Daily Art News

Donald Ellis Achieves Record Sales for Native American Art at New York's Winter Antiques Show|: As New York’s Winter Antiques Show came to the end of its ten-day run, 21 to 30 January 2011, Canadian dealer Donald Ellis Gallery reported record sales. Not only did Ellis establish a new record for any Native American item twice, when he sold two extraordinary Eskimo masks from the estate of the Surrealist artist Enrico Donati (1909-2008), his sales at the Show of US$8.4 million exceeded the record total for any auction in this field. Each year Donald Ellis publishes a scholarly catalogue in conjunction with the fair and, in addition to the 36 works sold at the Show, he sold 9 other objects immediately prior to it for around US$1.3 million.

Work by John Marin On View this Summer at the Portland Museum of Art: PORTLAND, ME.- Although John Marin (1870-1953) was regarded as one of America’s most important painters at the time of his death, scholarship and museum exhibitions to date have focused on his early work coloring popular understanding of his life’s work. Featuring approximately 60 paintings, drawings, and watercolors, John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury, on view June 23 through October 10, 2011 at the Portland Museum of Art, will concentrate on the late period of John Marin’s career between 1933 and 1953. This exhibition, the first in-depth examination of the artist since 1990, will explore his late career, will add nuance to our understanding of his work, and will reclaim Marin’s reputation as an artist committed to developing a modern visual language of landscape and place in an era preoccupied with complete abstraction. Major loans from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., as well as museums and private collections throughout the country will provide this rare opportunity to view the work a modern master.

NEW YORK (REUTERS).- Objects and artwork from the Forbidden City's hidden inner sanctum, a sealed off compound built in high luxury for the Chinese emperor's retirement, will be unveiled in New York on Tuesday. "The Emperor's Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City" opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 1 and runs until May 1. The show features 90 objects from the 27-building garden sanctuary, built at Emperor Qianlong's request in the northeast corner of Beijing's Forbidden City. Known as the Qianlong garden, the compound was supposed to be for the emperor's retirement, but he never relinquished the throne and the space remained unchanged and unoccupied since its 1776 completion. It is made up of separate buildings meant for different activities, such as the "supreme chamber of cultivating harmony," or the "building of luminous clouds." This secret garden, which curators said showcased the epitome of late 18th century Chinese skill, has remained closed to the public since it was built. It has been undergoing restoration since 2001, with expected completion in 2019.