Art.view: Ars domestica

The exhibition, The Great American Hall of Wonders, examining the 19th-century American belief that the people of the United States shared a special genius for innovation, is now open at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It is a collaborative effort between the museum and Commerce's U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and explores six subjects – three natural resources, three man-made inventions – that helped shape America during this period: the buffalo, Giant Sequoia, Niagara Falls, the gun, the railroad and the clock. The exhibition will focus on the ways these six subjects brought together artistic, scientific and technological ways of seeing the world. In addition to providing creative and technical assistance for development of the exhibition, the USPTO has played a part in the public program development by working with the museum to provide:  speakers for university level courses as well as inventors from the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame for a lecture series.   There will also be a day and a half long inventors symposium held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the USPTO will take the lead in providing experts to address the many challenges facing independent inventors and entrepreneurs.

For busy vacationers who want to do it all, it can be hard to pack in tours, museums, landmarks, restaurants, nightlife, and shopping. Sometimes you have to give one up. But why not cut some corners by combining your museums and hotels?

Steven Kopit, a loyal MR commentator, asks: Tyler - Let’s have more on the economics of museums. That’s actually an interesting topic. Only a very small portion of the collections of the Louvre other major museums is on display at any given time. I think it would make a great deal of sense to provide additional venues for shows–including in China. In the end, holdings of art (like income, per SS) only matter is someone actually consumes them, ie, gets to see them.

A young damsel and Old Masters await in NaplesIt might seem odd for the Museo di Capodimonte to conclude our summer series about hidden-gem museums. How is it that this national museum, in a former royal palace at the top of a mountain (or sizeable hill) with grand views of Naples below, is not among the most visited fine-art galleries in Europe?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is one of the premier art institutions in the world.

PARIS — France is returning seven paintings taken from their Jewish owners during World War II, part of an ongoing effort to give back hundreds of looted artworks that still hang in the Louvre and other museums. The works were stolen or sold under duress up to seven decades ago as their Jewish owners fled Nazi-occupied Europe. All seven were destined for display in the art gallery Adolf Hitler wanted to build in his birthplace of Linz, Austria, according to a catalog for the planned museum.

An historic week for London’s Old Master dealersCHRISTIE’S and Sotheby’s quite sensibly plan their major sales according to a pre-set calendar. If it’s April it must be Chinese art being auctioned in Hong Kong, in May it is Impressionist and modern painting in New York, and in June it is contemporary art in London.

Serenity prevails in a unique museum in Queens, New York