Tag: Katrina Grant

Exhibition Review | Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court | Katrina Grant

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Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court, Museo del Prado Reviewed by Katrina Grant The exhibition runs until until 31st August 2014 at the NGV International, St Kilda Rd. This exhibition tells two stories. The first is the story of Italian art from Raphael to Tiepolo and the second is the story of Spanish engagement with Italian art over this period. The exhibition highlights the close artistic relationship between Italy and Spain in the Early Modern period. It includes paintings that were directly commissioned by the Spanish Royal family from such artists as Titian, as well as works collected a century or more after they were painted, such as the Holy Family by Raphael. There are also works by artists who travelled to Spain to undertake commissions in various royal residences. And, of course, there are paintings by a number of…

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Exhibition Review | Rome: Piranesi’s Vision | Katrina Grant

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Rome: Piranesi’s Vision Katrina Grant  State Library of Victoria, 22nd February until 22nd June 2014. Free exhibition. ‘When I first saw the remains of the ancient buildings of Rome lying as they do in cultivated fields or in gardens and wasting away under the ravages of time, or being destroyed by greedy owners who sell them as materials for modern buildings, I determined to preserve them for ever by means of my engravings’ – Giovanni Battista Piranesi Piranesi wrote this in his preface to the Antichità romane and it is just one of his many statements that declare his dedication to Rome. His views of Rome stand as a record of the past glories of Ancient Rome, each engraving carefully labelled so that we can identify the fragments of ruined monuments. They also record aspects of the Early Modern city of Rome that…

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Art and Art History News | April 4th 2014

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Fortunato Depero, Skyscrapers and Tunnels

Art and Art History News Katrina Grant A round-up of portrait news (rediscovered Seurat self-portrait, new book by James Hall and an Artemeisia self portrait acquisition) from the  the Melbourne Portrait Group. A good review of the current Futurism show on at the Guggenheim ‘What is most interesting about Futurism is not, then, the element of Futurism that can be preserved from Fascism, but what Futurism reveals and expresses about the soul of Fascism.’ Winthrop Professor at UWA asks Why are Western Australian art and artists invisible? Also a great discussion in comments on the need for digitisation of archives and other materials for ths study of Australian art. Speculation on a possible successor to Ron Radford at the NGA – this article really only looks at current directors of state galleries, which seems a bit narrow, though that would follow the…

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News, Writing and Reviews on Art and Art History | March 21st 2014

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News, Writing and Reviews on Art and Art History Katrina Grant Ron Radford, director of the National Gallery of Australia, has announced his plans to retire. He will step down from the role in September. He has been director since 2005. More here. An article in The Guardian about the work of Heather Dalton from the University of Melbourne that proposes that there is a sulphur-crested cockatoo in Mantegna’s Madonna della Vittoria (1496). I think I am keeping my sceptical hat on for this one – though I am intrigued and would like to read the full research. One commenter on The Guardian seems to have solved it though saying – “All this proves, is that the Italian cockatoo is extinct.” The NGV has announced it will be holding an NGV triennial for contemporary art and design. Tony Ellwood said, “Melbourne…

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Seasons Greetings and Holiday Break

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To all our regular visitors and subscribers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. MAN will be having a short break over Christmas, but will be back in mid-January. Our subscriber base has grown considerably over the past year – we now have almost 1000 email subscribers (you can subscribe by popping your email in ‘Subscribe’ box on the right hand side of our website). Our thanks to those who have written Exhibition Reviews over the past year and to those who have sent us items for inclusion on the site. Below is the latest in interesting News and Opinion on art and art history from around the internet in case you need something to read over the break. There is also a short list of jobs and calls for papers as well – I will continue to post these…

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Art and Art History News | September 20th 2013

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 Art and Art History News Katrina Grant The Atlantic asked its readers to tell them why Humanities PhD programs (in the US) haven’t collapsed (and in some cases are growing) if there is no job market? They elicited an interesting range of responses, I think my favourite is ‘Perhaps there is simply an inverse ratio between how much a person loves something, and how carefully they consider the economic wisdom of pursuing it.’ Indeed.  A thoughtful piece on ABC arts by Barnaby Smith asks whether curatorial choices in the new Royal Academy show in London, Australia,  show perpetuate British ideas of Australian art. A piece in The Atlantic Cities on why American University campuses embraced Gothic Architecture – ‘”The newer the campus was, the older it appeared to be.” Is a smuggling scandal about to erupt around the looting of…

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Art and Art History News | September 13th 2013

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A round up of recent news from the world of art Katrina Grant A press release from the Australian Academy of the Humanities has cautioned that ‘the Coalition’s proposal to redirect Australian Research Council funds away from projects it deems to be “wasteful” compromises the fundamental principle of funding research based on the criteria of excellence.’ Made last week, pre-election, but, still relevant. A good post-election follow up in the Guardian Australia by Hila Shacher from UWA who writes that “Politicians shouldn’t be allowed to decide what is “relevant” in research any more than they have the right to tell business owners whether they like or dislike their products.” And that “if the waste lies anywhere, it is in the over-bureaucratic and counter-productive sections in ARC grant applications in “which researchers bend over backwards to mollify politicians concerned that somebody, somewhere, might be doing…

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News | The Getty makes images of their collection freely available

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Yesterday the Getty announced that it would make available all images of public domain works of art in the Getty’s collections. The initial release includes “making roughly 4,600 high-resolution images of the Museum’s collection free to use, modify, and publish for any purpose.” This is not just the release of images of the museum’s collection, it is apparently the beginning of the Getty’s ‘Open Content Program‘. This will share not only images from the collection, but also images from the collections of the Getty Research Institute such as documentation from field projects, publications and the Getty Vocabularies. The Getty joins other US institutions such as the Walters Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, Yale University, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Harvard University, along with places like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, in making high resolution images freely available to download. there is still some…

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News and Writing on Art and Art History | February 8th 2013

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News and Writing on Art and Art History Katrina Grant The Art Gallery of New South Wales has chosen not to replace Senior Curator of Asian Art Jackie Menzies after she retires, a decision that has surprised many, considering the gallery’s large collection of Asian Art (there will continue to be two curators of Asian Art). Perhaps, though, this role is to be absorbed into the recently advertised position for a Director of Collections at AGNSW. Liberal arts degrees may not come with a job description attached, but you are just as likely to end up employed and probably a more well-rounded person as well – Nicolaos Jones On the Liberal Arts and the Advantages of Being Useless (may need to be logged into academia.edu to read) The problem of inflation in academic reference writing – should academia follow most other…

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News and Writing on Art and Art History | Jan 25 2013

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Art and Art History News and Writing | Jan 25 2013 Katrina Grant Ben Eltham in Crikey with good news for people in, or aspiring to, the creative industries. ‘New census data on Australia’s cultural and creative industries allows us to peer inside a dynamic sector for the first time in five years. And the news is generally good… Australia’s creative and cultural employment is growing faster than employment in the rest of the economy.’ A new blog called the ‘Grumpy Art Historian’ has some interesting musings on bad acquisitions. The Ritz has discovered they own a Charles Le Brun painting of ‘The Sacrifice of Polyxena’ and plan to sell it at Christies. The Art Gallery of South Australia has announced a rehang (pdf) of their European collection. they have moved away from the traditional chronological hang to a thematic one. The release states…

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Exhibition Review | The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death and Disaster. Reviewed by Katrina Grant

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The ‘Four Horsemen’ exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria draws together a rich, varied and evocative selection of images of death: the horseman crushing rich and poor alike beneath the hooves of his skeletal horse; the shadowy figure stalking the young and the beautiful; the horrors of war; the terrors of the final Apocalypse.

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Art and Art History News | November 3rd

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Art and Art History News | November 3rd Katrina Grant The Rijksmuseum is the latest museum to make a massive number (125 000 so far) of high quality, zoomable images of its collection available online without any copyright restrictions. The museum is encouraging people to create galleries of their favourite works, print out the images on posters or ‘re-mix’ them to create new art. Looters are stripping ancient sites in Bulgaria – reports suggest that as many as 50 000 people could be involved in daily trasure hunting raids. Ben Eltham in Crikey on the contribution  the arts sector can make to engagement with Asia. One of America’s foremost art critics Dave Hickey says he is walking away from the arts world because it is ‘calcified, self-reverential and a hostage to rich collectors who have no respect for what they…

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News and Writing on Art and Art History | September 3rd

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News and Writing on Art and Art History | September 3rd Katrina Grant News New NGV director Tony Ellwood gave a speech to the Melbourne Press Club on the 23rd August (full text in The Australian) where he outlined plans for the NGV under his leadership, some more specific than others. The continued focus on the apparent need for more and more contemporary art at the NGV strikes me as misplaced. A collection will always have its gaps (I’m sure many of us could think of a certain period we would love to see a few more examples of). However, the NGV does a lot for contemporary art, there is always contemporary art on display in both the NGVA and NGV International, including a dedicated space at the NGV International. They collect (it seems to me) a significant amount of…

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News and Writing on Art and Art History | 18th August

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News and Writing on Art and Art History | 18th August Katrina Grant News A fascinating overview of the Czartoryski Raphael on the Three Pipe Problem, this painting is one of the famous looted paintings of World War II and remains lost: possibly destroyed, possibly in a bank vault somewhere. The provenance is mysterious and it is hard to be certain of whether it is even by Raphael himself. The state of the humanities, including art history, was a topic of discussion on Radio National’s Books and Arts Daily program, guests included Melbourne University’s ANthony White, Monash University’s Raelene Francis and Queensland University’s Paul Makeham. More to listen to here with NPR’s interview with art forger Ken Perenyi – ‘An Art Forger Tells All’ Ann Stephen has written a conference report on this year’s AAANZ conference, held in Sydney in July. The reflections on Robert Hughes continue – Simon Schama writes in…

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Exhibition | ‘William Kentridge: Five Themes’ at ACMI, Melbourne – Katrina Grant

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‘William Kentridge: Five Themes’ at the ACMI Thursday 8th March to Sunday 27th May, ACMI at Federation Square, Melbourne William Kentridge: Five Themes opens today at ACMI, Federation Square. The exhibition was originally curated by Mark Rosenthal for the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Rosenthal has travelled to Melbourne, with the artist William Kentridge, to oversee the installation of the exhibition in ACMI’s expansive underground exhibition space. Since 2009 the exhibition has been touring cities around the world including Johannesburg, New York, Paris, Vienna, Jerusalem and Moscow. Kentridge is known for his stop motion films of charcoal drawings and the exhibition includes five rooms screening short animations, as well as charcoal drawings, theatre models, sculptures and books. Speaking at the launch Kentridge said that the works in the exhibition should…

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