London’s Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art opens Alberto Burri retrospective

by Sean McLachlan on

The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art is one of London’s best small art museums. Housed in an elegant Georgian mansion on a quiet street in the London borough of Islington, it has the best collection of modern Italian art in the city and perhaps the nation.

Its latest exhibition is Alberto Burri: Form and Matter, a retrospective of one of the leading Italian figures in modern art. Burri (1915-1995) started painting while interned in Texas as a prisoner of war during WWII. By the 1950s he was experimenting with common materials such as sacking, plastic, and tar, breaking out of the two-dimensions dictated by traditional painting.

His effect on modern art was huge and spawned many imitators. This exhibition brings together works from a number of museums and rarely seen examples from private collections. Aficionados of modern art won’t want to miss this one.

Alberto Burri: Form and Matter runs until April 7.

Photo courtesy Alex Sarteanesi.

Metropolitan Museum of Art to reopen American Wing after $100 million remodel

by Sean McLachlan on


The Metropolitan Museum of Art is famous for its impressive collection of American art, including iconic images such as Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. Now that collection has a larger, better designed home thanks to a $100 million renovation.

The New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts open Jan. 16 and total 30,000 square feet of exhibition space, which is 3,300 more than previously. It houses American art from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries and provides better lighting and access than the previous galleries.

Besides Leutze’s work, which has been given a new gilded frame, the collection is a who’s who of American art, including painters such a John Singleton Copley, Thomas Cole, and Frederic Remington. Cole’s painting View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm-The Oxbow is also on display and is shown below. There’s also a large folk art collection, historic furniture, and work by important silversmiths such as Paul Revere.

Paintings by Emanuel Leutze and Thomas Cole courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

National Gallery in Budapest exhibits art of epic Hungarian history

by Sean McLachlan on


The Hungarian capital of Budapest is a popular destination for those who love high art and culture. Its sumptuous National Gallery is famed across Europe, and now it’s putting on a new exhibition highlighting the nation’s history.

Heroes, Kings, Saints – Pictures and Memories of Hungarian History brings together some of the masterpieces of 19th century Hungarian painting. This was a high point in Hungarian art and a time when artists looked to the past for inspiration. Several rarely seen works of art will be on display, including Conquest (The entry of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin) painted by Mihály Munkácsy in in 1893 for the Hungarian parliament.

Part of this epic painting is shown above, courtesy Marta Pataki. The original is 15 meters (49 feet) long.

The exhibition was opened this week by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The exhibition marks Hungary’s new constitution, which came into effect at the beginning of the year. An article in the Guardian notes that while Orbán was opening the exhibit, thousands demonstrated outside the gallery against what they say are his increasingly authoritarian tendencies and the new Constitution’s granting of more power to the executive.

With the nation so deep in crisis, Orbán’s every move, even appearing at a gallery opening, are subject to public comment.

Heroes, Kings, Saints – Pictures and Memories of Hungarian History runs until August 26.

Phoenix Art Museum opens exhibit on world religion

by Sean McLachlan on

The Phoenix Art Museum is one of the city’s best art spaces. With more than 18,000 objects in its permanent collection, it brings everything from Picasso to medieval Japanese silk to central Arizona. Their Asian collection is especially good.

Now the museum has started the new year with a major new exhibition. Sacred Word and Image: Five World Religions covers the written word and painted image as expressed in Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. By showing the art and writings of these different religions side by side, visitors can see how people each faith use them to express their beliefs.

The exhibit includes a wide variety of objects, including Christian icons, Muslim prayer mats, religious texts, sculptures, and much more. One interesting item is a 7th century Japanese printed prayer, one of the oldest printed texts in the world. When Japan converted to Buddhism in the 7th century, the emperor had one million small wooden pagodas built. Each included a printed prayer inside.

Sacred Word and Image: Five World Religions runs until March 25, 2012.

Photo courtesy Chanel Wheeler.

Your Paintings website puts UK’s art collections at your fingertips

by Sean McLachlan on


An online collection now boasts half of all the publicly owned oil paintings in the United Kingdom.

Your Paintings was started in June by the BBC and the Public Catalogue Foundation and has already uploaded high-quality images of 104,000 oil paintings by 23,000 artists.

The goal is to put online all of the estimated 200,000 publicly owned paintings housed in some 3,000 institutions, making it a veritable Google Books of UK art. There are plenty of UK artists, as well as many other works from around the world and from all periods. While all are owned by the public, many are in buildings that aren’t generally open to the public, so this website helps make them available.

Right now the website is focusing on putting up all the oil paintings since that was the preferred medium of painters for several centuries, and a medium that British painters used quite well. Other media such as watercolor and tempera are represented, and more such paintings will probably go up in the future.

Users can tag paintings to help with the ongoing organization of the collection. There are also links to BBC’s online sound and video archives and various guided tours by different people in the art world.

The website also hosts regular online exhibitions. Currently there’s one on the arctic.

Detail from John Constable’s “The Hay Wain” courtesy Wikimedia Commons.