News and Information
Qantas to Sell Part of Australian Art CollectionQantas Airways Ltd. will sell part of its Australian art collection, raising as much as A$4 million ($3.1 million) from paintings that decorate its offices and frequent flyer lounges. Proceeds from selling 22 of the 100 artworks in its collection, including pieces by Brett Whitely and Sidney Nolan, will fund scholarships for emerging Australian artists, according to Chief Executive Officer Geoff Dixon.
It will be the first large corporate art sale in more than a year and follows similar moves by companies such as Coles Group Ltd., Foster's Group Ltd., Orica Ltd. and BHP Billiton Ltd. The auction will be held at Sotheby's Sydney office in May, the Australian Financial Review has reported.
Brett Whiteley's Opera House, one of the works selected for sale, is expected to sell for between A$2 and A$3 million, and is likely to break the Whiteley record of A$2.04 million set last year. An art market analyst, Michael Reid, believes the Sotheby's estimate for Opera House, the highest ever placed on an Australian painting before an auction, is ambitious, and that the painting's size, 213cm x 260cm, could deter buyers.
While the sale barely compares to the Foster's A$14.6 million corporate art sell-off through Sotheby's in 2005, it is estimated the works will raise between A$3 million and A$4 million. They include Charles Blackman's Dream in a Cat's Garden and Leonard French's The Crossing, as well as works by Sidney Nolan, John Coburn and Tim Maguire.
Qantas said the proceeds of the auction would fund state-based scholarships for Australian artists. With advice from the director of the Art Gallery of NSW, Edmund Capon, and the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Elizabeth Ann MacGregor, among others, Qantas chose works that would raise the most money. Qantas's events and sponsorship manager, Ken Groves, said the decision to sell the works was made more than 18 months ago and had nothing to do with the proposed sale of the company. He said the scholarships were likely to be annual and would involve air tickets and cash.
(excerpts from the Australian Financial Review January 25, p3 and the Sydney Morning Herald, February 15)
Viking Range Corporation receives Governor's Award for Excellence in the ArtsJackson, Mississippi. Viking Range Corp. and Fred Carl Jr., its president and chief executive officer, are one of five recipients of Mississippi's Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts. The awards are presented annually to writers, artists, performers, craftsmen and educators who have made significant and lasting contributions through their work.
Viking was recognized for Excellence in the Arts as a corporate arts patron. The award is for the Alluvian art project and its impact on the lives of Delta artists, said Jane Crump, Viking's manager of public relations. Previous award winners include B.B. King, Leontyne Price, Eudora Welty, James "Super Chikan" Johnson, William Dunlap, Little Milton Campbell, Elizabeth Spencer and the Mississippi Mass Choir.
Artist Jim Seale of Merigold curated the Alluvian Art Collection, which includes more than 55 pieces representing 40 artists at the boutique hotel and its spa, said Carol Puckett, president of Viking's Hospitality Group. Artist were invited to submit works in their media of choice that reflected the land, water, sky and overall mood of the Delta.
Bank of America opens corporate art gallery in Delaware Bank of America has opened Delaware's first corporate art gallery to display works from their important art collection. The gallery, which has been launched in conjunction with Bank of America's first retail branch in Wilmington, is located in the bank's building at 11th and King streets on Rodney Square. The first show, called "The Wyeth Family: Three Generations," features nearly two dozen paintings by N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth. The exhibit, which will run through April 27, 2007, displays paintings that have not been available for public viewing in many years.
All of the paintings on display in the Wyeth exhibit were collected by credit card giant MBNA during its boom years. MBNA was acquired by Bank of America last year. Besides the MBNA collection, Bank of America has artwork by a who's who of contemporary artists, including Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Motherwell, said Allen Blevins, senior vice president of global marketing. The exhibit that will follow the Wyeth show will feature works by Warhol.
Bank of America's Wilmington gallery is the fourth gallery opened by the bank in the past three years. The other galleries are in London, Charlotte, N.C., and San Francisco.
Great Southern Hotels' Art Collection, IrelandThe Great Southern Hotel Group art collection will be given to the Crawford Art Gallery, in Cork, Ireland. With the sell-off by the Republic's government of the state-owned Great Southern Hotels, the fate of the hotels' art collection had become a controversial issue. Deputy Michael D. Higgins criticized the Dublin Airport Authority for removing artwork from Galway's Corrib and Great Southern Eyre Square Hotel without any public indication as to what was proposed to be done with them. According to Higgins, the Airport Authority stated that the sale of the hotel group as a going concern was an option for the future, and there had never been public statements regarding the art collection. The collection was established during the 1960s and 1970s by the Great Southern Hotel group, through assistance from the Arts Council joint purchase scheme. The collection is thought to be valued in the region of 4 million Euros, and includes works by key works by Nora McGuinness and Louis le Brocquey, Patrick Collins, Patrick Scott, Brian Burke, Cecil King, Maurice McGonagle, Harry Kernoff, William Leech and many other.
The Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, John D'Donoghue stated that the Great Southern Hotels Art Collection should be returned to the State in its entirety. Because the artworks were part of Ireland's national heritage, and had, in effect, been purchased by the people of Ireland, they should be returned to the national collecting institutions and the OPW for continued public display. Minister O'Donoghue had also asked the Arts Council to investigate the matter and to provide a full report on the disposition of all works of art purchased by CIE under the same scheme.
Sands Corporation to develop project in SingaporeSingapore. The Las Vegas Sands Corporation will develop a 51-acre tract of waterfront land on Marina Bay creating what they describe as an “integrated resort”, designed to increase business travel and tourism to the city. Sands Corporation is investing over $3.2 billion in the project designed by Boston-based architect Moshe Safdie. The Singapore Tourism Authority, which managed the competition, says the project will be completed by 2009.
The resort complex will include three 50-storey hotel towers, convention and retail space, a casino, performing arts venues, and a new museum that will examine the relationship between science and art. Mr Safdie’s previous projects include the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. He has just broken ground on Crystal Bridges, the Walton family’s American art museum in Bentonville, Arkansas.
The Singapore government plans for Marina Bay had called for an iconic building on a waterfront promontory that would house a cultural facility. Early plans had included yet another Guggenheim—to be designed by Zaha Hadid—but when Mr Safdie was chosen as master planner he included his own museum, a 220,000 sq. ft, circular structure crowned by finger-like petals that the developers refer to as “the welcoming hand of Singapore”.
The challenge was “how to give meaning to the site that would be a contribution to Singapore,” said Mr Safdie. He convened an advisory group that included Harvard University Art Museums director Tom Lentz, information design expert Richard Wurman, and Albena Yaneva who heads the Gallery of Research in Vienna. He also consulted with French philosopher Bruno Latour and Harvard art historian Joseph Koerner. After considering an art museum, theatres, and an aquarium, they settled on a museum that connects the arts and sciences.
According to Safdie, the Sands Corporation emphasised that they didn’t want anything “highbrow”, and that the museum must be able to deal with “blockbuster” shows. He responded with proposals for several temporary exhibitions. One would focus on a specific moment in history—possibly 1915—when cubism, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and developments in film and in x-rays were altering the way we see the world. Another would be based on the geography of the Silk Roads, with art and music of nomadic peoples, archaeology from China, and the IBM/National Geographic genome project about the movement of DNA from Africa to Asia. Yet another would examine the five senses through science and art. Permanent displays may include one depicting various aspects of the work of Leonardo da Vinci.
The Singapore authorities selected the Sands Corporation bid over those of Malaysian casino operator Genting and two Las Vegas-based gaming companies, MGM-Mirage and Harrah’s, both of which were in partnership with Singapore developers controlled by the Finance Ministry’s investment arm Temasek Holdings. Harrah’s proposal, designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, was to include a branch of the Pompidou Centre.
A spokesman for Sands Corporation says the company will fund the capital costs of the museum, and will oversee the managerial structure. Casino, retail, and dining revenues may contribute to the museum’s operation, but financial details, possibly including contributions from the Singapore government, are not yet finalized.
excerpts from an article by Jason Edward Kaufman, Art Newspaper, July 20, 2006
LaSalle Bank Funds Michigan State University Photograph GalleryLaSalle Bank, through its branch in Troy, Michigan, has made a gift to Michigan State University’s Kresge Art Museum that will provide exhibition space dedicated to photography in the planned museum expansion. The 750-square-foot LaSalle Bank Photography Gallery will showcase works of art from the museum’s collection in addition to temporary and traveling exhibits. The space is designed to be flexible, allowing variety in the look of the gallery suited to each exhibit installation, and to serve as a study area for photographs from the collection
LaSalle Bank’s decision to fund the photography gallery relates directly to the bank’s own collection, considered to be one of the finest photography collections in private hands, according to Susan Bandes, director of the art museum. LaSalle’s collection ranges from work from the beginnings of photography in the mid-19th century to contemporary examples. Many are on display at the corporate headquarters in Chicago as well as Chicago area LaSalle Bank branch offices, and have been lent for exhibitions internationally.
Funding for the new museum is a priority of The Campaign for MSU, and more than $4.5 million has been raised to date. The architectural design of the expansion will give the Art Museum a dramatic identity and make it more visible, more inviting and more accommodating to visitors. The exhibition space will double, allowing for a greater portion of the collection’s strong holdings of 7,000 pieces – ranging from ancient to modern art – to be on display and to more adequately host major traveling exhibitions. The plan is to open the new art museum in conjunction with its 50th anniversary in 2009.
K-Mart Selling its Corporate Art CollectionK-mart has begun to liquidate its corporate art collection, selling its artworks this summer at its former corporate headquarters in Troy, Mich. Overseen by Michael Weissman, a curator working for National Retail Equipment Liquidators, the sale is taking place on the fourth floor of the former Kmart headquarters in 3100 W. Big Beaver Road in Troy, featuring a different type of artwork each month (oil paintings and watercolors in June 2006). Buyers must be present in person to bid on the items.
More valuable works in the sale include items such as a 15th-Century Chinese Ming Dynasty watercolor on silk, a 1972 Picasso tapestry featuring a green and black swirl pattern, and a signed Andy Warhol poster of Apache leader Geronimo. Other items for sale include a photo by artist and astronaut Alan Bean, autographed by more than 20 other ex-astronauts, and the large oak board table where Martha Stewart finalized her agreement with K-mart in 1987. The art sale also features a "Blue Light Special Room" where oil paintings can be purchased for $10-$200.
The sale comes as part of K-mart’s move to Illinois, having merged with Sears, Roebuck and Co. in 2005, a development that came on the heels of its 2002 bankruptcy -- the largest retail bankruptcy in U.S. history. For additional information, contact National Retail Equipment Liquidators at (248) 463-5898.
Chase Bank donates art to Utah Arts CouncilChase Bank has donated 22 sepia drawings and paintings by Utah artist Dean Fausett to the Utah Arts Council for the State Art Collection. The drawings, valued at more than $32,000, will be on exhibit at the Utah Arts Council's Alice Gallery at 617 East South Temple in Salt Lake City through June 30, 2006.
"We are proud to celebrate the anniversary of our becoming Chase by donating Dean Fausett's artwork," said Craig Zollinger, president of Chase in Utah. Chase's parent company, JPMorgan Chase, has an extensive art collection from across the country. Fausett's sepia drawings show scenes of the 1869 John Wesley Powell expedition that first crossed the Green and Colorado River systems and the Grand Canyon. The drawings record the perils, human situations and historical events of the 13-week journey, based on Major Powell's journals and the artist's own experience. Part of the donation is a large painting, Desert Storm, shows a western landscape, showing the expanse and environment during a dramatic storm. The United States Bureau of Reclamation commissioned Fausett to record the pioneer spirit of Major Powell and the grandeur of the country he explored.
Born 1913 in Price, Utah, Fausett studied at Brigham Young University, New York's Art Student's League, and the Beaux Arts Institute of Design. He painted award-winning murals in the Washington, D.C. Capitol Building, and his works are included in collections of numerous museums, including the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. His work has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Fausett died in 1998.
SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 12, 2006
Collection of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain at Museum of Contemporary Art inTokyo22 April - 2 July, 2006
The first overseas exhibition of the Fondation Cartier's impressive collection of post 1980 art was on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. Cartier has more recent Japanese contemporary art (the show includes some exceptional photographs by Daido Moriyama) than the host institution - thanks to the Tokyo Metropolitan government's refusal to give them a purchasing budget for the last seven years.
A.G. Edwards & Sons Exhibition in Lafayatte, LouisianaLandscapes, an exhibition currently on display at the University Art Museum of the University of Louisiana since April 22, features landscape prints s by American, European and Asian artists from 1843 through 2000, from the collection of A. G. Edwards & Sons. The exhibition will be on display through September 2, 2006, and shows the variety of interpretations ideas artists have used in depicting landscapes through print media. The majestic landscape of Michael Eastman’s chromogenic color print is sharply contrasted by Edward McHugh’s abstracted aquatint and etching of a landscape. The collection also contains prints by Brett Weston, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol.
A.G. Edwards & Sons began its corporate art collection in 1967. Spanning more than 200 years and including over 4,000 works by noted American and European artists, the collection represents a broad range of print types, including lithographs, engravings, woodcuts, serigraphs, gelatin silver and platinum prints as well as mixed media. The firm began collecting poster graphics in the mid-1980s, viewing them as an extraordinary sociopolitical documentation of their times.
A.G. Edwards created the traveling exhibition program in 1991. With the collection, the firm's branch offices have the opportunity to bring portions of the collection to their communities and share it with a greater public.
UBS Sponsors New Installation for Tate Modern The Tate Modern collection in London is to be re-installed in May, through sponsorship from the banking group UBS. Works will be shown around four “hubs” focussing on movements: Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism.
Sponsorship negotiations with UBS (formerly Union Bank of Switzerland) were approved on June 14, and the three-year project was announced on September 29th.
As part of the sponsorship arrangement, the Tate Modern will hold a series of displays of works from UBS’s own art collection. One room is to be set aside for half the year, curated by the Tate’s Frances Morris. The first show, running from May to October 2006, will feature 40 photographs, since the Tate does not have strong photography collections.
Now including over 900 works, UBS owns one of the world’s most important corporate collections of contemporary art. It has been built up over 30 years, partly with works acquired from PaineWebber in America and the Swiss Bank Corporation, which UBS acquired through bank mergers.
The collection focuses on art from 1950 from both Europe and America, with artists such as Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter and Freud. The collection is displayed around the world, and 60 UBS works are currently on display at the Beyeler Foundation in Basel from 27 November 2005 until 26 February 2006.
Fuji USA sponsors Art of Andy Warhol exhibitionOn November 19th the Children's Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) will debut an interactive traveling exhibition, The Art of Andy Warhol. The Art of Andy Warhol - sponsored by Fuji Photo Film USA - recreates, in part, Warhol's 1983 Zurich exhibition, "Paintings for Children" that was designed specifically for children. The exhibition at CMOM, is organized by the Andy Warhol Museum and the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh
The exhibition will feature 18 Warhol paintings showing animals and tin toys, as well as 6 screen prints from Warhol's Myth Series including Uncle Sam, the Wicked Witch of the West and Howdy Doody. In keeping with the Museum's mission to help children understand the process of artistic creativity and experimentation, the exhibition will include workshops and hands-on activities.
According to Camilla Jenkins, Vice President of Corporate Communications, Fuji Photo Film USA is committed to the creation and preservation of beautiful images." The exhibition helps CMOM "introduce children to the delightful art of Mr. Warhol, as well as to the joys of picture taking, sharing and printing in a digital world."
CMOM is in the Tisch Building at 212 West 83rd Street between Broadway and Amsterdam on Manhattan's kid-friendly Upper West Side.
Fuji Photo Film USA, Inc. is a subsidiary of Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. . As a global leader in digital imaging, Fujifilm pioneered the development of digital medical systems, and today is the leader in digital minilab systems. The company was ranked number 15 for U.S. patents granted during 2004, employs more than 75,000 people worldwide and in the year ending March 31, 2005, had global revenues of more than $23.6 billion.
South Africa's Telkom introduces new projectThe South African communications giant Telkom is opening new ground with an innovative project that marries art with oral history. Working with artists and historians, the company has released a CD-ROM, Artists in Conversation, that explores the lives and work of 14 South African artists whose work is included in the Telkom collection.
The company believes that as much as telephone lines provide a physical link between communities, so art can speak across barriers of race, culture and language.
The Telkom corporate art collection was started in 1992. It contains about 800 works by about 350 artists, from greats such as Walter Battiss and Willem Boshoff, to lesser known, younger artists such as Daniel Mosako and Mandla Mabila.
Most of the 43 artworks selected for the Artists in Conversation exhibition reflect the post-1994 culture. The notable exception is Bettie Cilliers-Barnard, grande dame of South African art who served for years on the committee of the South African Association of Arts.
The 14 artists showcased are Vincent Baloyi, Kim Berman, Clifford Charles, Bettie Cilliers-Barnard, Chris Diedericks, Mandla Mabila, Osiah Masekoameng, Daniel Mosako, Henriette Ngako, Charles Nkosi, Mmakgobo (Helen) Sebidi, Moses Seleko, Kedibone (Sarah) Tabane and Alfred Thoba.
They were interviewed by Wits University post-graduate students in history, art history and journalism. Using techniques developed by the Wits Oral History project, students set about recording biographical details about the artists, as well as their views on how and why they work.
The oral histories have not been forced into an academic formula; the authentic voices of the artists have been recorded, capturing their tone and the immediacy of their experiences.
Telkom plans to distribute the CD-ROM to schools, museums and galleries.
It will be loaded onto the intranets at Telkom and Wits, and thereafter onto the internet.
Disney Donates African Collection to the SmithsonianWalt Disney Corporation's Chief Executive Michael Eisner has announced that the company will donate its African art collection to the Smithsonian Institution.
The Walt Disney-Tishman Collection, 525 pieces in all, includes most major styles of African Art spanning five centuries, and represents 75 peoples and 20 countries. Expert estimates of its current value vary wildly, from $20 million to $50 million. The gift includes 15th-century carvings, rare ivory figures and evocative brass masks. It was assembled over 20 years by the late Paul Tishman, of the influential New York real estate family. The collection was sold to Disney in 1984 and, except for a few small displays, it has been kept in a humidity-controlled warehouse in California.
According to Eisner, he had been contacted by many museums and the French government, but Eisner "wanted to place the collection with a museum that charged no admission fee, and "there's only one Smithsonian, only one museum for all Americans." The gift will become part of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art, which plans a debut exhibition in 2007.
Under terms of the gift, said Sharon F. Patton, director of the National Museum of African Art, at least 60 items from the collection are to be labeled the Walt Disney-Tishman African Art Collection and be displayed in the institution for at least the next three decades.
The list of items includes Nigerian masks of wood and antelope skin, a carved ivory-and-metal hunting horn from the area now known as Sierra Leone, intricately carved ivory armlets made for Yoruban kings and Shona stone carvings from the area now known as Zimbabwe.
Dozens of wooden carvings range from delicate mother-and-child figures to rough-hewn ceremonial swords. In one 17th-century piece from the post-missionary Democratic Republic of the Congo, the artist has fashioned a copper alloy crucifix.
The pieces were first collected by New York real estate developer Paul Tishman and his wife, Ruth, beginning in the 1960s. Paul Tishman, whose firm served as contractor in the construction of Disney's Epcot Center in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., had been approached by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which organized a special exhibition of Tishman holdings in the early 1980s.
Instead, the Tishmans sold the collection to Disney in 1984 for an undisclosed amount, with the idea that Disney would display the items at Epcot, reaching a broader audience than a museum. Tishman, who died in 1996 at age 96, wanted the collection to stay whole to protect its worth, and now Disney is ensuring that by transferring it to the Smithsonian.
When Eisner arrived to take control of the company, plans for Epcot changed. Cost was a key factor, said Van Romans, who was then Disney's executive director of cultural affairs and is now president of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. Some of the collection was shown at the National Geographic Museum at Explorers Hall in 2001. And selections have been displayed at the Louvre in Paris and the African Art Museum. The Tishman collection's influence extended to Disney's animators. and Disney artists studied some of the objects to create images for "The Lion King." But the majority of the collection has been in storage for most of the last 20 years.
According to Lizzetta Lefalle-Collins, a California-based scholar who was the curator of an exhibition of works from the collection last year at the Disney American Heritage Gallery at Epcot, "It's the breadth of the collection and the choice pieces from around Africa that make this a historically important collection."
The National Museum of African Art will open a small exhibition of the works immediately, and then mount a full exhibition with a catalog in February 2007.
Royal Bank of Canada Painting CompetitionMore than 1,200 entries were received this year from across Canada for RBC's Canadian Painting Competition. Vancouver artist Etienne Zack was named the national winner of the 2005 RBC Canadian Painting Competition and awarded a $25,000 cash prize for his work entitled, escape from shapes. Along with Reichertz, Kristine Moran of Toronto was given honourable mention, and a cash prize of $15,000 for her work entitled Control and Choice.
The national winner and honourable mentions were selected from 15 semi- finalists from across Canada and were judged by a panel of artists, curators and museum directors. The RBC Canadian Painting Competition award is the largest award for painting in Canada. For visuals and descriptions of the winning works, please visit www.rbc.com/paintingcompetition.
The exhibition is touring to museums across Canada including the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art in Toronto, Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver and Galerie Sussex Gallery in Ottawa. Established in 1999, the goal of the RBC Canadian Painting Competition is to support and nurture Canadian visual artists in their early career by providing them a forum to display their artistic talent to the country and hopefully open doors to future opportunity. An investment in Canadian culture and the visual arts community, the competition awards one national prize of $25,000 and two honourable mentions of $15,000 each. Along with past winners, the winning paintings of 2005 will become part of RBC Financial Group's Canadian art collection comprised of more than 4,000 works of art collected over the past hundred years.
The Royal Bank of Canada (TSX, NYSE: RY) uses the initials RBC as a prefix for its businesses and operating subsidiaries, which operate under the master brand name of RBC Financial Group. Royal Bank of Canada is Canada's largest bank as measured by assets, and is one of North America's leading diversified financial services companies. It provides personal and commercial banking, wealth management services, insurance, corporate and investment banking, and transaction processing services on a global basis. The company employs approximately 60,000 people who serve more than 14 million personal, business and public sector clients through offices in North America and some 30 countries around the world. For more information, please visit www.rbc.com.
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