The Tim Rogers Band perform at ‘Starry Nights’, an evening event hosted by the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra during the ‘Masterpieces from Paris’ exhibition – visit the NGA’s Facebook or Flickr pages for more of their photographs. @National Gallery of Australia

On Sunday evening, 5 pm local time, the doors finally closed at Canberra’s National Gallery of Australia on the ‘Masterpieces from Paris‘ exhibition. By all accounts, the exhibition closed on an incredible high for the Gallery. [Read more →]

Claude Monet. The Japanese Footbridge [Le Pont japonais]. c. 1920–22. Oil on canvas. 89.5 cm x 116.3 cm. © The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Grace Rainey Rogers Fund.

Review of ‘Monet’s Water Lilies’ at MoMA, New York

It took me a long time to get down to the much-loved exhibit of six of Monet’s late garden paintings, created in his 70s and 80s at Giverny. Fortunately, though the one large exhibit room was crowded, one could still spend some time with the paintings which I did. [Read more →]

“We predicted that we would get 250,000 people, but we didn’t predict that we would get 250,000 people six weeks before the finish of the exhibition and before Easter,” he said. “So we’re very thrilled about that.” Ron Radford, Director National Gallery of Australia, 2010.

The summer exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, has broken previous attendance records. The exhibition opened 4 December 2009, and on Friday 26 February Ron Radford, Director of the National Gallery, personally welcomed the 250 000th visitor. According to tourism statistics, around 70% of the visitors are from outside Canberra. The previous record was set in 1992, with Rubens and the Italian Renaissance which attracted 241 770 visitors. [Read more →]

Claude Monet, Plage de Pourville, 1882. Oil on canvas (60 X 73 cm). © National Museum in Poznań, Poland. Stolen from the Museum in 2000, and recovered by Polish Police 12 January 2010.

Monet’s Plage de Pourville, painted in 1882 and stolen in 2000 from National Museum in Poznań, Poland, was recently recovered by the Polish police and presented to an eager press-pack in Poznań. And yesterday, 1 March, the man who stole Poland’s only painting by Monet was placed under psychiatric observation. [Read more →]

“This partnership speaks to the role that visual arts can play beyond aesthetic enjoyment. Every time we work with a different audience we learn so much more about how our works of art are meaningful to other people.” Dale Hilton, Cleveland Museum of Art, February 2010

Yesterday, 24 February 2010, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Clinic jointly hosted a symposium exploring the possibility of making art accessible to dementia patients. [Read more →]

Claude Monet, Wisteria, 1917-1920. Oil on canvas (100 x 300 cm). © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris. On display at the Fundación Caja Madrid, as part of Monet and Abstraction.

The Spanish Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, in collaboration with the Fundación Caja Madrid, is currently hosting an exhibition of a selection of Claude Monet’s paintings that presents an innovative perspective. ‘Monet and Abstraction‘ demonstrates Claude Monet’s influence on the development of abstraction in in Western art during the second half of the 20th century. [Read more →]

”

People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.” Claude Monet, 1902.

As Claude Monet painted the Rouen Cathedral 30 times at different times of the day and in different weather conditions over a period of a few months, it is not that surprising then that the Cathedral will play an important part in this year’s summer festival to celebrate the impressionists in Normandy. [Read more →]

Camille Pissarro, View of Rouen, 1898, oil on canvas. © Honolulu Academy of Arts

The role played by the city of Rouen in the history of Western art at the end of the nineteenth century is immense. Camille Pissarro is said to have remarked that “Rouen is a beautiful as Venice”.

This summer the museum of Fine Art in Rouen will host a major exhibition of Impressionist artists as part of the Normandie Impressionniste 2010 festival:

President Sarkozy of France is said to be considering whether Claude Monet’s remains should be removed from the church cemetery in Giverny to the Panthéon in Paris.

The Panthéon (the name derives from an ancient Greek word meaning ‘every god’), located in the Latin Quarter of Paris, is the chosen burial place for France’s national heroes, and currently includes the likes of Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Louis Pasteur, Pierre and Marie Curie, to name but a few. An act of Parliament is required for a person’s remains to be interred therein, the last person person being Alexandre Dumas whose remains were reburied in 2002. [Read more →]