June 2018 Art News

Following a four-year-long conservation treatment, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's "Bacchus and Ariadne(c. 1743/1745) will return to public view in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, on June 14, 2018. The comprehensive restoration has revealed elements by the Venetian master hidden from view since the work was removed from its original location at the end of the 18th century.

“You want people to see something that is important, and it’s your job as an artist to focus that somehow.” Inside his studio in El Segundo, California, Allen Ruppersberg discusses the roles collecting and copying play in his practice—and how ephemera, from old comic strips and advertising signage to historical materials from the Walker Art Center Archives, makes its way into his art.

Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker discuss Gian Lorenzo Bernini's "Pluto and Proserpina (Persephone)" (1621-22) at the Galleria Borghese in Rome.

On its final stop of a nation-wide tour, “Horse Nation of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ” is currently on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia).

The Spring sale of Asian Art at Sotheby’s France attracted a packed saleroom, and 20 phone lines with bids from around the world. The sale got off to an explosive start with the auction record achieved in France by the extraordinary recently-discovered treasure of Imperial China: a unique Imperial 18th century ‘Yangcai’ Famille-Rose porcelain vase, bearing a mark from the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736-1795).

BOSTON—The fragility of powdery pigment and the light sensitivity of the paper on which it rests mean pastels can rarely be exhibited—typically for only a few months per decade. French Pastels: Treasures from the Vault at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), provides an opportunity to see nearly 40 masterworks by 10 avant-garde artists who reinvigorated the challenging medium in the 19th century, from depictions of rural life by Jean-François Millet to portrayals of ballerinas by Edgar Degas.

Stories of art forgeries are among the most captivating the art world has to offer. In this video, Sotheby’s Director of Scientific Research James Martin and art historian Jonathan Lopez recall Han van Meegeren—one of the most infamous art forgers the world has known. Watch as they describe how nearly undetectable mistakes in his otherwise flawless copies of masterworks by artists such as Johannes Vermeer led to his downfall.

As the western art world gradually wakes up to the realization that for centuries, it has been dominated by white male artists and curators–and that this state of affairs is neither sustainable nor desirable–the Berlin Biennale, Germany’s most important contemporary art event after the quinquennial Documenta, offers a timely new perspective.

Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) presents El hombre con el hacha y otras situaciones breves (2014/2017), a large-scale installation by Argentine-born, New York-based artist Liliana Porter. Featuring hundreds of objects and fragments of various scales—from tiny figures and miniature train sets to a life-size piano that has been broken into pieces—the work is the most ambitious installation by the artist to date.

From June 8 to September 12, 2018, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will present the work of the Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966)—the first major museum exhibition in the United States in more than 15 years dedicated to the Swiss-born artist. Installed within the museum’s rotunda, Giacometti examines this preeminent modernist who is renowned for the distinctive figurative sculptures that he produced in reaction to the trauma and anguish of World War II, including a series of elongated standing women, striding men, and expressive bust-length portraits.