April 2006

The Poetry of Light: Venetian Drawings from the National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art, Washington: April 30–October 1, 2006

Some one hundred thirty four works from the Gallery's outstanding collection reveal that Venice produced some of the finest artists in history. The exhibition features drawings by Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Vittore Carpaccio, Giorgione, Lorenzo Lotto, and Titian. One of the earliest surviving European drawings in colored chalks, by Jacopo Bassano, and excellent works by Veronese, Jacopo Tintoretto, and Paolo Farinati highlight the later sixteenth century section. ...

http://www.nga.gov

Master Drawings from the Woodner Collections

National Gallery of Art, Washington: April 30–October 1, 2006

Ian Woodner (1903–1990) formed one of the foremost private collections of old master and modern drawings in the United States. The core drawings of the collection were placed at the National Gallery of Art by Woodner's daughters in 1991, in honor of their father's achievement as a collector. This exhibition celebrates the 15th anniversary of the arrival of the Woodner drawings at the National Gallery and honors the ongoing generosity of Dian and Andrea Woodner, who have already donated many of the core drawings and have augmented the collection with additional gifts. ...

http://www.nga.gov

DESIGNING TRUTH

Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum: April 30 - June 25, 2006

Daniele Buetti; IT IS ALL IN THE MIND, 2005

With: Back & Forth, Daniele Buetti, Jimmie Durham, Jochen Gerz, Knowbotic Research, Sigalit Landau, Mark Lewis, Kris Martin, Grayson Perry, Michael Richter, Hinrich Sachs and Peter Sandbichler.
The exhibition “Designing Truth” is to be understood as a contribution to the festival “Duisburger Akzente”, the theme of which is “What to believe in”? The festival theme is a reaction to society’s reorientation towards lastingly viable, identity-creating values and patterns of behaviour. At a time of enormous technological and political change, and of global problems in the economic and geopolitical spheres, people are searching – as ever - for order and meaning that can help them to understand the world and determine their behaviour within it. ...

http://www.lehmbruckmuseum.de/

Maxwell Bates: At the Crossroads of Expressionism

Art Gallery of Greater Victoria: April 28, 2006 to June 25, 2006

Maxwell Bates, Odalisque 1970 oil on canvas AGGV Collection

Artist, architect, and writer Maxwell Bates (1906 to 1980) is a pivotal figure in the history and evolution of Canadian art. We are particularly pleased to be exhibiting his work at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Bates’ tremendous impact on the art scene here from 1962 to 1980 remains a key period in this city’s artistic development.
This retrospective exhibition features over 80 works spanning Maxwell Bates' career from 1921 to 1978. The exhibition is divided into chronological sections starting with his early work in Calgary. The expressionist influence that features heavily throughout his career was already evident at this early stage. Bates was working with philosophies and ideals that were very different from those of his contemporaries in Calgary. ...

http://aggv.bc.ca

Helene Schjerfbeck - Unveiling the Unseen

Didrichsen Art and Cultural Museum: 28.4 - 1.10.2006

The reputation of one of the most important figures in Finnish art history, Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946), is growing constantly, both in Finland and abroad.
As an artist, Schjerfbeck made no attempt to produce an illusion of reality, but was interpreting her own inner feelings from very early on, and advanced systematically along the path she had chosen.
The more than 50 works in the exhibition take us on a journey through this artist’s production. The earliest work shown is The Wounded Soldier from 1880, when Schjerfbeck was only 18 years old. The endpoint of the journey is the very last work that she ever produced, Three Pears on a Plate from 1945. There are also several repetitions of various themes, such as the self-portraits, which the artist returned to repeatedly. ...

http://www.didrichsenmuseum.fi

William Forsythe

PINAKOTHEK DER MODERNE | KUNST: until 04.06.2006

William Forsythe (*1949 in New York) is the world's leading choreographer of the present day. His name stands undisputedly for new discoveries in the field of performing arts, for the future of dance, for the breaking down of traditional barriers and for crossover with the fine arts. For this reason, the planned project of the Pinakothek der Moderne represents a completely new departure in exhibition format. It will feature a live, stage-like and performative art exhibition to run in different rooms of the museum. ...

http://www.pinakothek.de

The Art of Betty Woodman

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: April 25, 2006–July 30, 2006

The Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Gallery, Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, Modern Art, 1st floor American-born artist Betty Woodman (b. 1930) is celebrated internationally for her contribution to contemporary ceramic sculpture and for the interrelationship between ceramics, sculpture, and painting in her work. This retrospective includes some 70 examples of early utilitarian objects, large vessel groups, wall installations, paintings, and drawings. ...

http://www.metmuseum.org

John Greene

New Arts Gallery: April 22 - May 15, 2006

"Untitled",2006 -encaustic on panel, 36"x36"

John Greene’s encaustic paintings rely on both the textural element of his medium as well as the refined selectivity of color, form and distilled composition. He explores the rigor of geometry as well as the fluidity of implied landscape and organic form. In some works these elements converge in others they remain separate and dominant. What remains constant is the crafted surface that elaborates and enhances the conceptual nature beneath. Together he creates engaging and elegant statements, focused and direct, which invite personal interpretation. Greene states, “I try to introduce elements that are hidden or apparent, that will encourage “reading” the paintings many times and constantly discovering something new. I find myself using different materials such as copper or lead (materials from the earth), as is paint, which may also change continually over time. I especially like beeswax, which in many ways is just the opposite in terms of its durability and permanence, and for its wonderful ability to be opaque or transparent…Above all, I love the PROCESS of making a picture – revealing parts of myself that might be a mystery to me.” ...

http://newartsgallery.com

Daphne Odjig: Four Decades of Prints

WINNIPEG ART GALLERY: April 22 to July 16, 2006

Daphne Odjig: Four Decades of Prints brings together 95 print works created during the last 40 years. The exhibition celebrates one significant aspect of her work – printmaking – and provides viewers with an exceptional opportunity to honour Aboriginal cultural heritage through the eyes of one of Canada’s most remarkable artists.
Daphne Odjig was born on Manitoulin Island. In 1963 she moved to northern Manitoba where a very significant period of her career was launched. She was a founding member of the Professional Native Artists Incorporation which has been dubbed the “Indian Group of Seven,” along with Jackson Beardy, Carl Ray, Norval Morrisseau, Eddie Cobiness, Alex Janvier, and Joseph Sanchez. In 1970 she moved to Winnipeg where, in response to the lack of representation of Aboriginal artists in mainstream galleries, she and her husband opened an art gallery dedicated to Aboriginal artists--Warehouse Gallery. During this period in Manitoba Odjig produced her largest number of prints in any given period and her work attained an international reputation. Odjig’s unique style is characterized by repeated curvilinear forms that build rhythm throughout the composition, combined with brilliant and uplifting primary colours. ...

http://www.wag.mb.ca

Casas Grandes and the Ceramic Art of the Ancient Southwest

The Art Institute of Chicago: April 22-August 13, 2006

Jar with Plumed Serpent and Macaw-Headed Serpent, c. 1280-1450. Casas Grandes. Private Collection.

In the deserts and mountains of the American Southwest and Northwestern Mexico, there flourished ancient Indian communities whose ceramics are among the most accomplished in the world. Bearing plumed and horned serpents, macaws, and lively geometric designs, these objects reveal an unknown story in the art and culture of Southwestern American Indian antiquity. This innovative exhibition highlights the imaginative graphic complexity and distinctive symbolism of Casas Grandes ceramics with vessels from c. 1250-1450. ...

http://www.artic.edu

Xi'an – Imperial Power in the Afterlife

Kunst - und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: 21 April - 23 July 2006

This exhibition presents recent archaeological discoveries from the vast necropolis surrounding the city of Xi'an in today’s Shaanxi province, the very cradle of Chinese culture and capital of China through thirteen dynasties.
Taking the unification of the empire under China's first emperor Qin Shihuangdi as its starting point, the exhibition focuses on the Qin, Han and Tang dynasties (221 BC – 907 AD) and showcases around 200 magnificent objects from the sumptuous funerary complexes and rich temple furnishings of the emperor and the aristocracy.
An impressive computer-aided display allows a glimpse into the as yet unopened burial chambers of two imperial tombs. ...

http://www.kah-bonn.de

Present Tense - Murray Laufer

Art Gallery of Ontario: April 19 to July 30, 2006

The first comprehensive view of Toronto artist Murray Lauferís work features large-scale paintings that address classic themes in Western painting, achieving a sculptural rendition of form through the use of transparent paint mediums and collage elements. ...

http://www.ago.net

Pieter Lastman. In Rembrandt’s Shadow?

Hamburger Kunsthalle: 13 April – 30 July 2006

Pieter Lastman’s (1583-1633) oeuvre is of pre-eminent importance for the development of history painting in Holland. 1618 he is lauded in a “Praise of the City of Amsterdam” as one of the most important painters of his home town. With the example of biblical sources, the selected paintings present his innovative method of composing his works. Only in the 19th century the importance of his personal artistic achievement was overshadowed by the fact that Rembrandt briefly studied in his workshop. ...

http://www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de

The Art of the Book from East to West and Memories of the Ottoman World Masterpieces of the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection

Sakip Sabançi Museum, Istanbul: From 14 April to 28 May, 2006

The Divan by Mir Ali-Shir Nava'i Persia, Tabriz, ca. 1530 1575 26.3 x 18 cm Inv. no. L.A. 183

The Sakıp Sabancı Museum is preparing to host a magnificent selection of works from Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. The exhibition brings together 75 outstanding and rare manuscripts and printed books representing the art of the book around the world, and 35 works of art that are reminders of Calouste Gulbenkian's Ottoman origins, consisting of orientalist paintings, Ottoman fabrics and Ottoman tiles. ...

http://muze.sabanciuniv.edu

The Photography of David Barker Maltby

J M Barnickle Art Gallery (West Gallery): April 13 to May 11, 2006

"Tent City" (1999-2000)

TORONTO - Images of squeegee kids and the homeless as seen through the lens of Toronto photojournalist David Barker Maltby will be on view in the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery from April 13 to May 11, 2006.
Toronto-born Maltby, who died of meningitis at age 38 in 2001, often lived with the people he photographed. He also came to know their plight while working as a photographer for such organizations as the city’s Street Health and Anishnawbe Health.
"David was a social documentary photographer in the classic definition of the word," co-curator Susan Maltby said of her brother, who began his photographic career as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto. ...

http://www.utoronto.ca

Václav Machač - Figurative Glass

Czech Museum of Fine Arts: 12. 4. 2006 - 4. 6. 2006

Václav Macháč (1945), a graduate of the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (studio of Prof. S. Libenský, 1965-1971), has been a leading representative of Czech and international glass art since the 1970s. His starting point is in classical sculptural modelling and he uses the technique of glass blown into a mould that is then polychromed. With this approach he achieves outstanding results in an expressive form of realism. His dramatic drawings, both as studies and finished works, are equally outstanding. Machač chooses characteristic themes in which he emphasises his interest in manifesting the strength, resistance and determination of both humans and animals. These themes are primarily portraits of sportsmen, cyclists and skiers. Here we can find, for example, a portrait sculpture of the Ukrainian boxer Vitaly Klichko. Machač's horse heads and dog portraits are also exceptional. ...

http://www.cmvu.cz

home! abroad. home again!

Thorvaldsens Museum: April 12 to June 25 2006

Rome’s famous historical sights, the Coliseum, the Forum, Monte Pincio and the Pantheon have fascinated artists and tourists over the ages. As a result, Bertel Thorvaldsen, who lived in Rome for many years, acquired an extensive collection of paintings with motifs from the city executed by the leading artists of the time. The collection is on permanent exhibition on the 1st floor in Thorvaldsens Museum, where the artist Søren Lose has now created a photographic installation. With the exhibition home! abroad. home again! he creates an interplay between Thorvaldsen’s collection of paintings and the contemporary art of his own day. ...

http://www.thorvaldsensmuseum.dk

Bellini and the East

National Gallery: 12 April - 25 June 2006

Bellini, 'Seated Scribe' about 1479-80. © Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Photo: Tom Lingner.

In 1453 the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople, capital of the Christian Byzantine Empire. This event transformed European politics, culture and society. This focused exhibition will examine images of the Muslim and Christian Eastern Mediterranean that were produced subsequently by the great Venetian painters Gentile and Giovanni Bellini.
Gentile Bellini spent some time in Istanbul as the guest of Sultan Mehmet II, and was fascinated by the Sultan's court and city. The work reflects their knowledge of and sympathetic interest in both Byzantium, and the Islamic civilisation that followed it. Greek architecture and painting were the basis of Venetian art, and many Byzantine Greeks felt an affinity to Venice. ...

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Beauty in the Rocks

McPherson Library Gallery: Apr. 11, 2006 - May. 4, 2006

The Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery is pleased to present an exhibit of 30 photographs by David Baird with accompanying poetry. Dr. Baird has traveled the world in search of stirring images of the “big places,” such as the Rockies, and the “small places,” like macro-images of fossils. “Beauty in the Rocks” is comprised of select images from his years of world ravel as a record of his research. This exhibit combines his photographs shot in Canadian National Parks, juxtaposing nature with humanity’s presence in it, and including accompanying poetry. ...

http://www.maltwood.uvic.ca

Marie-Louise von Motesiczky

Tate Liverpool: 11 April – 13 August 2006

Marie-Louise von Motesiczky After the Ball 1949 © Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust

Celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Marie-Louise von Motesiczky’s birth, this exhibition brings the work of this acclaimed, yet relatively unknown, artist to a much wider audience than ever before. Fleeing the Nazis in 1938 she left Vienna with her mother, finally settling in England where she lived and worked in a community of gifted exiled artists.
The exhibition presents around 70 paintings and a number of drawings, exploring the transition from her hard-edged realist style of the twenties to the poetic realism of her later work. ...

http://www.tate.org.uk

Dana Novak - Frozen Passage

Kamloops Art Gallery: April 9 to May 28, 2006

Artist Dana Novak, who recently relocated to Vancouver after many years living, working and studying in Kamloops, is well known for her sensuous photographs of water, ice, and other natural elements. Frozen Passage is a photo-based installation about ice in which Novak explores the Canadian landscape and culture in relation to her own perspectives developed during her formative years in the Czech Republic. ...

http://www.kag.bc.ca

Eduardo Masferré: A Philippine Arcadia

Brandts: 8. april 2006 - 11. juni 2006

Eduardo Masferré: A Philippine Arcadia

http://uk.brandts.dk

The Road : Constructing the Alaskan Highway

McMichael Canadian Art Collection: April 8, to June 11, 2006

To many people the Alaska Highway is simply a long line that connects two dots on a map. To others it is an essential transportation route, linking towns, cities and communities across northern Canada. To others, it is an engineering marvel − a symbol of a history of cooperation between two great nations. To the thousands of people that built it, however, the Alaska Highway was known simply as “The Road.” ...

http://www.mcmichael.com

Lucius O’Brien: Sunrise on the Saguenay

Art GAllery of Alberta: April 8–May 28

Lucius O’Brien’s painting Sunrise on the Saguenay of 1880 is a landmark work in the history of Canadian art and a major work in the artist’s career. The painting was submitted on O’Brien’s appointment as the first President of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts by the Governor General of Canada, the Marquess of Lorne. Since then, it has become a key image of the growth of the arts in Canada, and of the building of a nation. At the same time, the image is linked to several decades of tourism on the lower St. Lawrence River, as well as to the identity of Québec City as the former bastion of British North America. ...

http://www.artgalleryalberta.com

erwin wurm. adorno was wrong regarding his theory on art

museum der moderne (salzburg): 08.04.-09.07.2006

Born in Bruck/Mur in 1954, the artist belongs to the most important artists within the Austrian art scene. Within the last years he gained an international reputation through countless national and international museum exhibitions as well as publications. Since many years he focuses on the weaknesses in every day life, the insecurities within human relations and the unpredictable flexibility which can be shown abruptly by assumed security. ...

http://www.museumdermoderne.at/

Reinventing America: Three Modern Views on Paper

Amon Carter Museum: April 8–September 23, 2006

Three recent museum acquisitions—works by Edward Hopper, Joseph Stella and John Marin— chart the artists’ transformation from drawing distinctively early nineteenth-century subject matter to creating emblems of the modern. These engaging artworks will be displayed with a group of related prints, photographs, and drawings from the collection that provide artistic and historical context. ...

http://www.cartermuseum.org

American Watercolors and Pastels, 1875–1950, at the Fogg Art Museum

Fogg Art Museum: April 8 through June 25, 2006

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Group in the Simplon, 1911. Watercolor over graphite on white wove paper, 36 x 50.9 cm. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Gift of Sir Joseph Duveen, 1927.7. Photo: Allan Macintyre, HUAM, © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

This exhibition presents a survey of over 50 works drawn predominantly from the Fogg's extraordinary collection of American art. The period 1875-1950 was a golden age in American watercolor, when masters from Sargent, La Farge, and Homer to Hopper, Demuth, and Rothko explored its representational and expressive possibilities. ...

http://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu

Jāzeps Grosvalds (1891 - 1920)

LATVIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ART: 07.04. – 21.05.2006

Jāzeps Grosvalds is known in Latvian art history as one of the most important figures in the introduction of classical modernism. In the context of Latvian painting, his works dedicated to the themes of refugees and war, stand out with the innovative approach to the subject and its formal expression.
This exhibition, however, focuses on a lesser-known part of Grosvalds’ oeuvre – the works created prior to the First World War while the artist was on study tours abroad. Grosvalds was not an academically trained artist; he conducted most of his studies in museums familiarising himself with the finest achievements of artists from various ages and countries. ...

http://www.vmm.lv

Certain Encounters: Daros-Latinamerica Collection

Belkin Art Gallery (Canada): 07 April–04 June 2006

Certain Encounters: Daros-Latinamerica Collection presents the work of twenty artists who either live or have lived in Latin America. The Daros-Latinamerica Collection is based in Zürich, Switzerland and was initiated six years ago. It currently includes more than one hundred artists from all regions of Latin America, and the works focus primarily on the past twenty years with important examples included from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. ...

http://www.belkin-gallery.ubc.ca

The Three Gorges Project: Paintings by Liu Xiaodong

Asian Art Museum: April 7–July 16, 2006

Newly Displaced Population, by Liu Xiaodong (China, b. 1963). Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Mr. Cahyadi Kuma la Kwee.

China's Three Gorges Dam: 26 million cubic meters of concrete, 395 square miles, 250,000 workers, and millions resettled. The Three Gorges Project features a series of monumental paintings by one of China's leading artists chronicling the Three Gorges Dam project, a massive 17-year effort to dam the Yangzi River. Liu Xiaodong has shown an intense interest in documenting the China emerging today, and his aim as a painter is to capture the psychic landscape of a changing society. ...

http://www.asianart.org

Henrik Saxgren: WAR AND LOVE – about the immigration in the Nordic countries

Finnish Museum of Photography: 6.4. - 28.5.2006

The Danish photographer Henrik Saxgren has interviewed and photographed immigrants in Scandinavia. He met people of more than 200 different nationalities. The pictures and stories in the exhibition reveal that the most common reasons for migration are war and love – and sometimes both. ...

http://www.fmp.fi

The art and museum libraries of West Flanders

6 April – 4 June 2006

In the (early) summer of 2006 the Flemish Art Libraries Consultative Group (known for short as OKBV) is organising a project which will ensure that the doors of West Flanders’ most important art and museum libraries are temporarily opened to the general public. In Bruges an evocative exhibition will be held in the Gezelle Museum, based around the many (art) books and (museum) libraries of our province. And there are more of these than you might think, some of them real collector’s items! A small and easy-to-use guide will provide you with more information about the libraries, their collections and their participation in the project. ...

http://www.brugge.be

Warriors of the Himalayas: Rediscovering the Arms and Armor of Tibet

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: April 5, 2006–July 2, 2006

This exhibition is the first comprehensive study of armor, weapons, and equestrian equipment from the Tibetan plateau, a subject that has remained virtually unexplored until now. Many rare or previously unknown examples of helmets, body armor, swords, horse armor, saddles, and stirrups are exhibited and published here for the first time. Dating from the 13th to the 20th century, these objects include some of the finest examples of Himalayan ironwork embellished with gold and silver and extremely rare decorated leatherwork. ...

http://www.metmuseum.org

Cy Twombly | Sculptures

Alte Pinakothek: until 30.07.2006

The Alte Pinakothek exhibition of new sculptures by the American artist Cy Twombly is a minor sensation: the forty or so works have never been presented in Europe before. Indeed, the most recent sculptures have not even been shown at the Twombly Museum of the Menil Collection in their entirety. The works now to be exhibited were selected jointly with the artist himself at his studio in Lexington/Virginia, USA. ...

http://www.pinakothek.de

CONCRETE KINGDOM: SCULPTURES BY NEK CHAND

American Folk Art Museum: April 4–September 24, 2006

“Concrete Kingdom: Sculptures by Nek Chand” showcases the work of this visionary self-taught artist from India, whose thousands of cement animal and human sculptures occupy a 25-acre site-specific art installation, the Rock Garden, in Chandigarh, India. The American Folk Art Museum recently acquired 29 works from a miniature garden Nek Chand built for the National Children's Museum, in Washington, D.C. (currently relocating). These sculptures, along with 5 already in the museum’s collection, will be featured in groupings on tiered pedestals, echoing the design of the original Rock Garden. Large-scale photographic images will demonstrate the grand scale of the world's largest and most significant folk art environment. ...

http://www.folkartmuseum.org

All Fired Up!

KELOWNA ART GALLERY (Canada): April 1 to June 11, 2006

Bonnie Anderson
The Three Graces, 2006
clary art

The Okanagan Valley is a region rich in creativity so it is not surprising that this area is also ripe with accomplished potters and clay artists who are experimenting with a variety of techniques and exploring diverse subject matter. The objects produced range from functional cups and bowls to decorative wall murals and everything in between. To complement the touring exhibition Regina Clay in the Treadgold Bullock Gallery, All Fired Up! features a small but strong selection of contemporary clay work produced by Okanagan-based artists including Bonnie Anderson, Angela Carlson, Gillian Paynter, Bob Kingsmill and others.

http://www.galleries.bc.ca