melanie bonajo, When the body says Yes @ Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Collection

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen acquires melanie bonajo’s When the body says Yes

melanie bonajo, When the body says Yes

© melanie bonajo / Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen receives When the body says Yes in its museum collection. The installation, created by Dutch artist melanie bonajo,  was exhibited during the summer of 2024 during the much talked about event Craving for Boijmans. There it functioned as a sensory end piece for a special art route through the closed museum building. In 2022, When the body says Yes was the Dutch entry for the 59th Venice Biennale.

When the body says Yes

This art piece by melanie bonajo is an installation consisting of a video artwork that is 43 minutes in length, framed by an organically-shaped scenography created in collaboration with fellow artist Théo Demans. When the body says Yes takes the viewer through and around the body, addressing the role of sexuality, body positivity, gender and consent within our society. There’s a very diverse group of people featured in the film, which challenges the viewer with a multitude of questions: on sexuality, the body and a personal vision on gender beyond the stereotypical patterns.

Craving for Boijmans

When the body says Yes was a prime attraction during Craving for Boijmans. It became an inspiring challenge and collaboration between the museum, the artists and the gallery to land the piece at the majestic Bodonzaal. It injected a humanity into what was an abandoned building. Not just thanks to the expressive, inclusive design, but most of all the topics that were addressed. When the body says Yes builds a bridge between the human who experiences it and the individuals who appear inside of it. Visitors have reacted in a positive way – often surprised or provoked – which speaks to the continuous social relevance of the subjects melanie bonajo addresses in their work.

melanie bonajo is an artist, filmmaker, sexological bodyworker, somatic sex coach and educator, cuddle workshop leader and activist. Through videos, performances, photographs and installations, bonajo explores current issues arising from living together in a capitalist system. melanie bonajo is represented by AKINCI.

MUSEUM BOIJMANS VAN BEUNINGEN

Museumpark 18-20, 3015 CX Rotterdam

www.boijmans.nl

Kay WalkingStick and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith @ Saint Louis Art Museum

Saint Louis Art Museum purchases works by Native American women artists: Kay WalkingStick and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

The Saint Louis Art Museum has acquired works by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Kay WalkingStick, deepening the museum’s commitment to Native artists with the addition of three critical pieces to the collection.

The acquisitions address gaps in the museum’s collection of works by contemporary Native American artists and leave a significant legacy at the museum for the recent exhibition “Action/Abstraction Redefined: Modern Native Art, 1940s-1970s,” an important presentation of modern Native art and the first exhibition of this size at SLAM.

Kay WalkingStick, American and Cherokee, born 1935 

“Personal Icon”, 1975; 

Acrylic, wax, and ink on canvas; 42 x 48 inches; 

Saint Louis Art Museum, The Siteman Contemporary Art Fund, and funds given by Barbara and Andy Taylor, the Werner Family, John and Susan Horseman, Christine Taylor-Broughton and Lee Broughton, Nancy and Kenneth Kranzberg, Pam and Greg Trapp, Mr. and Mrs. Gary Wolff, Dottie and Kent Kreh, Dwyer Brown and Nancy Reynolds, Suzy Besnia and Vic Richey, Clare M. Davis and David S. Obedin, Yvette Drury Dubinsky and John Paul Dubinsky, in memory of Pauline E. Ashton, and Kiku Obata; 

© Kay WalkingStick

“We are in a moment of heightened visibility for Native artists across the country but especially in St. Louis,” said Min Jung Kim, the museum’s Barbara B. Taylor Director. “Adding these works to our collection is a way to continue to shed light on these vital artists, whose art speaks to both personal histories and wider cultural concerns. These acquisitions are also essential to the continued diversification of both our collection and our programming, ensuring that we provide our community with opportunities to see and experience the fullest view of human creativity from many different cultural and aesthetic traditions.”

One of the works—WalkingStick’s “Personal Icon”—was recently featured in the final gallery of the museum’s summer 2023 exhibition, “Action/Abstraction Redefined.” “Personal Icon” is among the last major works available from a pivotal era in her career. During the mid-1970s, WalkingStick turned away from figuration and experimented with different media while also investigating Native history for the first time. The 1975 painting repeats a low, swelling arc against a gridded frame of red encaustic; these experimental forms and materials shaped her practice subsequently.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Enrolled Salish, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, MT, born 1940; 

“State Names Map: Cahokia”, and “Trade Canoe: Osage Orange”, 2023; 

Saint Louis Art Museum, The Siteman Contemporary Art Fund, and funds given by Barbara and Andy Taylor,The Werner Family, John and Susan Horseman, Christine Taylor-Broughton and Lee Broughton, Nancy and Kenneth Kranzberg, Pam and Greg Trapp, Mr. and Mrs. Gary Wolff, Dottie and Kent Kreh, Dwyer Brown and Nancy Reynolds, Suzy Besnia and Vic Richey, Clare M. Davis and David S. Obedin, Yvette Drury and John Paul Dubinsky, Judith Weiss Levy, Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Lowenhaupt, and Mary Ann and Andy Srenco; 

© Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York; 

Image courtesy of Counterpublic, Photograph by Jon Gitchoff

Using collage and gestural painting, Quick-to-See Smith’s “State Names Map: Cahokia” reconfigures the United States map, using text with only those state names based on Indigenous words. In “Trade Canoe: Osage Orange,” the artist created the frame of a canoe using wood from an Osage Orange tree, and inside the canoe are cast-resin objects—mirrors, guns, liquor and a beaver—that highlight the destructive qualities of European trade goods on Indigenous peoples.

Both “State Names Map: Cahokia” and “Trade Canoe: Osage Orange” are new works that were featured in Counterpublic, a triennial civic exhibition that showcased contemporary art in locations across St. Louis from April through July. Nearly one-quarter of the artists in the 2023 Counterpublic cited Native heritage.

Quick-to-See Smith’s work has appeared in more than 90 solo exhibitions across the country, most recently “Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map” at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. SLAM’s collection includes the mixed media painting “I See Red: Migration” and a suite of prints produced at Washington University’s Island Press including “Celebrate 40,000 Years of American Art.”

SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM

One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri 63110

www.slam.org

Lorser Feitelson @ National Gallery of Art, Washington - Acquisition

Lorser Feitelson 

National Gallery of Art, Washington - Acquisition

An important figure in the development of West Coast modernism, LORSER FEITELSON (1898–1978) is best known for his abstract paintings of the 1950s through the 1970s. The National Gallery of Art has received two transitional works of 1945—a painting and a drawing— from the collection of Tobey C. Moss. The works capture Lorser Feitelson’s stylistic shift from surrealism and cubism into abstraction.

Featuring flamelike abstract shapes in red, orange, blue, and turquoise with two small, biomorphic forms at bottom center, Dancers (Magical Forms) (1945) shows the transition from a surrealist style influenced by Yves Tanguy to the rhythmic abstraction that would characterize Lorser Feitelson’s "ribbon" paintings of the 1960s and 1970s, including the National Gallery's Untitled (1964). Figure Evolving into Magical Forms (1946), a small study in ink on paper, depicts several distinct forms, from a seated female figure seen in three-quarters view in sharp light, to blocky abstract shapes that convey the simplified bent gesture of her neck and head.

Lorser Feitelson - Biography

Born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1898, LORSER FEITELSON soon moved with his family to New York City. After attending the 1913 Armory Show and being inspired by its modernist works, he immersed himself in the growing community of New York artists. In the 1920s he relocated to Paris, hoping to find an audience that would be more receptive to modern art. He settled in Los Angeles in 1927, where he began teaching at the Chouinard Art Institute and organizing exhibitions with groups of fellow artists. He was an informal mentor to Philip Guston, whose early works show Lorser Feitelson's influence. In 1934 Lorser Feitelson founded the so-called post-Surreal movement with his future wife and close collaborator, the artist Helen Lundeberg. During this time, he also began creating murals across Los Angeles as part of the California Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project.  He was one of the four artists featured in the landmark 1959 Four Abstract Classicists exhibition curated by Jules Langsner at the Los Angeles County Museum in Exposition Park. From the mid-1960s, influenced by minimalism, Lorser Feitelson began reducing his compositions, creating sleek paintings comprised of sensuous lines set against solid backgrounds of color. Lorser Feitelson’s work was featured in Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design and Culture at Midcentury (2007) at the Orange County Museum of Art, as well as the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Pacific Standard Time (2011–2012). Works by Lorser Feitelson are in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and numerous other public and private collections.

NGA - NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON

www.nga.gov

Sebastiano del Piombo: Acquisition by the Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago acquires newly discovered High Renaissance Painting, Christ Carrying the Cross, by Italian master Sebastiano del Piombo

SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO

Christ Carrying the Cross, 1515/1517.

The Art Institute of Chicago.

Lacy Armour, Ada Turnbull Hertle, Mary Swissler Oldberg Acquisition, Charles H. and Mary F. Worcester Collection funds; Wirt D. Walker Trust; Alyce and Edwin DeCosta and the Walter E. Heller Foundation Fund; Estate of Walter Aitken; Frederick W. Renshaw Acquisition, Marian and Samuel Klasstorner funds; Edward E. Ayer Fund in Memory of Charles L. Hutchinson; Lara T. Magnuson Acquisition, Director's funds; Samuel A. Marx Purchase Fund for Major Acquisitions; Edward Johnson, Maurice D. Galleher Endowment, Simeon B. Williams, Capital Campaign General Acquisitions, Wentworth Greene Field Memorial, Samuel P. Avery, Morris L. Parker, Irving and June Seaman Endowment, and Betty Bell Spooner funds.

The Art Institute of Chicago announces the exciting acquisition of SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO’s Christ Carrying the Cross (1515/1517) to strengthen its focused collection of Italian High Renaissance painting. The first major discovery of a work by Sebastiano in recent years, it was brought to light by Colnaghi, the renowned London-based art gallery, who facilitated its transition to the museum’s world-class collection. It represents one of the most popular compositions by one of the most distinguished painters working in Rome in the first half of the 16th century. Celebrated by the founding voice of art history, Giorgio Vasari, and given major commissions by Pope Clement VII, Sebastiano was hailed both in his time and beyond as a master of inventive painting who reimagined the monumentality and power of Michelangelo’s style, and the grace and balance of Raphael’s.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled to have this rare and wonderful opportunity to bring such an important painting—our first by Sebastiano—into the Art Institute’s permanent collection,” shared Gloria Groom, Chair of European Painting and Sculpture and David and Mary Winton Green Curator. “This acquisition affirms that through the extraordinary support of our generous donors, we can take our reputation for excellence in collecting to the next level, and tell a more creative and complete story in the galleries that feels exciting and relevant to our thousands of visitors to the museum each day.”

Jorge Coll, CEO of Colnaghi offered, “It was very exciting to have discovered this lost work by such an important Renaissance master, and it is extremely satisfying to know that it now belongs in one of the most important and visited museums in the world. It is of the utmost importance for Nicolas (Cortés) and me as the new partners in Colnaghi that we continue the company’s long and storied tradition of placing important works of art in the world’s greatest museums. This painting was the subject of the first of our new series of publications called ‘Colnaghi Studies’ – catalogues written by leading scholars in order to shed light on lesser known artists and unknown works of art – and we hope that there will be many more works from the ‘Studies’ series that find such prestigious homes in the future.”

Sebastiano developed the innovative composition for Christ Carrying the Cross to heighten the emotional charge of the image. The painting’s dramatic visual impact comes through in the monumental figures and their poignant expressions, the powerful diagonals of the cross, the dynamic and sculptural effect of Christ’s drapery, and the luminous landscape background. The popularity of the composition led Sebastiano to paint several versions and variations of the subject—the Art Institute joins the Museo del Prado, Madrid; Hermitage, Saint Petersburg; and the Szépmüvészeti Museum, Budapest in sharing Sebastiano’s iconic invention with audiences from all over the world.

The painting, now on view in Gallery 205 within the Art Institute’s world-class collection of European Painting and Sculpture, offers visitors a new and exciting opportunity to understand a richer and more inclusive story of Renaissance art and is poised to educate and inspire our visitors for generations to come.

The Art Institute of Chicago
www.artic.edu

Magic Lantern, Israel Museum: Recent Acquisitions in Contemporary Art

Magic Lantern: Recent Acquisitions in Contemporary Art 

Israel Museum, Jerusalem 

Throught April 30, 2012

Israel Museum, Jerusalem, presents a selection of 18 recent acquisitions and gifts of international and Israeli contemporary art. Magic Lantern: Recent Acquisitions in Contemporary Art brings together works in a range of mediums by an international cadre of artists, including Vahram Aghasyan, Ilit Azoulay, Luis Camnitzer, Isaac Julien, Jonathan Monk, Adrian Paci, Anila Rubiku, Yehudit Sasportas, Hiraki Sawa, Jan Tichy, and Maya Zak, among others, all of which explore the theme of enchantment. 

Whether in landscapes or interior scenes, the works in Magic Lantern invoke the world of legend, daydream, fantasy and illusion. Through imaginary journeys, blurred silhouettes in the mist, flickering flames and dark forest shadows, the real world assumes the diffuse contours of something magical. The exhibition features works in a range of mediums, including installation, photography, video and film.

Highlights include:

- VAHRAM AGHASYAN: photographic series Ghost City (2005-2007), showing the actual state of a utopian urban development—a housing project planned in Armenia by the Soviet regime but left unfinished when the USSR collapsed, and now overtaken by seemingly apocalyptic floodwaters. In his photography, Aghasyan investigates sites and structures that originated during the Soviet era but are non-functional, incomplete or irrelevant in their current socio-political environment.

- ILLIT AZOULAY: Tree for Too One, The Keys, Window (2010), a work composed of thousands of photographs of a variety of objects and people, taken from several angles and then pieced together. Shapes and sizes are reworked digitally and recast as a single image, creating a new photographic reality in which multiple layers of being, memory and association exist simultaneously in one coherent whole.

- JONATHAN MONK: Candle Film (2009), made up of eight 16 mm films of a candle filmed as it changes slowly over time. The 16 mm film and film projector require that the reels be changed on a regular basis —approximately once every hour— by a technician. 

- MAYA ZACK: Living Room (2009), which recreates the interior of an apartment in Berlin just before it was abandoned in 1938by means of computer visualization. Based on the artist's interview with Yair Noam and his description of his childhood home, the work addresses such questions as the limitations of memory, the imagination of the artist, and the impossibility of recapturing what has been lost.

Magic Lantern is curated by Suzanne Landau, Yulla and Jacques Lipchitz Chief Curator of the Fine Arts and Landeau Family Curator of Contemporary Art.

Israel Museum Web Site

Daguerreotypes Girault de Prangey Bnf

Quatorze daguerréotypes de Girault de Prangey viennent enrichir les collections de la BnF

La Bibliothèque nationale de France vient d’acquérir treize daguerréotypes de Joseph Philibert Girault de Prangey auprès de Marie-Thérèse et André Jammes. Ces derniers ont par ailleurs fait don à cette occasion à la Bibliothèque d’une quatorzième plaque. Originaire de Langres, Joseph Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804-1892), aristocrate érudit, archéologue et amateur de plantes rares, a rapporté d'un voyage qui le mena de Rome à Jérusalem entre 1842 et 1844 près de mille plaques daguerriennes miraculeusement conservées jusqu'à nos jours. Le département des Estampes et de la photographie de la BnF possède 178 daguerréotypes, soit la plus importante collection publique de ses oeuvres. Cet ensemble constitué patiemment par don (1950), acquisitions (2000) et dation (2005) vient de s'enrichir grâce à l'acquisition de ces treize plaques. Toutes les photographies de Girault de Prangey sont par nature uniques mais dans ce nouvel ensemble de très grande qualité on signalera tout particulièrement une vue de la porte de l'église du Saint-Sépulcre à Jérusalem, une étude de fenêtre au Caire et des rochers sous la neige (environs de Langres). Cette acquisition est complétée par le don par Marie-Thérèse et André Jammes d'une plaque intitulée par l'auteur « Paris, 1841, étude de plantes ». Elle représente la porte ouverte d'un atelier, encadrée de plantes grimpantes exubérantes, dans laquelle se détache un moulage du buste de la Vénus des Médicis. Cette oeuvre inédite rappelle les essais contemporains des premiers maîtres de la photographie sur papier que sont Hippolyte Bayard et William Henry Fox Talbot. Elle prend place d'emblée parmi l'iconographie de référence des débuts de la photographie. La BnF souligne que "Marie-Thérèse et André Jammes se sont toujours montrés attentifs à l’enrichissement des collections nationales. Cette nouvelle preuve de leur générosité mérite une reconnaissance toute particulière".

Shirin Neshat and Claude Zervas’ Works at SAM

The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) has added two important works to its collection: Claude Zervas’ sculpture Nooksack (2005) and Shirin Neshat’s video Tooba (2002).

Multimedia artist CLAUDE ZERVAS uses technology to abstract landscape in Nooksack, comprising 32 nine-inch fluorescent lights and hundreds of feet of cascading white wire. An expert in computers and digital technologies, Zervas uses their magic to transform the topography of the Nooksack River into a luminous drawing that appears to float above the ground. The composition of this sculpture is inspired by the topography and flow of the river as it winds towards Puget Sound. This work is part of a larger series that includes video and photography, and will be part of the upcoming exhibition Made in Seattle (May 4 – July 23, 2006) at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Nooksack was purchased for the museum by John and Shari Behnke, Rena Bransten, Carlos Garcia, David Lewis, Kim Richter, Josef Vascovitz, Robin Wright, Dawn Zervas, and the Contemporary Arts Council.

Iranian-born photographer, filmaker and video artist SHIRIN NESHAT is best known for videos of archetypal imagery and spare elegance that explore the experience of exile and complexities of contemporary Islam. Her most ambitious works, including Tooba, unfold on two projection screens creating visual oppositions of tradition and modernity, nature and culture, individual and collective and male and female. The video will go on display at the Seattle Asian Art Museum for the reopening on January 14, 2006. Tooba was inspired by the novel Women Without Men by Iranian writer Shahrnoush Parsipour, who was imprisoned for five years for her work. Shot near Oaxaca in Mexico, Tooba contrasts an earthly paradise with a mountainous landscape, and begins by focusing on a central female character nearly merged into a large fig tree set alone in a walled garden. The image of a woman symbolizing the soul of the tree originates in myths of the promised tree in the Koran, commonly known as a “feminine tree.” Over the barren landscape men and women draw near, impinging on this enclosure – the only one within the vast landscape; they threaten the space, solitude and peace therein. As the invading men and women seek refuge in the garden the woman disappears into the tree, called Tooba, which means eternal happiness. In the Koran this tree offers shelter and sustenance. Shirin Neshat explains: “The idea is that they are transcending everyday life and moving into something greater.”

Shirin Neshat was born in Qazvin, Iran in 1957, and came to the United States in 1974 at age 17, to study art at the University of California in Berkeley. Her first return to her country in 1990 coincided with the beginning of her career as a photographer, filmmaker and video artist. She established her reputation in 1999, winning the international prize at the Venice Biennale. She has held solo exhibitions in England at Tate Gallery, London (1998), Serpentine Gallery, London (2000) and in the United States at Walker Art Center (2002) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, Philip Morris (1998). Tooba was commissioned by Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany and was the first of Neshat’s pieces to be shown in her native country, at an exhibition in Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art. It was also exhibited at the Asia Society, New York.

Tooba was purchased by the SAM with generous contributions from Jeffrey and Susan Brotman, Jane and David Davis, Barney A. Ebsworth, Jeffrey and Judy Greenstein, Lyn and Jerry Grinstein, Richard and Betty Hedreen, Janet Ketcham, Kerry and Linda Killinger Foundation, James and Christina Lockwood, Michael McCafferty, Christine and Assen Nicolov, Faye and Herman Sarkowsky, Jon and Mary Shirley, Rebecca and Alexander Stewart, William and Ruth True, Bagley and Jinny Wright, Charles and Barbara Wright, and Ann P. Wyckoff.

This important acquisition of works of Shirin Neshat and Claude Zervas has been made to Honor Departing Curator Lisa Corrin. The former Deputy Director of Art/Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, resigned her position to become Director of the Williams College Museum of Art.

Acquisition of Polaroid by One Equity Partners

Polaroid Corporation and One Equity Partners today announced that an affiliate of One Equity Partners has acquired substantially all Polaroid assets, creating a new company that will operate under the Polaroid Corporation name. “Polaroid is a very special company with a unique heritage and promising opportunities,” said Charles F. Auster, partner in One Equity Partners and chairman of the new Polaroid board of directors. “The company has made significant progress since filing for bankruptcy last October in improving its operations and is well positioned to take advantage of future opportunities. We look forward to working closely with the company’s loyal and committed employees to maximize its potential.” In a joint statement, Polaroid Executive Vice Presidents William L. Flaherty and Neal D. Goldman said, “We are pleased that One Equity Partners shares our vision for revitalizing Polaroid. Our objectives are to build a profitable core business and realize the tremendous potential of our instant digital printing technology.” As previously announced, One Equity Partners will own 65 percent of the new company and the former Polaroid -- now known as PDC, Inc. -- will own the remaining 35 percent until distributed under a reorganization plan approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

One Equity Partners manages $3.5 billion of investments and commitments for Bank One Corporation in direct private equity transactions. Bank One Corporation is the sixth largest bank holding company in the United States.