April 27, 2007
Dr. Jeffrey Weiss, Curator and Head of Modern and Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 4-27-07
Dr. Jeffrey Weiss is Curator and Head of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. He is the curator of the National Gallery of Art exhibition, Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965.
Dr. Weiss holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts in New York. Between 1986 and 1989, he was a doctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington. His book, The Popular Culture of Modern Art, was published by Yale University Press in 1994.
Dr. Weiss is also the editor and author of exhibition catalogues on Mark Rothko and Pablo Picasso. He has published articles and reviews on modern and post-war art in various periodicals and journals, including Burlington Magazine, Artforum and La Revue de l’Art. Recent essays have appeared in anthologies from Princeton University Press and the Getty Research Institute.
Dr. Weiss has served on various public art committees, including the General Services Administration in Washington. He currently holds the first Kirk Varnedoe Professorship at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York. In preparation is the exhibition, Matisse: Painting and Drawing, 1935-1948.
Posted by David Lemberg at 07:37 AM | Comments (0)
Ruth Weisberg, Artist, and Dean of the Roski School of Fine Arts, University of Southern California, 4-27-07
Ruth Weisberg is Dean of the Roski School of Fine Arts of the University of Southern California. Known for her work in painting, printmaking, drawing and large-scale installations, she has recently completed a major mural commission for the New York Jewish Federation. Recent honors include Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, Hebrew Union College, 2001; College Art Association Distinguished Teaching Award, 1999; and Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, 1995, 1994 and 1992.
Ms. Weisberg has exhibited actively, with over 70 solo and 160 group exhibitions. Her work is included in 60 major museum and university collections, including Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco; The Art Institute of Chicago; Bibliothèque Nationale de France; Istituto Nationale per la Grafica, Rome; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Ruth Weisberg Unfurled, on view May 8th – July 29th at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, presents three decades of painting and printmaking by celebrated Los Angeles artist Ruth Weisberg. The retrospective features, in its first complete showing in 20 years, the 94-foot-long masterwork The Scroll. In this acclaimed mixed-media drawing, Weisberg synthesizes her experiences as an American Jewish woman with life-cycle events—birth, childhood, coming of age, marriage, adulthood, and death—all portrayed in conjunction with scriptural motifs, Jewish history, and rabbinic legend.
In addition to The Scroll, more than 30 paintings, drawings, and prints from throughout Weisberg's career will be on view. Together these highlight the artist's extraordinary depictions of her life story and its convergence with art history and Jewish memory. They also illuminate the parallels Weisberg draws between the contemporary and biblical worlds, her desire to memorialize those who perished during the Holocaust, and her fervent belief in renewal.
Posted by David Lemberg at 07:36 AM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2007
James Cook, Artist, 3-16-07
James Cook is a painter who is in love with painting, with the feel of paint, with its smell, with its application, with its color, with its movement on the canvas. He paints quickly creating richly colored and exciting surfaces. Indeed, his bravura use of paint is akin to the Abstract Expressionists; unlike them, however, he provides the viewer with a recognizable reality, ordered by his own personal vision and controlled by his technical mastery. In subject matter and the interpretation of that subject, Cook’s is an American vision which owes much to tradition, but it is tradition that is, in the artist’s hands, fully redefined taking on a new, personal, but very important meaning.
The landscape paintings of James Cook are in the tradition of American landscape painting going back to the earliest painters of our country. But Cook’s paintings are not repetitions of those earlier works; they are uniquely his own and are part of the world today, stated and presented in the artist’s own dramatic and deeply felt terms. The paintings are also a consummate demonstration of years of hard work, of looking at and, literally, inhaling the landscape and rendering it in a sure and dramatic way. These are the paintings of an artist totally in control of his medium and totally sure of what he does. In them he achieves that elusive goal for which all artists strive: he realizes his personal artistic vision in dramatic and uncompromising terms when he presents that vision to us and we comprehend its meaning and intent.
Since 1982, James Cook exhibited in over 40 solo exhibitions, and since 1980, he exhibited in over 100 group exhibitions.
Posted by David Lemberg at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2007
Greg Miller, Artist, 3-9-07
Greg Miller has been labeled by critics as a “post pop industrial artist”. Miller, a child of the fifties and sixties, is very much a romantic, with a strong yearning for the simple beauty of yesteryear America. Miller paints billboards, motels and old Hollywood haunts, building his surfaces with a subtle yet very physical process, starting with collage, then layering paint, airbrush and finishing off the surface with resin. The artist views his work as looking into the past to find the future.
Currently Miller is in a group show, Greetings from the American Dream, at the Riverside Art Museum and will be exhibiting in a solo show in London, September 2007.His art can be found in the collections of The Kemper Museum in Kansas City, MO; The Saatchi Collection; and The Frederick R. Weisman Foundation. Miller is represented by MW Gallery, New York, NY.
Greg Miller was born in 1951 in Sacramento, CA. He has a M.A. from San Jose University and attended the San Francisco Art Institute and UCLA graduate school. He currently lives and works in Venice, CA and his work is in numerous corporate, private and museum collections. In addition to his painting career, Miller has created short films such as “The Kidnapping” and “Darth Days”, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. His third film project, “Go Fish”, previewed at Art Basel - Miami Beach in December 2006.
Posted by David Lemberg at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2007
Jori Finkel, Art Critic and Journalist, 1-19-07
Jori Finkel is an art critic and journalist based in L.A., where she regularly covers contemporary art for The New York Times. She also writes reviews for Art in America, news articles for Artnews, and features for Art+Auction magazine. Finkel has been Art+Auction’s West Coast contributing editor since 2004; before that, she was the magazine’s senior editor for six years in New York. Finkel lectures widely on topics in the art market, contemporary art, and the history of photography.
Posted by David Lemberg at 01:50 PM | Comments (0)
December 08, 2006
Dr. Franklin Kelly, Senior Curator of American and British Painting, National Gallery of Art, and Professor, Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland, 12-8-06
Dr. Franklin Kelly is Senior Curator of American and British Painting, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and a Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland. He received training in art history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (B.A., 1974), the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art (M.A., 1979), and the University of Delaware (Ph.D., 1985).
Dr. Kelly's concentration is on 19th- and early 20th-century American painting. His publications include Frederic Edwin Church and the National Landscape (1988), Frederic Edwin Church (1989), Thomas Cole's Paintings of Eden (1995), and Nineteenth-Century American Paintings in the National Gallery of Art (1996), as well as articles and essays on a wide range of artists, including William Sidney Mount, Thomas Eakins, George Bellows, Edward Hopper, and Charles Sheeler.
In 1995 he was the co-curator of the Winslow Homer exhibition, organized by the National Gallery of Art, and co-author of the accompanying catalogue. More recently he was the curator for Twentieth-Century American Art: The Ebsworth Collection, seen at the National Gallery of Art and at the Seattle Art Museum during 2000. He co-organized the exhibition Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford, which opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2003 and was subsequently seen at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, TX, and at the National Gallery in 2004.
John Constable's (1776–1837) seminal six-foot landscapes—among the best-known and beloved images in British art—are reunited with their groundbreaking full-size sketches for the first time since the artist's death in Constable's Great Landscapes: The Six-Foot Paintings, at the National Gallery of Art, East Building, October 1 through December 31, 2006. Fifty-five works include oils and drawings that are related to the large landscapes, an early pencil portrait, and a series in varied media brought together for the first time, illustrating areas along the Stour River in Suffolk known to many as "Constable Country." The exhibition and its companion catalogue examine why Constable produced the six-foot sketches.
Eight finished six-foot paintings, including The White Horse (1819), Stratford Mill (1820), The Hay Wain (1821), View in the Stour near Dedham (1822), The Lock (1824), The Leaping Horse (1825), Hadleigh Castle (1829), and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831) are paired with their corresponding full-size oil sketches, while Chain Pier, Brighton (1827) is presented with related smaller oil sketches. Two large finished versions of The Opening of the Waterloo Bridge(c. 1829–1832) and what is believed to be a full-size sketch from the very end of Constable's life, Stoke-by-Nayland (c.1835–1837), will also be on view.
Posted by David Lemberg at 08:33 AM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2006
Dr. Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Senior Curator, The Phillips Collection, 11-17-06
One of the country’s paramount anthologies of modern art will be on view at The Phillips Collection from Oct. 14, 2006 to Jan. 21, 2007. The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America, organized by the Yale University Art Gallery, represents a diverse cross section of art from the 1910s to 1950s, including now widely acknowledged masterpieces by artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró, and Piet Mondrian, alongside key Dada works that have not been seen for decades. The exhibition also will include works by Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, and many other visionaries that forever altered the way America looks at the world.
Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Senior Curator of The Phillips Collection, is a specialist in early twentieth century modern art. Dr. Turner’s Ph.D. is from the University of Virginia (1985). Before joining The Phillips Collection she worked for the National Museum of American Art and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has been at The Phillips Collection since 1989, where she has directed a series of traveling exhibitions derived from the permanent collection that address the earliest chapters of the Phillips’s collecting history, including Men of Rebellion: The Eight and their Associates at The Phillips Collection (author, 1990), Duncan Phillips Collects: Paris between the Wars (author, 1991); Two Lives: Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz (co-author, 1992); Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series (editor, 1993; also includes video and children’s book); and In the American Grain: Dove, Hartley, Marin, O’Keeffe, and Stieglitz (author, 1995).
During her tenure at The Phillips Dr. Turner also has curated and directed significant large loan exhibitions, including Americans in Paris: Man Ray, Gerald Murphy, Stuart Davis, Alexander Calder (principle author, 1996); Arthur Dove: A Retrospective (co-author, 1997), and Georgia O’Keeffe: The Poetry of Things (co-author, 1999). She contributed an essay on “Bonnard, Matisse, and the School of Paris” to the definitive text on The Phillips Collection and Duncan Phillips entitled The Eye of Duncan Phillips: A Collection in the Making, and was co-curator for the 1999 exhibition Renoir to Rothko: The Eye of Duncan Phillips.
Dr. Turner contributed an essay to the Jacob Lawrence catalogue raisonné entitled Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence (2000) and, on the occasion of its publication she curated the nationally touring show of the same title, which opened at The Phillips Collection in 2001. She was also the curator of Pierre Bonnard: Early and Late (2002), a show co-organized by The Phillips with the Denver Art Museum that includes examples of all the media in which this artist worked. Dr. Turner was the project director and co-curator for Calder, Miró: A New Space for the Imagination, which opened in May 2004 and was co-organized by the Phillips Collection with the Foundation Beyeler in Basel (Switzerland). Dr. Turner’s current projects include co-editing with Dr. Josef Helfenstein the exhibition catalogue for Klee and America.
Posted by David Lemberg at 01:50 PM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2006
Jocelyn Kress, Art Historian and International Lecturer, 11-10-06
Jocelyn Kress has achieved international recognition for her varied and significant contributions to the world of Art. Her informational and engaging lectures reflect an extension of her lifelong interest in preserving the legacy of the Samuel H. Kress Collection, which many consider the most extensive and encyclopedic art collection of old masters ever amassed by an American. The Kress Collection was started by her uncle Samuel H. Kress and continued by her father, Rush.
Today, approximately 45% of the Kress Collection is housed at The National Gallery in Washington, D.C. The collection represents 67% of all old master paintings and close to 90% of all French 18th century paintings in the Gallery’s permanent collection.
The Samuel H. Kress Collection is the only art collection of its scope and size ever to have been divided, distributed, and subsequently donated throughout the continental United States, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, and as such the Collection’s dispersal across America to regional art museums and universities literally seeded the nation with great art. The Collection has provided millions of Americans with their first glimpse of celebrated art.
In addition to her forthcoming lecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (January 18th, 2007), Ms. Kress has lectured at The Wallace Collection, London in honor of Marie Antoinette’s 250th birthday; The Old Masters Biennale, Florence; and Les Chateaux de Versailles, including The Salon Rond of the Grand Tranon, a favorite spot of Louis XIV and the Pavillion Francais — a favorite of Marie Antoinette.
Ms. Kress’ lifelong work within the arts reflects her strong desire to provide the American people with an opportunity to experience a connection with virtually all the great names in Western art from the 13th to the 19th century, from Giotto to Rembrandt to David.
In the tradition of her father and uncle, Jocelyn Kress has devoted her life to Art, including producing more than 100 art exhibits in New York City and at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. In addition to showcasing traditional fine arts, Jocelyn produced a comprehensive exhibition of American cartoon art, which included the first retrospective ever of television commercials from the 1950s through the 1970s. Her exhibition “Cartoon Now” of 1975 is still considered the comprehensive showing of this great American art form.
Posted by David Lemberg at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2006
Sean Scully, Artist (Sean Scully: Wall of Light is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 9-26-06 to 1-15-07), 10-20-06
Sean Scully, born in Dublin in 1945, grew up in a working-class neighborhood of south London. He learned typesetting and graphic design as an apprentice in a commercial printing shop in his late teens, and then studied painting at Croydon College of Art, London, and Newcastle University. He discovered the work of Mark Rothko and Bridget Riley, and switched from figurative work to abstraction. After a trip to Morocco in 1969, Scully incorporated the bright light of North Africa and the stripes of local textiles into his work. A year’s fellowship at Harvard University brought him to the United States for the first time in 1972; a second fellowship in 1975 allowed him to settle in New York, and he became an American citizen in 1983.
After coming to the U.S., Mr. Scully retained but simplified the stripes that characterized his earlier work: Moroccan color and pattern gave way to almost monochromatic paintings. In the early 1980s, Scully reintroduced color, space, and texture, through the application of multiple layers of paint, and thereby added an expressive element. He began experimenting with compositional and structural concepts that led him to break out of the two-dimensional picture plane, creating asymmetrical assemblages that take on a sculptural quality.
By the mid-1980s, Mr. Scully’s work had garnered international recognition, and many major museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, began to acquire his paintings. His work was included in The Museum of Modern Art’s 1984 exhibition An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture. The following year, the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh organized the first major exhibition of his work in the U.S., which traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Four years later, his work was the subject of a major solo exhibition in Europe that originated at London’s Whitechapel Gallery and traveled to Madrid and Munich.
During this time, the aesthetic lessons of his Mexico visits, and the early watercolors they inspired, germinated quietly; in 1998 they burst forth in a new series of works, showcased in this exhibition. The Wall of Light works rely on two main formal elements: the vertical and the horizontal bar. Yet, the surface texture and the space between the forms create fascinating, highly complex structures. Some of the works evoke such architectural elements as bricks, post-and-lintel construction, even the hulking structure of Stonehenge. The spaces between the blocks frequently reveal the underlying colors and read as light shining between the bricks of a wall. The rectangles are often built up with several rich layers of color, and the broad, gestural brushstrokes emphasize the presence of the artist’s hand.
Sean Scully: Wall of Light is the first U.S. museum presentation of Mr. Scully’s Wall of Light series and began its national tour at The Phillips Collection, followed by showings at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Cincinnati Art Museum. The Metropolitan has had a commitment of more than 20 years to the work of Sean Scully. In 1985, it became the first U.S. museum to acquire his work, with his painting Molloy (1984).
Posted by David Lemberg at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2006
Jerrilynn Dodds, Distinguished Professor of Art History and Theory at the School of Architecture of the City College of the City University of New York, 10-13-06
Jerrilynn Dodds is Distinguished Professor of Art History and Theory at the School of Architecture of the City College of the City University of New York, and lecturer and consultant at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her work has centered on issues of artistic interchange, and how groups form their identities through art and architecture. She is known in addition as an author, curator and documentary filmmaker.
Professor Dodds is the author of Architecture and Ideology of Early Medieval Spain (London and University Park, 1991); Al Andalus: The Arts of Islamic Spain (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992); The Arts of Medieval Spain (with Little and Williams, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993); New York Masjid. The Mosques of New York (2002) and numerous other publications, including a book concerning the reconstruction of the historical center of Mostar in Bosnia.
Professor Dodds has also curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions on the subject of cultural interchange as seen through art and architecture (Al Andalus, The Metropolitan Museum, 1992; Convivencia , The Jewish Museum, 1992; The Mosques of New York, Storefront for Art and Architecture, 1996; and Crowning Glory, Images of the Virgin in the Arts of Portugal, The Newark Museum, 1997).
As a prize-winning filmmaker, Professor Dodds writes and directs films in conjunction with museum exhibitions (Journey to St. James; An Imaginary East; NY Masjid) and for public television audiences (Hearts and Stones: The Bridge at Mostar). Among the other institutions at which Professor Dodds has taught are Harvard University, MIT and Columbia University. She is currently completing a book co-authored with Maria Menocal entitled Out of Arabic: The Formation of Castilian Culture, and working on another: Romanesque and the Myth of the West.
Posted by David Lemberg at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)
Larry and Debby Kline, Artists/Curators, 10-13-06
Debby and Larry Kline are artists who create untraditional artwork that addresses social concerns. Their unique approach to art has been awarded three grants from The Gunk Foundation, New York, and a grant from the Potrero Nuevo Fund, San Francisco. Their work has been featured in internationally distributed publications such as Orion, Utne, Public Art Review, Camerawork, and ArtPaper. The popularity of their work has led to a wide range of venues from mainstream galleries such as SF Camerawork to The United States Chess Championships. In July, they participated in an Artist Residency at Center for Land Use and Interpretation at Wendover, UT. Their artwork can be found in numerous corporate and private collections.
Larry and Debby Kline have extensive museum backgrounds working at illustrious institutions such as The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Chicago Art Institute, and The Indianapolis Museum of Art. In addition, they have curated exhibitions for venues such as The Oceanside Museum of Art, COVA Gallery, and Gotthelf Gallery in La Jolla, CA.
The Klines are also lecturers, published writers, and arts advocates and have spoken on the nexus of art and science at California State University San Marcos and The Salk Institute.
Posted by David Lemberg at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2006
Elsa Longhauser, Executive Director and Curator, and Lisa Melandri, Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs, Santa Monica Museum of Art, 8-11-06
Founded in 1984, the Santa Monica Museum of Art creates dynamic exhibitions of contemporary art in all mediums and across disciplines, complemented by outstanding educational programs for people of all ages. The only non-collecting museum in Southern California, SMMoA devotes its exhibition spaces—the main gallery and two Project Rooms—to exploring and advancing the work of contemporary local, national, and international artists whose unique bodies of work merit sustained inquiry and recognition. SMMoA diversifies its artistic vision by inviting distinguished guest curators to organize selected exhibitions. Opened in 1988, the museum’s exhibitions and programs celebrate the innovative perspectives of artists who profoundly influence contemporary art and culture.
The museum’s programs cultivate dialogue among diverse communities and increase accessibility for under-served audiences. SMMoA is a longtime participant in the Getty Multicultural Internship Program, which provides funded internships for students. The museum has won three International Association of Art Critics awards and been praised by the National Endowment for the Arts for “the clarity of the organization’s institutional goals; the high quality, interesting and provocative programming; and the museum’s ability to reach into, and beyond, the communities served by the major museums and other artists’ spaces in the Los Angeles area.” The California Arts Council lauded the museum as “a model organization programming at a level much higher than organizations with greater resources.”
Elsa Longhauser has guided the Santa Monica Museum of Art as Executive Director since her appointment in June 2000. Her curatorial vision is complemented by a wealth of art historical and administrative expertise, and a dedication to creating local, national, and international exhibitions and programs that provide audiences with a deeper awareness of contemporary art issues and ideas. With a focus on rigorous scholarship, the highest museum standards, and a commitment to contextualizing the contemporary art experience across historical and national boundaries, Ms. Longhauser’s leadership has transformed SMMoA into one of the core museums “doing the heavy lifting” (LA Times) in Southern California and into a preeminent kunsthalle respected by arts professionals in the United States and abroad.
Since arriving at SMMoa, Ms. Longhauser has organized an array of pivotal exhibitions, including VALIE EXPORT: OB/DC+CON(STRUCTION); The Book Show; Raymond Pettibon 1978-2001; Cavepainting: Peter Doig, Chris Ofili, and Laura Owens; Alfred Jensen: Concordance; Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations, 1979-2000; Dark Places, created in collaboration with guest curator Joshua Decter with installation design by servo; Álvaro Siza/Architect: Drawings, Models, Photographs, created in collaboration with the Pritzker Prize-winning architect; and an upcoming site-specific installation by world-renowned artist Michael Asher.
Lisa Melandri is Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA), where she organizes exhibitions and manages oversight of the museum’s infrastructure and exhibition/education program. She is curator for the upcoming exhibitions Enigma Variations: Philip Guston and Giorgio de Chirico, (September 2006 with co-curator Michael Taylor, Philadelphia Museum of Art) and William Pope.L: Garden of Earthly Delights (September 2007), and organized the exhibition Rosamond Purcell: Two Rooms (2003), which is still touring nationally. Ms. Melandri also curates the Project Series at SMMoA, where she has featured the work of such artists as Mariella Bettineschi, Abby Donovan, Mark Dutcher, Kota Ezawa, Roger Herman, Virgil Marti, Adrian Meraz, and Hugh Pocock.
Posted by David Lemberg at 09:08 PM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2006
Dr. Eric Denker, Senior Lecturer, Education Division, National Gallery of Art, 8-25-06
Dr. Eric Denker is Senior Lecturer, Education Division at the National Gallery of Art. Dr. Denker received his Bachelors from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, and his doctorate from the University of Virginia, writing on the American artist James McNeill Whistler. His dissertation was the subject of a book and an exhibition that he curated for the National Portrait Gallery in 1995, In Pursuit of the Butterfly: Portraits of James McNeill Whistler. In 1995 he also organized the exhibition Prints by Whistler and his Contemporaries at the National Gallery of Art.
Dr. Denker is the Senior Lecturer in the Education Division at the National Gallery of Art, where he has been since June 1978. From 1998 to 2006, he also has served as the Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Corcoran, overseeing the permanent collection and coordinating an active special exhibition schedule, including historical shows of John Singer Sargent drawings, James McNeill Whistler in Venice, Childe Hassam prints, and contemporary print exhibitions focusing on Wayne Thiebaud, Roy Lichtenstein, William T. Wiley, and Rupert Garcia.
Dr. Denker also serves in Washington as an Adjunct Professor at both Georgetown University and at Cornell University. He frequently lectures in Italy for the Smithsonian Institute and for the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, and around the Washington area on Venice, Italian art, Dutch painting, French 19th-century art, and the history and techniques of printmaking.
The National Gallery of Art is currently exhibiting Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting.
Posted by David Lemberg at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)
Bijan Khezri, CEO, Artist Pension Trust, 8-18-06
Bijan Khezri is a graduate in international economics from the Institut de Hautes Etudes Internationales at the University of Geneva. Mr. Khezri worked for BNP Paribas in London where he led the global technology sector’s equity financing group. In 1998, he joined the board of directors of three leading technology companies: Baltimore Technologies plc (UK), VPNet Technologies Inc. (United States) and Jetter AG (Germany). Mr. Khezri led Jetter’s IPO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 1999 and remained on its board until 2004.
In 2004, Mr. Khezri co-founded Saphire Finance LLP, a London-based principal merchant banking partnership.
In June 2006, Mr. Khezri became CEO of the Artist Pension Trust. He has been passionately collecting young emerging artists for many years. With his professional finance background, he brings his multi-faceted experience to APT.
Established in 2003, MutualArt, Inc. is an independent company dedicated to developing new financial service products for the art world. MutualArt’s Artist Pension Trust is the first-ever financial institution to champion artists as client and beneficiary. MutualArt has applied the discipline of financial services and the math of risk diversification to the art world to create the first investment service program for artists. Selected artists participate in the Trust by investing artwork on a barter basis. Trusts operate in Beijing, Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and New York.
Posted by David Lemberg at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)
Professor Henry Adams, Professor of American Art, Case Western Reserve University, 7-28-06
Professor Henry Adams was recently singled out by Art News as one of the foremost experts in the American field. A graduate of Harvard University, he received his M.A. and Ph.D from Yale where he received the Frances Blanshard Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in art history. In 1985 he received the Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize of the College Art Association, the first time this had been awarded to an Americanist or a Museum Curator. In 1989 William Jewell College awarded him its distinguished service medal for his services to Kansas City and the Midwest. In 2001 he received the Northern Ohio Live Visual Arts Award for the best art exhibition of the year in Northern Ohio.
Dr. Adams has produced over 200 publications, including scholarly and popular articles, books, catalogues, and exhibitions catalogues. These focus principally on American artists of the 19th and early 20th century and include pieces on George Caleb Bingham, Thomas Cole, John F. Kensett, John La Farge, William Morris Hunt, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, George Bellows, Charles Burchfield, Thomas Hart Benton, Fairfield Porter, and David Hockney. His books include John La Farge, 1987, Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original, 1989, Thomas Hart Benton: Drawing from Life, 1990, Albert Bloch: The American Blue Rider, 1997, Viktor Schreckengost and 20th-Century Design, 2000, Eakins Revealed, 2005, and Andrew Wyeth: Master Drawings from the Artist’s Collection, 2006.
Dr. Adams has served as curator of Fine Arts at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, as curator of American Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, as Curator of American Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, as director of the Cummer Museum of Art in Jacksonville, FL, and as interim director of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Kansas City. He has also taught at the University of Illinois, the University of Pittsburgh, Colorado College, The University of Kansas, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He currently serves as Professor of American Art at Case Western Reserve University.
In 1989, in partnership with film maker Ken Burns, Dr. Adams produced a documentary on Thomas Hart Benton which was broadcast nationally on PBS to an audience of 20 million. His book on Thomas Hart Benton will be read from, and featured as a prop, in the forthcoming movie Prison Song, featuring Q-tip.
Posted by David Lemberg at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)