Creator or Buyer: Who Really Owns the Art?

When we purchase an item, whether it’s a blender, a car, or a really cool toboggan for snowmageddon races, the purchaser owns what the bought and can modify it to their heart’s content.  Buying an artistic work, on the other hand and the ownership is joint, with some right going to the buyer while others are retained by the work’s creator.

Read all about it here.

XLIX

41-10 Hawks

How to turn $5,000 into $5.2M in 18 months

The award for the most compelling market tale undoubtedly goes to the third highest-selling painting, a rediscovered John Constable landscape, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831), that sold for $5.2 million, far exceeding its $3 million high estimate. The consignor had acquired the work at Christie's London in July 2013, and paid a mere $5,300 for it, but then set about getting the work authenticated as a Constable. (See Sotheby's Ratchets Up Price on Rediscovered Constable).

See the whole article by Eileen Kinsella here.

Do you think that the previous owner, who dished this out for $5K, is pissed off that he/she didn't do due diligence?

Visions of Home

Submission Deadline: February 20, 2015

The Art Connection in the Capital Region (ACCR) invites you to participate in Visions of Home, an exhibition and art placement project presented in conjunction with the Arts Management Program at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at George Mason University (GMU).

Visions of Home will feature original artwork that embodies the idea of "home". The artwork will be placed within nonprofit organizations that provide affordable housing to underserved communities throughout Northern Virginia. The artwork, selected by the participating nonprofits, will be considered a donation to the agencies for permanent display.

Read the prospectus

 

Wanna go to a museum talk tomorrow?

Photoworks: Presence of Place
American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center
January 24 through March 15, 2015Artist Gallery Talk:  January 31, 2015, 4PM

American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20016
Museum Hours: 11:00 AM - 4:00 PM, Tuesday-Sunday

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Elsie Hull Sprague                 Brad Beukema                Joe Cameron
Tanguy de Carbonnieres        Eliot Cohen                      Sora DeVore
Rebecca Drobis                     Saman Michael Far           Peggy Fleming
Henry Friedman                    Sheila Galagan                 Frank (Tico) Herrera
Michael Horsley                    Karen Keating                   Michael Lang
Julie Miller                             David Myers                    Christine Pearl
Mark Power                           Molly Roberts                   Gayle Rothschild
Sarah Hood Salomon            Sonia Suter                       Grace Taylor
Tom Wolff                            Alejandra Vallejo              Fred Zafran
Judith Walser

EXHIBITION OVERVIEW
Forty years ago, in a derelict building hidden among the abandoned amusement park rides of Glen Echo Park, four young photographers founded Photoworks with little more than a shared passion for the daily work of seeing, shooting, and printing images of lasting beauty and artistic integrity.

Photoworks: Presence of Place will feature works by past and present members of the Photoworks community, faculty and students who have distinguished themselves by the quality and integrity of their work. This exhibition is in memory of Elsie Hull Sprague, an artist with a MA in Film from the School of Communication, American University.

Peck on Schwartzberg

DMV artist Judith Peck reviews Deanna Schwartzberg at the gorgeous Art Museum of the Americas:

 

It was my pleasure to attend the opening reception of “Primal Connections” a one-person show by local artist, Deanna Schwartzberg, at the Art Museum of the Americas F Street Gallery.  

 

It is a deceptively simple, long, and brightly lit grand hall.  Deanna's intensely jewel colored palette and assured brush strokes lit up the space. 

  

As curator of the exhibition, “Primal Connections”, Ana Maria Ascano tells us; “Viewing the art of Deanna Schwartzberg is like reading a favorite poem.”  This thought stayed with me as I viewed an array of paintings beautifully composed, with the artist’s unique understanding of color and light.  These works spoke to me in an indirect manner, the way poetry does, igniting the mind and senses and making the artist’s subject matter all the more intense and powerful.

 

For many years, Deanna has been working with the interconnection of humanity and the world of nature. She gave an intriguing talk about how she went from nonobjective painting to finding her voice in paintings that invite us, the viewer, to discover with her the fluid relationship between body and nature.  In her larger works a powerful figure merges with an abstracted landscape. The subject matter resonates, and her color choices are so inventive that we feel we are discovering places we have been, perhaps only in a dream.

 

Along with eight large figurative pieces, the artist has an installation of 28 small painted faces.  The poem by the artist, Primal Connections, is the source of inspiration for these works. The faces, each have a feminine name for one of the elements: earth, fire and air. Each one is different and expressive in its own way.  Neither happy, sad, scared nor surprised, they appear to be centered in their own thoughts and feelings and part of the drama and wonder of the world that surrounds them.

 

You can contact the museum or the artist directly at schwartzbergart@verizon.net to find out when tours are available. Hours are by appointment only.

 

“Primal Connections”

Paintings by Deanna Schwartzberg

Art Museum of the Americas F Street Gallery, 

1889 F St NW,

Washington, DC
Opening Reception  Jan 28    Jan28 through March 6, 2015.

Contact; Art Museum of the Americas, 202- 370- 0151, for appointments and tours.

Why Self-Censorship of Controversial Artwork is Wrong

Following the shocking events of the massacres and sieges in Paris, a debate has raged over whether or not to publish images of the prophet Muhammad for fear of reprisals, apparently from whichever shadowy fundamentalists might be out there.

So, the latest news, that London's Victoria & Albert Museum quietly pulled from its website a reproduction of a 1990 Iranian poster depicting Muhammad, held in the V&A's collection, is dispiriting. Citing the level of “security alert" the V&A has to operate under, a spokeswoman defended that the work, “as with most of our reserve collections, would be made available to scholars and researchers by appointment."

Read the whole piece by JJ Charlesworth in artnetnews here.