaletto who featured them in several works (pictured). It was inspired by the recent restoration of the Ponte Vecchio in Bassano del Grappa, an ancient wooden bridge reconstructed many times after the architect's sixteenth-century designs.
The exhibition will run until 10th October 2021.
Body and Soul at the Louvre
April 26 2021
Video: Louvre
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Louvre's ongoing exhibition Body and Soul: Italian Renaissance Sculpture from Donatello to Michelangelo is due to close on 3rd May 2021. Due to museum closures in France, it's likely that hardly anyone has had the opportunity to see it. Thankfully, the Louvre have posted this YouTube lecture on the exhibition with English subtitles, in case you'd like to learn more!
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Ps. Regarding the title of the exhibition, I hope I'm not the only one whose ears are instantly transported to this jazz standard?
The Duke of Bedford sends his Canalettos to Bath
April 21 2021
Picture: Woburn Abbey
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Duke of Bedford is loaning out Woburn Abbey's important set of Canalettos to the Holburne Musuem in Bath for a special exhibition which opens on 17th May. This loan has been made possible due to a large scale renovation project at the Duke's ancestral home. This is the first time in 70 years that the significant set of paintings, created during the 1730s, have left Woburn Abbey.
The works usually hang in the so-called Canaletto Dining Room. This magnificent display is impressive, but, does not allow for particularly close viewing. I'll be excited to see exactly how the loaned works will be displayed in the museum.
Visitors will have the opporunity to see this magnificent set of paintings until 5th September 2021.
Love's Labour's Found at Philip Mould
April 21 2021
Picture: Philip Mould & Co
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Philip Mould & Co's new selling exhibition Love's Labour's Found - Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture opens in London today.
To quote the exhibition's website:
Love’s Labour’s Found sheds new light on the practices and the production of portraits in 16th and early 17th century Britain. Formerly misidentified sitters and previously misattributed artists govern this exhibition’s key themes of re-examination and discovery.
As a continually evolving period of art history, art historians have recently benefited from improved access to unseen or overlooked documentary sources and transformative technological advances in the physical understanding of art, to produce fresh insights into the life and work of many of the artists of this era.
This exhibition brings together works by well-known artists such as Nicholas Hilliard, Jean Decourt, George Gower, Isaac Oliver and William Larkin whilst shining the spotlight on lesser-known names such as Benjamin Foulon, The Master of the Countess of Warwick and Rowland Lockey.
Fortunately, their website lists all the works included within the show complete with detailed catalogue notes. Amongst the most interesting portraits is a very splendid image of Elizabeth I, filled with carefully painted symbols on her clothing. Also included is a Sleeper featured on this blog last July, which has turned out to be a fully fledged work by William Larkin.
The show will run until 28th May 2021.
Recently Conserved Fra Angelico sent to Forlì
April 20 2021
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Italy that a recently conserved painting by Fra Angelico has been loaned from the Museum of San Marco to the Musei di San Domenico in Forlì, Northern Italy. The Final Judgement, and another Nativity by the artist already in the city, will form part of an exhibition on Dante that will run till 11th July 2021. This significant loan was brokered by the Uffizi Gallery's director Eike Schmidt.
Thyssen-Bornemisza Family Collection to be Exhibited
April 20 2021
Picture: artdaily.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza are organising a special exhibition this year to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. The museum has been loaned a selection of twenty works from his heir's private collection, many of which have not been exhibited since 1992. Alongside several paintings will be a large selection of sculpture and pieces of decorative art spanning from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries.
The exhibition opened on 12th April 2021 and will run till 23rd January 2022.
National Gallery of Umbria sending 40 Works to Russia
April 19 2021
Picture: The Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria have announced that they will be sending 40 masterpieces from their collection to the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The works will feature in a special exhibition dedicated to the museum's collection. Preparations for the show have resulted in discoveries and new attributions, including to the Rimini masters Baronzio and Francesco da Rimini.
The exhibition will run from 18th May - 15th August 2021.
Fede Galizia to Receive First Monograph Exhibition
April 19 2021
Picture: finestresullarte.info
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
It really seems that 2021 is shaping up to be a bumper year for exhibitions on female artists. The Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento, Italy, will be presenting the first ever monograph exhibition dedicated to the Milanese artist Fede Galizia (c. 1578– c. 1630). Gailzia, who is likely to have learnt painting from her father Nunzio, achieved a reasonable fame for her still-lifes, portraits and religious works. Her art was so highly prized that it was collected by the likes of Rudolf II in Prague.
The exhibition will contain 80 works including paintings, drawings, engravings and medals, many of which have been loaned from institutions around Italy.
The show will run from 3rd July - 25th October 2021.
Online Lecture: Rembrandt's Orient
April 16 2021
Picture: garyschwartzarthistorian.nl
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A reader has kindly alerted me to a very interesting free online lecture on Rembrandt's Orient given by the exhibition's co-curator Gary Schwartz. Unfortunately I'm not able to post the video on here directly, so you'll have to scroll down the bottom of the page via. the link above to watch it.
Do Not Adjust Your Screens
April 16 2021
Picture: smithsonianmag.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
"Why has AHN decided to utterly debase itself by using poor quality images?" - I know what you're thinking, but it's not my fault.
The picture above is a new piece of contemporary art by the Miaz Brothers in their upcoming show at the Maddox Gallery in London entitled The Past, Present & Imperceptible. The exhibition features blurred images of old master paintings by the likes of Caravaggio and Rembrandt.
Explaining these works in an article for the Smithsonian Magazine:
“[I]t is not possible to gaze passively. Instinctively, you are immediately prompted to engage on a physical level with what you see, moving closer or further away to decode what is before you,” say the brothers in a statement. “As memory begins to manifest and thoughts start taking form, emotions arise along with the possibility for reflection.”
Well, there it is.
Virtual Tour and Fragrance Boxes from the Mauritshuis
April 16 2021
Picture: Mauritshuis.nl
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
For those who won't be able to make it to the Fleeting - Scents in Colour exhibition, the Mauritshuis have produced a rather fun virtual tour and accompanying 'fragrance box' which can be sent directly to your house. The fragrance box contains four different scents which accompany this sensory exhibition.
According to the museum's website:
After scanning a QR code Dutch culinary journalist Joël Broekaert and Mauritshuis Conservator Ariane van Suchtelen invite you for a tour behind the closed doors of the exhibition. Join them and discover the amazing paintings in the exhibition, using your eyes ánd your nose!
The special scent pumps in your fragrance box allows you to actually smell the scents of the exhibition during your virtual tour.
Curious to discover the smell of the Dutch bleaching fields of Jacob van Ruisdael'sView of Haarlem? Or the beautiful Grocer’s Shop by Willem van Mieris? Dare to sniff the stench of the foul-smelling canal of Jan van der Heyden's View of the Oudezijds Voorburgwal ?
Online Exhibition: Women in Ancient Rome
April 16 2021
Picture: Uffizi Gallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Uffizi Gallery in Florence has published a free online exhibition of their recently finished exhibition Empresses, Matrons and Freed Women. The show had opened last November but had to close a day later due to lockdown restrictions. It features around 30 works from the gallery's collection supplemented by loans from the National Archaeological Museum and the National Central Library of Florence.
Henry Scott Tuke at the Watts Gallery
April 16 2021
Picture: The Watts Gallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Watts Gallery in Surrey have announced more details about their upcoming exhibition on the late Victorian / Edwardian artist Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929). The show is due to run from 7th June - 12th September 2021.
According to the exhibition blurb:
Henry Scott Tuke explores the complexities that surround the life and art of this British painter, famed for his depictions of sun, sea, and bathing during a late Victorian and Edwardian golden age. Tackling questions of artistic influence, art practice and a varied reception history, the exhibition brings together some of Tuke's most significant works. Having spent his early years studying at the Slade School of Art, Tuke first discovered the appeal of painting en plein air on his travels in Italy and France. On his return to Britain in the 1880s, like many of his generation, Tuke was drawn to Cornwall. He initially headed to Newlyn, while the emerging artists' colony was still in its infancy, before settling in Falmouth. Using both beach and boat as his studio, Tuke built his early reputation with ambitious sombre-coloured scenes of Cornish seafaring. He even converted an old French brigantine, the Julie of Nantes, into a colossal 60-foot floating studio. It was aboard this vessel that Tuke painted his most ambitious seafaring subject, All Hands to the Pumps! (Tate).
Today – as in his lifetime – Tuke is best known for his distinctive depictions of nude male youths swimming, messing about in boats and sunbathing on Cornish beaches. Influenced by the colour and technique of the European avant-garde, Tuke strove to capture the chromatic effects of sunlight on skin, becoming a leading figure in the resurgence of the male nude in British art.
The exhibition will also be accompanied by the release of new major book on the artist by Yale University Press.
Variations: The Reuse of Models in Paintings by Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi
April 10 2021
Picture: The Cleveland Museum of Art
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Cleveland Museum of Art will be opening their new exhibition tomorrow entitled Variations: The Reuse of Models in Paintings by Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi.
As the show's blurb explains:
Recent conservation of the CMA’s Italian Baroque painting Danaë by Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639) has revealed a more vibrant and refined painting than has hitherto been possible to perceive. It is an extraordinary work now conveying the artist’s trademark virtuosity in painting drapery and flesh tones. Danaë is the second version of a picture painted in Genoa around 1621–22 by Orazio, who often copied his own works; these subsequent versions can rival the original in quality.
While issues of attribution are still very much alive in several works by Orazio and his daughter Artemisia, it is clear that both artists returned to and reworked certain themes and compositions throughout their careers. In content and form, Orazio’s Danaë is a key example of this phenomenon. In the exhibition, Danaë will be at the center of an intimate group of paintings by father and daughter that will beautifully distill the artists’ capacity to modify and manipulate forms across subjects.
The exhibition will run from 11th April - 22nd August 2021.
What the Nazis Stole from Richard Neumann (and the search to get it back)
April 8 2021
Picture: WAM
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts is about to open its latest exhibition entitled What the Nazis Stole from Richard Neumann (and the search to get it back).
As the title suggests, the show follows the fate of the art collection of Dr Richard Neumann (1879-1959), whose paintings were confiscated by the Nazis when he fled Austria in 1938. Reuniting Neumann's 200 works of art, including old master paintings and sculpture, became the focus of the last years of his life. 16 works of art have been returned thus far, and 14 of these will be in the exhibition. The show will include works by Maerten van Heemskerck, the sculptor Alessandro Algardi and Guiseppe Sanmartino. Also included are works by Italian artists Alessandro Magnasco, Giovanni Battista Pittoni the Younger, and Alessandro Longhi.
The show will run from 10th April 2021 till 16th January 2022.
