Collecting News Briefs

Showing posts with label exhibit. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Made in the UK: Contemporary Art from the Richard Brown Baker Collection exhibited at RISD Museum | projo.com

Vast Baker collection exhibited at RISD Museum | Art | projo.com | The Providence Journal:

"Titled “Made in the UK: Contemporary Art from the Richard Brown Baker Collection,” the show will feature more than 100 artworks, ranging from an early Hockney painting (“Plastic Tree Plus City Hall” from 1964) to works by present-day art stars such as Rachel Whiteread, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

About the half the pieces, which also include works by the British Op Art pioneer Bridget Riley and the India-born sculptor Anish Kapoor, were donated to the museum during Baker’s lifetime. The rest were purchased through a special acquisitions fund set up after his death.

“He liked to tell people he had this disease called ‘accumulitis,’ ” says RISD print curator Jan Howard. “He meant it as a joke, but there was certainly an element of truth to it. Like anyone who’s passionate about something, he had a hard time saying no.”"

The Art of Rachel Whiteread (Amazon)
Tate Modern Artists: Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread: House

Friday, August 26, 2011

1950s and '60s drug exploitation movie posters tackle sex and drugs | montrealgazette.com

Poster madness on the Main:

Dave Rosen collects and sells vintage movie posters, 18 of which are on display at Blue Sunshine on St. Laurent Blvd. until July 31. "I put this together because I thought this is something nobody has ever done before," Rosen said.

"Thrills That Kill: Morals and Movie Posters - on the walls of the Blue Sunshine film centre on St. Laurent Blvd. (Montreal) - provides an entertaining glimpse into the fascinating netherworld of what were known as 'cautionary tale' exploitation movies. From the earliest days of American cinema, filmmakers would make movies about sex, drugs and later rock 'n' roll, designed, in theory, to warn viewers of the evils of these things.

The 18 vintage posters in the show belong to Dave Rosen, the former CBC Radio traffic reporter and current Montreal Mirror cartoonist."

"I put this together because I thought this is something nobody has ever done before," said Rosen. "To show specifically this kind of exploitation poster, for the cautionary tale films. It's a sub-genre. Reefer Madness is probably the one that set the pattern for cautionary-tale films. The whole idea is that things are shown on the screen that are forbidden, but it's okay to show them because you're teaching people that they shouldn't be doing this stuff. That's how these producers got around the Production Code. They could show drug use and sexual situations, but it had to be an educational experience. Everyone had to get their comeuppance at the end of the movie."

The Production Code was instituted to try to keep any illicit activity out of American movies and, by the 1930s, filmmakers, mostly independent producers, began churning out these pictures. Most of the posters in Thrills That Kill are from the 1950s and 1960s - for movies like the rock 'n' roll cult fave High School Confidential and Synanon, a drama starring Edmond O'Brien as a reformed alcoholic who starts up a rehab facility.

Friday, August 19, 2011

HOWL Gallery/Tattoo features rock poster art show during Art Walk - Ft. Myers Galleries | Examiner.com

HOWL Gallery/Tattoo features rock poster art show during Art Walk - Ft. Myers Galleries | Examiner.com:

"Art Walk [was on] Friday night and HOWL Gallery/Tattoo featured modern rock posters by some of the world’s most celebrated concert poster artists. Included in the show are framed and unframed posters by Bob Masse, Frank Kozik, Todd Slater, Clint Wilson, Leia Bell, Michael Michael Motorcycle, Aesthetic Apparatus, Print Mafia and internationally-renowned concert poster artist Derek Hess, who will be appearing at HOWL in September for a solo show."

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Bizarre collections: Barf Bags | Wonderfully weird + mobile phones, weapons | thestar.com.my

Wonderfully weird: "People love collecting stuff, but some collections are so bizarre it makes you wonder.

Through the years, Silberberg has built up his collection of air sickness bags. Now he has around 2,400 unique air sickness bags with 2,216 currently catalogued on his Air Sickness Bag Virtual Museum (airsicknessbags.com). Funnily enough, he still has no clear idea why he collects them. “At first, I figured I’d be the only one. I was wrong, of course. I found out that there are well over 100 people worldwide who either collect or have collected air sickness bags and have amassed a substantial amount (say over 50) of them.

An American woman who calls herself Pikabellechu holds the Guinness World Record for having the largest Pokemon collection in the world. Okay, so that’s not really weird, but consider Australian Graham Barker, who holds the Guinness World Record for having the world’s largest collection of navel fluff."

Why in the world would anybody want to collect stuff from belly buttons?

German Martin Mihál has a collection of around 40,000 empty chocolate wrappers from around the world; John Reznikoff from Connecticut, USA, holds the Guinness World Record for the largest and most valuable collection of hair from celebrity and historical figures; Carol Vaughn from Birmingham, Britain, has collected more than 5,000 bars of soap since 1991; and Karen Ferrier, also from Britain, is a Dalmatian-obsessive woman who owns a collection of 3,500 spotty items accumulated over 17 years.

And it’s not just individuals who have a penchant for weird things. There are entire museums dedicated to the weird and wacky. The Museum of Burnt Food (yes, you read right) in Arlington, Virginia, founded by Deborah Henson Conant, is dedicated to carbonised culinary masterpieces (i.e. accidentally burnt food), the British Lawnmower Museum features (you guessed it) lawnmowers, while the Asphalt Museum in Sacramento, California, has a large collection of everything asphalt.

The most interesting museum would be the Icelandic Phallological Museum, located in a tiny Icelandic fishing town of Husavik. Run by Sigurdur Hjartarson, the museum showcases an extensive collection of 276 penises from whales, seals, bears and other mammals. The museum finally received its first human specimen (!?!) in April this year.

There must be something driving people to strange items. Here’s an insight into why a few individuals feel the need to collect certain objects.

The Largest Collection of Fabergé in the United States is On View at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The Largest Collection of Fabergé in the United States is On View at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts:

"RICHMOND, VA .- The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts presents an exhibition of the exhibition of the largest collection of Faberg in the United States. The exhibition, Fabergé Revealed, includes more than 500 objects and is on view from July 9 through October 2. The Russian jeweler Karl Fabergé crafted objects for the Russian imperial family in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including specially commissioned Easter eggs. VMFA’s collection, the largest public collection of Fabergé outside of Russia, includes five of the thirteen Russian imperial Easter eggs that are in the United States."

Monday, May 23, 2011

Art book collector Arthur Jaffe - Sun Sentinel

Career of art book collector Arthur Jaffe a real page-turner - Sun Sentinel

Jaffe is synonymous with rare book collecting in Palm Beach. He established the Book Center at Florida Atlantic University in 1998 when he and his late wife Lois donated 2,800 titles to the university. There are now 12,000. And after 13 years curating Boca Raton's Jaffe Center for Book Arts and its treasures, he marked his birthday on May 7 with an announcement: "I'm retiring."

[Page 3] He traces his memory for what sparked his passion for books and settles on two recollections. During Arthur's childhood, his father Max hand-built bookcases back home to shelve the family's immense library. The second was meeting his first wife Lois, a University of Pittsburgh professor, at a wedding. Their first date? A restaurant nook inside the Peabody Book Shop at Charles Street in Baltimore. Without missing a beat, he proposed marriage after the meal. Lois thought he was crazy at first, but accepted. She shared his passion for harvesting books before she passed away.

Within the "Time Flies" exhibit, some of Jaffe's fondest collectibles rest in glass cases at the wing's entrance, along a second-floor landing and near the first-floor circulation desk. There's a 300-year-old "Ga'ez Bible" that Jaffe found in Masai territory in Kenya and a $5,000 edition of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" that took 17 years to hand-illustrate and bind.

There are stranger literary oddities still, such as a book crafted into slices of a cake and a red-stained book shaped like hands. A diary of Jaffe's wartime service sits in the first-floor lobby while a TV flashes a photo slideshow of Arthur in his formative years.

"For my birthday, people sent me letters telling me, in one fell swoop, I changed the character of the library," Jaffe said. "I didn't know I had an effect on it. The impact I leave here may be the joy I inspire in others."

"Time Flies When You're Having Fun" runs through Aug. 10 at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Leonardo da Vinci: seven paintings exhibit @ National Gallery | The Guardian #Squidoo

Leonardo da Vinci show at National Gallery to limit visitor numbers | Art and design | The Guardian:

"It will be a singular opportunity to see half of Leonardo da Vinci's extraordinary paintings together at one exhibition and the National Gallery has announced it will attempt to make the experience as joyous as possible by restricting visitor numbers.

The Leonardo show, which examines the artist's years as painter at the court of the ruler of Milan, promises to be one of the most popular art exhibitions ever. Its scale is unprecedented: to get the loan of one of his 14 paintings would be something of an achievement but to get seven is 'miraculous', said Luke Syson, curator of the show."

Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, runs from 9 November 2011 to 5 February 2012

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Hot Wheels: Greatest collector in USA | die-cast cars | The Daily Item, Sunbury, PA

|Hot Wheels fanatic lives in Valley | The Daily Item, Sunbury, PA:

"Mike Strauss, who is considered the greatest collector of the die-cast cars in the country.

He made friends with the folks at Mattel, who started making the cars in 1968, and put together books featuring hundreds of photographs of Hot Wheels cars."

A boy named Matt Delbaugh, who was not even 10 years old, bought a Hot Wheels car and, using the proof of purchase from the back, sent away for the 1989 edition of Strauss’ collector’s guide.

As part of the Snyder County Historical Society’s museum program, Delbaugh spoke Sunday about his collection of redline Hot Wheels, which were in production from 1968 to 1977. Some of the hundreds of cars and other Hot Wheels collector items he has remain on display at the museum.

The cars are referred to as “redline” because of a distinctive red stripe painted, like a white wall, on the wheels of the cars. In California, where Mattel was based, the feature was popular on many cars, Delbaugh said.

Phoenix Marathon Auction Ring 4 - Saturday May 7th, 2011 9:00 am ITEM 2244

Rare Movie poster exhibit Tyler Museum of Art | Dallas Art News

Thrills, Chills, and Movie Stills at the Tyler Museum of Art | Dallas Art News:

Boris Karloff in The Bride of Frankenstein, 1935

"Remember When: Marvels and Memories from the Collection of Dr. James Clark. The exhibition will be on view at the Tyler Museum of Art from May 8 – August 14, 2011 and is the sixth exhibition in the “Tyler Collects” series, organized by the Museum to showcase private collections belonging to residents of Tyler."

“Most of the items included in this colossal exhibition are extremely rare examples,” said Ken Tomio, Curator of the Tyler Museum of Art. “Dr. Clark has spent decades searching for each piece, working with other collectors and through special auctions to refine his collection. Remember When is a unique and impressive presentation of materials which the public would normally not be able to enjoy at one time.”

Dr. Clark says that his fascination with movie posters stems from his high school job, when he worked for Interstate Theatres in Paris, Texas. His primary duties included changing out the movie posters and the theatre’s marquee. Over his thirty years of collecting, Dr. Clark has expanded his focus to include various items from the 1940s and 50s that recall prominent moments in American history as well as personal childhood memories.

Friday, April 22, 2011

US Civil War (150 years ago) Photographs from the Liljenquist Family #Civilwar #Collection - Exhibit: Library of Congress

Collectors and the Collection - The Last Full Measure: Civil War Photographs from the Liljenquist Family Collection - Exhibitions - myLOC.gov (Library of Congress)

The Last Full Measure: Civil War Photographs from the Liljenquist Family Collection presents a stunning array of Civil War-era ambrotype and tintype photographs that associates human faces, often startlingly young, with statistics on both sides in this wrenching conflict.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Incunables and illuminated manuscripts & #Greek pottery: exhibit at Bryn Mawr College - Philly.com Rare books #Squidoo

A wide range of holdings to mark its 125th anniversary. - Philly.com:

"'Worlds to Discover: 125 Years of Collections at Bryn Mawr College.' Its aesthetic brilliance, along with the complexity of its message, fills us with wonder.

Among the readily identifiable works that establish the art collection as major are pieces from the ancient world - the Attic (greek) black-figure storage jar and the Attic red-figure plate that have been studied by generations of students; medieval illuminated manuscripts (Wikipedia) of unusual distinction; and one of the largest collections of books printed before the year 1500. Plus a trove of old-master prints (Wikipedia) studied in art-history classes, notably the etching Rembrandt Drawing at a Window (1648), and anthropology collections of the Americas with beautiful utilitarian artifacts from the Arctic, the U.S. Southeast, and the Northwest Coast.

Red-figure Greek serving plate for fish 4th ce...

Image by mharrsch via Flickr

Red-figured Greek Red-Figure Kantharos (Drinki...

Image by mharrsch via Flickr

Venice Biennale 2011 National Pavilions: ARTINFO's Comprehensive Guide + more articles

ARTINFO: Venice Biennale 2011 National Pavilions: ARTINFO's Comprehensive Guide:

2011-03-24-400.3315164820_52e8db8d09_b.jpg

"The Puerto Rico-based multimedia duo Allora & Calzadilla has been announced as the United States' representatives to the 2011 Venice Biennale, marking the first time that an artist pair or collective has been picked by the nation to fill the prestigious role. The selection was made by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which the U.S. State Department has entrusted to organize next year's pavilion."

Related articles

Rare books collection « Florida State FSU Special Collections + Harriet Beecher Stowe

Women for FSU event « FSU Special Collections and Archives:

Anulus Nuptialis,
an early illuminated manuscript
by Venetian nuns, circa 1450

"... wide variety of rare books and manuscripts available for research in Special Collections. Several examples from the collection were on display, including a signed copy of The Chimney Corner by Harriet Beecher Stowe, books on women’s rights, women in Southern literature, women’s efforts during World War I and World War II, and women’s education.

The display included a 15th century handwritten and illuminated manuscript created by nuns in Venice, Italy. Additional manuscripts included letters from Helen Keller and Harriet Beecher Stowe; scrapbooks of Betty Wood McNabb, a 1930 Florida State College for Women (FSCW) alumna and pilot; and a lengthy handwritten oration on poetry delivered by Lucile Gregory at FSCW in 1911."

Related articles

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Posters of medical products - exhibit at Philadelphia Art Museum

Art: Medical posters that are aesthetic, effective | Philadelphia Inquirer | 04/17/2011:

"'Health for Sale' at the Philadelphia Museum of Art both timely and historically fascinating; that it's also a cornucopia of graphic imagination is a bonus.

This exhibition of more than 50 vintage posters that promote medical products and address public-health issues was drawn from the museum's William H. Helfand collection, itself a subset of the museum's incomparable Ars Medica collection of more than 3,000 works of medical art.

Helfand, a retired pharmaceutical executive, has been an indefatigable collector of medical prints, posters, and related ephemera for more than 55 years."

16th Century Maps overlay at Google maps + Rough Guide to everything

The historical Rough Guide to everywhere: 16th century book mapping major cities is reprinted | Mail Online:

London: The Tower of London can be see in the east of the city while the lack of development south of the Thames, which has only one bridge, is also obvious

The course of the Thames is all that remains the same as the city has expanded south of the river

"The reprinted book contains bird's eye view maps of every major European city at the time, as well as maps from cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The maps are part of a complete reprint of the 363 colour plates designed by Franz Hogenberg and annotated by Geog Braun - both renowned geographers and cartographers."

Sunday, April 3, 2011

13 Carousels in Connecticut + more #Carousel in the US & News

Carousel News and Trader Magazine:

"The first hand-carved carousels appeared in the United States in the middle of the 19th century. The carousel quickly gained popularity and thousands of carousels were created between 1880 and 1930. These beautiful creations became the centerpieces for the hundreds of amusement parks that sprung up in cities and resorts across the country. Unfortunately, depression crippled the country by the early 1930s and many carousel producers were forced to cease production. The “Golden Age of the Carousel” had come to an end.

There are now less than two hundred antique wooden carousels left operating in this country. They are an endangered species. If we do not support and protect these unique treasures, it is possible that this important piece of Americana could all be gone in our lifetime."

Monday, March 28, 2011

Civil War photographs on display | Slater Auditorium at Norwich, CT Free Academy

The Day - Civil War photographs on display at NFA | News from southeastern Connecticut

To mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the Norwich Historical Society will host a photography program by noted historic photography collector Matthew Isenburg Monday at Slater Auditorium at Norwich Free Academy.

The program, “ Civil War Photographs,” will begin at 6:30 p.m. Monday as the highlight of the Norwich Historical Society’s annual meeting. The program is free and open to the public.

His collection includes images, many rare, daguerreian and wet-plate cameras, thousands of books on photography and manuscripts.

#CivilWar photo Exhibit sheds light on history (Norwich, CT) + More Civil War Photograph stories

Civil War photos shed light on history - Norwich, CT - Norwich Bulletin:

"A look into the soul of the 19th century by renowned photograph collector Matthew Isenburg promises a view into a forgotten world Monday at Slater auditorium.

“A look at a photograph of a man who died at Antietam during the Civil War, rather than an illustration, brings the subject to life,” Isenburg, a Hadlyme resident, said. “You’re looking into his soul.”

Isenburg will present a slide lecture featuring photographs from the 1850s to the 1870s, according to William Champagne, of the Norwich Historical Society, the group sponsoring the program."

Related articles

Glass spheres with human skulls | Ohio Glassware Museum Exhibit

Exhibit Review | Ohio Glass Museum: Orbs, more colorful, fascinating | The Columbus Dispatch:

Glass spheres with skulls inside by Mark Matthews

"In addition to marbles and crackle glass, the exhibit includes about 20 pieces from the museum's archives of goofus glass - pressed glass"

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Exploded Human skull from the Zoological Museu...

Image via Wikipedia

Thursday, March 24, 2011

3 Centuries of Quilts | March 25-30 > Park Avenue #Armory show + related

'Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts' at the Park Avenue Armory - WSJ.com:
A rendering of the installation of “Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts” at the Park Avenue Armory.

A rendering of the installation of “Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts” at the Park Avenue Armory.

"New York quilt collector Joanna Rose received her first quilt, a red and white blanket with a schoolhouse design, upon the birth of her first child in 1957. She hasn't stopped collecting since and has amassed more than 1,300 quilts. When Ms. Rose, who belongs to a prominent New York real-estate family, recently turned 80, she decided to put her entire collection of red and white quilts—some 651—on public display.

Hosted by the American Folk Art Museum, 'Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts' at the Park Avenue Armory, beginning next Friday and ending March 30, will be the largest textile exhibition ever presented in New York City."

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