Multiple modernisms on exhibit in New York

Editorial Staff Art, Exhibitions

Early twentieth—century modernism-particularly that of Austria and Germany—seems to be all over New York this fall, with two exhibitions at the Guggenheim—Kandinsky, and Gabriel Munter and Vasily Kandisnky 1902-14: A life in Photographs—one at the Museum of Modern Art—Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity, and yet another at the Neue Galerie: From Klimt to Klee: Masterworks from the Serge Sebarsky Collection, …

Eye candy

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Having immersed himself in bygone foodways and culinary techniques for decades, author, food historian, and master of antiquated cookery Ivan Day is the man to call when England’s great historic house museums look to re-create the grand feasts of earlier centuries. He has whipped up historically accurate food and settings at Chatsworth, Waddesdon Manor, Hardwick Hall, and many others. While …

My MESDA

Editorial Staff Exhibitions, Furniture & Decorative Arts

Sometimes you have to move every object in a collection to fully appreciate it.  In January the curatorial team at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts did just that.  We moved virtually every exhibited object in the museum’s galleries and opened our new 45-minute guided tour, called Southernisms: People and Places, in one week’s time.  Exhausted, and with sore …

Blockbuster shows in London and Paris

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Moctezuma The British Museum inaugurates a fall blockbuster season with a sweeping exhibition on the last Aztec ruler. Anticipating the 2010 bicentennial of Mexican independence and the centennial of the Mexican Revolution, the British Museum completes its four-part series on great rulers with the first major show devoted to the Aztec emperor Moc­tezuma II. That the museum has chosen to …

Blocks of color

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

One of the country’s finest collections of American color woodcuts is now being featured in the exhibition Blocks of Color: American Woodcuts from the 1890s to the Present at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, through January 3, 2010. The Zimmerli has one of the largest university print collections in the country …

The Art of the Samurai at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Editorial Staff Art, Exhibitions

Selecting a single object from the myriad works on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s current exhibition Art of the Samurai (through January 10, 2010) presents a challenge. The exhibit, which Roberta Smith of the New York Times has called a “once-in-lifetime event for children, war buffs and connoisseurs of all ages, even garden-variety art lovers,” includes more than …

Gauguin rising

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

October 2009 | That anyone even remembers the so-called Volpini exhibition of 1889—which has just been artfully re-created at the Cleveland Museum of Art—is a minor miracle. At the time, this modest Paris show, organized by Paul Gauguin and destined to introduce a new kind of art to the larger world, had to compete for attention with Thomas Edison’s phonograph, …

Questions for the Curators: Ellen Paul Denker and Brian Gallagher

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Long before Lenox was known for its tableware, the New Jersey-based firm was responsible for some of the most exquisite handpainted porcelain produced in this country, which is the subject of an exhibition Faces & Flowers: Painting on Lenox China, on view at the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte through January 2010. This rare showing, drawn mostly from private …

Photography in New York

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

The New York dealer of fine photographs Hans P. Kraus Jr. celebrates his gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary this year with a display of iconic works entitled Silver Anniversary: 25 Photographs, 1835 to 1914, opening today. Even readers who are less familiar with photography dealers will recall Kraus’s impressive booth at the 2009 Winter Antiques Show at the Park Avenue Armory, which …

Serizawa Keisuke at the Japan Society

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Serizawa: Master of Japanese Textiles, which opens tomorrow at the Japan Society in New York, is an exhibition that will win many people over many—from the devoted connoisseur of fiber arts to those with an eye for graphic design to the Japanese art aficionado. In this display of one hundred works that span Serizawa Keisuke’s (1895-1984) career—the first large-scale museum …