Summer Courses at Sotheby's Institute of Art - New York

Enrollment in the 4-week summer courses at Sotheby's Institute of Art in New York is now open to college students, professionals in the field, experts-in-training and career-changers and international students while visiting the U.S. on a tourist visa.

Without any formal entry requirements, these courses allow students to develop professional expertise, critical thinking skills, and enhance their knowledge of art and about the international art market, while at the same time providing interesting and compelling insights into the art world, lectures, guest speaker interviews, and site visits led by Sotheby’s Institute of Art faculty, international experts, and leading practitioners in the field.

The intensive 4-week courses will be divided in two sessions:

31 May – 23 June, 2011:

Emerging Markets in the Global Art World.
Explore contemporary art from emerging markets such as China, Korea, India, and the Middle East, and examine developments in regions that lie beyond what was once neatly defined as "the West."

Legal Adventures & Misadventures in the Art World.
Gain an overview of important legal issues and cases in art by exploring subjects such as copyright, fair use and the appropriation of images by artists. No legal background is required.

Being a Curator in the 21st Century.
Examine today's most influential curators and seminal exhibitions of contemporary art from around the world, and analyze how the 'business' of curating has evolved over the last two decades.

Art of the Object.
Explore first-hand the essential characteristics of individual objects, covering key aspects of connoisseurship from construction to condition reports, to fully understand what to look for when assessing works of art.

Impressionism to Now.
In this intensive introduction to modern and contemporary art, students examine different movements, schools and the kinds of visual art-making practices that have proliferated since the late nineteenth century.

Contemporary Art in New York.
Get an insider's look at today's vibrant contemporary art market in New York through gallery, museum, auction house, and studio visits and gain an understanding of both contemporary art history and the newest developments.

5 July – 28 July, 2011:

Contemporary Art: Market Theory & Practice.
Students analyze the business aspects of the market for contemporary art and explore the theories behind how monetary values are attributed to objects considered by some to be priceless, and others to be worthless.

Art Marketing & Communications.
Explore the full range of marketing approaches that visual arts businesses and organizations use to communicate about their activities, attract collectors and visitors, and build their institutional brands.

How to Run a Gallery.
Gain an overview of the gallery business, from initial funding, forming an artist roster, and procuring artwork, to exhibition planning, marketing and communication strategies, and negotiating prices.

Art and Collectors.
Investigate changing taste and historical trends in collecting. Topics include motivations of historical and contemporary collectors, the economics of collecting (supply and demand), connoisseurship, and aesthetics.

Moving Images: Contemporary Photography, Video, and Film.
Explore the uses (and abuses) of the moving image in art today, while examining shifts in contemporary photography, the emergence of the artist's film, the growth of video-installations, and other critical issues in the field.

Contemporary Art in New York.
Get an insider's look at today's vibrant contemporary art market in New York through gallery, museum, auction house, and studio visits and gain an understanding of both contemporary art history and the newest developments.

All courses are offered on a non-credit basis. Students who wish to take the 4-week intensive courses for credit should inquire about requirements from their home institution. It is advisable to seek approval prior to taking the course as credit acceptance is at the discretion of individual institutions.

For students who have received approval to take the course for credit, some seminars and field trips are mandatory, and there may be an additional exam or written assignments due at the end of the course.

The registration for the Summer Study Courses at the Sotheby's Institute of Art in New York can be made online, by phone or fax.

For further information or questionsabout Public Programs, please email: publicprogramsNY@sothebysinstitute.com

This article contains excerpts from artandeducation.net and Sotheby's Institute of Art - New York

The Sunday Telegraph Watercolour Competition: the winner will be announced and their work published on May 8th

On the 4th of February The Sunday Telegraph launched a watercolour competition under the theme "The Great British Landscape", to coincide with Tate Britain’s blockbuster show, Watercolour.

It was previewed that the winner would be announced and their work published in The Sunday Telegraph on Sunday, April 24, 2011, however The Art Inquirer has been informed by an official source that due to the very high number of entries, which subsequently took rather a long time to go through, the winning watercolour will be published on the 8th of May.

artbygenève 2011 at Palexpo, Geneva

Taking place at Palexpo, Geneva, the 2011 edition of artbygenève aims to provide an optimal public access and enjoyment, where exhibitors and public have the opportunity to establish relations in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere.

Galleries, artists and protagonists will be able to present themselves and their works to the general public and collectors in an efficient way, while visitors will be provided with specific and relevant information concerning the different trends and disciplines represented in order to help deciding which artworks to acquire.

Counting with 40 galleries, artbygenève will be presented in 4 sections:

artbygalleries: galleries selected for the quality of the artworks they highlight especially galleries that spot tomorrow’s talent.

artbyfoundation: a selection of artists and groups of artists presented by the Visual arts foundation.

artbymedia: special interest press, art publishers, bookstores, organizations.

artbymuseum: area devoted to foundations, museums and institutions.

For the first time at artbygenève, the Art and History Museum Library (Librairie du Musée d'Art et d'Histoire), located inside the Geneva Art and History Museum and founded by Luca Notari in 2002, will unveil a unique and ephemeral collection of more than 500 books, entirely dedicated to art.

Every day the library will organise an open to everyone event, where a meeting between an artist and an author will take place at tea-time (5 pm) in a friendly surrounding.
The presentations will be in French.

Regarded as an opportunity for everyone, especially for emerging artists and emerging art collectors, artbygenève 2011 will run from Friday 29 April through Tuesday 3 May (preview on 28 April) in the halls 4 and 5 of Palexpo-Geneva, at the same time as the 25th International Book and Press Fair: SILP, Geneva (25 Salon International du Livre et de la Presse, Genève).

Admission to the Fair will be free on Friday 29 April.

"The Prince and the Paper" at the Israel Museum

Born in Vienna, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II (1765–1833) belonged to one of Hungary’s wealthiest and most revered aristocratic families. He continued his family’s tradition of art patronage, establishing an impressive collection of paintings, drawings, prints, neoclassical sculpture, minerals, and books.

Now the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, brings to the public an important exhibition of the collection of Nicolas II Esterhazy (1765-1833), a patron of the arts whose collection found its permanent home at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

Entitled The Prince and the Paper. Masterworks from the Esterhazy Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, and focusing on 16th – 18th century prints and drawings of the German, Italian, French and Netherlandish schools, the exhibition features works by Carracci, Cranach, Durer, Fragonard, Poussin, Raphael, Rembrandt, Tiepolo, and Veronese, among others.

The exhibition is curated by Meira Perry-Lehmann, Michael Bromberg Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings and the collection is curated by Zsuzsa GondaCurator of Prints and DrawingsMuseum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

Available for viewing until July 1, 2011 at the Rena (Fisch) and Robert Lewin Gallery, this is the first in a series of Israel Museum exhibitions showcasing private art collections that were donated to public institutions.

MOCA presents Art in the Streets

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is showing the first major U.S. museum exhibition on the history of graffiti and street art until August 8, 2011, at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.

Organized by Jeffrey Deitch and associate curators Roger Gastman and Aaron Rose, Art in the Streets signs the development of graffiti and street art from the 1970s to the global movement it has become today, showcasing the works by 50 of the most renowned artists by the graffiti and street art community, including including Banksy (London), Fab 5 Freddy (New York), Lee Quiñones (New York), Futura (New York), Margaret Kilgallen (San Francisco), Swoon (New York), Shepard Fairey (Los Angeles), Os Gemeos (São Paulo), and JR (Paris).

The exhibition emphasizes Los Angeles’s role in the evolution of graffiti and street art, with
special sections dedicated to cholo graffiti and Dogtown skateboard culture, as well as hilighting
photographers and filmmakers who documented graffiti and street art culture including Martha Cooper, Henry Chalfant, James Prigoff, Steve Grody, Gusmano Cesaretti, Estevan Oriol, Ed Templeton, Larry Clark, Terry Richardson, and Spike Jonze.
Works by influential local artists such as Craig R. Stecyk III, Chaz Bojórquez, Mister Cartoon, Robbie Conal, RETNA, SABER, REVOK, and RISK, are also featured.

Art in the Streets also features a timeline illustrated with artwork
photography, video, and ephemera, providing a compehensive historical context to its visitors.

The exhibition includes several shows, namely a special section dedicated to the Fun Gallery and curated by its founder Patti Astor, featuring the works of Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the graffiti artists who shaped the gallery’s history.

The public can also visit a section dedicated to the seminal film Wild Style (1983), co-curated by the film’s director Charlie Ahearn, documenting its influence on the global dissemination of graffiti and hip-hop culture, watch a memorial presentation of Battle Station by legendary artist and theorist RAMMELLZEE, and a display of graffiti black books and other historic works
from the Martin Wong Collection presented in collaboration with the Museum of the City of New York.
A re-creation of an urban street complete with overturned trucks by Todd James, Barry McGee, and Steve Powers, offers a Los Angeles version of Street Market.

An extensive programme of educational and community workshops complements the exhibition, including a graffiti and street art film festival presented in collaboration with the Cinefamily, music and dance programs featuring some of the originators of hip-hop and break dancing, and an admission free Levi’s® Film Workshop at MOCA, offering a diverse schedule of programming that celebrates the craft of filmmaking and explores the exhibition’s subject matter.
A special version of Associate Curator Aaron Rose’s Make Something!! educational project will also be presented at various Los Angeles high schools.

A comprehensive catalogue on the history of graffiti and street art published by Skira Rizzoli and edited by Nikki Columbus, former associate editor of Artforum, will accompanies the exhibition.

Following MOCA’s presentation, the exhibition will travel to the Brooklyn Museum, where it will be on view March 30–July 8, 2012.
This major exhibition follows a partnership between the Brooklyn Museum and MOCA started in 2005 with Brooklyn-organized exhibition of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, followed by the MOCA-organized ©MURAKAMI in 2007. A partnership between two major culture institutions that has proved itself successful by bringing to the public a major record of public art over the past half century.

Art in the Streets can be visited until August 8, 2011, at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (formerly The Temporary Contemporary).

The Affordable Art Fair New York City 2011

The Spring 2011 edition of the Affordable Art Fair New York City will be inaugurated at 7W 34th Street (7 West 34th Street) on Thursday, May 5th ( private preview on Wednesday, May 4, 6pm - 9pm) and will run until the 8th of May.

Counting with over 60 international exhibiting galleries , the AAF NYC Spring 2011 will include workshops, children's activities, and a special section of nine galleries exhibiting solely work by women artists.

Worth mentioning is a silent art auction in partnertship with The Affordable Art Fair New York City hosted by Children's Cancer & Blood Foundation (CCBF) that will include 10 works donated by AAF NYC's exhibiting galleries.
All proceeds from the auction will go to enable the foundation to provide much needed medication, chemotherapy and other life-saving treatments to children who would not otherwise be able to afford care.

The fair presents quality contemporary art and is an opportunity to learn about art collecting in a relaxed environment and start your own private collection since the prices go from just $100 up to $10,000, making it affordable to practically anyone.

Please refer to this page to learn about location, transports, ticket prices and other relevant information.

The Affordable Art Fair was founded by Will Ramsay in 1999 with the purpose of making contemporary art accessible to everyone, and to show that one doesn't need to be an art expert or a millionaire to enjoy and buy art.

With fairs taking place in Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, New York, Milan and Singapore, while affiliate events include Sydney and Melbourne, the AAF has gained global recognition and has been visited by 783,000 people globally, buying over £120 million of art.

The Greatest Fakers, Counterfeiters and Art Frauds in the World

Many of us share a secret admiration for those who possess the skill to counterfeit a famous work of art, or even create a painting in the style of a famous old master making most of us, and sometimes even experts, believe that it was created by the old master himself.
The fact that some of them managed to get away with it, at least for a while, ads to that admiration, even if their condemnable acts have caused losses.

Now the readers of The Art Inquirer can satisfy their curiosity upon this subject and learn the names of some of the world's greatest and most famous art fakers such as Piero del Pollaiuolo, Michelangelo Simoni, Paul Désiré Trouillebert, Émile Schuffenecker, Han van Meegeren, and Chang Dai-chien / Zhang Daqian.

Included are also forgers and counterfeiters like Reinhold Vasters, 'Baron' Charles Weisberg, Brigido Lara, Riccardo Riccardi and Alfredo Fioravanti: (The Ricardi family), The Mudlark Forgers, and 'Operation Dealer no Deal'.

A section mentioning frauds and scandals, namely Edouardo Marquis of Valfierno (Mona Lisa art theft), Otto Wacker (Vincent van Gogh art fraud), Ethem Ulge (Fake paintings on ebay), is also provided.

Master copyists such as Gustav Klimt, Peter Paul Reubens, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, and The Posin Brothers also have a dedicated section.

All this information that includes the history of the greatest fakers, counterfeiters and art frauds in the world, has been placed together under a unique resource brought to you by Art Fake.net with the support of Freemanart Consultancy.

Antalya, Turkey will host Sandland 2011

The 5th International Antalya Sand Festival "Sandland 2011," in the Mediterranean province of Antalya, Turkey, will be inaugurated on May 1, 2011, counting with the participation of nearly 25 professional sculptors from around the world who already started working on their sculptures since this April.

This year's edition is dedicated to Hollywood and will show 30 famous reproductions, including ‘Back to The Future,’ ‘Braveheart,’ ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Jurassic Park,’ ‘E.T,’ ‘Spiderman,’ ‘Jaws,’ ‘King Kong,’ ‘The Godfather,’ ‘The Matrix,’ ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ ‘Harry Potter,’ ‘Transformers,’ ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ ‘James Bond’ and ‘Lord of the Rings.’

Visitors will see immortal Hollywood actors such as Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin in the fantasy world of sand, as well as a 25-meter-tall dinosaur sand sculpture that will add to the atmosphere of ‘Jurassic Park.’
Special lighting and sound effects will add colour to the sand sculptures at night, enhancing the experience.

Artists from United States, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Spain, Portugal and Turkey will use near 10,000 tones of sand to create the 30 Hollywood scenes.

Last year the festival was visited by near 160,000 and more than 200,000 are expected this year, making it a reference in it's kind and a contribution to the tourism in Turkey and more specifically Antalya.

The Sandland 2011 - 5th International Antalya Sand Festival, can be visited until November 14, 2011.

The Art Inquirer could not find an official website of the event, but you may probably get more information, should you wish to visit the festival, at the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Weekend With the Masters Intensive: New York

Those wanting to get in close touch with renowned artists and learn what they have to share from their knowledge and experience can register for the American Artist’s Weekend With the Masters Intensive: New York City, which will take place in several locations between June 20-26, 2011.

Designed according to a track system, the intensive programme will focus on representational figurative, portrait, or interior subject matter, namely Classical Figure Drawing, Figure in Color (Oil), Professional Portraiture, Figure & Still Life in Watercolor, Figure & Still Life in Pastel, Contemporary Realism Figure in Oil, Allegorical Figure & Landscape, Sculpted Figure in Bronze, and Illustration, where enrollees will select a specific block of study of similar subject matter, media, and style led by a group of New York-area artists. Depending on the track, instructors and students will be working in either drawing media, oil, pastel, watercolor, or sculpture. The requested materials list can be consulted here.

The Weekend With the Masters Intensive: New York City will include in its special evening events a painting demonstration by Nelson Shanks on the 23rd at the National Arts Club, a challenging panel discussion, and museum tours led by history experts.
Closing reception will take place at the Arcadia Fine Arts gallery.

The Event Flat Rate Fee for the Weekend With the Masters New York City Intensive Standard Master-Participant for 3 ½ days of instruction and special evening events is $1,495. The John Howard Sanden track is $1,195 for 3 days of instruction. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Tour on Friday night, June 24 is an optional event for participants with an additional $30 admittance fee.

Weekend With the Masters Intensive: New York City is being organized by the team behind the acclaimed Weekend With the Masters Workshop & Conference.
The historic Salmagundi Club will be the event headquarters and location for some of the evening festivities.

Read about the Weekend With the Masters Workshop & Conference 2011, that will take place in Monterey Bay, California (September 7 through 10, 2011).

I went to MoMA and...

Recently the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York asked its visitors to share their visiting experiences.

Visitors shared their stories on a wall of messages using text and drawings to illustrate what they saw and felt during their visit to MoMA.

From the most rational to the most inusitate thought, this wall of messages is worth exploring.
Maybe this will give you an idea of who is the traditional museum frequenter - or maybe not.

You can read more at the Inside/Out blog.

The Second Annual Joseph Devon Fan Art Contest

Writer Joseph Devon is offering a choice of one of three great prize packages for the winner of The Second Annual Joseph Devon Fan Art Contest.

Those interested in participating must create an original work of art based on the "Probability Angels" novel and e-mail the content to joe@josephdevon.com with “Contest” in the subject line until July 15th, 2011.

Entrants can complete their works in any medium as long as it can be sent by e-mail, with exception of written words, and submit as many as they like.

A few weeks after the deadline, Joseph and a panel of judges will pick one work as the Grand Prize Winner, who will be able to choose from *EITHER* 1) a Wacom Tablet *OR* 2) a copy of Photoshop Lightroom as well as this color calibration thing as well as a Spyder3 Elite *OR* 3) a copy of Adobe Illustrator *OR* 4) an iPad.
Note that 1, 3 and 4 prize packages only contain one item, but 2 contains three items.

If the winner lives in an area where the above prizes are non-functioning or impossible to obtain then they will be compensated with a prize of similar design and value.

There are no fees to enter The Second Annual Joseph Devon Fan Art Contest and the rules and terms are simple to follow and fair.

Joseph Devon is a writer from New Jersey and his stories and books can be read online or on your handheld using a free format, or purchased on Amazon or at the Kindle store.

1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei

Inspired in Ai Weiwei’s project Fairytale: 1,001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs, an installation which was comprised of 1,001 late Ming and Qing Dynasty wooden chairs at Documenta 12 in 2007 in Kassel, Germany, curator Steven Holmes has come up with the idea of reenacting the project to support the safe release of Ai Weiwei who was detained this April 3rd at the Beijing airport.

This Sunday, April 17, at 1 PM local time, supporters are invited to participate in the "1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei" initiative, by bringing a chair and gathering outside Chinese embassies and consulates around the world and to sit peacefully in support of the artist’s immediate release.

Call for the release of Ai Weiwei: an online petition launched by the Guggenheim

In sequence of the detainment of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei at the Beining airport while en route to Hong Kong on April 3, and confiscation of his papers and computers from his studio compound, the Guggenheim has launched an online petition for Ai Weiwei's freedom and to express the international arts community concern towards China's reluctance to live up to its promise to nurture creativity and independent thought.

Museums and cultural institutions around the world, including the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD); Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; Gwangju Biennale, Korea; and the Musée national d'art moderne/Centre de création industrielle, Paris, have joined this initiative and launched the online petition through their Web sites, Twitter, and Facebook.

The detention of Ai is inconsistent with the Chinese government pledged, through the Ministry of Culture, to promote all artistic disciplines and to advance artistic ideas, as well as with China's commitment to the guarantee of fundamental freedoms.

Ai Weiwei, the son of one of the country’s most beloved poets, is an internationally acclaimed artist, a documentary filmmaker and an architect who helped design the Olympic stadium in Beijing known as the Bird’s Nest.

FIESA 2011 - 9th International Sand Sculpture Festival (Pêra, Algarve)

Now in its 9th edition, the International Sand Sculpture Festival (FIESA) brings to Pêra in Algarve, some of the best sand sculptors in the world, showing their artistic skills and creativity through the creation of amazing works of art made with sand.

In this year's edition, until June 15th, visitors will have the chance to observe the creative process of some of the sculptures, something that will certainly add to enhance the public's experience.

In similarity with previous editions, FIESA 2011 offers a space where children and grownups may try their creative skills on this form of artistic expression.

During the night , the festival will also include shows and performances and video projections.

Since it's start in 2003, FIESA (Festival Internacional de Escultura em Areia) presents a different theme every year. This year's theme is "Animal Kingdom", a freely translation of "Animalândia" where artists were invited to represent animal in a humouristic manner and personified through human behaviours, at the same time paying tribute to characters from children and adults fiction.

Scenes with endangerous species in their natural habitat show the concern of the aritsts and of the organization toward the environment and the preservation of species.

Organized by ProSandArt, FIESA is considered the world's largest sand sculpture festival due to its occupational area (near 15,000 sqm) and for the size of the sculptures created from 35,000 tones of sand.

FIESA 2011 was inaugurated today and can be visited everyday from 10h00 to 20h00 between April 15 and June 15 and between September 15 and October 15.
From 10h00 to 24h00 between June 16 and September 14.

Admission is free for children up to 5 years old and there are special prices for groups, schools and kindergartens (call to reserve: Mobile: (00351) 969 459 259 / Fax: (00351) 282 317 084)

People & Planet International Photography Competition 2011

The People & Planet International Photography Competition is open to amateur and professional photographers worldwide and will offer the opportunity to 53 participants to have their photos published in the 2012 People & Planet: Social Justice & Environment Diary & Calendar and achieve international recognition.

Photos submited to this competition should transmit "good news" stories about social-justice or the environment, and be at least at 300 dpi resolution, supplied in JPEG format, with a maximum file size of 10 MB.

Although minimal photoshop-ing may be acceptable, its obvious use will usually lead to exclusion of the photo.

Entrants may submit up to 4 photos (each image in a separate e-mail). All submitted photos must be accompanied by 3-5 sentences describing the image and the social-justice or environment issues which are raised by it. Do not submit images that were submitted to this competition in previous years.

The participation in the People & Planet International Photography Competition is free.

Entrants may e-mail their entries to peopleandplanet@peopleandplanet.org.au before 31 May 2011. Read the rules of entry carefully.

Winners will be selected by the competition judges Michael Cebon (People & Planet Editor) and Rodney Dekker (Australian Photographer).

A 1st Prize in the value A$1,300 and a 2nd Prize in the value of A$350, both in cash, will be awared to the two best photos. The author of the photo to be used on the cover of the People & Planet Diary & Calendar 2012 will receive the Diary Cover Prize: A$350 cash.

All 53 winners will receive a free copy of the 2012 People & Planet Diary.

Established in 2007, People & Planet raises funds, namely through their 100% Carbon Offset printed on Monza Recycled paper calendar, and supports the work of Australian environment and social justice organisations, helping create a more just and environmentally sustainable world.

NY ART MARATHON - Spring 2011

Open to all artists working in any media and genre, including traditional and digital, the NY ART MARATHON is an international art competition which will offfer its 10 finalists the opportunity to participate in a group show in New York City during the month of July 2011.

The most voted-for artist by the public will receive the People's Award and will be featured for a year on the main webpage of THE NY ART MARATHON. Each week, selected participating artists will enter an online group show with a review of their submitted artworks by the curator.

The overall winner, chosen by the juror, will receive a $3000 cash prize.
All entrants will have their works exhibited in an online group show as a reward for participating.

Participants can submit up to 3 images with 72 dpi and no more than 700 KB (there is a non-refundable entry fee of $25 for the first image and $15 for every next image).

The submission deadline is June 15th, 2011, after which 50 semi-finalists, selected by the juror, will be voted by the public the week after the deadline. Public voting goes for one week.

Finalists will be notified by July 1st, 2011 and shipping arrangements will be made.

Each finalist will exhibit one work of the size no bigger than 40"x60" in a group show in the New York gallery district.

The artwork should be signed and labeled on the reverse side with its title, media, size and year, as well as with the artist's name, date of birth and country.

Shipping expenses to and from New York will be supported by the NY ART MARATHON.

The theme for this Spring 2011 edition of the NY ART MARATHON is "NEW VISION = NEW WORLD. Break old canons, create new art" and will be juried and curated by David Gibson, a well-known NY art critic and curator with experience in teaching and lecturing in rewoned institutions.

David Rowe wins the World Press Cartoon Sintra 2011

The Australian cartoonist David Rowe is the overall winner of the 7th edition of the World Press Cartoon , with the work "Wikileaks and Uncle Sam", published last December in "The Sun-Herald". Besides winning the Grand Prix, David was also awarded the first prize in the Editorial Cartoon category.

In the Gag Category, the Brazilian Samuca was awarded for his work about pedophilia in the Catholic Church, published in the "Diário de Pernambuco". Other renowned names that are participating in this saloon, whose works will be on view after April 9th together with those of selected artists, are Pawel Kuczynski from Poland who conquered the second place in the Editorial Cartoon category with "Made in China" and the Mexican Alecus, who portrayed the famous Chilean miners who got burried last year and managed to survive, in his work "Chilean Miners".

João Vaz de Carvalho, with a portrait of D. João I, and Santiagu, with a drawing of Mother Teresa of Calcuta, both from Portugal, were respectively awarded the first and third places in the Caricature category. The second place in Caricature was attributed to the Cuban cartoonist Ángel Boligán with a drawing of Julian Assange.

The awards ceremony took place this April 8th at the Centro Cultural Olga Cadaval in Sintra.

This year's edition received 822 drawings by 462 authors from several nationalities, of which 401 were selected during February. The selected cartoonists are from Albania, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Poland and Portugal were selected during February.

The juri was composed by António Antunes, saloon Director and cartoonist at the Expresso newspaper, Ralph Steadman, an illustrator and cartoonist from Great-Britain, the Canadian artist and illustrator Anita Kunz, Alessandro Gatto, Italian painter, illustrator and graphic artist, and the Belgian cartoonist, illustrator and plasticine modeler Cecile Bertrand.

Considered one of the most important events of its genre worldwide, the World Press Cartoon Sintra 2011 can be visited at the Sintra Museu de Arte Moderna from April 9th to June 30th 2011, Mon-Sun, 10h00-18h00, including holidays. Admitance is free.

Monet's Water Lilies triptych at the Nelson-Atkins

Brought to New York in the 1950's Claude Monet's Water Lilies triptych was separated, and the individual panels were sold to the St. Louis Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum. The last time that these panels were exhibited together as they were meant to seen was in 1979, and now in collaboration with the other two museums, the Nelson-Atkins reunites the right-hand panel from its collection with the other ones, making this a rare opportunity to observe one of the most famous works of who is considered the most important Impressionist painter.

Each panel measures 6-feet tall by 14-feet wide and is believed that Monet started working on these in 1915, then continuosly reworking them in his studio at Giverny until the year of his death in 1926, according to Nicole Myers, Associate Curator at the Nelson-Atkins. This is most evident due to the fact that through x-ray imaging, light boxes, and computerized cross-sections, conservators have discovered the artist obsessively changed the composition over the years. For example, beneath a cluster of water lilies on the Nelson-Atkins canvas, conservators found the image of an agapanthus plant that Monet suppressed halfway through painting it. An x-ray of the agapanthus will be part of the exhibition. "We don’t even know for sure whether he considered them finished," said Simon Kelly, who, as curator of modern and contemporary art at the Saint Louis Art Museum and former associate curator of European painting and sculpture at the Nelson-Atkins, has been working on this exhibition for more than three years.

Through a range of archival photographs and a rarely seen film from 1915, showing Monet painting in his garden, wearing a white suit and a straw hat, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, the exhibition will bring to life the beauty of the garden and his passion for it.

Visitors will be able to use touch screens to "make your own Monet", which can be displayed on the museum's website, while another permits a close-up observation of the artist's loose and short brush strokes. Another panel can be used by visitors to describe their experience, description that will then be projected in light on the walls of that room.

In a separate, dedicated space, the paintings themselves will be displayed with side panels at slight angles to recreate something of the panoramic experience of the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris where several of Monet’s water lily triptychs are mounted.

The Water Lilies triptych will be on view, from April 9 to Aug. 7, 2011 at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City (MO, USA), after which it will travel to the Saint Louis Art Museum in the fall of 2011, before showing at the Cleveland Museum of Art at a date to be confirmed.

With the exception of a triptych in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, this is the only Monet triptych in the United States.

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. In Kansas City the exhibition is supported by the Hartley Family Foundation, Carol and Fred Logan and the Campbell-Calvin Fund and Elizabeth C. Bonner Charitable Trust for exhibitions. Frontier Airlines is the official airline sponsor.

This article contains excerpts from the museum's press release

"The Art of the Enlightenment" (启蒙的艺术) at the National Museum of China

Under the the joint auspices of Hu Jintao, President of the People's Republic of China, and Christian Wulff, German Federal President, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Munich jointly present "The Art of the Enlightenment" exhibition in partnerhisp with the National Museum of China, one of the largest museum buildings in the world.

This major exhibition follows the completion in spring 2011 of renovation work by Hamburg-based architects Gerkan, Marg und Partner and marks the high point of the German-Chinese programme of cultural events, bilaterally agreed upon in 2005.

Held at the National Museum of China in Beijing/Peking, 北京 "The Art of the Enlightment" (启蒙的艺术) is divided in nine separate chapters 'Court Life in the Age of the Enlightenment', 'Perspectives of Knowledge', 'The Birth of History', 'Far and Near', 'Love and Sensibility', 'Back to Nature', 'Shadows', 'Emancipation and the Public Sphere' and 'The Revolution of Art' exemplifying the great ideas of the Enlightenment, its influence on the fine arts and its effective history, from the artistic revolutions of the 18th century right up to the present day.

Occupying over 2700 m² and with 579 loans including the art of famous artists such as Angelika Kauffmann, Caspar David Friedrich, Francisco Goya, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Marie-Gabrielle Capet, Theobald Reinhold von Oër, Thomas Gainsborough, Julius Caesar Ibbetson and Piranesi, the exhibition shows the full spectrum of the art in the Europe of Enlightenment, encompassing painting, drawings, sculpture, prints, crafts, fashion and even exquisite scientific instruments.

Also for the entire duration of the exhibition, the Stiftung Mercator will stage the Enlightenment in Dialogue series comprising a number of dialogue blocks at intervals of around two months, addressing various facets of a contemporary examination of the subject of enlightenment.

BMW is also a partner of the exhibition and will support a cultural programme that will include an exchange programme for young curators from China and Germany, which is designed to approximate both cultures, a youth congress and a series of concerts entitled “The Music of Enlightenment".

The exhibition can be visited from April 2nd 2011 to March 31st 2012.

The National Museum of China is located at Tiananmen Square, 16, East Chang’an Street, Dongcheng district Beijing.

"Survivors" by GMB Akash at Centro Português de Fotografia

The work of the award-winning photojournalist G.M.B. Akash can be seen until the 9th of April 2011 at the Centro Português de Fotografia in the city of Oporto, Portugal.

Entitled "Survivors", the exhibition portrayes the determination and dignity of people who struggle to survive against all odds, who are deprived of the most basic needs and yet hold on to their hope and show a positive spirit. In "Survivors" exhibition, people are heroes with great character, presence of mind and kindness, who are true life lessons.

Born in 1977, GMB Akash is based in Dhaka, Bangladesh and represented by Panos Pictures. His passion for photography started at the age of 19, he attended the World Press Photo seminar in Dhaka for 3 years and graduated in photojournalism from the famous Pathshala institute in Dhaka.

In 2002 he became the first Bangladeshi to be selected for the Joop Swart Masterclass and in 2004 he received the Young Reporter's Award from the Scope Photo Festival in Paris. He won a World Press Photo award in 2006, the same year when he wrote his first book "First Light", and in 2007 was selected as one of Photo District News Magazine (PDN30, USA) emerging photographers.
In 2009 Akash is awarded the Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOY2009, GB).

His work subject, quality and humanity, led him to win the Humanity Photo Award (China, 2009), an honourable mention attributed by the International Photographer of the Year Award (USA, 2009) and the 3rd place as Photographer of the Year (Germany, 2010) by UNICEF.

You can read an interview that Akash gave to Seshu at Tiffinbox in November 2010.