- VIRGINIA (USA)
Big Donation
The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, USA has announced a $34 million donation from Joan Brock to the Mackon & Joan Brock Collection of 40 works by leading 19th and 20th century painters. Among these works is the landscape of Corfu by John Sargent Singer. The donation also includes the support of two organic positions as well as expansion projects of the Museum and will also support the expansion of the Perry Glass Studio. The artworks from the Macon and Joan Brock collection span nearly 100 years of American art, from just after the Civil War to the mid-20th century, according to the Chrysler Museum.
- DUBLIN (IRELAND-EU)
Exhibition: National Portrait Collection
This exhibition in National Gallery of Ireland named National Portrait Collection has been an integral part of the National Gallery of Ireland since the late nineteenth century. It was suggested as early as 1872, a short number of years after the foundation of the National Gallery of Ireland itself. The Gallery’s then Director, Henry Doyle, envisaged a collection modelled on the National Portrait Gallery in London, but his application for funding was refused by the Treasury on the grounds that in the London gallery ‘eminent Irishmen are represented indiscriminately with Englishmen and Scotchmen. Sensitive to the social and political realities in Ireland, however, Doyle persevered and without any increased means opened in March 1875 a room dedicated to portraiture. Later, in 1884, this display was expanded to become the Historical and Portrait Gallery. The newly assembled collection initially comprised forty-eight oil paintings, as well as watercolours, drawings, engravings, mezzotints, and marble busts, and expanded steadily over subsequent decades. In the 1970s a part of the portrait collection was transferred to Malahide Castle, Co. Dublin, where it can be viewed to this day.
