It’s March! Celebrate Youth Art Month, National Craft Month And the arrival of Spring!

Museum to Reopen--The New Orleans Museum of Art will open its doors once again on March 3, with free admission to Louisiana residents. To celebrate, a select group of objects from the Whitecloud collection of Native American art will be prominently displayed in the Great Hall, with a full-color catalog available in the Gift Shop. Donations to NOMA’s Katrina Fund may be mailed to: NOMA, Katrina Fund, PO Box 19123, New Orleans, LA 70179; or made online at www.noma.org.

Auction Records Set--Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture auctions totaled over $79 million, a record for a series of Old Masters sales in New York. Among the highlights of the sales were strong prices for works by Rembrandt, Donatello, Francisco Goya, and William Blake, among others.

--And at Christie’s, an oil on canvas portrait by Charles Willson Peale, “George Washington at Princeton,” set a world record for an American portrait at auction at $21,296,000. The full-length painting is signed and dated 1779 and depicts George Washington as the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army.

Milestone Reached--Animation legend Myron Waldman has passed away at the age of 97. The last surviving head animator of the Max Fleischer Studios, he was instrumental in the animation of Betty Boop, Popeye, Casper, Raggedy Ann and Andy and the original Superman series.

Fund Created--The Getty Foundation has established a $2 million fund to aid visual art institutions in New Orleans as they recover from the impact of Hurricane Katrina. The foundation’s Fund for New Orleans will enable nonprofit arts organizations to apply for either conservation grants or transition-planning grants to strengthen nonprofits as they respond to the city’s changed arts environment. The foundation will also consider support through its regular grant categories for other organizations in the region.

New Museum Directors Appointed--The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has announced the appointment of Michael Govan as Director and CEO. Highly regarded, Govan was previously President and Director of the Dia Art Foundation in New York and spearheaded the creation and 2003 opening of the critically acclaimed Dia: Beacon (Beacon, NY), the new museum that houses Dia’s collection of art from the ‘60s to the present.

—And Andy B. Jones, renowned decorative artist, teacher and author, has been appointed Director of the Decorative Arts Collection Museum. The Museum, established in 1982 in Wichita, KS, has a mission to promote understanding and appreciation of decorative painting by saving outstanding historic and contemporary examples, maintaining exhibitions and providing educational opportunities to the public. See www.decorativeartscollection.org.

Exhibitions:

New York, NY -- Metropolitan Museum of Art -- Robert Rauschenberg: Combines takes a rare and comprehensive look at the objects that he terms “combines,” in which he has reinvented collage. The exhibition includes approximately 65 works and is the first to focus exclusively on this significant material. Through April 2 and travels to The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles on May 14.

Charlotte, NC -- Mint Museum of Craft & Design -- Thirties Glamour and the Allure of Bakelite features jewelry/fashion accessories drawn from the collection of Charlottean Patty Gorelick, combined with period fashions from the Historic Costume Collection of the Mint Museum of Art and showcases the beauty and intriguing designs of manufacturer-designers who embraced the Bakelite medium. Through April 2.

Brockton, MA -- The Fuller Museum of Art -- Wickedly Wild and Wonderful Wood: Recent Works by the Massachusetts South Shore Woodturners features functional and sculptural lathe-turned objects by 30 members of the MSSW. Through April 2.

New York, NY -- Whitney Museum -- Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night is titled after Francois Truffaut’s 1973 film and examines contemporary artmaking by over 100 artists in America at a moment of profound global change. This marks the 73rd in the series of Annuals and Biennials inaugurated by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1932. Opens March 2 through May 28.

Copyright ARTtalk Vol. 16 No. 5 -- March 2006