Daily art news

This Oct. 15, 2009 file photo shows the famous 3,300-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti seen at the "Neues Museum", New Museum, on the so-called Museum Island during a media preview in Berlin, Germany. Egypt has officially requested the return of the bust, which has been in Berlin decades. Dating back to the 14th century B.C. monarch, it tops Egypt's wish list of artifacts the country hopes to bring back as part of a campaign to retrieve thousands of antiquities spirited out during the colonial period and afterward. 

 RADFORD, VA.- Community leaders and officials from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) and Radford University gathered on Thursday evening, Jan. 20, for a preview event celebrating the opening of “Van Gogh, Lichtenstein, Whistler: Masterpieces of World Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,” an exhibition commemorating the museum’s 75th anniversary. Supported by Altria Group, the special exhibition is open to the public and is featured in the Radford University Art Museum, located in the Covington Center for Visual and Performing Arts, from Jan. 21 - March 4, 2011. Admission is free.

NORTH ADAMS, MA.- Although celebrated for the revolutionary role he played in the development of both Conceptualism and Minimalism, Sol LeWitt was also renowned for his exchanges of artwork with various artists throughout his lifetime. For LeWitt, the act of exchange seemed to be not only a personal gesture, but also an integral part of his conceptual practice. In addition to encouraging the circulation of artworks through a gift economy that challenged the art world’s dominant economic model, LeWitt’s exchanges with friends and strangers had the same qualities of generosity and risk that characterized his work in general. In the spirit of continuing the artist’s lifelong philosophy of open exchange, and in conjunction with the LeWitt Wall Drawing Retrospective on view at MASS MoCA through 2033, MASS MoCA and Cabinet present An Exchange with Sol LeWitt—a curatorial project initiated by independent curator Regine Basha. The two-part exhibition will be on view in MASS MoCA’s Prints and Drawings Gallery through March 31, 2011, and at the Cabinet exhibition and event space, located at 300 Nevins St. in Brooklyn, N.Y., through March 5, 2011.