NEW MUSEUMS OF MODERN ART IN LISBON AND MIDDLESBROUGH
Beginning in July, Lisbon will have a major museum of modern art, housing a collection of works by Picasso, Warhol, Dalí, Miró, Francis Bacon, and others that was valued last year by Christie’s at $410 million, reports the New York Times‘ Lawrence Van Gelder. The museum, part of the state-run Belem Cultural Center, will display the 862 works of the collection of José Berardo, a sixty-two-year-old billionaire who made his fortune in mining in South Africa. French historian Jean-François Chougnet will be the museum’s director.
In other news, The Independent_‘s Ian Herbert reports that Middlesbrough, UK, has opened a £20 million ($39.2 million) art gallery that, in a crafty glance at New York’s MoMA, will be called MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art). The acronym means “beautiful space” in Japanese; the architect responsible for its creation is the Dutchman Erick van Egeraat.
