Art Resources

Picasso Museum in Paris closes for renovations

Author: Associated Press

Doors shut on Monday

Sunday was the last day to visit the Picasso Museum in Paris for the next 2½ years and admission was free.

On Monday, the museum was to close its doors for extensive renovations and expansion. Its collection of 5,000 original works by Pablo Picasso will be stored in high-security government warehouses, and lending of works to other venues will be curtailed until the museum reopens, museum director Anne Baldassari told The Associated Press on Saturday.

In his later years, the Spanish painter divided his time between Paris and Provence. When he died in 1973, many of his works became the property of the French government. The national museum authority opened the Picasso Museum in 1985 in the Hôtel Salé, a 17th-century baroque mansion in the fashionable Marais district of Paris.

The museum also displays some works by Cézanne and Matisse.

Renovation of the 32,000-square-foot space will cost about $20 million Cdn and will be completed in February 2012, the museum said in a statement. It will include electrical upgrading, making the building more accessible to visitors with reduced mobility, expanding exhibition space and adding halls for student activities.

V&A to set up Dundee outpost, with hopes to open in 2014

Author: Martin Bailey

Project to be locally funded and run—Scottish government has given its backing

London. The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is to set up an outpost in Dundee, Scotland. Although branded as “V&A at Dundee”, the project will be locally funded and run.

The new exhibition building will be on the waterfront, in the area between the Tay Road Bridge and Discovery Point, where council offices are being demolished. A precise site will be selected in October, and this will be followed by an architectural competition. Capital costs of the project are likely to be more than £40m.

V&A at Dundee will have a series of spaces. There will be a large temporary exhibition gallery, to host travelling shows from the V&A in London. The plan is to normally have two V&A exhibitions a year and one touring show from elsewhere. In addition, there will be a gallery to showcase Scottish art and design, presented in an international context. This will be curated at Dundee with outside loans, but probably with an input from V&A curators and loans. Discussions are underway about a long-term display of contemporary design, supported with loans from the V&A. It is hoped the galleries will attract 500,000 visitors a year (the V&A in London gets 2.5m).

The V&A stresses that it is providing support, but not funding. The V&A at Dundee steering group, which is setting up the project, comprises Dundee City Council, Scottish Enterprise, the Universities of Dundee and Abertay, and the V&A.

Forthcoming Frida Kahlo book denounced as fake

Author: Jason Edward Kaufman

Art historians assert that “lost archive” of paintings, drawings and diaries are forged

new york. A collection of Frida Kahlo oil paintings, diaries and archival material that is the subject of a book to be published by Princeton Architectural Press on 1 November has been denounced by scholars as a cache of fakes. Finding Frida Kahlo includes reproductions of paintings, drawings and handwritten letters, diaries, notes, trinkets and other ephemera attributed to the artist. They belong to Carlos Noyola and Leticia Fernández, a couple who own the antique store La Buhardilla Antiquarios in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The publisher describes it as “an astonishing lost archive of one of the twentieth century's most revered artists...full of ardent desires, seething fury, and outrageous humor”.

According to an interview in the forthcoming book, and to emails from Noyola to The Art Newspaper, the couple acquired the items incrementally from 2004-07 from a lawyer who in turn had acquired them from a woodcarver who allegedly received them from the artist. Noyola tells The Art Newspaper he has more than 1,200 Kahlo items in all. He would not disclose how much he paid, but says: “We did acquire the collection with the belief and some groundwork done to prove that it is in fact authentic and thus paid accordingly.” He states that the collection is not for sale and will not be for sale in the future.

The author of the 256-page illustrated book is Barbara Levine, a former director of exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art who operates a curatorial services company called Project b. She brought in as a secondary author Stephen Jaycox of San Francisco, with whom she has worked on archive and library exhibitions.

In an email to The Art Newspaper, Levine says that she is “not working for the Noyolas and the Noyolas did not fund any portion of the book”. She describes Finding Frida Kahlo as “my personal encounter with the materials”, and says that the study is “about the personal belongings of an icon not from the point of view of telling her story or contributing to her place in art history, but instead from the perspective of our essential human need to accumulate talismans, keep scraps to remember, track time and leave legacy”.

Neuroesthetics & Artists as Brain Scientists

Author: Art News

This year I finally relented and bought myself an iPod. It's easily the best gadget I have ever bought and I really don't know how I lived without one for 33 years! I love it because I can take my whole music collection anywhere, it shuts off the outside world while working in the studio, and when I'm at the PC I am always listening to podcasts and lectures.

The best podcasts haven't necessarily been art podcasts either, they have been podcasts on the mind, nature, spirituality, and business. One podcast which I always look forward to listening to is All in the Mind by Natasha Mitchell.

In her latest episode (which can be downloaded Here, even if you hate music and don't own an iPod yet) she talks about neuroesthetics and an exhibition at London's Hayward gallery called Walking in My Mind.