Museums Of Modern Art

The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, located in Islington’s beautiful Canonbury Square in the district of Islington on the northern fringes of central London is a unique and elegant venue for corporate and private entertaining. Conveniently situated within 5 minutes walk from Highbury and Islington Underground station, and only 10 minutes by taxi from the City, it has been described as a "hidden jewel". It is the United Kingdom's only gallery devoted to modern Italian art.

The Estorick Collection was established by American sociologist and writer Eric Estorick (1913-93), who began to collect works of art when he came to live in England after the Second World War. Estorick and his German-born English wife Salome (1920-1989) discovered Umberto Boccioni’s book Futurist Painting and Sculpture (1914) while they were on their honeymoon in 1947. Before the end of their trip they visited erstwhile Futurist Mario Sironi in Milan and bought most of the contents of his studio, including hundreds of drawings. They built up the collection mainly between 1953 and 1958. The collection was shown in several temporary exhibitions, including one at the Tate Gallery in London in 1956, and the key works were on long term loan to the Tate from 1966 to 1975. The Estoricks rejected offers to purchase their collection from the Italian government and museums in the United States and Israel. Six months prior to his death Eric Estorick set up the Eric and Salome Estorick Foundation, to which he donated all his Italian works. The Estorick Collection moved to its new home, current premises in Northumberland Lodge, a converted Grade II-listed Georgian house, in 1998. Building was restored with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and contains six galleries, an art library, cafe and bookshop.

The focal point of the collection is its Futurist works, but it also includes figurative art and sculpture dating from 1890 to the 1950s. It features paintings by Futurism's main protagonists: Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Gino Severini, Luigi Russolo and Ardengo Soffici, works by Giorgio de Chirico, Amedeo Modigliani, Giorgio Morandi, Mario Sironi and Marino Marini, and a number of paintings and sculptures by contemporary English artists including Edward Dutkiewicz. In addition to the main displays from the permanent collection, the Estorick Gallery organises temporary exhibitions, both in its own galleries, and on tour.

The Estorick featureы six stylish galleries on three floors of an creatively restored Georgian villa. The gallery contains a world-renowned collection of Futurist paintings and figurative art and sculpture from 1895 to the 1950s and stages innovative temporary exhibitions. In addition to the versatile gallery spaces the Estorick has an attractive landscaped garden, ideal for entertaining in the summer. The Estorick Collection can also offer exclusive curator-led talks, which can offer your guests an unique presentation to the works of art on display.

To begin with, I want to review the Modern art in general. Modern art is an overall term used for most of the artistic work considered wherever from the early 17th century until the nowadays. Modern art refers to the new style to art which placed emphasis on representing emotions, themes, and various abstractions. Artists experimented with new ways of seeing, with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of art, often moving further toward abstraction. The notion of modern art is closely related to Modernism.

By the late 19th century, a number of movements which were to be dominant in modern art had begun to emerge: Impressionism and post-Impressionism, as well as Symbolism. Influences upon these movements were varied: from exposure to Eastern decorative arts, particularly Japanese printmaking, to the colouristic innovations of Turner and Delacroix, to a search for more realism in the depiction of common life, as found in the work of painters such as Jean-François Millet. The advocates of realism stood against the idealism of the tradition-bound academic art that enjoyed public and official favor. The most successful painters of the day worked either through commissions, or through large public exhibitions of their own work. There were official, government-sponsored painters' unions, while governments regularly held public exhibitions of new fine and decorative arts. The Impressionists argued that people do not see objects, but only the light which they reflect, and therefore painters should paint in natural light rather than in studios, and should capture the effects of light in their work. Impressionist artists formed a group, Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs ("Association of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers") which, despite internal tensions, mounted a series of independent exhibitions. The style was adopted by artists in different nations, in preference to a "national" style. These factors established the view that it was a "movement". These traits — establishment of a working method integral to the art, establishment of a movement or visible active core of support, and international adoption — would be repeated by artistic movements in the Modern period in art.

Along with the movements which blossom out in the first decade of the 20th century were Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, and Futurism. World War I brought an end to this phase, but indicated the beginning of a number of anti-art movements, such as Dada and the work of Marcel Duchamp, and of Surrealism. Artist groups like de Stijl and Bauhaus developed new ideas about the interrelation of the arts, architecture, design and art education. Modern art was introduced to the United States with the Armory Show in 1913, and through European artists who moved to the U.S. during World War I. It was only after World War II, though, that the U.S. became the focal point of new artistic movements. The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of Abstract Expressionism, Color field painting, Pop art, Op art, Hard-edge painting, Minimal art, Lyrical Abstraction, Postminimalism, Photorealism and various other movements. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, Land art, Performance art, Conceptual art, and other new art forms had attracted the attention of curators and critics, at the expense of more traditional media. Larger installations and performances became widespread. Around that period, a number of artists and architects started rejecting the idea of "the modern" and created typically Postmodern works. By the end of the 1970s, when cultural critics began speaking of "The End of Painting", new media art has become a category in itself, with a growing number of artists experimenting with technological means such as video art. Painting assumed renewed importance in the 1980s and 1990s, as evidenced by the rise of neo-expressionism and the revitalization of figurative painting.

Heide Museum of Modern Art.
The Heide Museum of Modern Art is situated in Bulleen, Victoria, Australia and was founded in 1981. The site was originally owned by the prominent Melbourne art collectors John and Sunday Reed, whose private farm-house was known as Heide (and now Heide I). Heide I remains on the site, alongside the newer house, Heide II, which was designed by David McGlashan of Melbourne architecture firm McGlashan and Everist and is an archetypical example of modernist architecture in Victoria. Heide II was used as the originally public gallery, but were restorated in 2006 as part of the site's renovation. The major gallery is known as Heide III, which also were restorated.

Heide was an "idyllic refuge of inspiration for artists and intellectuals" from the 1930s through the 1950s. An example of this was the work of notable Australian artist Sidney Nolan, whose famous Ned Kelly series were painted in the dining room of Heide I.

As well as having galleries which house an expressive and considerable collection of modern and contemporary art, the site is known for the large gardens which surround the various buildings, and are home to numerous sculpture and installation art pieces.

On July 13, 2006 the museum re-opened after a $3 million dollar renovation and enlargement to incorporate the new Albert and Barbara Tucker Gallery. The new buildings were designed by O'Connor + Houle Architecture. O’Connor + Houle Architecture is an architecture, interior design, landscape and urban design practice located in inner city Melbourne.

After visiting this museum of Modern Art you will get tons of tremendous impressions! The architecture of this space presents numerous opportunities and creates challenges for the lighting. In the gallery space the ceiling tracks are positioned neither parallel to the walls nor horizontal. This creates a great challenge to achieve even wall washing and spot lighting to the paintings. The resulting composition – which looks simple enough – is the fruit of much modelling and analysis. Good looking fixed objects are chosen to fit in well with architecture, as do clean lines of flangeless tracks. Uplighting to above skylights adds to the volume of the space and partakes to exterior view of building when coming from the upper car park.