CONTENTS December 2009
EDITORIAL
The modern Old Masters
We are often told that Old Master galleries need to break down boundaries between the art of the past and that of today – but who actually benefits from this argument?
CONTEMPORARY ART
The outsiders
A ramshackle building in Primrose Hill is the home to a new museum of everything, a display of outsider art that has mainstream artists queuing up to praise it.
ARCHITECTURE
The new Neues
Berlin's Neues Museum has reopened. How justified was David Chipperfield's determination to repair the building rather than restore it?
Market Review
London’s Frieze and Art and Design Pavilion fairs were quiet successes and Sotheby’s did well with a dealer’s dusty stock-in-trade.
Art Business
Christie’s have begun to provide art insurance – at a time when a combination of factors has led to an increase in premiums.
Collectors' Focus
Exceptional chimneypieces turn up infrequently at auction but the sale of a dealer’s stock brought some fine examples onto the market this autumn, writes Annie Blinkhorn.
Market Preview
An astonishing array of superb Old Masters, including a masterpiece by Rembrandt, is on offer in London this month.
Acquisition of the Year
One of Titian’s most celebrated paintings was bought jointly by the National Galleries of Scotland and the National Gallery, London, in part with funds raised by a public appeal.
Museum Acquisitions: Apollo’s Selection from 2009
Despite a recession that has had a severe impact on many museum endowments, especially in the USA, major acquisitions continue to be made by purchase as well as gift, ranging from an extraordinary Viking treasure to a great collection of German Expressionist paintings.
Renaissance in the Galleries
This month the Victoria and Albert Museum unveils its Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, the fruit of seven years’ research and planning. Caroline Campbell reviews a major project that inspiringly combines familiar and little-known treasures with new ideas.
A New Portrait of Mozart?
Descendants of the Hagenauer family of Salzburg, friends of Mozart’s father, recently sold a group of items associated with the composer. Among them is a painting that may be an unknown portrait of Mozart. Cliff Eisen assesses the evidence.
Book of the Year
The new edition of Van Gogh’s letters is both masterly and moving, writes Martin Bailey.
Personality of the Year: Malcolm Rogers
Fifteen years ago Malcolm Rogers was appointed Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He talks to Louise Nicholson about his dynamic – and at times controversial – transformation of this great museum, culminating in the American Wing, which opens next year. Portrait by Brian Smale.
Exhibition of the Year
‘Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts’ at the Yale Center for British Art and the Fitzwilliam Museum
The Last Emperor
The British Museum challenges our preconceptions about the Aztecs in this spectacular exhibition on Moctezuma, writes Gauvin Bailey.
Now You See It
An exhibition in Florence demonstrates that trompe l’oeil is an underestimated genre as well as a teasingly enjoyable one, writes Andrea M. Gáldy.
M is for Masters
Paul Bonaventura visits the new Museum Leuven, which has opened with a spectacular exhibition on Rogier van der Weyden.
The Art of Dressmaking
An exhibition at Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris seeks to re-establish Madeleine Vionnet’s reputation as an artist, writes Sanda Miller.
Melodies in Colour
This admirable account of Giovanni Bellini is underpinned by emotion as well as intellect, writes David Ekserdjian.
Drawn to Paint
Martin Gayford welcomes a pioneering exploration of Lucian Freud’s graphic work that elucidates the complex relationship between the artist’s paintings and his works on paper.
Furnishing the Future?
A magnificent catalogue of the upholstered furniture in the Lady Lever Art Gallery prompts Adam Bowett to ask where museum catalogues go from here.