Two chicks with major wanderlust who live to see the world: themselves, through others, or just living vicariously with the latest & greatest gadgets, travel accoutrements - from luggage to skincare
"Too many people these days travel purely to tick items off a list of things to be seen, rather than letting the experience truly seep through," notes the French-born Anne Suire, the owner of Luxury Travel Consultant, which has six new tours of France on offer for fall, all focusing on various regional specialties - and all at a relaxed pace.
Designed for small groups of 8-10 people, they are divided into three categories of two tours each:
for women who like art, food, wine,
and shopping
with a focus on painting in the Luberon region of France
the high life in a plush castle outside Avignon with an expert chef, housekeepers and waiters
All the tours include:
visits to wineries
tours of the region
visits to local artists like potters, sculptors and designers
"Our tours are not touristy but rather educational, and we want our clients to see the world from a different perspective and feel absolutely at home in France." For France at a more French pace, visit LuxuryTravelConsultant.com.
Ten years after an exhibit of Renoir's Portraits set an attendance record of 340,000, the National Gallery of Canada will be hosting the Renoir Landscapes, 1865-1883 exhibition featuring 60 of Renoir's most beautiful landscape paintings - on loan from leading art museums and private collections around the world from June 8, 2007 until September 8, 2007.
For the duration of the exhibition, the Albert at Bay Suite Hotel & Best Western Victoria Park Suites in Ottawa have been named Privileged Partners with the National Gallery of Canada. "We are pleased to partner with the Albert at Bay Suite Hotel and Best Western Victoria Park Suites to help provide a unique and enriching experience to tourists visiting the National Capital Region", explains Joanne Charette, Director of Public Affairs at the National Gallery. "We understand that guests traveling to Ottawa have a very finite amount of time to visit attractions. The beauty of booking a Renoir package with us is that the guest will have a guaranteed time to see the Renoir Landscapes Exhibit and will not leave disappointed," notes Roger MacKinnon, Director of Sales & Marketing for the hotel, which is located in downtown Ottawa & situated steps from Parliament Hill, the Canadian War Museum and Sparks Street's shopping & nightlife. "We are delighted to be in partnership with the National Gallery to help make this happen."
Travel around the world in your dreams in the Jules Verne room at The Spencer Hotel.
To celebrate their 100th anniversary, the Spencer Hotel - an intimate, literary-themed boutique hotel - has teamed up with the not-for-profit Washington Community Arts and Cultural Center to host a series of art activities and customized workshops by renowned artists, writers and musicians of multiple disciplines. Workshops will include poetry, pottery classes, jazz guitar lessons, concert & composition, watercolor & acrylic painting classes, drawing and illustration, visual arts for children, theater and performing arts, and playwriting. Wine tastings, spa treatments, food themes and relaxation exercises will be also be part of each themed workshop.
Each room of the Spencer is dedicated to a renowned author, depicting
scenes from their most famous works. In the C.S. Lewis (Room 302) a mural shows the entrance to Narnia from The lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, complete with the famed Wardrobe. The Isak Dinesen (Room 203) pays homage to Out of Africa with a bed under dream-like safari tent, while the Jules Verne (Room 306) gives the playful feel of sleeping up in a balloon traveling Around the World in 80 Days.
The tree-lined college town of Claremont, California, will gain a museum of its own when the Claremont Museum of Art opens its doors on Sunday, April 15, 2007. Located inside a renovated citrus packing house, the museum's inaugural exhibit, A Conversation with Color: Karl Benjamin, Paintings 1953-1995, will be a retrospective of the work of world-renowned painter Karl Benjamin. Featuring 46 paintings spanning 42 years, the exhibit traces Benjamin's career, from his early experiments with cubism to works that represent his role as one of the founders of abstract classicism, through to his serial explorations with patterns, systems, letter shapes, stripes and natural forms in the 70's and 80's. Considered a regional artist of international importance, curator Steve Comba points out that his legacy as an open & generous teacher is just as important.
"Claremont is home to a remarkable number of internationally-acclaimed artists, many of whom settled here to teach at the prestigious Claremont Colleges," says Executive Director William Moreno, former director of The Mexican Museum in San Francisco. "The result is an impressive body of work and significant arts community that will now have an institution dedicated to celebrating this on-going legacy." The museum's permanent collection, Building a Legacy: Founding a Museum, Building a Collection, will occupy the smaller of the two museum galleries with works exhibited on a rotating basis. The collection will present work by Millard Sheets, Jean Ames, Harrison McIntosh, Betty Davenport Ford, Aldo Casanova, Roland Reiss, Norm Hines, James Hueter, Milford Zornes and other notable local artists.
The actual packing house space in which the museum is located boasts an interesting history itself. During the first half of the 20th century, citrus was the primary industry for Claremont and many other cities in Southern California. By the late sixties, however, housing tract development had become more lucrative, leading to the decline of the citrus industry until the last packing house closed its doors in 1972. "The spirit in which this building was originally conceived -- a cooperative effort of citrus ranchers who came together to pack and ship their fruit -- is similar to what's happening with the Claremont Museum of Art," notes architect Mark von Wodkte, also a founding board member of the museum. "That the Claremont Museum of Art is located within the Packing House is a celebration of this place and its history."
In conjunction with Art Basel Miami Beach, renowned pop artist Kenny
Scharf recently announced a special exhibition and event December 7, 2006, at 10
PM, poolside at the legendary Andre Balazs-owned art deco hotel The Raleigh on Miami
Beach. The exhibition kicks off with an interpretative dance by Scharf and a group of fellow artists, and features a single work of art and marks the
second public showing of a
mixed-media installation known as the Astral Uber Cumulo Nimbus Atlantian Express: a flawless 1960 Cadillac Coupe DeVille - with only 5,200 original miles - that is a psychedelic collision of past and future. It is reminiscent of the artist's 1985 black light installation
for Art in Action, at the Sogetsu Museum in Tokyo, Japan, where
Scharf's customized 1973 Cadillac, Dream Car exhibit opened in a
celebration that included performances with friends Ann Magnuson and
John Sex.
Inside the car, mint condition antique upholstery
is transformed into a den of pop culture and puckish humor. Below the rooftop tiara, hood ornaments are
redefined as florescent brains explode from twin fuchsia totem poles,
and an elfin dinosaur stands watch over grinning orbs zooming through
aqua vapors. In the trunk, a revolving
disco ball, rope lights and mirrors cast streaks of light on animated
characters spinning gleefully atop twirling turntables - a nod to Scharf's celebrated closet
installations. "The exhibit is a combo of the futuristic -- the Cadillac, and the past
-- the caveman dance, resulting in a time splat, when the future and
the past collide, loosely. It's all time,
no time, every time," notes Scharf, who first made a splash in the eighties, in tandem with roommate
Keith Haring and friends Jean Michel Basquiat & Andy Warhol.
Over the past two decades, Scharf's work has appeared in some of the world's most prominent galleries and museums including the Guggenheim and Whitney Museums in
New York; the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; the Museu de Arte
Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the
Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida, and the Vincent Van Gogh Museum in
Amsterdam. "Scharf is an artist of overload," explains art critic Carter Ratcliff.
"He is also an artist of remarkable clarity, which means that the
effect of overload is not the result of clutter or crowding. In Scharf's universe, the idea of form is
inseparable from the effect of motion…Because Scharf has made himself
permeable to our culture, his art can baffle interpretation. The label
he invented for himself, 'Pop Surrealist,' is helpful here."
As the sister event of Art Basel in
Switzerland, Art Basel Miami Beach is regarded not only as one of the most important art shows stateside, but throughout the world as well. Event organizers estimate that more than 2000 artists and 200 exclusive
international galleries will exhibit works. Exhibition sites
are located in the Miami's beautiful Art Deco District, within walking
distance of the beach, noted hotels and acclaimed restaurants.
The deets on Kenny Scharf's mixed-media installation featuring his Astral Uber Cadillac at Art Basel Miami Beach:
WHEN: December 7th @ 10 pm - an interpretative dance by Scharf and a group of fellow artists kicks things off
WHERE: poolside at The Raleigh Hotel, Miami Beach (fun factoid: it was once the site of Hollywood water ballets starring Esther Williams) - RaleighHotel.com
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