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National Portrait Gallery Presents First Ever Exhibition Devoted to Indian Portraits

An important exhibition telling the story of the Indian portrait over three centuries will open at the National Portrait Gallery on 11 March 2010. Bringing together 60 works from international public and private collections, The Indian Portrait 1560-1860 will celebrate the beauty, power and humanity of these works of art. The exhibition sets out to show that Indian portraiture - an area of artistic achievement overlooked in Britain - should be seen alongside other outstanding portraits from around the world.

The works in the exhibition range from magnificent formal portraits of the Mughal emperors to penetrating studies of courtiers and holy men, as well as candid depictions by Indian artists of Europeans living in India. These paintings are a record of a rich and complex history, embracing influences from Iran and Europe as well as local Hindu and Muslim traditions. They not only show a growing self-awareness of how Indians saw themselves, but also how they wished to be seen.

Important loans include: two pages from the Padshahnama made for Shah Jahan, now in the Royal Collection; a huge Mughal cloth painting of the Emperor Jahangir; and a pair of images of the Mughal courtier 'Inayat Khan close to death, which have never previously been shown together in the UK. There are also striking portraits such as those of Amar Singh II of Mewar taking his ease, and the Maratha general Ram Rao Phalke, which call for a re-examination of portraiture in India.

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, says: 'These beautiful paintings offer glimpses into the cultures that have flourished in the Indian subcontinent, as well as authoritative images of captivating individuals living through the 300-year span of the exhibition. These exquisite depictions are wrought with dazzling skill and technical brilliance - as vivid likenesses of people, their surroundings and often radiant costumes. However formal the pose or setting, here are people brought to life with utter conviction.

Developing from its origins at the Mughal court under the emperor Akbar in the sixteenth century, portraiture spread to the Islamic sultanates of the Deccan and to the small Hindu kingdoms in Rajasthan and the Punjab Hills. In all of these regions, distinctively local styles were overlaid on essentially Mughal prototypes until European influence returned during the so-called Company period, when Western concepts of realism were applied by Indian artists to local subjects.
Exhibits have been assembled from several private collections as well as public institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the San Diego Museum of Art, the V&A, Musée Guimet, the David Collection, Copenhagen, the British Library, the British Museum and the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Continue reading the article here.

(www.artdaily.org)
Smithsonian Accepts Michelle Obama's Inaugural Ball Gown

First Lady Michelle Obama formally presented the gown she wore to the 2009 inaugural balls to the Smithsonian’s First Ladies Collection Tuesday, March 9, during a ceremony at the National Museum of American History. The gown will be displayed in the center of a new gallery addition to the museum’s popular exhibition, “The First Ladies at the Smithsonian.” The new gallery, “A First Lady’s Debut,” opens to the public March 10. The one-shouldered, white-silk chiffon gown, created by designer Jason Wu, is embellished with organza flowers with Swarovski crystal centers.
For decades, the First Ladies Collection has been one of the most popular attractions at the Smithsonian Institution. The original first ladies exhibition of 1914 was the first display at the Smithsonian to prominently feature women. The exhibition itself has changed in size, location, style and story several times over the years.

“Today Michelle Obama continues a nearly century-long tradition that is important to American history and beloved by the public,” said Brent D. Glass, director of the museum. “The donation of an inaugural gown is a long-held tradition and the most visible of the objects our historians collect to document and explore the contributions of first ladies to the presidency and American society.”

“When we look at the dress that Jackie Kennedy wore 50 years ago, or the one that Mary Todd Lincoln wore 100 years before that, it takes us beyond the history books and the photographs and helps us understand that history is made by talented people,” said First Lady Michelle Obama. “The dress I donated today, made by Jason Wu, is a masterpiece. It’s simple, it’s elegant and it comes from the brilliant mind of someone who is living the American Dream.”
Beginning with Mamie Eisenhower, the new gallery focuses on each first lady’s public introduction during the inauguration or beginning of her husband’s presidency and includes contemporary accounts of initial impressions about each woman and the role she might play in the White House. “A First Lady’s Debut,” features life-size photos of the 11 women who have filled the position over the past 50 years, each one wearing her displayed gown.

Together, the two galleries that make up “The First Ladies at the Smithsonian” showcase 24 dresses and more than 100 other objects, including portraits, White House china, personal possessions and related artifacts from the Smithsonian’s unique collection of first ladies’ materials. Among the dresses displayed in the exhibition’s first gallery are Martha Washington’s silk taffeta gown, Grace Coolidge’s flapper-style evening dress and Helen Taft’s 1909 inaugural ball gown—the first to be presented to the Smithsonian by a first lady.

The exhibition is divided into four main sections: the evolution of the First Ladies Collection, the tradition of the inaugural gown, a first lady’s contribution to the presidency and American society and the public debut of America’s more recent first ladies.

(www.artdaily.org)
Antony Gormley takes his statues to New York

British sculptor Antony Gormley is breaking into America with a debut showing of public art in Manhattan.

Visit the gallery here:

(www.guardian.co.uk)
Tate Modern Turbine Hall to host China's Warhol

The cavernous space of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall has been dwarfed by a massive spider, cleaved by a 167-metre crack and baked by an artificial sun. Now, the gallery has announced, the space is to be filled by its most politically adventurous commission yet.

Ai Weiwei is China's most famous living artist. Described by the New York Times as a "figure of Warholian celebrity" in Beijing, Ai is also an influential architect, a publisher, a restaurateur, a patron and mentor and an obsessive blogger (he is read by 10,000 people every day).

His cultural status, however, failed to protect him last year when Chinese police burst into his hotel room and beat him so badly that surgeons in Munich later had to drill two holes in his head to remove 30ml of fluid from his skull.

The attack was a reaction to Ai's investigation into the deaths of 5,250 children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, an inquiry that inspired Remembering 2009, a work made up of thousands of children's backpacks.

His outspoken challenge to the government over why so many children died was, however, just the latest in a series of provocative stances the artist has taken. He inspired Beijing's Olympic stadium but then refused to attend the opening ceremony. His criticism of the government is fearless.

He acknowledges his activism could well see him attacked again and even jailed. But these are fates viewed with equanimity by an artist who spent five of his formative years in a desert labour camp with his father, the Chinese poet Ai Qing.

"I almost got killed," he admitted after his Munich operation. "If it had been any more serious, I wouldn't be here. The point is if you want to make a point you are in danger. Whoever comes to this point will be crushed."

Ai is the 11th commission in the Tate's Unilever Series, the most popular of public art installations in recent years.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/mar/05/tate-modern-ai-weiwei...

(http://www.guardian.co.uk)
Getty Foundation Grants Put Southern California in Spotlight

The Getty Foundation will award $3.1 million in grants to 26 arts institutions for their roles in "Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980," a bonanza of exhibitions coming to Southern California in fall 2011.

The grants nearly double the foundation's financial commitment to the exhibitions. Most of the grants, to be announced today at the Chateau Marmont hotel in Hollywood, will support art shows and catalogs initiated by an earlier, $3.6-million round of Getty research and planning grants.

"It's exciting to be moving this project into the public phase, when we will see the fruits of many years of behind-the-scenes work," said Deborah Marrow, director of the foundation, the philanthropic arm of the J. Paul Getty Trust. The collaborative venture will construct an enormous patchwork quilt of Southern California's post-World War II art history in museums and galleries from San Diego to Santa Barbara. Composed of exhibitions such as "California Art in the Age of Pluralism, 1974-1980" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, "Doin' It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman's Building" at Otis College of Art and Design and "Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980" at the Hammer Museum, "Pacific Standard Time" is designed to illuminate a vibrant art community long overshadowed by its East Coast counterpart.

For Hugh Davies, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, it boils down to this: "An opportunity for a critical mass of institutions, all focusing on our art history from 1945 to 1980, to finally bring a little bit more balance between the East and West Coast in accounts of what happened during this period.

"It's great that the Getty has the vision and perspicacity to do this," he said. "And I love the fact that we are not waiting for someone else to do it. We are doing it ourselves. And who better to tell our story?"

Read the rest of the article here.

(www.latimes.com)