November 17, 2009 - Auction Central News

Auktionshaus Kaupp plans Nov. 26-28 megasale with 4-volume catalog

SULZBURG, GERMANY – Germany’s “auction house in a castle,” Auktionshaus Kaupp, is making history with its 2,800-lot fall sale. Not only will its Nov. 26-28 auction series comprise the biggest event ever conducted by the company, its contents also required the production of a four-volume catalog – the largest in the firm’s history.

The upcoming sale reveals Auktionshaus Kaupp’s stronger focus on Modern and Contemporary art, with one of the catalog volumes devoted entirely to the genre. But director Karlheinz Kaupp says he and his team have assembled an exceptional spectrum of art objects covering almost all collector’s interests, thanks to various extraordinary consignments from Noble provenances such as Villa Douglas, former property of countess Marie von der Goltz; property of the von Brauchitsch and derer von Rom families; and numerous other consignors.

A private collection of carpets from southern Germany and a huge collection of jewelry and wristwatches from a Nuremberg patrician dynasty will be offered, as well as a sizable collection of 18th- and 19th-century glassware from the estate of an entrepreneurial family from Freiburg.

Decorative arts are in the spotlight on day one. From a Thuringian private estate comes an impressive collection of 18th-century Meissen porcelain, including a tankard with Kakiemon decoration, a Lowenfinck tureen whose cover features numerous fabulous characters, a 1780s landscape-decorated tobacco box and a chinoiserie pot with handle designed by Meissen director Johann Gregorius Hoeroldt.

Kaupp will offer approximately 180 special glass objects on Nov. 26, most of which are from the aforementioned Freiburg estate. Highlights include a circa-1744 glass with lid decorated with a crowned coat of arms, and a circa-1610 beaker. Additionally, there will be many magnificent glasses, bottles and beakers with reasonable opening prices.

Also on opening day, Kaupp will present a fine selection of Russian works of art, including a set of important Russian Easter eggs by the imperial porcelain manufacture St. Petersburg. One of the eggs has a portrait of St. Anthony, while another from around 1870 shows a view of the Alexander Newski church in Potsdam from around 1870.

In the Art Nouveau/Art Deco section, one of the highlights is certainly the signed, circa-1910 Tiffany Studios Double Poinsettia table lamp. Another key lot is the bronze vase by Chalon, showing a female nude with ice crystals in her hair.

Jewelry and watches are contained in their own separate auction catalog volume. Among the featured lots are a courtly ensemble of natural pearls and diamonds, and a museum-quality pendule à negre featuring an allegory of trade with the colonies and the ideal of a noble savage. Also noteworthy are two table clocks from the 17th century made by Johann Sayller of Ulm and Christoff Müller from Augsburg.

Day three includes a variety of bronze sculptures and other first-class objets d’art, including a rococo ivory bacchante scene attributed to the French sculptor Claude Michel Clodion. A moderate estimate has been placed on a nice, 17th-century Venetian box.

A finely crafted mircomosaic brooch in an 18K gold mounting depicting the Roman Pantheon, a micromosaic box with a view of the Colosseum in Rome are deemed to be pieces of exceptional quality.

Amongst the Old Master paintings is the exquisite Girl with Dove, attributed to the famous rococo painter François Boucher. An equally impressive painting titled Consequences of War probably came from the studio of Peter Paul Rubens. Also highly regarded is a painting attributed to one of the most famous rococo masters – Jean Antoine Watteau.

After the success of the spring auction, Kaupp is particularly pleased to be able to sell four additional works of excellent quality by Carl Spitzweg. The top lot is undoubtedly the enchanting painting On the Bastion. The painting shows a yawning soldier standing on the top of an inoperative, almost romantic bastion. Other important Spitzweg works include The Serenade and the small, charming painting The Watchmen. All Spitzweg paintings are listed in the catalogue raisonné by Prof. Dr. Wichmann, and detailed expert reports for these works, written by Prof. Wichmann, are available. The three paintings are joined by Landscape with a Small Town, which proves Spitzweg’s mastership in landscape painting.

In addition to traditional 19th-century paintings, Kaupp also offers various interesting works from the early 20th century, such as a portrait of the legendary French vaudeville dancer Cléo de Mérode, attributed to Giovanni Boldini. Cows Returning Home by Hans Thoma was formerly part of the Collection of Georg Schäfer in Schweinfurt, and most recently was owned by a Swiss gentleman.

Arabian Warriors is considered one of the most brilliant canvasses by Arthur Trevor Haddon. The painting shows Arabian men on horseback with weapons, in front of Oriental architecture.

In the Modern art section are works by Rupprecht Geiger, Arnold Topp, Rita McBride, Otto Dill and Nam June Paik. Lovis Corinth is represented with one of his famous and sought-after Walchensee paintings showing the beautiful lake in Upper Bavaria and its surroundings. The North American painter Edward Alfred Cucuel, whose impressionistic works have been influenced by various study visits in France, is represented with a nice portrait of a woman and a floral still life. Sculptures include five exceptional works by Ludwig Kasper. All are listed in the catalogue raisonné by Werner Haftmann, and four of them were exhibited in the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin as a long-term loan.

The auction offering is rounded out by carpets, fine silver, prints and books, clocks and quality furniture from the Baroque through Biedermeier periods.

The preview will take place at Castle Sulzburg from Nov. 17-23. For further information call 011 49 7634 50 38 0 or e-mail auktionen@kaupp.de. View the fully illustrated catalog online at www.kaupp.de.

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ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

Leland Little gathers a cornucopia of antiques, art for Dec. 5 sale

Tiffany Studios fitted this four-arm electrified candelabra form lamp with Favrile glass shades. The estimate is $5,000-$8,000. Image courtesy Leland Little Auction & Estate Sales Ltd.

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. – Leland Little Auction & Estate Sales Ltd. will sell nearly 750 lots of high quality antiques and fine art – most of them fresh to the market items from prominent local estates – on Dec. 5. The auction will begin at 9 a.m. Eastern in the firm’s new facility at 620 Cornerstone Court. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding.

An array of categories will be represented, to include period American furniture; Continental furniture; American portraits and traditional American art; European art; bronzes and statuary; Southern pottery; estate jewelry and watches; vintage lamps and art glass; Americana; vintage musical instruments; first-edition books; over 70 lots of Asian art; and gold and silver coins.

June Lucas, the director of research at Old Salem Museums and Gardens in Winston-Salem will give a lecture titled Wood as Canvas: the Paint-Decorated Furniture of Piedmont, N.C., on Dec. 4 at 3 p.m. at Little’s auction facility. Lucas’ talk will focus on the late 18th- and 19th-century furniture makers in the Piedmont region of North Carolina and their use of paint decoration.

Previews are scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 28, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.; Thursday, Dec. 3, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; and Friday, Dec. 4, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. An evening reception will be held Thursday, Dec. 3, at 6 p.m.

Furniture will abound at the sale. Examples of period American furniture include a Southern Chippendale walnut step-back cupboard, circa 1800-1820, made in western North Carolina; a walnut early 19th-century Southern chest on frame, Rowan County, N.C.; an early 19th-century mahogany New York Federal tilt-top candlestand; and a circa 1800 fine Southern mahogany Hepplewhite inlaid cellaret.

Classical American furniture will feature a nice diminutive pier table, circa 1830, mahogany and mahogany veneers, with a marble top, Corinthian columns and mirrored base on carved paw feet; a carved sofa, Philadelphia or New York, dated on the back in chalk 1827, mahogany over white pine; and an early 19th-century recamier in the Baltimore manner, mahogany and mahogany veneers.

Continental furniture pieces will include a Renaissance Revival dressing table, circa 1860, fruitwood and wood veneers with light and dark inlay; a Belle Epoque French escritoire, Louis XV style, mahogany with ormolu mounts; and a lovely Irish 19th-century Chippendale-style triple-back settee, mahogany, with a shaped crest in a carved eagle motif.

Traditional American art will include a still life oil on canvas of fruit by Paul Lacroix (New Jersey/New York, 1827-1869), signed lower left and housed in the original gilt wood frame; and an oil on canvas rendering titled Moonlit Snow, by Aldro T. Hibbard (Massachusetts/Vermont, 1886-1972), framed and signed. A nice selection of European art will feature an oil on canvas work by Patrick Hennessey (Irish, 1915-1980), titled Summer.

Antique American portraits will also cross the block. Some stars of the category include a framed oil on canvas of William Bicker Walter (1796-1822) by Sarah Peale (Michigan/Pennsylvania, 1800-1885); a miniature, possibly ivory, of Robert Brooke (1770-1821) attributed to Thomas Cummings (New York/Connecticut, 1804-1885); and a pair of watercolor on paper portraits by the renowned New England artist James S. Ellsworth (1802-1873).

Southern pottery pieces will include a rare Edgefield District Dave the Slave 5-gallon ovoid form jug, with applied ear handles and an even medium brown alkaline glaze, with wide mouth and rolled rim, inscribed and dated (1857); and a Jugtown (North Carolina) Chinese blue Tang vase, Oriental translation form, with applied extruded handles and strong deep wine allover the glaze.

Examples of Americana are sure to impress the crowd. Highlights include a large American eagle carved in New England in the late 19th century; a 19th-century Virginia leather key basket, oblong form, hand-stitched brown tinted leather; a rare Joseph Farr Bass surveyor’s compass, New York; and a Northampton County, Pa., needlework sampler dated Oct. 7, 1832, by Susanna Lerch.

Bronzes and statuary will include pugilists in pose by Eberhard Encke (German, 1881-1936); four putti in drunken revelry by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (French); a bronze titled Bear by Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876-1973); a 19th-century marble statue of a girl and dog by J. Roulleau; a pair of gilt bronze dancers by Agathon Leonard (French, 1841-1923); and a bronze greyhound dog by Eli Harvey (American, 1860-1957).

Sterling will feature an important Southern coin silver footed silver cup by Leinbach with an applied handle, a beaded border to the foot and mouth and a body with an elaborately hand-engraved landscape scene; a 125-piece King pattern Dominick & Haff sterling flatware and Kings III Reed & Barton, retailed by J.E. Caldwell & Co.; and an important American coin silver beaker owned by William Walker, rector of Trinity Church and Christ Church in Boston prior to and after the Revolutionary War.

Rounding out the top lots will be vintage musical instruments, including a 1915 Gibson F-4 mandolin, serial no. 24534, with red sunburst spruce top and oval sound hole; vintage books, including a true first-edition copy of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, published by J.B. Lippincott Co. in 1960; and around 45 lots of antique gold and silver coins, most of them late 19th and early 20th century.

For details call 919-644-1243 or e-mail info@LLAuctions.com.

View the fully illustrated catalog and sign up to bid absentee or live via the Internet during the sale at www.LiveAuctioneers.com.

Click here to view Leland Little Auction & Estate Sales Ltd.’s complete catalog.

ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

Rare Edgefield District pottery by Dave the Slave, like this 5-gallon jar, is rare. This piece dated 1857 and has a $20,000-$30,000 estimate. Image courtesy Leland Little Auction & Estate Sales Ltd.

This gilt bronze figure, one of two dancers by Agathon Leonard (French, 1841-1923), is inscribed with the sculptor’s name. Image courtesy Leland Little Auction & Estate Sales Ltd.

Paul Lacroix (New Jersey/New York, 1827-1869) signed this still life oil on canvas lower left. The estimate is $15,000-$25,000. Image courtesy Leland Little Auction & Estate Sales Ltd.

Auctioneer Leland Little expects this early 1800s Chippendale step-back cupboard from western North Carolina to sell for $10,000-$15,000. Image courtesy Leland Little Auction & Estate Sales Ltd.

James S. Ellsworth (New England, 1802-1873) used thin pink paper for this watercolor portrait, which is estimated at $2,000-$4,000. Image courtesy Leland Little Auction & Estate Sales Ltd.

Black Cat movie poster leaps to $334,600 at auction

Only known Style B one-sheet poster promoting the 1934 horror classic The Black Cat, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Image courtesy Heritage Auction Galleries.

DALLAS – Anyone doubting the legitimacy of vintage movie posters as an art form might change their opinion after consulting LiveAuctioneers.com’s archive of prices realized from past sales. Movie posters are true Americana, with an appeal to all ages and an affordability that runs from less than $100 to nearly half a million dollars.

Consistently, it is horror movie posters that have earned the most money at auction, like the Frankenstein one-sheet that made $207,000, inclusive of 15% buyer’s premium. It was Heritage Auction Galleries’ turn to take the spotlight on Nov. 12-13 as the only known Style B one-sheet movie poster for the 1934 Universal classic The Black Cat rang the register at $334,600 (inclusive of 19.5% buyer’s premium).

The Black Cat was the first collaboration between Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and many would argue their best.

“The graphically spectacular red, black and white stone lithograph Black Cat movie poster is that rare collectible that transcends its genre,” said Grey Smith, director of Vintage Movie Posters at Heritage. “Yes, it’s a gorgeous movie poster, but it also carries great appeal as a piece of art, as a piece of pop culture and as an important piece of cinematic history. There’s no other movie poster like it in the world, as far as we know, and it’s worth every cent paid for it.”

The poster came to Heritage from renowned collector Todd Feiertag, whose collection also supplied the copy of The Mummy, which sold for $453,500 in 1997 at a different auction house. The $334,600 price paid for the poster ties it for fourth place overall on the all-time list of top-selling movie posters, together with a Style D one-sheet for The Bride of Frankenstein, sold at Heritage Auctions in November 2007.

“As ever, classic horror is the top in the world of vintage movie poster collecting,” said Smith. “It was a thrill to auction this poster, and we can’t wait to see what turns up next.”

Search for movie posters in upcoming sales at www.LiveAuctioneers.com.

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Restored murals reinstalled at historic Orpheum Theater in S.D.

The Orpheum in downtown Sioux Falls, S.D., is on the National Register of Historic Places. Image by Alexius Horatius, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) – The dancing Grecian ladies in the murals at the Orpheum Theater recently became more vivid, even as their history remains a cloudy mystery. After a yearlong, $40,000 restoration project, two murals original to the 1913 building were reinstalled this past week, without the almost 100 years of grime.

“We are very excited to have these murals back in the building safe, sound and restored,” said Russ DeCurtins, the general manager for SMG, the company that has managed the theater for the city since 2003.

“They will add greatly to the recent renovations in bringing this historic facility back to its early years,” DeCurtins said.

“This is just another example of the wonderful transformation that’s taken place at the Orpheum Theater center,” Mayor Dave Munson said.

On Tuesday the second of two 5- by-11-foot canvas oil paintings was gingerly unrolled on a scaffold high above the balcony seating by three art conservators from Minneapolis.

The painting, depicting several women in flowing gowns playing music for dancing cherubic children, glowed with a rich burgundy dress and bright golden curls across from the other restored mural.

Still, no one is sure who painted the six rectangular murals and the large one above the stage. Beyond that, the whereabouts of two of the six rectangular murals painted for the theater is unknown.

“It’s sad that there wasn’t more documentation of the space when the city took it over in 2004,” DeCurtins said. A photograph of the space in its early years has not yet been found.

Opened in 1913 as a vaudeville house, the Orpheum Theater in 1927 became a movie house and remained so until 1954 when the Sioux Empire Community Playhouse acquired it. In 2002 the city acquired it. Now, SMG runs and rents the theater.

According to history of the building DeCurtins has cobbled together through the years, there were six rectangular murals: three on the north side of the building depicting drama and three on the south side depicting music.

In the 1970s, two of the murals featuring theater were sent to New York to be restored. They never came back.

“We’re going to try to locate them,” said DeCurtins. But he said he’s not holding his breath: “I can’t imagine someone keeping them for 30 years.”

DeCurtins said that after that experience, the murals were hand delivered to the Minneapolis-based restorers.

Even the return to former glory of these two works is impressive since no one knew these particular murals existed when they city first acquired the building.

“We found one rolled up in a tube in a closet,” DeCurtins said.

The other painting was found folded up in a storage room.

For as beautiful as they appear in the renovated theater now, these paintings had been down a rough road. They had been misted with spray paint in white and blue around the edges and had layers of bonded grime making the paintings dark and dingy. Because of water damage on the walls behind them, the paintings had been wrenched from the wall making as many as 100 holes in one of the paintings.

“And then there was the mold,” said David Marquis, a senior paintings conservator with the Midwest Art Conservation Center, which did the restoration. “They don’t come in much worse shape than these.”

The next phase of the project is to restore the three remaining murals – two similarly sized murals, one depicting music and one depicting drama and the large image of ladies acting above the stage.

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Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com

AP-WS-11-15-09 1210EST

Art restorers uncover unknown Duncanson work worth $300K

Duncanson painting after restoration. Image courtesy The Eisele Gallery.

CINCINNATI – On the surface, there was nothing remarkable about the dingy, dirty canvas that arrived at Doug Eisele’s Old World Restorations for a cleaning in March of this year. The owner of the painting, a dentist from London, Ky., had purchased the artwork for $900 from an antique shop in Lexington, Ky., and felt it would benefit from a once-over from the expert restorers in Cincinnat

When Doug Eisele saw the painting he remarked, “That’s a nice painting,” which turned out to be an understatement of some magnitude. He thought the work looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t see a signature. As the cleaning progressed, the letters “…son” emerged from the right corner, and Eisele knew he was looking at a previously unknown work by Cincinnati artist and resident Robert Scott Duncanson (African-American/Canadian, 1821-1872). He immediately called the owner, suggesting he insure the painting for at least $100,000 – an estimated value Eisele would later increase to the $300,000 range.

Eisele was familiar with Duncanson’s work, having seen his eight mural works on exhibit at Cincinnati’s Taft Museum (formerly known as the Belmont), the home of Nicholas Longworth, who commissioned the work in 1851. He also had previously restored several Duncanson works.

Born in Fayette, N.Y, Duncason was the son of a Scottish-Canadian father and an African-American mother, which made him a “free-born person of color.” He was raised in Canada by his father to avoid racial conflicts, returning to the United States in 1841. He became a self-taught artist by copying prints and painting portraits. Seeking more commissions, he set up a studio in Detroit in 1845 but returned to Cincinnati in 1846 and focused on landscapes of the Ohio River Valley inspired by works of the Hudson River School. By the early 1850s he was a recognized landscape artist.

Duncanson became associated with the abolitionist movement in 1848 through a commission by Charles Avery, an abolitionist Methodist minister, which established him within a network of abolitionist patrons for the rest of his life. He is considered to be the first African-American to make a living selling art.

Duncanson was noted for painting partly from real life and partly from imagination. Eisele feels this is the case with the work brought in for restoration. He believes the painting is a combination of the White Mountains of New Hampshire in the Hudson River School style and an unidentified European landscape.

But before he could make that judgment, Eisele had to see enough of the painting to identify it, and that took considerable restorative skills. The first task was to remove the layers of smoke, soot, dust and dirt that had accumulated on the surface over the last 140 years. Then the original overlayer of yellowed damar varnish needed to be removed. As that process evolved, the green sky began to revert to blue, but it revealed that significant overpainting had been done at some point during a previous restoration. When the overpainting was removed, using all reversible procedures, the sky returned to its original hue. Old World’s inch-by-inch restoration took nearly eight weeks to complete, but the result was worth the wait.

The owner of the restored Duncnason has placed the work on long-term loan to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Ky., where chief curator Ruth Cloudman said, “It’s a fantastical landscape. When the opportunity came up to have one of his paintings on extended loan we knew that would be very exciting.”

Old World Restorations has been in the art conservation and restoration business since 1978. To contact them, call 513-271-5459 or e-mail deisele@oldworldrestorations.com. Visit them online at www.oldworldrestorations.com.

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ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE

Duncanson painting prior to restoration. Image courtesy The Eisele Gallery.

T. rex fossil that passed at auction now headed for museum

1919 Charles R. Knight (1874-1953) painting of a Tyrannosaurus rex in an outdated posture. Originally ran in National Geographic. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

LAS VEGAS (AP) – A fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex that failed to sell at auction in Las Vegas last month has been bought by a private buyer who intends to see it displayed in a museum, an auctioneer has told The Associated Press.

Tom Lindgren, a natural history specialist for auction house Bonhams & Butterfields, said the buyer is talking with several museums in North America that want to showcase the bones of the 40-foot-long, 7.5-ton dinosaur that lived 66 million years ago. Lindgren said the buyer wants to keep the skeleton in the United States.

Lindgren said he could not reveal who bought the T. rex dubbed “Samson” or say how much he paid for the bones because of an agreement with the buyer. He said the selling price was near pre-auction estimates of $5 million to $8 million.

“We expect her to be on public viewing within the next couple months, hopefully before Christmas,” Lindgren told the AP. “She’s found a very good home.”

Lindgren said the buyer contacted at least four museums and found two that were interested. Lindgren said the buyer was discussing terms to loan the T. rex for display.

“By the time you look at the insurance and everything else that has to be provided, some of the museums may not be able to afford to have her,” he said.

Bidders didn’t meet a minimum price when Samson went on the block at the Venetian hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip. Auctioneers were hoping it would fetch $6 million, but the highest bid came in at only $3.7 million.

The T. rex found 17 years ago in South Dakota and its 170 fossilized bones represent more than half of the dinosaur’s skeleton.

A similar T. rex fossil sold for $8.3 million in 1997 and is now housed at the Field Museum in Chicago. That dinosaur, named “Sue,” is 42 feet long and has more than 200 bones.

Lindgren has said “Samson” is the third most complete T. rex skeleton ever discovered and has the “finest skull” of any T. rex ever found.

The female dinosaur’s lower jaw was found by the son of a rancher in 1987, and the rest of its bones were excavated in 1992, Lindgren said. It was sold twice to private owners and was last owned by an American whom Lindgren wouldn’t name.

“The fellow that owns her now has just as much an interest in science as I do, so it makes me feel good that we’ll find a good exhibit space for her,” Lindgren said.

AP-WS-11-12-09 0922EST

New contemporary arts museum takes its place amid Rome’s ruins

MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Rome, 2009.

ROME (AP) – Italy is opening its first national museum for contemporary arts and architecture in a bid to shed its image as merely a keeper of a glorious artistic past.

The $223 million Maxxi cultural center opened Saturday for a limited weekend run before its full-fledged opening in a few months. Located in a residential area of Rome, the museum was designed by Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid, the first woman to win the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004.

The Culture Ministry decided to build the museum in 1998, recognizing that the country that produced Giotto, Michelangelo and Bernini – avant-garde artists of their times – must continue to promote contemporary creativity if it wants to have a cultural heritage in the future.

“It is inconceivable for this very long flow of Italian creativity to be interrupted and do without the promotion and support which, over past centuries, have generally kindled it,” said Pio Baldi, head of the foundation that runs the museum.

The center, officially called the National Museum of the XXI Century Arts, is the latest in a series of cutting-edge architectural projects to be built in the Eternal City, which is better known for its Roman ruins, Baroque basilicas and Renaissance palazzi.

Renzo Piano’s Auditorium opened in 2002, giving Rome its first major-league concert hall. More recently and controversially, Richard Meier’s Ara Pacis museum, which houses a 2,000-year-old altar, opened in 2005. Critics complained the box-like shell was a modern blot in Rome’s historic center – to some, a gas station blocks away from the Spanish Steps.

No such protests sullied Hadid’s design for the museum, built on the grounds of a former military barracks in Rome’s Flaminio neighborhood, far from the cobblestoned streets of the center but close enough to be reached on public transport and near the new concert hall.

Hadid said she intended the space to be an “urban cultural center,” an arts campus with indoor and outdoor exhibition spaces. The building itself – a sleek, windowed box on top of a box – is made of cement walls, steel stairs and a glass roof, giving the galleries a neutral backdrop illuminated by filtered natural light. Black staircases offer sharp contrast to the white walls.

“I see Maxxi as an immersive urban environment for the exchange of ideas, feeding the cultural vitality of the city,” she said.

Guests at Friday night’s festive preview described the museum as essential to Rome’s living fully in the present.

“Surely a museum of contemporary art in such an ancient city is a passage from the ancient to the future, a voyage in space and time,” said Vincenzo Di Stefano, a manager for a publishing group. “Art is always a message that unites the contemporary, future and past.”

Artist Marianna Masciolini, an Umbrian who works in Rome, said: “The city needs to enter the 21st century.”

Among the 1,500 visitors strolling Friday through the three-story museum were several German tourists, including Karla Gogel, who described herself as a “great supporter of art that represents the present.”

Indeed, the museum is designed to be a research workshop of sorts, not just exhibiting contemporary art and architecture but incorporating contemporary design, fashion, film and advertising in a multidisciplinary cultural center.

Maxxi technically is two museums: Maxxi Art and Maxxi Architecture, which includes the files of architecture designs. The campus – which covers 312,000 square feet – also includes an auditorium, library, media library, study rooms, laboratories, a bookshop, cafe and spaces for live events and commercial activities.

Rome has several other modern and contemporary art spaces, but the Culture Ministry says Maxxi is the first national museum devoted to contemporary arts.

Baldi, the head of the Maxxi Foundation, said the aim is for the museum to act as a sort of “antenna” which broadcasts Italian contemporary art overseas and receives international culture at home.

“Art and architecture are essential components of the image and perception of a country abroad,” he said. “This holds true today ever more immediately and rapidly” considering the globalized world.

Hadid is best known for her tram station in Strasbourg and her Vitra fire station in Germany, which was cited by the Pritzker jurors in awarding her the 2004 prize, architecture’s most prestigious honor. More recently, she designed the aquatics center for the 2012 London Olympics, the games’ architectural showpiece.

While Maxxi museum opened to the public officially on Saturday, it was a limited two-day opening. The museum will formally open its first exhibits in 2010, when five shows are planned.

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Associated Press reporter Corinne Gretler contributed to this story.

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On the Net:

Museum is at http://www.maxxi.beniculturali.it

AP-ES-11-16-09 1627EST

ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE

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