Thank you again, Los Angeles Times Culture Monsters:

Several museums and art institutions, including the Orange County Museum of Art, are saying that the Judith Rothschild Foundation has failed to make good on 17 grants awarded for 2009.

The total amount of money in question reportedly amounts to more than $100,000. Some of the arts organizations have filed a formal complaint to the New York attorney general’s office.

A spokeswoman for OCMA said today that it has received a letter from the foundation stating that the grant money will be paid. The museum added that its grant from the foundation was for $4,000 and is intended to go toward costs associated with the works of Florence Miller Pierce in an exhibition titled “Illumination”…..

Read the rest online at LA times Culture Monsters

Thank you again, Los Angeles Times Culture Monsters:

Thomas P.F. Hoving, the controversial former director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art who died this month, is widely attributed (for good or ill) as the “Father of the Modern Blockbuster Exhibition,” thanks to undertakings like the first King Tut show in 1976. Big extravaganzas with jaw-dropping loans can be a revelation, and at least one from the past year made it onto my list. But so did small, quirky or unexpected presentations, proving once again that it isn't always the manufactured crowd-pleasers that end up pleasing the most. Click on the photo gallery for the 10 most fascinating museum exhibitions I saw this year.

– Christopher Knight

Also:

Architecture 2009: Christopher Hawthorne's Top 10

Music 2009: Mark Swed's Top 10

Theater 2009: Charles McNulty's Top 10

Follow this link:
Art 2009: Christopher Knight’s Top 10

More here:
Through the Lens & Beyond California: call for photography …

From ArtDaily.org:

PALM DESERT, CA.- Heather James Fine Art in Palm Desert, CA, has established itself among U.S. and international art collectors as one of the nation’s premier galleries with shows by Monet, Rauschenberg and diverse, up-and-coming young artists. Today it announces a world-class Picasso exhibition that will survey the master’s paintings, drawings and sculptures from several of his major periods, including Cubism, and will highlight an important private collection of 80 pieces….

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Major Picasso Exhibition Featuring Unique Paintings at Heather James Fine Art

From the LA Times Culture Monsters:

Which one is the Rembrandt?

That’s the question at “Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference.” Opening Dec. 8 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the exhibition will pair the 17th century Dutch master’s works with drawings of the same or similar subjects by 15 other artists — and point out ways to tell them apart.

The goal, says Lee Hendrix, the Getty’s senior curator of drawings who organized the show with an international team of colleagues, is to condense 30 years of scholarship into an illuminating exhibition. “We are demystifying the process, saying this is the way it was done and you can do it too,” he said.

Take two pen and brown ink drawings called “Christ as a Gardener Appearing to Mary Magdalene,” one by Rembrandt (right), the other by Ferdinand Bol (below). Both works, based on the story of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the recently risen Christ, were once thought to be by Rembrandt.

“But the treatments are very different,” Hendrix says. “Rembrandt makes Christ look magisterial. He lifts a finger and says, ‘Do not touch me, for I am not yet ascended to my father’ and Mary collapses in emotion. In Bol’s drawing, Christ is very nonchalant and speaks to her rather casually…..

Read the rest at the Los Angeles Times.

Fascinating article from the LA Times again.

You could call it the skeleton in the Page Museum's closet.

For years, the George C. Page Museum in Los Angeles has housed a 9,000-year-old set of bones that is said to be the only human remains recovered from the Rancho La Brea area, which is famous for its prehistorical tar pits. A cast of the skull was on display at the museum for a period but the museum withdrew it from exhibition about five years ago and placed it in storage along with the original bones.

Now, a former volunteer at the museum has published images of a facial reconstruction of the specimen against the museum's wishes. She claims that the museum is scared that her reconstruction, in which the specimen is depicted as having Native American features, will encourage tribes to reclaim the bones for reburial.

“Obviously they're not completely happy about it,” said Melissa Cooper, the former volunteer in question, when asked about going public with her work. She said that the museum won't display her images out of fear that the Chumash, a Native American tribe, will attempt to take the bones away…..

Read the complete article online at The Los Angeles Times.

David Hockney is one of the most thoughtful and prolific artists of the late 20th century with own unique dialogue with southern California.

NOTTINGHAM.- A major exhibition of over 60 works by David Hockney from national and international museum collections will open Nottingham Contemporary , one of the most interesting new spaces for art in the UK. Designed by leading architects Caruso St. John, the public opening is on Saturday November 14, 2009. The exhibition will re-examine Hockney’s work 1960-1968, his early years in London and Los Angeles, in the context of art today. It is the first time the early work – finishing with the iconic Californian painting “A Bigger Splash” – has been brought together since the Whitechapel retrospective of 1970, nearly 40 years ago.

David Hockney

Today on ArtDaily.org:

DURHAM, NC.- “Big Shots: Andy Warhol Polaroids,” an exhibition of rare photographs, many depicting celebrities, will open at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke on Thursday, Nov. 12. The exhibition includes about 250 Polaroids and 75 silver gelatin black-and-white prints taken by Warhol from 1970 to 1987. The exhibition includes Warhol’s Polaroids of such famous subjects as artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, writer Truman Capote, skater Dorothy Hamill, fashion icon Bianca Jagger, artist Grace Jones, golfer Jack Nicklaus and musician Rick Ocasek….

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Nasher Museum of Art at Duke Presents "Big Shots: Andy Warhol Polaroids"

We appreciated this sharp-tongued listing SDMA’s Culture and Cocktails event tomorrow night in Balboa Park:

Culture cold war: San Diego Museum of Art’s Culture and Cocktails events are often filled with some serious gallerinas and culture vultures eyeballing each other more than the art. We don’t expect that to change between 6 and 9 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29, but scenesters take note: SDMA’s new exhibition, American Artists of the Russian Empire, featuring mid-century work from Russian artists who emigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union pre- and post-WWII, is a stirring show that’s worth taking an hour or so to peruse. There will also be complimentary cocktails (we have a feeling vodka will be involved), DJs, an interactive watercolor activity and an after-party at The Prado restaurant for post-culture schmoozing. 1450 El Prado in Balboa Park. $15. www.sdmart.org.