News
Why touching art is so tempting -- and exciting
Featured on cnn.com
Imagine an empty gallery in a museum. It's just you, a 200-year-old masterpiece and the quiet. The brush strokes of a Rembrandt painting draw you in, and with your hands behind your back, you lean in to study the colors and textures.
Looking sideways, you spot the security guard at the door, standing bored and inattentive. You could easily reach out your hand and steal a quick touch, rules be damned.
Boston is getting a new art museum, and it will be free to every visitor
The 15,000-square-foot museum will open in February 2020.
Featured on boston.com
It will cost nothing at all to check out contemporary art in Boston when a new museum opens its doors next year.
Art Collector to Plant 299 Trees in a Stadium to Protest Inaction About Climate Change
The idea was inspired by a 1970 drawing depicting a forest entrapped in a big city soccer stadium.
Featured on hyperallergic.com
Basel, Switzerland-based art collector and curator Klaus Littmann will plant 299 trees in the Wörthersee Stadium in the Austrian city of Klagenfurt as a statement on climate change. For Forest: The Unending Attraction of Nature, a temporary intervention scheduled to open on September 9, will be Austria’s largest public art installation to date.
Santa Rosa Show Celebrated by the Community
From a new record installation time to a super fun awards reception, Coordinator Jessica Rasmussen reported that everything ran very smoothly for the City of Santa Rosa’s 16th Annual NAP exhibit. Jessica credits this success in large part to an amazing group of returning volunteers who look forward to helping with the program each year.
Can an Art Collective Become the Disney of the Experience Economy?
Meow Wolf started as a loose group of penniless punks. Now it’s a multimillion-dollar dream factory anchoring an “immersive bazaar” in Las Vegas.
Featured on nytimes.com
A Painter Who Left the Art World in Order to Actually Make Art
For the past 30 years, Vivian Suter has been quietly working in her home on Lake Atitlán, Guatemala. Now, she’s found international recognition.
Featured on nytimes.com
What will art look like in 20 years?
Devon Van Houten Maldonado asks artists and curators to imagine the changes and trends that will influence the art world in the next two decades.
Featured on bbc.com
The future may be uncertain, but some things are undeniable: climate change, shifting demographics, geopolitics. The only guarantee is that there will be changes, both wonderful and terrible. It’s worth considering how artists will respond to these changes, as well as what purpose art serves, now and in the future.
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Pinterest employee #1 launches blockchain art market MakersPlace
Featured on techcrunch.com
Pinterest is a great place to find digital art but a terrible place to sell it. The fact that anything online is infinitely copyable makes it tough for artists to establish a sense of scarcity necessary for their work to be perceived as valuable. Yash Nelapati saw this struggle up close as Pinterest’s first employee. Now he has started MakersPlace, where creators can generate a blockchain fingerprint for each of their artworks that proves who made it and lets it be sold as part of a limited edition.
What Happened to Notre-Dame’s Precious Art and Artifacts?
Officials say the ‘main works of art’ were saved. But others have been lost or seriously damaged
Featured on smithsonianmag.com
People around the world watched with heavy hearts as a fire tore through the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris yesterday. It took firefighters 12 hours to extinguish the flames. When all was said and done, the cathedral’s iconic spire collapsed, its roof has been destroyed, but not all was lost in the blaze.
Luxury fashion brands are making a splash in the art world
Featured on theconversation.com
Louis Vuitton reopened its refurbished flagship store in Florence in March 2019 to great fanfare from the fashion industry. The brand made great play of the fact that, alongside all the luxury apparel and accessories, the store is replete with artworks including works by Italian artists such as Osvaldo Medici del Vascello and Massimo Listri.
5 Places That Inspired Vincent van Gogh’s Art
Featured on artsy.net
Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh led a turbulent, restless life. From a young age, he moved incessantly, searching for both artistic inspiration and an environment that would calm his gnawing nerves. “It always seems to me that I’m a traveller who’s going somewhere and to a destination,” he wrote to his brother, Theo, in August 1888. By the time of the artist’s death in 1890, at age 37, he’d lived in over 15 different cities across Europe.
Why Madame X Scandalized the Art World
Featured on artsy.net
In 2019, it’s hard to see why John Singer Sargent’s 1883–84 paintingMadame X scandalized Paris. If you visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American wing, where it now hangs in an ornate gold frame, you’ll see a simple composition of a porcelain-skinned woman with an updo standing against a brushy brown background. She wears a plunging black gown with gold straps, one hand clutching a fan while the other rests on a round table. Her face is in profile, the line of her long nose leading the viewer’s eye slantwise out of the picture.
University of Arizona President Attends NAP
Pamela Wagner, the wonderful coordinator of the University of Arizona’s National Arts Program Exhibit, had another successful year. She hung a total of 186 artworks for their 9th annual exhibit! Their show, entitled “On Our Own Time”, invites all UA employees, retirees and immediate family members to take part.
Hartford Focuses On Their Youth
The Executive Director of the National Arts Program had a chance to visit Community Renewal Team (CRT) and see first hand just what this wonderful organization is accomplishing. One of their biggest projects each year is coordinating the City of Hartford’s National Arts Program Exhibit. In its 28th year, coordinator Ilana Bernstein says that they have renewed their commitment to offering this exhibition for many years to come.
Cleveland’s 20th Year Breaks All Records
This year marked a huge milestone for the City of Cleveland National Arts Program exhibit. The city celebrated their 20th Anniversary with the program while simultaneously breaking all of their previous participation records. This year’s exhibit featured 525 pieces of art by city residents - that’s 204 pieces more than their 2018 show! Organizing a show of this size is no small task and coordinator Rosa Casiano along with her team from Cudell Fine Arts did an amazing job from start to finish. The show received rave reviews from participants, visitors and judges alike.