Museum Barbie

Lynn Boland, our Pierre Daura Curator of European Art, directed our attention yesterday to the fact that Mattel has just come out with "Museum Barbie." No, she's not a jumpsuited preparator, a fundraising director or an exhausted public relations coordinator. Instead, her ensembles are inspired by Van Gogh's "Starry Night," Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Adele Bloch I" (pictured above and by far the most successful of the three) and Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa." You can view all three here. Boland pointed out that it's a real shame the Van Gogh Barbie still has both her ears and, indeed, she does look awfully chipper.

Great Art in the Great Outdoors

Stumbling across a van Gogh on your morning constitutional may be a startling thought and a dream come true for many art lovers. If you’re one such aficionado, then you may just have to take a trip to Detroit, where the Detroit Institute of Art is celebrating its 125^th anniversary with the outdoor installation of famous paintings by Vincent and such other museum ticket-selling faves as Seurat, Fuseli and Degas.

Well, okay—almost. The pieces in this commemorative public installation, DIA: Inside/Out, are actually life-size waterproof reproductions created just for the occasion. Even so, what a thrill to be walking downtown or along the Detroit RiverWalk and find a beautiful piece of art! DIA will be producing a map of all the sites, should you like to make a day of chasing down these faux masterworks. You can read more about this outdoor exhibit here and here.

Blogging the Restoration

We read this story in Art Daily a while ago about the restoration of Vincent Van Gogh's painting "The Bedroom," which is being blogged about regularly, but we hate to link to a blog until it has at least a couple of posts up. By this point, there's plenty to read on the site, which is amusingly titled "Bedroom secrets," from discussion of the preliminary examination of the painting to sources on it (previous versions, a letter Van Gogh wrote about it to his brother Theo) to consideration of the most frequently used materials in painting. It's a neat way to approach a highly technical subject.