Claremont Museum of Art will close its doors 27 December after the Board of Directors voted to discontinue operations. Fundraising had begun in earnest to raise donations for the 2010 operating budget but was ultimately unsuccessful. The plan is to close, “restructure and rebuild”. via the LA Times blog Culture Monster
An overhaul of the LA County Museum of Art complex is again on the table. After the failure to get a 2/3 majority vote on a 2002 bond measure that would have paid for a Rem Koolhaus re-design, dreams of a vast renovation were put on hold. But now the LACMA board is working with…
Thomas Hoving, the former director (1967-77) of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has died. He transformed the museum by, among other things, introducing the “blockbuster” show. The King Tut exhibit was the first of such shows, now a staple in museum exhibition calendars. Mr. Hoving was only 35 when he took over as the director…
The Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena has announced that Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Comtesse d’Haussonville (1845) has arrived on loan from The Frick Collection in New York. The portrait, the first loan from the Frick in an art exchange program between the two institutions, will be exhibited October 30, 2009–January 25, 2010. The loan is also…
Highlights from the The Iraq Museum in Baghdad can now be viewed online at The Virtual Museum of Iraq. The “halls” are organized by period and offer historical and geographical background as well as sculptures and decorative objects. Objects can be explored both by description and visually via multiple views or a QTVR. Some objects…