Museums Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Jordi de Nadal

Seven for seven: From Bilbao to where your luck will take you.

Posted on 3 August, 201714 September, 2017

1. Paret, at a discount.

The Museo de Bellas de Bilbao is exhibiting the first acquisition of Miguel Zuzaga as his new director: an exquisite copper by Luis Paret y Alcázar (Madrid 1746-1799), The Harbour of Bermeo (60 x 83,5 cm). It was bought in at the sale of its former collection at Christie’s, on December 7h, 2016. The estimate then was GBP 1,200,000 – 1,800,000; the selling price now has been €900,000, according to EFE’s note. The museum has posted a commentary on the work.

2. Torino wins.

Already home of one of the best Egyptian museums of Europe, and also of the fine Galleria Sabauda, Torino, Italy, has announced it has won the long term loan of extraordinary and very private collection of the late Francesco Cerrutti. It plans to open to the public in January 2019 in its Castello di Rivolo, according to Il Giornale dell’Arte and artnet news. The renowed collection is a careful selection of 300 paintings and sculptures from Medieval to Contemporary, plus 200 rare books and 300 items of fine furniture, which, according to its director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, will make the Castello “the first contemporary art museum in the world to incorporate an encyclopedic historic art collection”. At The Art Newspaper you will find a portrait of Cerrutti and the announcement of a conference about him for 2018.

3. Sacharoff heads north.

Georgia-born refugee Olga Sacharoff (1889-1967) will have her 50th death anniversary celebrated with a retrospective (“Olga Sacharoff. Pintura, poesia, emancipació”) at the Museu d’Art de Girona, opening on November 25th (Elina Norandi is its curator). A good occasion to rediscover her, after her previous retrospective in la Pedrera, Barcelona, in 1994 (catalogue here). Other activities of this Year Sacharoff will be held in Barcelona, where she lived with his husband, the photographer and painter Otto Lloyd, from 1940 until her death.

4. Rosa Maria Malet, segona part?

Rosa Maria Malet is retiring as Director of the Fundació Miró, Barcelona, after 37 years of distinguished service. She gave a long interviewsto Avui, El País and Ara (in Catalan). But perhaps these are not the last words we hear from her in public: “I would perhaps have an opinion and think about different options”, she answered when asked whether she would like to be further involved in culture public matters. The deadline for candidates to her post is July 21st (requirements here).

5. Fortuny revisited.

The Prado will host a generous retrospective of the works of Marià Fortuny (1838-1874), from November 21st 2017 to March 18st, 2018. “This will be an exceptional and unrepeatable exhibition as in addition to examples of his paintings, watercolours, drawings and prints it will include items from Fortuny’s exquisite collection of antiquities and works of art which he housed in his studio”, reads the announcement. It will include his copy of Ribera’s Saint Andrew sold to the museum by truly yours.

6. The French director inside you.

For sure you have always dreamed about directing a big French museum: : Connaisance des Arts offers you a test to finally discover which one.

7. In the meantime.

If you have more modest dreams, however, you can still aply for directorships at Palais Galliera- Musée de la Mode, Paris (until September 15th), Musées de la Ville de Béziers (until August, 31st) or Musée de la Ville de Challon (until September, 15th). All the details in museesemplois.worpress.com.

Seven for seven: From Sijena to Washington.

Posted on 27 July, 201714 September, 2017

1. Italy, capital Sijena.

Among this season’s sleepers, this powerful Adoration of the Magi (155,5 x 130,5 cm) stands out. It came as “Italian School, 16th century” at Stuker Bern last June, 20th. It rocketed from a modest CHF 5,000 estimate to a CHF 130,000 result and can safely be assigned to the Aragonese Master of Sijena, probably for the main retable in the monastery of the same town – his Nativity from the same retable now at the Prado measures 171,5 x 130,5 cm, a difference of 16 cm that may be explained by some trimming on the bottom of the piece.

2. Sunnier days for Venusti?

At Christie’s last Old Masters Day Sale (July 7th), this fine Deposition attributed to Marcello Venusti (?1512/1515 – 1579) rose from an estimate of GBP 20,000 to a final price of GBP 115,000 (including buyer’s premium). It is a record for an artist who, as the title of the forthcoming catalogue by Dr Francesca Parrilla points out, has yet to come out from his friend Michelangelo’s long shadow (Marcello Venusti, un pittore all’ombra di Michelangelo, ed. Campisano, Rome). For a good report on the best results of the rest of the Old Masters sales, see this article at The Telegraph.

3. Already here.

Quite ahead from the opening day, the catalog for the upcoming exhibition “Murillo. The Self-portraits” in the Frick Collection, NY (30.10.2017-10.02.2018) and then in the National Gallery, London (28.02.2018 – 21.05.2018) is already on sale – edited by Xavier F. Salomon, Chief Curator at the Frick, and Letizia Treves, curator of later Italian, Spanish, and French 17th-century paintings at the National Gallery.

4. Rigaud reopens.

After a 9M€ refurbishment, the Musée Rigaud reopened last May. Didier Rikner dislikes the result. Anyway, you will still find there the great Retable of the Trinity, by the anonymous Master of the Llotja de Mar de Perpinyà, and also some new loans of works by Aristides Maillol from the Foundation Dina Vierny.

5. Challenging Nonell.

In this interesting article in Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide, Illinois University PhD student Maria A. Dorofeeva explores the reasons behind the negative contemporary reaction to Isidre Nonell’s exhibition in 1903, at the all-conservative Sala Pares, Barcelona: the gipsy, destitute women portrayed in his paintings challenged stablished and reassuring conventions about them.

6. It’s a hospital… are the new NATO’s headquarters …. no, it’s a museum!

The new but not opened Museo de Colecciones Reales (Madrid) has been bestowed with the FAD Architecture Award 2017. Not my taste.

7. Alternatives.

Artsy has a nice piece about fine new buildings for art – among them, David Adjaye’s strong and elegant National Museum of African American Art, Wahington.

Seven for seven: From Torroella to the Courtauld Institute

Posted on 20 July, 201714 September, 2017

1. After beach time.

The Fundació Mascort in Torroella de Montgrí (in North Catalonia, close to the coast) is showing the Selected Pieces of its founder’s collection, until October 15th. They are displaying them as they were the normal furnishings of their lovely house, the Casa Galibern, and the effect is refreshing. You will find, among other interesting items, a splendid cross from 15th century Barcelona, attributed to Pere Barnès. For good ice cream, try the local Gelats Angelo (at Bohème or El Cruixent shops).

2. A Catalan in Texas.

Appollo Magazine informs us the Meadows Museum bought this panel with Saints Benedict and Onophrius attributed to Pere Vall. Dated c. 1410, it is only the third work before 1450 in the collection. The happy seller was Sam Fogg.

3. Now it is public.

José Ángel Montañes reviews in El País the Generalitat of Catalonia’s 2016 acquisitions list (“Más patrimonio para todos”, May 1st, 2017). It includes this Saint James Apostle by Ramon Solà II, a painter from Girona. It was found by yours truly, and it will join the Museu d’Art de Girona’s fine Medieval collection.

4. Great job in a great work.

Bartolomé Bermejo’s masterpiece The Pietat Desplà looks spectacular after its restoration (paid by Fundació Banc Sabadell). It has now returned to the small museum in the Barcelona’s Cathedral cloister. Otherwise, between in October 2018 and February 2019 the Prado in Madrid will host a comprehensive retrospective of Bermejo’s works, curated by Joan Molina from the Universitat de Girona.

5. They found gold.

The Centre de Restauració de Béns Mobles de la Generalitat has published this tape of its excellent cleaning of the Romanesque Portal in Santa Maria of Ripoll – in collaboration with Arcovaleno. Perhaps you can spot a golden beard. Here you can download an executive summary (in Catalan). In Arcovaleno’s website there is some extra material.

6. Leonardo shines again.

After a year of research and discussion, followed by five and a half years of actual cleaning and restauration work, Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi is hanging again in the Uffizi (“Firenze, l’Adorazione dei Magi restaurata debutta ai Uffizzi”, La Reppublica, 27.03.2017). Specialist Frank Zöllner hails it as a brilliant answer to the restorer’s permanent dilemma: to erase or not to erase the work’s physical past. (“Ist Mückenschiss keine wahrhafte Geschichtsspur?”, F.A.Z., 26.04.2017).

7. Medieval ivories, now less rare.

When looking for 14th and 15th century ivory caskets, I came across the impressive Gothic Ivories Project mantained by the Courtauld Institute, which includes the medieval ivory collections of more han 400 than institutions and archives, for a total of over 5100 objects.

20.06.2015. From Barcelona to Basel

Posted on 21 June, 2015

1. The road to heaven.

This Spanish School – Circle of José de Ribera rocketed from an estimate of €4,000 to a hammer price of €350,000. It might be by the master himself, although I won’t rule out the name of Juan Do (Saint Jerome, oil on canvas, 135 x 102 cm, La Suite Subastas, Barcelona June 18^th, 2015, lot 32).

2. The naturalized Pietà.

What came to auction in Germany as the work of an Italinienischer Meister, turned out to be a fine panel by the Spanish Maestro de la Piedad, who was working around 1400 in the Toledo area under a strong Neapolitan or Southern Italian influence. It now belongs to a private collector.

3. A journey with Mr Wiseman.

Wiseman’s extraordinary National Gallery is a filmed play that opens with a rather topical argument about museums and its public (which Director Neil McGregor wins over, thanks to the old lawyer’s trick of asking the other part to produce the actual proof of her quite foggy claim), and takes you all the way up to two professional dances performing before Titian’s Diana and Acteon and its sequel Death of Acteon, as a way to celebrate its reunion. From talking about art to just contemplating it, as Richard Brody puts in The New Yorker, Wiseman’s way is a fascinating journey.

4. The Greek route.

While the magnificient Defining Beauty in the British Museum shows the multiple ways the Greeks explored the human figure; the tiny, carefully selected Maillol and Greece in the Museu Marés, Barcelona, explains which lessons took and retook the creator of the Mediterranée (1905) from the kouros and other archaic examples, during his trip in mainland Greece between April and May 1908. Curator Alex Susanna claims this was a key moment for modern sculpture, since Maillol’s quiet, self-contained forms opened the door to cold, modern, abstract works.

5.And then, Picasso.

No survey would be complete without the Master, so MOMA’s Picasso Sculpture (opening on September, 14th) comes particularly at hand for exploring further the birth of contemporary sculpture. According to David Ebony in Art in America, it will include the 1909 Head of Fernande – and perhaps the 1912 Cardboard Guitar?

6. A word from the lawyer.

Rebecca Foden, the lawyer from Boodle Hatfield LLP that represented Mr Thwaytes in his lost case against Sotheby’s, gives here some valuable pieces of advice about consigning works to auction.

7. The return of the prodigal son.

The most commented piece news from the ground floor of this year’s Art Basel was the return of Helly Nahmad with a spectacular stand (see reports at Artnet and Artnews). But it was not all about big works by big names. I was attracted by the reunion of these little Miró: no less than three, all of the same year (1944), all from the same series. I didn’t dare ask their price.