American Art

New Britain Museum of American Art 56 Lexington St. New Britain, Conn. 860-229-0257 nbmaa.org Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thursday 11 -8 , Saturday 10 -5 , Sunday noon-5 . Adults $9, seniors $8, students $7, under age 12 free. Directions: New Britain is 110 miles or a little over two hours from Boston. Take Interstate 90 (Mass. Pike) west to exit 9 and Interstate 84. Take exit 57 (Route 15/Berlin Turnpike) and in one mile, take Route 175 west three miles to Route 9 south.

A modern art collection, including works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Salvador Dali, will be sold next week in London, Sotheby's said Saturday. The works were collected by German-born photographer Gunter Sachs, best known for his playboy lifestyle and brief marriage to French actress Brigitte Bardot. He committed suicide at the age of 78 in May 2011. Sachs had collected hundreds of art works over his lifetime and was friends with many key artists of the 20th century, including Warhol, Dali and Georges Mathieu.

A modern art collection, including works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Salvador Dali, will be sold next week in London, Sotheby's said Saturday. The works were collected by German-born photographer Gunter Sachs, best known for his playboy lifestyle and brief marriage to French actress Brigitte Bardot. He committed suicide at the age of 78 in May 2011. Sachs had collected hundreds of art works over his lifetime and was friends with many key artists of the 20th century, including Warhol, Dali and Georges Mathieu.

Spatter, splash, swivel, and swoop. Willem de Kooning's "Untitled" is a painting I go to bed dreaming about. Full of air and light, it changes speed before your eyes. Its colors — yolky yellows and pale lemon against poached-salmon pink and a sun-kissed deep-sea blue — give it a lyricism unmatched in American art (except, of course, by other de Koonings). This one — the finest de Kooning I know of in New England — is in the permanent collection of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.

NEW YORK (AP) — Helen Frankenthaler, an abstract painter known for her lyrical use of color and her stained-canvas method who led a postwar art movement that would be termed Color Field painting, has died. She was 83. Clifford Ross, Frankenthaler's nephew, says his aunt died Tuesday following a long illness at her home in Darien, Conn. One of her most famous works is ‘‘Mountains and Sea," a 1952 painting on show at the National Gallery of Art, which she created by pouring thinned paint directly onto raw, unprimed canvas laid on the studio floor.

Less than a year after the opening of the ambitious and highly successful Art of the Americas Wing, Team MFA has rolled up its sleeves yet again and opened a second wing, this one dedicated to contemporary art. Exhausted, frazzled, and bleary-eyed they may be. But they have done a fine job. In this case, the bricks and mortar were already there. The Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, as it is now called, was originally designed by I.M. Pei, tacked on to the west side of the building in 1981 and used primarily for temporary exhibitions.

Students at the Rhode Island School of Design are getting a crash course in international diplomacy as they work with a professional sculptor on artwork for a new U.S. embassy in Morocco. The collaboration with the U.S. State Department's ART in Embassies program is a first for the premiere arts school in Providence. It's given nine hand-picked students the chance to put their talents to use for Uncle Sam. "One the one hand it's a little scary, because it does put pressure on you," said Bayne Peterson, a 27-year-old graduate student from Boston.

WORCESTER - The Worcester Art Museum, which has one of the nation's great collections, is entering a period of momentous change after many years of relative stability. That stability, personified by its beloved director James A. Welu, who has worked at the museum since 1974 (as director since 1986) has served the 115-year-old museum well: Welu's contributions, both to the institution and the city, have been immense. But Welu announced his retirement in September last year. And although no one wants to come even close to criticizing him, many are privately hoping...

SCARSDALE, N.Y. -- Rita Fraad, an art collector who lent works to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, among other museums and galleries, died May 9 of cardiac arrest, her family said. Ms. Fraad was 88. Ms. Fraad collected 19th- and 20th-century works by such American greats as Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Edward Hopper. She frequently gave pieces to Smith College, from which she graduated in 1937, and was a member of an advisory board to the school's renowned art museum until last year.

Spatter, splash, swivel, and swoop. Willem de Kooning’s “Untitled’’ is a painting I go to bed dreaming about. Full of air and light, it changes speed before your eyes. Its colors — yolky yellows and pale lemon against poached-salmon pink and a sun-kissed deep-sea blue — give it a lyricism unmatched in American art (except, of course, by other de Koonings). This one — the finest de Kooning I know of in New England — is in the permanent collection of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.

NEW YORK — Edward Hopper's imagery is so deeply ingrained in the American imagination that the impulse to associate it with hackneyed states of alienation is by now difficult to undo. And yet, just as Ingmar Bergman was more than a tormented Swede shaking his fist at God — he was also a filmmaker of surpassing gentleness and sensual, mischievous humor — Hopper was much more than a poet of depression and loneliness. You simply have to look at his work to realize how various his moods are and how capacious, how richly ambivalent his images.

Students at the Rhode Island School of Design are getting a crash course in international diplomacy as they work with a professional sculptor on artwork for a new U.S. embassy in Morocco. The collaboration with the U.S. State Department's ART in Embassies program is a first for the premiere arts school in Providence. It's given nine hand-picked students the chance to put their talents to use for Uncle Sam. "One the one hand it's a little scary, because it does put pressure on you," said Bayne Peterson, a 27-year-old graduate student from Boston.

ANDOVER - Really good artists synthesize all they know about art into something original and new. But history is always looking over their shoulders. Take Carroll Dunham as an example. The painter has, over the years, integrated elements of Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism, and cartoon imagery. Dunham has curated "Open Windows: Keltie Ferris, Jackie Saccoccio, Billy Sullivan, and Alexi Worth," at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, setting four contemporary artists in the context of American...

The allure of "Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art" is its upending of the divide between traditional and contemporary art. What might look like a radical departure at first glance isn't necessarily so. In two videos by Tlingit/Aleut artist Nicholas Galanin, a break dancer moves to the rhythms of a traditional tribal song, then a Tlingit dancer performs to a rap song. If you can get to the exhibit, running though April 29 at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, by all means, go. The next best thing is...

Mike Kelley, the daring and influential contemporary installation artist who counted the band Sonic Youth and artist Paul McCarthy among his collaborators, has died, police said Wednesday. He was 57. Kelley's body was found at his home Tuesday night and it appeared he had committed suicide, South Pasadena Police Sgt. Robert Bartl said, without providing further information on the death. An autopsy was pending. The artist's death brings a tragic end to a career empowered by both a punk-rock rebelliousness and pop-culture kitsch.

SALEM - "The chair from the Museum of Fine Arts is here," someone said softly. Four pairs of purple-gloved hands moved to place a wood-framed side chair gently atop a pedestal in the gallery of the Peabody Essex Museum, each chair leg landing on a protective square of plastic. The piece on loan from the MFA was not a treasure from Versailles. It was an Algonkian/Mi'kmaq chair from the mid-1800s, delivered to the Peabody Essex last month, with designs on the upholstery rendered in porcupine quills.

The Museum of Fine Arts has reinstated its award for local women artists and increased the cash amount that goes with it as preparations continue for the opening of the museum’s new wing for contemporary art. This year’s Maud Morgan Prize goes to Cambridge artist Wendy Jacob, whose work will be shown in the Linde Family Wing when it opens in September. Jacob, 53, an artist who creates sculptures and site-based installations, will also receive $10,000. “I grew up in this area, and when I was young, from first grade on, I took Saturday art classes at the Museum of Fine Arts,’’...

With the nearly three-year-old controversy surrounding Brandeis University's proposal to shut down the Rose Art Museum and sell off its artworks finally, it seems, resolved, we can at last get back to looking at art. The Rose is offering a superb opportunity to do just that with three new shows celebrating the 50th anniversary of the museum's founding. The museum and its superb collection have never looked better. But first things first: The proposal to sell, as is obvious now and should have been obvious to all at the time, was a mistake.

NEW YORK (AP) — Helen Frankenthaler, an abstract painter known for her lyrical use of color and her stained-canvas method who led a postwar art movement that would be termed Color Field painting, has died. She was 83. Clifford Ross, Frankenthaler's nephew, says his aunt died Tuesday following a long illness at her home in Darien, Conn. One of her most famous works is ‘‘Mountains and Sea," a 1952 painting on show at the National Gallery of Art, which she created by pouring thinned paint directly onto raw, unprimed canvas laid on the studio floor.

BENTONVILLE, ARK. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art : Walmart is not a name much associated with art, nor is Arkansas thought of as a cultural mecca. That may change, at least somewhat, with the opening earlier this month of Crystal Bridges. The museum takes its name from Crystal Spring, on its site, and the way the building's design, by Boston-based architect Moshe Safdie, incorporates bridges. Funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the museum is the inspiration of Alice Walton, a leading collector of American art and the daughter of Walmart's founder, Sam Walton.