Only five works of art attributed to Hieronymus Bosch exist in the United States, which is why June 30 was a significant date for a particular renowned institution.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, is currently displaying a stunning painting of “The Temptation of St. Anthony” by Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch. Opened on June 30, the public exhibition of the painting will be its first since 2003. Via the museum’s press materials, “The ‘Temptation of St. Anthony’ returns to the Nelson-Atkins after being lent in early 2016 to the Het Noordbrabants Museum in The Netherlands for the largest ever Bosch retrospective to commemorate the 500th anniversary of his death. The Bosch Research and Conservation Project authenticated the painting in 2015 after extensive testing, which was chronicled in a recent documentary by Pieter van Huystee about Bosch’s quincentennial exhibition in his hometown.

“‘The Temptation of St. Anthony’ will be shown alongside ‘Christ Crowned with Thorns,’ an autograph painting by Bosch’s contemporary Albrecht Bouts, which also makes its museum debut since its respective authentication. Both works will be presented in a special exhibition that will focus on the scholarly and scientific techniques used to determine the attribution of the paintings.”

To learn more, visit here.

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Gallery 1261 in Denver, Colorado, has a new location on Wazee Street, and its first show in the new spaces features a diverse range of representational talent. Whose work can you find on the walls through August 5? Find out here.

Nineteen of the world’s foremost representational painters are currently being shown at Gallery 1261’s new exhibition space. Titled “Exordium,” the group show runs from July 13 through August 5. Represented artists include Mia Bergeron, Suchitra Bhosle, Gregory Block, Scott Burdick, Valerio d’Ospina, Dianne L. Massey Dunbar, Ron Hicks, Quang Ho, Patrick Kramer, Wang Kun, Susan Lyon, Robin Cole Smith, Daniel Sprick, Josh Tiessen, Kevin Weckbach, Aaron Westerberg, Pamela Wilson, Vincent Xeus, and Elizabeth Zanzinger.

To learn more, visit Gallery 1261.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

A remarkable exhibition of contemporary photo-realist figurative works by two acclaimed painters will soon be on view at RJD Gallery in Bridgehampton, New York. It opens this Saturday, and there’s extra incentive for collectors.

Themes of identity, youth, and contemporary culture are explored with beautiful clarity through the paintings by Rachel Moseley and Katie O’Hagan in “A Girl Next Door,” opening Saturday, July 22 at RJD Gallery. A percentage of sales, as well as a raffle, from the reception will benefit the Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI), the oldest and largest organization dedicated to serving lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth.

Via the gallery, “Recognized by numerous organizations for their exceptional representational techniques, these artists create intimate and emotional paintings that captivate viewers. Moseley creates pop-portraits of the diverse contemporary youth within her community while O’Hagan’s psychological landscapes offer us an opportunity for introspection and challenge us to see beyond the outward appearance.

“Gallery owner Richard Demato continues his philanthropic efforts, raising awareness and funds in support of Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI), which believes that all young people regardless of sexual orientation or identity, deserve a safe and supportive environment in which to achieve their full potential. During the opening reception of ‘A Girl Next Door,’ a percentage of sales, as well as a raffle, will benefit this incredible organization.

“Further enhancing the context of our ‘girl next door’ we are concurrently exhibiting Daniel Pollera, a Hamptons-based painter specializing in architectural landscapes and seascapes, the cityscapes of Italian painter Marco Martelli, and urban landscapes of UK-based painter Rick Garland. Mingle with the artists, Katie O’Hagan and Daniel Pollera, and many of the HMI supporters.”

To learn more, visit RJD Gallery.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

A very nice exhibition at The Atelier at Flowerfield in New York is currently showcasing the soft, radiant landscapes by the popular Christian White.

Opened on July 13 and continuing through August 31, “Christian White” is a solo exhibition of recent works by the show’s namesake. White was born in Rome, Italy, in 1953, while his father, sculptor Robert White, was on a Prix de Rome fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. He grew up in a family of artists, studying drawing, painting, and sculpture from a very young age. He began taking life drawing at Stony Brook University at age 10. White studied welding, stained glass, and mosaics in Holland at age 13, and began studying painting in 1966 with Paul Russotto before attending Liceo Artistico in Rome, Italy in 1968-69. He has a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Major early influences include his maternal grandfather, Dutch painter Joep Nicolas, family friend Fairfield Porter, Paul Georges, and Robert Kulicke. In Rome, Christian developed relationships with Jack Zajac, Gregory Gillespie, Gilbert Franklin, and many other artists. He moved to Harrison Street in lower Manhattan in 1977 after graduating from RISD. He had his first solo exhibition in 1975 at the Harbor Gallery in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. His first solo show in Manhattan was at the Steven Adams Gallery in the East Village in 1986, followed by shows at Ingber Gallery, the Garrison Art Center, and the Great American Salvage Company. He has had yearly one-man shows at Gallery North, in Setauket, Long Island, since 1983.

To learn more, visit The Atelier at Flowerfield.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

July 29 marks a special day in the world of maritime art as this lavish new space opens its doors for the first time with a whiskey and wine reception.

Newport, Rhode Island, will soon be home to an outstanding new gallery exclusively dedicated to maritime art. On July 29 from 5 to 8 p.m., Mariner Gallery will host its grand opening with a whiskey and wine reception. Father-and-son duo Andre and Peter Arguimbau have spent over two years refitting, restoring, and conserving a pre-1780 Colonial home into a lovely space for art display. “The gallery’s ambitious program will host events and exhibitions throughout the year,” according to the press materials. “Our leading artists, Richard Loud, Russ Kramer, David Monteiro, and Peter Layne Arguimbau, hang alongside 19th-century fine art depicting historical and modern sailing events and seascapes in a traditional style.

“In addition to restoring the post-and-beam construction and wide plank floors of the main gallery, Andre, a captain himself, built a lower deck of solid oak named the USS Constellation Room. The room is constructed in honor of the second warship built for the U.S. Navy. The room will also serve as home to the Maritime League of the Arts. A Summer Party will christen the hull August 26, from 6 to 10 p.m. Richard Thursby, a lifetime sailor and student of maritime history, has been appointed director.”

To learn more, visit Mariner Gallery.

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Such a shame it was that Leonardo da Vinci’s Milanese masterpiece “The Last Supper” began chipping and deteriorating even before the artist died in 1519 due to an experimental fresco formula. However, a recent discovery has led two authors to publish a book that has heads turning and minds changing. On what?

Although no one disputes the genius of Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci, few realize exactly how poor a condition his Milanese masterpiece “The Last Supper” is actually in. In fact, only about 20 percent of the original fresco remains, which has led scholars to one simple conclusion: We really have a minimal conception of what the original painting looked like.

Two authors, however, have suggested in a new book that an extraordinary discovery — a life-sized canvas of “The Last Supper” discovered in a remote Belgian monastery — was by the hand of Leonardo and his studio, thus giving scholars the clearest picture of the fresco as it would have appeared upon completion.

Co-authored by Professor Jean-Pierre Isbouts and connoisseur Christopher Heath Brown, Young Leonardo: The Evolution of a Revolutionary Artist, 1472-1499 forwards a heap of evidence to suggest the above theory is indeed fact. Among the topics considered in the book are how the authors discovered that Leonardo and his workshop painted a second “Last Supper,” a life-size version on canvas, just seven years after the original fresco was completed; how the canvas still shows “The Last Supper” in all of its brilliant hues and tones; and how the canvas was discovered to have been commissioned by the French King, Louis XII, explaining Leonardo’s personal involvement with the project.

Regardless of where you fall on the argument, the book should be a fascinating read. To learn more, visit here.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

The Figurative Art Convention & Expo (FACE), along with the Representational Art Conference, has put out a call for ideas and scholarship. Think you fit the mold? Details here.

Via Michael Pearce (The Representational Art Conference):

Join our distinguished speakers Donald Kuspit and Stephen Hicks in sharing important ideas about the present and future of representational art.

Submit a paper to the Representational Art Conference at the Figurative Art Convention & Expo.

For details and to submit an abstract, please visit our website; second wave abstract submissions due August 12, 2017.

TRAC2017 is specifically interested in papers about the human figure in 21st-century representational art. What does it say about our current condition? What ideals of the self does it seek to express? How does it relate to the history of figurative art? What does it tell us about our current social reality? Does the artist have a new role? What cross-cultural themes will dominate 21st-century figurative art?

We invite paper proposals from academic writers and working artists.

Paper topics might include, but are not limited to:

• New 21st-century figurative sculpture, painting, drawing
• Idealization of the masculine and feminine in 21st-century figurative art
• Magical realism in new American art
• How does the 21st-century figure differ from that of previous centuries?
• Why the figure? Why now?
• Figure to ground — the human figure in the landscape in 21st-century art
• Bo Bartlett
• Antonio López García
• Gottfried Helnwein
• 21st-century figurative art in museum collections
• Exploitation versus celebration of the erotic in 21st-century representational art
• Emotional rescue — the therapeutic role of figurative art
• What is the future of the kitsch figure?
• The meta-narrative of the 21st-century figure
• The discombobulated figure — when is a figure not a figure?
• Interpreting the Crystal Bridges collection
• George Lucas and the Museum of Narrative Art
• Graphic novels as fine art?
• Selfies, portraits, and self-knowledge — the self in 21st-century figurative art
• Censoring the 21st-century figure

The Representational Art Conference provides a platform for discussion. It does not aspire to establish a single monolithic aesthetic for representational art, but to identify commonalities, to help to understand its unique possibilities, and perhaps provide some illumination about future directions. The conference is planned as a focused but non-doctrinaire event of serious academic standards. Papers of high quality on a variety of topics in the aesthetics of contemporary representational art are invited and welcomed.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

Death. It can be a frightening concept for some, a liberating one for others. The Egyptians were consumed by it, and most of their art and architecture that survives was in service of death. A fascinating new exhibition in Maine that delves into mortality — and morality — in Renaissance Europe may shake you to your core.

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine, recently unveiled a chilling but beautiful exhibition of nearly 70 objects from major North American and European museums titled “The Ivory Mirror: The Art of Mortality in Renaissance Europe.” Curated by the college’s Peter M. Small Associate Professor of Art History, Stephen Perkinson, the show reveals how “in an increasingly complex and uncertain world, Renaissance artists sought to address the critical human concern of acknowledging death while striving to create a personal legacy that might outlast it,” the museum writes. “[The exhibition] brings together exceptional examples of ‘memento mori,’ a genre of artistic and literary imagery that emerged in the early Renaissance to remind viewers of their inevitable death, to question how art historians have conventionally interpreted these objects and to propose new ways of considering their significance.

“‘The Ivory Mirror’ will bring together nearly seventy exquisite artworks, many of which have never been seen before in North America, from European and American institutions — among them the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Huntington Library in San Marino. New scholarship across the humanities features critical new discoveries, such as the attribution of several ivories, of previously uncertain authorship, to Chicart Bailly, a prosperous ivory carver active in Paris from at least the 1490s until 1533. The precious objects included in the exhibition — from ivory prayer beads and gem-encrusted jewelry to exquisitely carved small table sculptures — draw attention in spectacular fashion to the depictions of death, dying, and decay that proliferated in popular culture between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, when mortality rates were perilously high. The appeal of objects featuring macabre imagery urging us to ‘remember death’ — and, by implication, to consider how best to take advantage of our time on earth — reached the apex of its popularity around 1500, when artists treated the theme in innovative and compelling ways.”

The show, which opened on June 24, will continue through November 26. To learn more, visit here.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

A lighthearted and fun project via the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) that creatively uses cellphones and emojis has recently gone viral. Will you give it a try?

Whether you’re happy, sad, confused, angry, or a robot, texting emojis to the SFMOMA will get you art in return. Over the past few weeks, the museum has begun a project in which the public can text the number 57251 with the words “send me” followed by a word or emoji. The result? The museum will send you a related photo of an artwork in its world-class collection.

It’s easy, free, and requires no downloads, which has turned the small project into a viral hit in the digital world. Melena Ryzik of the New York Times reports, “The project, ‘Send Me SFMOMA,’ has been an ingenious, playful way to inject some rarefied culture into an everyday habit. And for art lovers, it has unearthed some unexpected artworks, long hidden in storage, along the way.

“Begun quietly last month, the project has become a viral hit, with over 2 million text messages delivered since Sunday alone,” said Keir Winesmith, head of web and digital platforms for SFMOMA. (The service is free.)

“It’s far more popular than the museum ever imagined, with people indulging in a long back-and-forth, binge texting. And it’s also revealed something surprising about its users — about how, and when, they want to interact with art, and how much they crave a personal connection with cultural authority.”

Among the top searches include “sad” and “inspiration,” but the potential is near limitless. To learn more, visit the New York Times.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.