All Art Friday

All Art Friday

Art Treasure Chest Opens to Researchers

The records of Leo Castelli Gallery are available now to researchers via the Washington, D.C.-based Archives of American Art. The huge collection, covering the gallery's nearly 40 years of operation, includes not only administrative files but also exhibition files, extensive artists' files (Castelli represented some of the most well-known and important artists of the 20th Century), photographs, sound and video recordings, and much more. It's a treasure chest. Read more about it here (and be sure to check out the oral history interviews with Castelli that are included at the end of the article).

Image Gallery 

Met Introduces Interactive Online Feature

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has introduced a new online series, "Connections", in which staff talk about aspects of art in the permanent collections. Lauded as "fresh ways to approach art", new four-minute-long, interactive audiovisual features are added weekly, on Wednesdays. The "webisodes" available currently are found here and include personal perspectives by the museum's associate director, a paintings conservator, a medieval art curator, and a video producer on, respectively, "small things", "virtuosity", "maps" and "Tennessee".

Met Museum on FaceBook and Twitter

The Digital Rockwell

Whether you're a reseacher or a fan of Norman Rockwell's art, if you can't get to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to visit the Norman Rockwell Museum, do the next best thing: access ProjectNORMAN, an online repository of images of more than 2,000 original artworks (including preliminary sketches or studies), some 20,000 reference photographs, and images of more than 3,000 objects (such as paintbrushes) from the artist's studio. The database also holds each of some 4,000 records and images from the enormous catalogue raisonne, Norman Rockwell: A Definitive Catalogue. 

The museum announced ProjectNorman, initiated in 2003, on January 3 of this year. A Berkshire Eagle article about the project is here.

Norman Rockwell Museum of FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Books and Posters at Matthew Marks

If you happen by New York City's Matthew Marks Gallery (526 West 22nd Street), which is housed in a 19th Century fire station, stop in to browse The Poster Shop on the second floor. Open on Saturdays through January 29, The Poster Shop features original artworks, rare books, signed catalogues, multiples, 1960s vintage rock posters, and other finds, according to the Website. Items bear the names of such famous artists as Robert Adams, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lictenstein, Brice Marden, Nan Goldin, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, and Tony Smith. Prices range from $100 to $5,000; there's also a bargain table.

Go here to see images and obtain additional information about some of the books available. There are some wonderful and affordable offerings.

Go here to view images of unframed posters, including those for shows of work by Nan Goldin ($20), Gary Hume ($30), Jasper Johns ($50), Brice Marden (signed by the artist, $200), Ellsworth Kelly ($30), and Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin ($100).

If you can't get to New York but want to purchase something of interest, the gallery has made it easy for you. Just go online and hit the "Purchase" link at the bottom of each page describing a particular item.

Yasha Wallin, "Marc Then Marks: A New Art Book Boutique", Interview, December 10, 2010

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ Next Thursday, January 20, the renovated Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College celebrates its reopening. Curatorial tours of the reinterpreted space will be offered throughout the evening. The event is from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Direct inquiries to: Francine Brown (845-437-5237; frbrown@vassar.edu).

On January 28, FLLAC opens "150 Years Later: New Photography by Tina Barney, Tim Davis, and Katherine Newbegin". Part of the college's campus-wide sesquicentennial anniversary celebration, the show features 40 new works documenting the people, environment, and culture of the college today. The show runs through March 27.

FFLAC on FaceBook

Vassar College on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Arts at Vassar on FaceBook

✭ Showing through February 18 at Babcock Galleries in New York City is "Harriet Bart: Drawn in Smoke: Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Centenary". Bart's installation comprises a series of 160 drawings composed from smoke and soot in which are inscribed names of the 146 garment workers who died in the deadly and infamous sweatshop fire.

Video of Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Trial, 1911

✭ Singer-songwriter Carole Bayer Sager's "Generations: New Paintings" opens today at LA Art House, West Hollywood, California, and runs through February 12.

Carole Bayer Sager, Odetokorn, 72" x 72", Oil on Linen
© Carole Bayer Sager

To see more of Bayer Sager's artwork, go here.

✭ In Charlotte, North Carolina, Jerald Melberg Gallery is showing "Wolf Kahn: The Early Years" through February 5. The exhibit includes both paintings and pastels dating between 1950 and 1970 and is accompanied by a full-color catalogue. More than 50 of the German-born artist's works are presented.

Wolf Kahn, In Tuscany, 13-3/8" x 19", Pastel on Paper, 1964
© Wolf Kahn

Wolf Kahn's Website

PBS Presentation on Wolf Kahn (Biography, Works, Interview Excerpts)

Jerald Melberg Gallery on FaceBook

Artists Against Violence

A man does not become a man by killing another man.

     Operation: Activate Billboard, Syracuse, New York 

A collective of artists in Syracuse, New York, is responding to an outbreak of gun violence in the city with "Operation: Activate". The anti-violence campaign is spear-headed by internationally known visual artist and photographer Carrie Mae Weems. A feature article about the campaign is here.