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ARTICLES FOR THE MONTH OF APRIL 2010
Contributing Bloggers: John Harbinger Jr.and David Harbrenig
Fakes on La Cienega Blvd.
While I was visiting the LACMA “American Stories” exhibition a few days ago, I read beside one of the paintings that around 1800, America was inundated with fake reproductions of famous European masterpieces. The art markets were literally full of them. Well, I don’t know how many forgeries are still out there but according to today’s newspaper, the market for fakes is still alive and well.
An art dealer who has a gallery on La Cienega Blvd. pleaded guilty this week to fraud in a case involving the sale of a fake Picasso. Apparently the woman paid an art restorer $1000 to create a reproduction of a pastel by Picasso from 1902 titled “La Femme au Chapeau Bleu.” She then sold the reproduction, with some made up provenance, to an unwitting buyer for $2 million. Not a bad mark up at all! The woman (who is 70 years old) faces a maximum of 25 years in prison though it was reported in the press that federal prosecutors have agreed to a term of about 2 years. As part of the plea agreement she will make full restitution to the buyer of the fake Picasso. She must also relinquish a work by de Kooning which she bought for $720,000 with the money from the fraudulent sale.
It’s not surprising the fakes keep popping up when you can pay an artist $1000 to copy a masterpiece and sell it for $2 million. By the way, I recommend reading Provenance written by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo, which tells the story of one of the greatest forgers of modern times John Myatt.
La Femme au Chapeau Bleu
Top 20 museums in the world
AllArtNews just published a list of the top 20 museums in the world. I, personally would have a different order of preference but here is their list:
1)The Louvre in Paris takes the number one spot as the most famous and most visited museum in the world. The Mona Lisa still brings in the crowds (as does the Da Vinci Code movie tour.)
2) Tate Modern in London comes in a number two with its amazing collection of international modern and contemporary art.
3) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York has one of the world’s biggest collections of artworks of every kind from every period.
4) British Museum, London is famous for its extraordinary collection of Egyptian art and antiques.
5) J. Paul Getty Center, Los Angeles whose architecture and gardens are themselves a delight has a fantastic collection.
6) National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
7) Musee d’Orsay, Paris (Starry Night by Van Gogh is housed here.)
8) Vatican Museums, Vatican City (Rome) All the great Renaissance Masters have some work in here.
9) Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris known also for its unique factory like design attracts as many visitors to its outside plaza as those who visit the great works inside.
10) Prado Museum, Madrid
11) Uffizi Gallery, Florence (Botticelli’s Birth of Venus)
12) State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg has, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the largest painting collection in the world.
13) Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
14) The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Cairo
15) Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) has arguably the best collection of modern art in the world.
16) Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo
17) The National Gallery of London, UK (situated in Trafalgar Square –beware of the pigeons.)
18) Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
19) The Guggenheim Museum, New York
20) The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
L.A. Street Artist Comes Home
There’s an interesting story today April 22 in the L.A. Times about an artist who is preparing a show called “Nothing to Declare” opening this Friday at a pop-up gallery in Beverly Hills. It will be his first local appearance in six years, during which he's grown from petty criminal to respected international artist.
The streets of Los Angeles were where David Choe's began his artistic career after dropping out of California Institute of the Arts in 1995, and his work can still be seen on concrete walls around the city.
Broke and desperate for a job in art, Choe sent examples of his work to lots of potential employers but was never offered work. At one time he spent two months working at a Beverly Hills advertising agency, mostly drawing movie posters but was bitterly disappointed by the repetition and lifelessness of the job. He quit.
At 15, Choe had been arrested in South L.A. trying to cash a forged check and now fell back into stealing materials he needed for his art. "From then on, it was a lot of thievery, a lot of going to jail, a lot of struggling," he said, "doing one show after the next, giving things away, doing things for free."
He eventually ended up in the Bay Area, where he took classes at California College of Arts and Crafts but was arrested again, that time for stealing food from a frat house. In 2005, Choe was arrested in Japan for punching a security guard at an art show he was participating in. After two months in jail, he was told he was looking at two to seven years in prison. It was then he had a breakdown and started reading the Bible which changed his life.
Though the change of heart did not lead immediately to commercial success it helped him whether the frustrations and obstacles until his work began to be noticed and accepted by the galleries.
Choe's latest show is sponsored by Lazarides Gallery of London, which is best known for showing anonymous U.K. artist Banksy — one of street art's few household names. Four years ago, Lazarides included Choe in a group exhibit. The next year, a solo show of his work sold out, with buyers including prominent British artist Damien Hirst.
Now he is back in L.A. to do one more show and to work in his studio downtown, where he can play drums, sculpt, paint or jump on the massive trampoline that sits in a corner.
The LACMA Collectors Committee Makes It’s Choice
The LACMA’s 25th annual Collectors Committee event took place last weekend when generous donors come together to pool their resources to purchase works for the museum’s collection. Curators from nearly every department give short presentations and present artworks they’d like to see added to the permanent collection. The Collectors Committee members (about 160 this year) consider the presentations and vote on which artworks to acquire then enjoy a well earned gala dinner. When the pool of funds is exhausted, the voting is over.
Last Saturday’s event raised $2,063,000, and six new works have been purchased for the LACMA collection, ranging from a 17th century Japanese screen, some Tibetan furniture, to a nineteenth-century painting and some works of contemporary art. Here are details of the 6 acquisitions.
1) A two-panel folding screen “Tiger Drinking from a Raging River”, c. 1640 by Kan Sansetsu who was among the most original Japanese artists of the seventeenth century. It is the first work by the artist to enter the collection of any museum outside of Japan. The screen was installed over the weekend and is now on view in the Pavilion for Japanese Art.
2) Tibetan furniture from The Hayward Collection which contains 39 masterpieces of virtually every important type of Tibetan furniture, dating from the late 12th to 20th centuries. With this acquisition, LACMA’s collection of Tibetan and Nepalese art has been elevated to the most comprehensive public collection in the world. The collection is already on view in the exhibition In the Service of the Buddha: Tibetan Furniture from the Hayward Family Collection.
3) Portrait of Madame Paul Duchesne-Fournet, 1879 by Jean Jacques Henner. Early in his career, Henner was a sought-after painter of religious subjects and portraits but he painted nudes and landscapes. His portraits were particularly appealing to a clientele eager to display in a dignified manner their newly acquired wealth and social rank.
4) The LACMA already has a number of John Baldessari’s works in its collection. Now they’ll be adding to them with: Portrait: Artist’s Identity Hidden with Various Hats, 1974. It will be featured in the upcoming retrospective: “John Baldessari - Pure Beauty”, which will be opening at LACMA in June.
5) Rügenfigur by Glenn Ligon is part of a recent body of Ligon works from 2009 entitled, collectively, America. The series was inspired by the paradoxical opening of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities—”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” This expansive neon courier-font A-M-E-R-I-C-A in-verso conjures what Ligon describes as the ’somewhat troubling’ moment in our country’s identity.
6) Iranian artist Samira Alikhanzadeh’s “Untitled” work from 2009 focuses on old photographs and found images of women from the mid-1930s, a period when Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1921–41) led a reform movement to bring women and minorities in Iran into the mainstream - including the compulsory uncovering of women. It was a time when Iranian women were free to appear uncovered in public and in photographs.
Made In California Artwork
Contemporary art from California artists will come under the hammer during the “Made in California” sale on May 3, 2010 at Bonhams & Butterfields on Sunset Blvd. Artwork by artists such as Ruth Asawa, Joan Brown, Gordon Onslow Ford, Sam Francis, Robert Graham, Manuel Neri, Nathan Oliveira, David Park and Edward Ruscha,
A spokesperson for the auction house said that; "The influence of California on the art world goes beyond traditional landscape and western paintings," Since 2006 “Made in California” is a bi-annual auction featuring the state's modern, surreal, abstract and conceptual artists.
The May sale will present works from the collection of Henry T. Hopkins, a distinguished museum director and educator, who played a leading role in establishing the Los Angeles' art scene. Hopkins taught, painted and drew throughout his life. In 1960 he opened the Huysman Gallery in Los Angeles before becoming an Assistant Curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art the following year. In 1991 joined the Department of Art at UCLA. The May sale includes one of Hopkins own works.
Work by Edward Ruscha will also be offered. In November 2009 Bonhams & Butterfields set a world auction record, selling a screen print, by the artist for $170,000.
Lots of great California made art work for sale for the lucky ones who can afford it.
Hands off the artwork!
Visitors to the Museum of Modern Art's - “The Artist is Present” by Marina Abramovic - have been getting a little too grabby with the show's naked performers.
Female performers, taking part in the exhibit, have complained about groping, while other models say they have been pushed, prodded and poked.
MoMA officials yesterday acknowledged it had had trouble with visitors touching the live art.
"We are well aware of the challenges posed by having nude performers in the galleries for this exhibition. Any visitor who improperly touches or disturbs any of the performers is escorted from the museum by MoMA security" a museum spokesman said.
An unspecified number of patrons have been ejected for groping performers since the exhibit opened on March 14, but none has been arrested, and there have been no calls made to 911.
The exhibit features 38 performers, who went through a 5-day mini-boot camp at the artist's Hudson Valley hideaway, leading a monk-like existence, in preparation for the show. They spend their time at MoMA in rotating shifts of eight facing each other at a doorway or lying under a skeleton or posing in other pieces, mostly in the nude.
None of the models has been deterred by the public's antics at the exhibit.
Part of the MoMA show
Dennis Hopper show coming to MOCA
The MOCA is currently preparing an exhibition of artwork by actor Dennis Hopper who made his mark in the movies by playing druggie, counterculture characters in the 1960’s. 73 year old Hopper has delved into various genres as an artist including Abstract Expressionist paintings, to Pop Art assemblages, portrait photography and in the 1980’s and 1990’s he did graffiti inspired paintings and photographs.
His last major show in Los Angeles took place at Ace Gallery in 2006.
Correcting Budget Problems at MOCA
The Los Angeles Times reported that the California Attorney General's office determined that the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) thumb-nosed state law for years as it neared a financial meltdown in late 2008 and ordered the museum to hire a consultant to help improve its financial management. The Attorney General also directed MOCA board members to receive special training in their fiduciary duties.
The findings and "required corrective actions" were included in a two-page letter to MOCA sent out last November. Overspending and investment losses drained MOCA's investment portfolio from a peak of $38.2 million in mid-2000 to $5 million in December 2008. It has rebounded to $14.2 million as of March 31, museum officials said, fueled largely by fresh donations.
A Scholarly Essay or Advertisement?
People who write about art generally have a good flair for language. Andy Warhol’s 1960 painting, “Where Is Yo Rupture?” based on a newspaper advertisement for surgical trusses is basically a chart of the human body with numbered arrows pointing to spots where a hernia might occur. It was once compared with great flourish in a Sotheby’s auction catalogue to a Renaissance painting of the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian by the Pollaiuolo brothers (1475).
Do art critics expect us to believe that there is any relationship between a rehashed poster and the work of the Renaissance Masters? An important caveat to any museum or auction catalogue, often completely overlooked by the general public, is that a ‘scholarly’ essay is often nothing but a subtle advertisement for the art work.
Can u see the similarities?
Monty Burns arrested for the Gardner Museum Heist
Over the past few months, the FBI, Interpol, the international press, the movie industry and TV have been investigation and speculating about what happened to the 13 artworks stolen in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 20 years ago. The Gardner Museum, by the way, has an outstanding $5 million reward for information leading to the recovery of these works (with confidentiality guaranteed) so if you have them in your garage now’s the time to own up.
On an episode of “The Simpsons,” (American History X-cellent), aired last week, the great mystery was finally ‘solved’. Springfield’s finest were called in to deal with a loud party at billionaire misanthrope Monty Burn’s mansion and one of the cops recognized a painting on the wall as Vermeer’s “The Concert” which was stolen from the Gardner in March 1990.
When Chief Wiggum confronts Burns, the latter contemptuously proclaims his innocence by saying: “Is it a crime to want nice things and then steal them from a public museum?”
Burns was arrested and imprisoned only to escape with the help of Homer, Lenny and Carl who pose as cops. The thieves in the Gardner heist also wore police uniforms to gain entrance.
Monty Burns & The Concert
It is too shocking for the Pope?
This weekend Pope Benedict XVI is set to visit the tiny island of Malta in the Mediterranean. On his way from the airport to the town of Luqa the pope will have a nice view from his pope-mobile of “Colonna Mediterranea”, a phallic like sculpture, erected in 2006 by artist Paul Vella Critien. That is, unless the mayor has his way and gets the structure removed or covered before the pontiff passes by. Mayor John Schembri has described the art work as "vulgar" and "embarrassing", saying it should go "as a sign of respect" for Pope Benedict XVI.
The artist responded by calling his critics "ignorant" and "uneducated" adding that his work is not a phallic symbol but symbol but a modern representation of a symbol dating back to ancient Egypt.
Pope Benedict's route through Malta will involve passing by the roundabout at the entrance to Luqa, where the monument stands.
The Times of Malta quoted the mayor saying "The object... is not the most fitting way in which to greet the Pope, especially by what is considered to be a very Catholic country.”
He told the newspaper that the council would again appeal to the government to order the removal of the column.
Amid the arguments and protests, the government has said it has no plans to remove the sculpture. Avert the holy peepers!
Colonna Mediterranea
An Upcoming Auction for Marilyn Monroe fans
A selection of Marilyn Monroe’s personal and professional property is to be auctioned June 26th & 27th at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino Las Vegas by Julien’s Auctions. Auction highlights include a collection of items from the Estate of Dr. Ralph Greenson, who was the Los Angeles psychoanalyst who began treating Marilyn Monroe in 1960 at the recommendation of her New York therapist. Before seeing Marilyn Monroe, Dr. Greenson had worked with many Hollywood celebrities including Vivien Leigh, Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis. As Monroe’s life got more complicated and her relationship with Arthur Miller changed she saw Greenson up to five or six times a week at his Santa Monica home office and developed personal friendships with his family. He remained her analyst until her death. Among the items offered for sale from his estate are the therapy couch used in his Beverly Hills home office where Marilyn Monroe would lie during her appointments.
Other items up for sale in the auction include X-Ray’s of Marilyn Monroe’s chest from Cedars of Lebanon Hospital from her doctors visit on November 10th, 1954, the chair used by Marilyn in her final photo shoot, David Conover negatives and copyrights to Marilyn Monroe photographs, There will also be previously unreleased photographs of Monroe on her honeymoon with Joe DiMaggio including their visit to troops in Korea, as well as Marilyn’s personal bottle of Chanel No. 5. Photos of Monroe taken on July 7, 1962 by photographer Allan Grant, from what is considered the last photo session of her life will also be in the auction.
Eight negatives taken by David Conover, who found Monroe working in a company in Van Nuys, show her early in her career as a model, are offered with their copyright registration.
Another highlight is this sale is a bottle of Chanel personally owned by Marilyn Monroe. She once gave a huge promotion to the fragrance when she said I was the thing she wore in bed.
Marilyn Monroe –Painting by Daniel Henigman
Get your work onto Google Goggles
Google launched a mobile picture-based search service called Google Goggles in December 2009. This image identification application will be become even more sophisticated now that Google has acquired a U.K. company called Plink which has an Android mobile app that will identify any work of art photographed by users. You point your camera phone at a painting or sculpture etc., click - and voila Google will identify it for you and tell you everything you need to know about it.
Plink already won a $100,000 prize from Google a few months back when Android users picked it as one of the platform's best reference apps. The two founders of Plink will now be working for Google developing the app into the future. According to them it will one day be possible to build a visual search engine that works not just for paintings or book covers but for everything thing you see around you.
Imagine the day, when you can walk along the street, point your mobile at some stranger, click and then Google will tell you everything about that person.
Though I am sometimes called “a work of art” I hope I’m not around to be clicked and identified.
A Los Angeles Artist brings light to London’s gloomy skies.
Some California sunshine will brighten the gloomy days of London’s underground commuters this summer. Los Angeles artist Pae White has been commissioned by “Art on the Underground” to create a neon installation at one of London’s busiest underground tube stations - Gloucester Road - in the heart of the city.
The installation which will stand at an estimated 260 feet long and 12 feet high will require more than 2000 neon lights. “I want to bring daylight to the underground,” said White about the intervention; “Imagine a giant Persian rug as a line drawing—that’s what I want to create in neon.”
The work is due to finished at the end of the summer, and will remain in place for three years. The artist hopes that her project, which she describes as “like a giant SAD [Seasonal Affective Disorder] light”, will bring a five-second glow of optimism to travelers under the rainy skies of Britain’s capital.
The Bones of Caravaggio
The great Italian painter Caravaggio died July 1610, at age 39 in mysterious circumstances after a dissipated life of street brawls, brothels, and drinking. So, what better way to mark the 400th anniversary of the artist's death than to dig up his bones? Deep in an old crypt of San Sebastiano cemetery in the town of Porto Ercole, Italy, art historians and scientists are sifting through piles of centuries-old skulls and bones. They believe it is in this mass grave they’ll find the final resting place of Michelangelo Merisi — better known as Caravaggio.
If the bones are found, the team will conduct carbon and DNA testing to discover how Caravaggio died. The project has drawn a measure of skepticism since so much time has passed since the artist's death. Documents show that Caravaggio died in a hospital at Porto Ercole and was buried in the town's San Sebastiano cemetery. In the 1950’s, to make space for a public park, thousands of bones were dug up and moved to another crypt nearby. It is here that the researchers are concentrating their efforts.
So far the experts have identified nine sets of bones belonging to men who died in the same period as Caravaggio and at around the same age. These remains are being transferred to laboratories in universities around Italy for analysis, including carbon dating.
While the work is going on underground to find Caravaggio’s bones, Italy’s museums are paying tribute to the man who revolutionized painting through dramatic use of light, unique perspective and the use of the poor and destitute he knew from the streets in religious and mythological scenes.
An exhibit in Rome's Scuderie del Quirinale, one of the city's prime venues, has been a massive success, with 240,000 visitors since its opening on Feb. 20. The show, which runs through June, brings together some of Caravaggio's most renowned works, such as "Bacchus," ''The Cardsharps" and the two versions of "Supper at Emmaus."
Caravaggio had no known direct descendants. But members of the team have also visited the small town of Caravaggio in northern Italy where the artist was born and taken DNA samples from possible male kin. The team says Merisi was and remains an uncommon last name, thus narrowing the search.
I hope they discover his death was caused by something that will make all the money and time searching for his remains ‘worthwhile’.
Caravaggio’s Skull?
More Michael Jackson Memorabilia on eBay –This time for $3 million
The only painting of Michael Jackson, for which he ever posed, is going up for auction on eBay of all places. The 50” X 40”-inch portrait by Australian artist Brett-Livingstone Strong was offered on the internet auction website Wednesday evening. The painting, titled "The Book," depicts Jackson wearing a red velvet jacket, clutching a journal at his home in Neverland Ranch.
Mr. Marty Abrams, acquired the painting with partner John Gentilly in 1992 from a Japanese businessman as payment on a debt owed to them. For over 17 years, the painting was kept in storage in a New Jersey warehouse except when it was briefly displayed at the Dancy-Power Automotive showroom in Harlem after Jackson's death last June 2009. Since then the painting, which also features the fairy character Tinkerbell from Peter Pan hovering in the background, has been hanging the walls of the owner’s home in Kings Point, NewYork.
The painting was originally sold to the Japanese businessman for $2.1 million in 1990. In 2000 an appraisal by a fine art appraisal and restoration company valued the painting at $5.3 million. The present owner hopes it will fetch over $3 million in the auction, which is scheduled to end April 17. If you’re interested, the minimum starting bid will be $2.75 million.
Why eBay? The auction organizer given the responsible to sell the painting thought that "instead of trying to call out to other people, let's bring the people that are really interested to us. The idea of doing it on eBay in an auction format seemed to make the most sense. When Marty's son, Ken, came to me with the painting, it hit me across the face. eBay is the way to get it out there."
Crime comes with Punishment
I remember watching a show on TV a few years ago where signed and framed lithographs, serigraphs and prints etc. by Picasso, Dali and Chagall and other masters were auctioned live and sold for ridiculously low sums. I could never understand how week after week these ‘limited’ editions were available in such quantities. Well the answer to my questions turned up in the local press today.
Prosecutors in Los Angeles announced a seven year sentence in federal prison for Kristine Eubanks on counts of conspiracy and tax evasion. Eubanks and her husband, Gerald Sullivan, conducted an art auction show twice a week on DirecTV and The Dish Network from 2002 to 2006. Husband Sullivan will be sentenced in May after earlier pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property. He faces a maximum sentence of six years in federal prison. Why six for him and seven for her?????
It turns out they sold $20 million in phony art to more than 10,000 people during the television show, signing the fakes and forgeries themselves with the artists’ names.
A Broadway Production about Mark Rothko
Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko went everyday to his New York studio ready to work. During the 1950s and 1960s, he painted some 20 canvases a year depicting in his words “the human drama and the plight of humanity.”
Rothko committed suicide 40 years ago at age 66. At the time of his death his reputation was in a lull replaced by the likes of pop artists Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. Recently Rothko work has resurfaced among the most recognized artists of his generation. Almost three years ago, a painting from 1950 that banker David Rockefeller owned fetched $72.8 million at Sotheby’s. A recent United States postage stamp to commemorate the painter has been issued with one of his works printed on it. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is currently showing six Black paintings from 1964, in addition to earlier work from the 1930s and ’40s, on view until Jan. 2, 2011. Rothko’s Seagram Murals (originally commissioned for the restaurant-see below **) of 1958-59 were just on display at the Tate Liverpool for several months; and, in a few weeks, a selection of his paintings opens at Moscow’s The Garage Center for Contemporary Art.
While museums celebrate Rothko’s work, Broadway is celebrating his life in a different way. A production entitled Red, starring Alfred Molina as Rothko is a serious, well-written, and wonderfully performed play about what it means to be an artist.
Born Marcus Rothkowitz in Dvinsk, a town between St. Petersburg and Warsaw, on Sept. 26, 1903 he was the youngest of four children. His father, died shortly after brining his wife and 10-year-old son to Portland, Oregon, late in 1913. Rothko — who legally changed his name 1959 —entered Yale on a scholarship in 1921, at a time when few Jews attended Ivy League colleges.
He left Yale for New York and in January 1924 enrolled at the Art Students League. In 1932, he met Edith Sachar, a sculptor, and married her a few months later. At that time Rothko was painting awkward, clumsy-looking figures neither making money nor meeting with much critical success. In the 40’s his art entered a new phase of absolute abstract expressionism. He began painting his now famous large canvases using darker and darker colors as he aged and grew more depressed and more preoccupied with death.
Accounts of Rothko’s life stress his melancholic nature, his alcoholism, his smoking, his trouble sleeping. But over the next few months, Red, the play will show the many facets of Rothko’s complex nature to the theater going public. The painter who wanted his art to express high drama now has his life transformed into grand theater.
**** In 1958 Rothko was commissioned to paint a series of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building. On accepting the commission Rothko remarked that he would paint something that “will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who eats in that place.” One night he took his wife to eat in the restaurant before his canvases were completed. After spending the evening there he decided that anybody who eats there and pays such prices will never be interested in his work and he refused to complete the commission.
Mark Rothko
Museum Rating -2009
The Art newspaper has just published its 15th annual survey of the world’s best attended exhibitions and museums and frankly Los Angeles should be doing a lot better in the ratings.
The 2009 list of the 150 most attended museums in the world included the San Francisco Asian Art Museum that reported 314,000 visitors last year but the L.A. MOCA with 148,616 visitors in 2009 – did not make the grade. Obviously, it didn't help that for most of the year, the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, one of the museum's two downtown facilities, was closed for financial reasons.
The Art Newspaper also compiles statistics as to an exhibition’s popularity using average daily attendance as its key measure. At MoMA, New York, the Martin Kippenberger show attracted 4,945 visitors a day, compared with only 608 daily at MOCA. Overall, nearly 306,000 people saw the show in New York; in Los Angeles, the total was 45,269.
The J. Paul Getty Museum came in ninth in the United States and 37th in the world in overall attendance, but arguably should have been ranked fifth and 21st. The Art Newspaper counted the Getty Center in Brentwood as a separate museum from the Getty Villa near Malibu.
The two locations combined drew 1.56 million visitors in 2009 placing it behind New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (4.89 million), the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (4.6 million), New York's MoMA (2.67 million), the Art Institute of Chicago (1.85 million) and the de Young in San Francisco, which attracted 1.84 million visitors with "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs."
Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA) was placed 17th in the United States according to the Art Newspaper rankings. The Los Angeles exhibitions that attracted 1,000 or more visitors per day, according to the Art Newspaper, were the Getty's "Taking Shape: Finding Sculpture in the Decorative Arts," a display of Baroque and Rococo pieces from the 15th and 16th centuries (114,468 total visitors), "Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution" (100,473 visitors) and Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575-1725” (141,080 visitors) and LACMA's “Vanity Fair portraits: Photographs 1913-2009” (128,805 visitors).
According to the list, the Louvre, Paris is the most visited museum in the world coming in a number one with 8.5 million visitors, followed by the British Museum (5.6 million) and the N.Y. Met at number three. London also had 4th and 5th position with the National Gallery and Tate Modern. These are followed by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Centre Pompidou and the Musee de Orsay, both in Paris, the Prado in Madrid and the National Museum of Korea in Seoul. MoMA finished 11th.
Juried Art Competitions & Events: Deadlines April 2010
“A Decade of Images 2010 is a Juried Online Competition by Women in Photography International open to all photographers and artists. $1000 1st Place + 10 image gallery, $500 2nd Place + 10 image gallery, and 50 Honorable Mentions. Jurors: Mary Goodwin, Assist Dir. at Light Work; Melanie Light, Executive Dir., Fotovision. Images that made either a personal or public impression, brought joy, awareness, caused pain or tugged on your heart strings -- how you see the world in which you live, your home, your work, your friends, and the world around you. This is a capsule of time representing and showcasing women's work during the years 2000-2010. $20-35 per image; variable savings until March 15. Minimum 2 entry submission. http://www.womeninphotography.org Online submissions only accepted. Questions? Please email the Curator at 2010Competition@womeninphotography.org DEADLINE APRIL 4, 2010
The Topanga Canyon Inn-Art Gallery in Topanga, California seeks artists for a juried art exhibition, “The Art landscape 2010” (April 20 - May 10). Open to all representational landscape artists working in mediums of oil, pastel, watercolor, acrylic, charcoal, graphite, colored pencil or pen and ink. Artwork must be two dimensional, no larger than 32" in any direction when framed and offered for sale. $25 first entry, $10 each additional entry. Juror: Plein-air painter Frank Serrano. Visit http://www.topangacanyoninn.com for prospectus, or send a SASE to: Elena Roche, 20310 Callon Dr., Topanga, CA 90290. Questions? Email Elena Roche at elenaroche@elenaroche.com or call 310-570-3791. DEADLINE: APRIL 8, 2010.
Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival has a call out for Entries: All applicants must apply through http://www.zapplication.org Exhibited work must be the original creation of the applicant(s). Co-artists may only show collaborative work. No production work is allowed. Artists must be present September 25th and 26th during Festival hours at Old Mill Park, Mill Valley, California. Commercial agents cannot substitute for an artist at their booth. To maintain a high quality show, the MVFAF requests that the art shown meet the following standards: No kits, music cassettes, commercial molds, tumbled stones, embellished objects, ivory, edible art, plants, flowers, T-shirts, manufactured clothing, or any other manufactured items. 5 awards of excellence, $500 each. $30 entry fee. Visit website for more info. Questions? Please contact Sarah Shiver at sarah@sarahshriver.com or (415) 381-8090. DEADLINE: APRIL 10, 2010
The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado announces a call to photographers world-wide, both amateur and professional, for an exhibit “Consumption” to be held July 2-24, 2010. Over $1300 in cash and awards. Juror: Brian Paul Clamp is Director of ClampArt, a contemporary art gallery in Chelsea in New York City. The Center for Fine Art Photography invites photographers working in all mediums, styles and schools of thought to participate in its exhibitions. Experimental and mixed techniques are welcome. $35 ($20 for Members) for the first 3 images, $10 for each image after that. Submit online at website. Emails to cfe@c4fap.org or call 970-224-1010. DEADLINE: APRIL 13, 2010.
Bowery Gallery in New York, NY announces a call to artists for a national juried art exhibition, August 3-23, 2010. Juror: Rackstraw Downes, internationally known artist and 2009 Macarthur Fellowship recipient. Open to all artists working in 2-dimensional media. Entry fee is $30 for 1-3 images, $5 for each additional image, 6 images maximum. Visit http://www.bowerygallery.org for prospectus, or send a SASE to: Bowery Gallery, 530 West 25th St., New York, NY 10001. Questions? Call the gallery at 646-230-6655. DEADLINE: APRIL 15, 2010.
The Fort Dearborn-Chicago Photo Forum announces a call for all photographers aged 18 years and older. More than $8,000 in Prizes. All winning images will be exhibited in June 2010 at Morpho Gallery in Chicago, IL and shown on the Fort Dearborn-Chicago Photo Forum website. Jurors: Mike Bilbrey, art buyer at Leo Burnett advertising agency; Bill Hurter, editor of After Capture and Rangefinder magazines; David Leigh, owner and curator of Morpho Gallery in Chicago. $45 for up to 3 entries, $15 additional; Early Bird: $36 for up to 3 entries, $12 additional. Visit http://www.chicagophotoforum.org Questions to Karen Hirsch: fortdinfo@gmail.com DEADLINE: APRIL 15, 2010
The American Society of Aviation Artists announces a call to artists for the ASAA International Aerospace Art Exhibition, June 6-September 10, 2010 at the San Diego Air & Space Museum in San Diego, California. Open to all artists. Entry Fees: $10 per entry for ASAA members; $35 per entry for non-members. Prospectus available online: http://www.asaa-avart.org. Send entry form and check to: Michael O'Neal, 3 Woodland Ave., North Brunswick, NJ 08902.Questions? Contact John W. Clark at johnwclark@cox.net or call (623) 556-9630. DEADLINE: APRIL 16, 2010.
The LACDA Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (http://www.lacda.com ) in Los Angeles, California announces a call to artists and photographers. Forty selected winners will be shown in an international group exhibition in LACDA gallery, May 13-June 5, 2010. Juror: Reginald Wollery, Curator for California Museum of Photography. Entrants submit three JPEG files of original work for $30. All styles of artwork and photography where digital processes of any kind were integral to the creation of the images are acceptable. Open to all geographical locations. Online registration only. Questions to rexbruce@lacda.com. DEADLINE: APRIL 19, 2010
ART for GOD announces a call to artists for the 5th Annual International Christian Art Competition, an online exhibition with $3,500 in Cash Awards. Entry Fee: $30 online. Visit: http://www.artists4god.com for prospectus. Questions? Contact Stephen Sawyer at steve@art4god.com or telephone 859-873-0120. DEADLINE: APRIL 30, 2010
TOPTEN Women in the Arts, 2° Edition, International Art Competition: Only for women artists, all media, open theme. ARTROM Gallery continues its commitment to women artists worldwide with the opening of the TOPTEN "Women in the Arts, Edition °2, 2010" International Online Art Competition. A woman's creative perspective and experience is not better, not in competition, not more important than any other but it exists clearly, strongly, steadfastly. It is diverse within itself, interesting, curious, at times controversial. Over the last three years we have discovered a wealth of high quality creative talent through the submissions of passionate artistic women. Fees: 30 euro for 5 images. Email enquiries: competitions@artomgallery.com or call 39 06 3227019. DEADLINE: April 30, 2010