Rik Meijers’ paintings are unforgettable. Love them or hate them, it is not possible to mistake his spirited compositions and untamed style with any other painter’s work. I first met the Dutch artist, early last month, at the opening of his joint exhibition with Jeroen van Bergen at the Bonnefanten Museum, in Maastricht… Meijers is represented […]
Category: BLOG
TEFAF – The Fairest of All Fairs
All the art world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. And one man or woman in his or her time plays many parts, …say: a historian, a dealer, a connoisseur, an auctioneer, a publisher, a banker, even an (art) insurance provider and/or a collector. These collectors are, of course, to be […]
Homa Taj In Conversation with Palazzo Strozzi’s James Bradburne on BRONZINO
Agnolo di Cosimo, also known as Bronzino (1503-1572), was one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance. Court artist to Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1574), his work embodied the sophistication of the Mannerist style. Despite his iconic portrayals of some of the most famous figures in the early modern period, there are elements of […]
Homa Taj In Conversation with De Nieuwe Kerk’s Marlies Kleiterp on the Khalili Collection
Marlies Kleiterp is Director of Exhibitions at De Nieuwe Kerk and the Hermitage Amsterdam. After graduating from Leiden University as a classical archaeologist in 1988, she worked at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden for 15 years, eventually as Director of Exhibitions. She joined the management team of the Nieuwe Kerk/ Hermitage Amsterdam in […]
Homa Taj In Conversation with The PRADO’s Javier Barón on Passion for Renoir
The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute has been a favourite museum, since the late 1990’s, when I began research on my first (undergraduate honour’s) thesis. The paper’s subject? Pierre Auguste Renoir’s Journeys to Algeria, in 1882 and 1883. Naturally, the Clark’s Mademoiselle Fleury in Algerian Costume (1882) was what initially drew me to visit the delightful Williamstown. Set on […]
Homa Taj In Conversation with MoMA’s Roxana Marcoci on New Photography
Homa Taj – This year marks the 25th Anniversary of MoMA’s New Photography series. How did this project originally come about? And, what does the new show say about what photography may look like for the next quarter of a century? Roxana Marcoci – Indeed, this year marks twenty-five years since the New Photography series was launched. […]
Homa Taj on The FRICK’s Symposium on Collecting Italian Renaissance Art
On November 12th and 13th, The Frick Collection’s Center for the History of Collecting in America held its eighth symposium A Market for Merchant Princes: Collecting Italian Renaissance Paintings in America. The over-subscribed event bespoke of immense interest in the history of collecting, a burgeoning new field of study, especially in the United States. It also attested to […]
Homa Taj In Conversation with The MET’s Maryan Ainsworth on Jan Gossart’s Renaissance
I met with Dr. Maryan Ainsworth, the Curator of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the twelfth hour of my visit to her most recent exhibition which is on view until the 17th of January, 2011. No, my stay at Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance was not an exhibitionary marathon but […]
Homa Taj In Conversation with Gabriel Bauret on Contemporary Photography
Parisian-born curator, critic and photography historian, Gabriel Bauret (1951), began his studies in semiotics at the University of Paris, where he earned a Ph.D. under the direction of Roland Barthes. In 1980, Bauret became an editor for ZOOM magazine, and in 1984 he founded the photography magazine Camera International with the French publisher Contrejour. Since 1994, Bauret has worked as a […]
Homa Taj In Conversation with Van Gogh Museum’s Maite van Dijk
I met Maite van Dijk, Curator of Paintings at the Van Gogh Museum, early in October (2010) during an event that honored Dutch collectors and patrons. The highlighted included a talk by Marina Abramović the foundations of whose work were established in the Netherlands and supported by the Dutch government, in the late 1970’s. Ms. Van Dijk and […]
Homa Taj In Conversation with The Mauritshuis’ Quentin Buvelot on The Van Otterloo Collection
In Conversation with Dr. Quentin Buvelot, the Senior Curator at the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis (Het Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen, in The Hague on the outstanding collection of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo. The couple, originally from the Netherlands and Belgium, has put together a magnificent collection of Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings: all are of outstanding quality and on a […]
Homa Taj In Conversation with The Frick Collections’ Inge Reist on Collectors & Merchant Princes
The Frick Collection’s Center for the History of Collecting in America Symposium, A Market for Merchant Princes: Collecting Italian Renaissance Paintings in America, November 12-13, 2010 Founded in 1913, The Frick Collection is a gem of an institution; it is America’s answer to The Wallace Collection that was established by The 3rd Marquess of Hertford, in 1897. Not […]