Romare Bearden’s vibrant mural-size tableau The Block (1971) and related sketches and photographs will be featured at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning January 15, 2010, in a small installation of works from the collection. The Block, an ambitious 18-foot-long collage, celebrates the Harlem neighborhood in New York City that nurtured and inspired so much of the artist’s life and work. Romare Bearden (American, 1911–1988), “The Block”, detail, 1971. Cut ... Read More

SALEM, MA –– The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) is pleased to announce the appointment of Anne Munsch to the post of Chief Financial Officer. Munsch comes to PEM from the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), where she served as Chief Financial Officer, and in other executive leadership capacities, for more than 12 years. Her tenure at IMA spanned an important period in the museum’s history, overseeing institutional accounting for the administrations of four museum directors. Munsch ... Read More

The University of Virginia Art Museum is the final venue of a two-year tour of “Treasures Rediscovered: Chinese Stone Sculpture from the Sackler Collections at Columbia University,” an exhibition organized by the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery of Columbia University. Touted as “eye-opening” by Roberta Smith, art critic at the New York Times, the exhibition is curated at U.Va. by Dorothy Wong, associate professor of East Asian art in the McIntire Department ... Read More

At a special presentation today, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History acquired Food Stamp Program coupons and other related materials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service, the cornerstone of U.S. food assistance programs designed to ensure that low-income citizens can obtain a nutritious diet. In October 2008, Congress renamed the Food Stamp Program to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to emphasize the program’s focus on ... Read More

The Smithsonian celebrates Black History Month in February with a series of films, lectures and performances at museums around the Institution. All programs are free unless otherwise indicated. Feature Event The Institution will kick off Black History Month at the National Museum of American History Saturday, Feb. 6, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m ., with its “Black History Month Family Day Celebration.” The day includes an award-winning interactive theatrical presentation, Join the ... Read More

The State Museum of Pennsylvania will host the traveling exhibition Tusks! Ice Age Mammoths and Mastodons from January 24 through May 2, 2010. This exhibit, created by the Florida Museum of Natural History, tells the story of mammoths and mastodons, extinct relatives of modern elephants who roamed much of North America until the end of the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago. These early proboscideans – large beasts with tusks and a long flexible trunk or proboscis – arrived in North ... Read More

Jewel-like watercolor collages bring to life the message of Martin Luther King, Jr., and tell the story of Rosa Parks, Langston Hughes, and other important figures and chapters in American history, in the exhibition Defining Moments: Works by Bryan Collier. Utilizing shape and color, combined with texture — much as he saw his grandmother do while making quilts when he was a boy — Bryan Collier has created stunning pictures, with layers of meaning, for over a dozen children’s ... Read More

The British Museum will show two major exhibitions which explore two important artistic traditions which flourished at the same time in different part of the worlds. Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings This major exhibition, supported by BP, will bring together the finest group of Italian Renaissance drawings to be seen in this country for over seventy years. Drawn from the two foremost collections in the field, the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe Uffizi in Florence and ... Read More

The BBC and the British Museum have joined forces in an original and unprecedented public service partnership, focusing on world history. At its heart is a landmark series on BBC Radio 4, ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ which will broadcast from 18 January 2010. This series is a narrative global history told through the British Museum’s unparalleled world collection. The series will tap in to the unique power of objects to tell stories and make connections across the globe. ... Read More

What happens next is a secret, an intriguing, experimental exhibition, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) on Tuesday 26 January 2010. The exhibition attempts to address the question of what happens when artworks become part of a museum collection and are subsequently shown in many different contexts. Working from a potential list, the artworks will be changed during the course of the exhibition, with removals generating absences which call to mind gaps in our ... Read More

Sir David Attenborough will tonight be honoured with the Queensland Museum’s highest award, Climate Change and Sustainability Minister Kate Jones said today. Ms Jones said internationally renowned marine sponge research scientist Dr John Hooper would also receive the 2010 Queensland Museum Medal at a Southbank awards ceremony. The awards mark the anniversary of the founding of the Queensland Museum 148 years ago on 20 January 1862. This year’s awards are themed around the ... Read More

On January 21, 2010, the Booth Western Art Museum, in Cartersville, Georgia, will host a sculpture unveiling and film screening featuring sculptor Craig Bergsgaard and award-winning writer/filmmaker Don Vasicek. These two prominent Colorado artists independently portrayed the tragic events of an 1864 skirmish between the United States and the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes on Sand Creek near Eads, Colorado. Who Bergsgaard and Vasicek will be on hand at the Booth Museum for a screening of an ... Read More

The Andy Griffith Museum has opened, providing a permanent place for the world’s largest collection of Andy Griffith memorabilia. The museum is located next door to the Andy Griffith Playhouse, a half-mile from the actor’s boyhood home. It houses a treasure trove of items collected by Emmett Forrest, a schoolmate and close friend of Griffith. Forrest’s collection has been displayed at various places in Mount Airy over the last 15 years, but never had a true home until ... Read More

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Sheldon Museum of Art presents “Rediscovering Slobodkina: A Pioneer of American Abstraction” beginning Jan. 26. On view through April 18, the retrospective showcases Esphyr Slobodkina’s role in the development of American abstraction. The exhibition includes her noted abstract artworks from the 1930s to 1950s, two original 1939 “Caps for Sale” book illustrations, her sculpture and assemblages, including ... Read More

Steelcase Inc., (NYSE:SCS) a global office environments manufacturer whose products help individuals collaborate and work more effectively and organizations use space more efficiently, announced that the Chicago Athenaeum of Architecture and Design has awarded several of its products with a Good Design(R) award. Products awarded were Elective Elements 6 New Solutions, Campfire Big Lamp, QiVi, Denizen, Emu Ivy and Emu Heaven. Founded in 1950, Good Design awards publicly acknowledge the ... Read More