Museum and art news

* New York Times: "Los Angeles Tar Yields Mammoth’s Skeleton."

The excavation for a parking garage near the La Brea tar pits here has yielded the site’s first intact mammoth skeleton as well as a trove of other bones that could double the size of the site’s already large collection of fossils from the last ice age.

Researchers from the George C. Page Museum, at the tar pits in Hancock Park, announced the find on Wednesday, although museum excavators have been reporting online about the recently uncovered fossils for several months.

Most of the material is in 23 crates of tar, clay and mud that were removed in 2007 during the digging of an underground parking garage at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which also sits next to the tar pits.

* www.ansa.it: "Rome celebrates Futurism."

The Italian capital is joining the country's Futurism frenzy, with a host of events celebrating 100 years since the launch of Italy's most famous modern art movement. Nearly 50 separate events have been lined up for coming months, including exhibitions, plays, conferences and installations...

The centrepiece of the capital's planned exhibitions will be a large-scale exhibition at the Quirinale, opening in Rome after a hugely successful run in Paris last year.

The show, which later moves on to London's Tate, invites visitors to re-evaluate the impact the movement had on modern art, concentrating on its origins.

* Art Institute of Chicago: Becoming Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety, and Myth. From the AIC's web site:

The Edvard Munch of popular imagination—a tortured, bohemian rebel who seemed almost a living version of the famous figure in The Scream—was in fact a myth, carefully constructed during Munch’s lifetime by critics, historians, and the artist himself. Since then, this persona has been reinforced by our collective fascination with his many pictures of existential suffering. But there are many other sides to the artist and his work that have been eclipsed by the traditional emphasis on his supposed emotional imbalance and artistic isolation. In addition to his depictions of death and anxiety, for example, are moody, calm landscapes and pictures of bathers that celebrate the vitality of the human form in nature.

Image: Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944), Moonlight, 1895. Oil on canvas, 93 x 110 cm (36 5/8 x 43 1/4 in.) The National Museum for Art, Architecture, and Design, Oslo, NG.M.02815 Woll 381

* High Museum of Art, Atlanta: The Treasure of Ulysses Davis. Perhaps overshadowed by the two "blockbuster" exhibitions -- Chinese terracotta army and the Louvre -- at the High, this exhibition might be the most interesting. From the High's site:

The first major traveling exhibition of works by Ulysses Davis in more than 25 years premieres at the High...

Davis was a barber in Savannah, Georgia, who was also a self-taught woodcarver of remarkable talent. He created a body of highly refined sculpture that expresses his humor, dignity and deep faith. The exhibition offers an opportunity for audiences to appreciate Davis' remarkable work, which is rarely seen outside of Savannah.

Image: Ulysses Davis, Jesus on the Cross, 1946, Carved cedar, mahogany, toothpicks and paint. High Museum of Art, Atlatna. Purchase with general funds and funds from Friends of the Museum.