The MEAM (Museum of Modern European Art) has prepared an online exhibition of paintings by international figurative artists. Many of the paintings have been on exhibit at the MEAM in the past.  The artworks are a reflection of the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of everyone in this time of isolation.

With these works, it is intended that virtual visitors make their own account of each work and that they can identify with the characters represented in each of them. The MEAM encourages viewers to send their ideas, reflections or poems inspired by one of the works. The MEAM will share select submissions on their social networks.

New works will be added every day.

To see the works present in the exhibition, please click here.

(Artwork - Fernando Devesa Molina, Una partida de ajedrez. Figurativas 2019.)

Congratulations to ARC Living Master Richard Whitney for winning “Best of Show” in the Copley Society of Art Pop-up Portrait Exhibition in Boston for his painting "Miriam".

To see more of Richard's work, please click here. 

We know that COVID-19 is having a serious impact on many artists and schools, with exhibitions and workshops being cancelled or rescheduled. Please be assured that the Art Renewal Center is continuing to operate. We are running on schedule and will be accepting entries for the 15th International ARC Salon Competition starting April 1. Next week! Entry dates are April 1 - August 14th, 2020. We are raising our "Best in Show" award this year to $25,000 and are adding some new exciting awards as well.

Please check back in on April 1 or after to view the full prospectus and to start entering your works. All entries are submitted through the ARC website.

As a needed distraction from these crazy times, ARC Associate Living Master Tina Garrett has opened her online Facebook group mentorship page to anyone who wants to watch a one-day live painting demonstration broadcast.

To participate, visit Facebook and go to Artist Tina Garrett’s page and "Like" it. Facebook requires this or you won’t be able to request to join the group. Then, search the “Groups” tab for Artist Tina Garrett's Mentorship Group (not the students group) and request to join. Ignore anything about payment, etc., and your request to join will be granted. You'll be a free member from now until April 2nd. Be online and in the Artist Tina Garrett's Mentorship Group on Monday March 30th at 10am CST and enjoy the free, live and interactive broadcast painting demo. You'll even be able to ask questions!

To go to Tina's facebook page, click here.  

The Barcelona Academy of Art, like many other art schools around the world, is currently closed in an effort to stop the Covid-19 epidemic. To keep positive in these difficult times and consolidate the bonds of the artistic community, the Barcelona Academy of Art has decided to organize a competition open to all artists who are currently confined at home. Using the materials available to them (drawing, painting, sculpture, digital art) the participants will have to create a self-portrait and send an image (.jpg) of the finished work, accompanied by an explanation of their creative process especially in relation to the quarantine we are all going through.

Send an image (.jpg) of the self-portrait with a text (max. 700 words) explaining the creative process of the work to press@academyofartbarcelona.com

The contest is open to all artists over the age of 18.

First prize wins a workshop at the Barcelona Academy of Art, second and third place win prize packages of artistic materials.

The school will share the 10 selected self portraits on their social networks
Instagram: @ barcelona.academyofart
Facebook: @BcnAcademyofArtParticipants can use the hashtag #baaquarantine to share their work in progress.

The contest ends on Monday, April 13, 2020 at 12 p.m.

Skill-Based Art: A Learning Resource for Art Students & Artist-Teachers has recently republished a video interview with painter, Michael Coyle, which took place in 1993. In the interview, Michael articulates the operations of Atelier LeSueur, a former Minnesotan studio-school which was patterned after the 19th century model. Rare footage of students working in the atelier is shown while Mr. Coyle describes the process of training and the rate of student development within the rigorous curriculum.

To watch the video, click here. 

ARC is pleased to welcome Jaq Grantford as an ARC Associate Living Master!

Jaq Grantford is an Australian artist based in Melbourne and has worked extensively as an artist.

Ever since she was a child, she has been passionate about portraying the human form, and that love has persisted throughout her life. To capture the essence of a person is one of her greatest joys.

To see her gallery on ARC, please click here.

Eric Rhoads, head of Streamline Publishing Inc., will be providing art instruction with top artists. Broadcasting will begin at 3 pm EST directly from the Streamline Art Video Facebook page. The broadcasts will run for approximately one hour and will feature one master artist painting a part of a painting, along with an interview with the artist. Each day will be different and will continue for as many days as the lockdown continues.

To watch these broadcasts, click here.

ARC is pleased to welcome Fine Art Academy Cologne as a new ARC Approved Atelier!

Fine Art Academy Cologne (FAAC) is a special place dedicated entirely to the teaching of drawing, painting, comics and digital art. Deriving from the classical figurative arts and influenced from the works of artists such as Rembrandt, Rubens, Caravaggio, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Léon Bonnat, Velasquez and Titian. The FAAC reveals the knowledge of the old masters from the renaissance till the 19th century academic painters. The FAAC generates the traditional atelier atmosphere and keeps the traditions of 19th century academic schools. The FAAC is the school you are searching for if you want to learn the secrets of the old masters and the skills of drawing and painting the academic and traditional way.

To learn more about Fine Art Academy Cologne, please click here. 

Due to closures due to COVID-19 virus, Briscoe Western Art Museum is holding their "Night of Artists Show and Sale" online. The dates have been extended from March 27 - July 26, 2020.

ARC Associate Living Master Mary Ross Buchholz will be among the artists participating.

A virtual Luck of the Draw is scheduled for Friday, March 27 at 10:00 am.

To view the works in the show and to fill out an absentee ballot form, click here. 

ARC is please to welcome Matthew Bird as an ARC Associate Living Master!

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Matthew Bird graduated with honors from the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, New York, in 2000. He is a Signature Member of numerous organizations, including the National Watercolor Society, where he serves as Vice President. His award-winning watercolor paintings have been exhibited in juried shows across the United States, as well as in Canada, China, Greece, Hong Kong, and Italy. His work is in permanent museum collections as well as numerous private collections.

To view his gallery on ARC, please click here.

Art institutions all over the world have had to close their doors due to COVID-19, but many are hosting free virtual tours of their spaces and exhibitions as an option in a time when we are keeping a distance from one another or being confined in our homes.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, and the Louvre in Paris are just a few museums offering free virtual tours of their spaces and exhibits.

Google Arts and Culture is also offering virtual museum tours and tours of cultural sites from around the world. To take virtual tours of Italian cultural sites now closed to the public, please click here. 

Created by Richard F. Lack and published by Atelier Lack beginning in 1986, the Classical Realism Quarterly mailed to 400 supporters. By 1992 it was transformed into the Classical Realism Journal published by The American Society of Classical Realism. By the time the CRJ folded in 2003 it had reached thousands of people worldwide. To ensure the knowledge contained within these publications will continue to enlighten generations to come, the rights to reprint the CRQ and CRJ were given to the Art Renewal Center. The ARC is proud to announce that these volumes have now been re-published on the ARC website. We view these as important historical documents pertaining to the founding of the 21st Century Representational Art Movement. To our knowledge these are the first publications dedicated and in support of representational art since the onset of modernism.

To read the journals and quarterlies visit this new section of the ARC website located in the ARChives.

After realizing that many visitors to the ARC website wanted to better understand the history of 19th century academic painting and the various movements and key players, Kara Lysandra Ross, ARC Co-Chair/COO has recently published a summary of 19th century French and Victorian painting (1849-1900) on the ARC website. This essay gives a concise understanding of this momentous period in fine art, including the driving factors that created it, the critical schools and institutions, most famous artists and the movements they inspired.

To read the essay, click here.

In these difficult times we wanted to remind our viewers that fine art is enduring. While being unable to visit physical museums, perhaps stuck inside your homes, consider relieving stress by immersing yourself in the beauty of the visual arts, either through personal creation or by exploring the ARC Museum and ARChives which are filled with thousands of images by top quality representational artists both living and from the past. Read articles to inspire thought and learn about the history of fine art.

The Da Vinci Initiative knows that parents and art teachers across the country are scrambling for art learning resources that can be used at home.

The Da Vinci Initiative, in partnership with Anthony Waichulis, is reminding everyone that there are FREE complete curriculum packets for EVERY GRADE available for download here.

Please use, share, post, and help everyone in need find this important resource to help integrate atelier skills into their home schooling plan for children across the globe.

The Florence Academy of Art is asking artists all over the world, in particular those affected by the virus, to send a drawing or painting of the view from your rooms.

FAA will post a few of the submissions, and offer a prize of a workshop to one lucky winner, and celebrate the end of this difficult time.

With your participation, FAA hopes to create a long-lasting positive experience for students and the FAA community!

To participate, send a low resolution jpg to social@florenceacademyofart.com through April 3, 2020.

Please include subject header: “#viewfromyourroom entry” and in the body of the email include your full name and how you would like to be credited if reposted to social media.

To view a message from FAA Founder and Director Daniel Graves, click here. 

ARC is pleased to welcome Richard Hall as a Living Master!

"For 35 years, I enjoyed a successful career in fine art, exploring the opposing worlds of abstract art and traditional still life.

But chance intervened when a mischievous toddler added her two-cents worth to one of my still life settings, prompting me to see my work in an entirely new way..."

To learn more and see Richard Hall's gallery, click here. 

At Manchester Studios RVA, artist Constance Ramsey Bowden welcomes the finest instructors in realist drawing, painting and sculpting from all over the world to teach workshops from 3 days to 2 weeks in length. Manchester Studios RVA is located in Richmond, Virginia, USA in a 2000  square studio with soaring 16 foot ceilings and massive banks of light filled windows.  It is a haven of creativity where instructors and students can gather to share knowledge and advance skills in a supportive and uplifting space.

To learn more about the various workshops offered at Manchester Studios, please click here.  

In the second half of the nineteenth century, three generations of young rebellious artists and designers revolutionized the visual arts in Britain and challenged the new industrial world around them. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, William Morris and his associates, and the champions of the Arts and Crafts movement offered a radical artistic and social vision that found inspiration in the preindustrial past and decisively influenced visual culture in Britain and beyond. Victorian Radicals will bring together approximately 145 paintings, works on paper, and works of decorative art—many never shown outside the UK—to illuminate this most dynamic period of British art in an exhibition of unparalleled historical and visual richness.

The exhibition takes place at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St, New Haven, CT 06510 and runs from 2/13 - 5/10/20.

To learn more about this exhibition, please click here.  

 To see more events, please visit the ARC Calendar.

Raphael was one of the greatest artistic figures working in the Western classical tradition. In celebration of the 500th anniversary of his death, the National Gallery presents 25 prints and drawings in an intimate installation. The works will illustrate how the combination of artistic traditions, wide range, and immediate influence of Raphael’s art shaped the standard of aesthetic excellence for later artists, connoisseurs, and scholars.

The exhibition runs from 2/16 - 6/14/2020 at the National Gallery of Art, Constitution Ave NW, Washington, D.C., 20001.

For more information, please click here.

To see more events, visit the ARC Calendar.

The National Sculpture Society is holding a members only exhibition, with works embracing the theme of Spring as a season of birth, new growth and renewal.

Among the exhibiting artists is ARC Associate Living Master Paige Bradley who will exhibit her work "Irresistible Spring".

The exhibition runs from March 2 - May 8, 2020 at the National Sculpture Society Gallery, 6 E 39th St, New York, NY.

For more information, please click here.

To learn about more events, please visit the ARC Calendar. 

The February/March Plein Air competition, brought to you by Plein Air Magazine and Streamline Publishing, is now open and accepting entries until midnight on March 15, 2020.

Entrants can win up to $15,000 if their painting is chosen as best of the year. A total of $27,000 in cash prizes are offered. Steve Diamant, Arcadia Gallery founder, is the judge.

To learn more, please visit https://pleinairsalon.com/.

ARC Approved Laguna College of Art + Design is holding a Spring open house event.

Prospective students will have an opportunity to tour their various campus locations and facilities, learn about LCAD's academic programs, and receive portfolio reviews from their faculty and admissions staff.

This event is open to all prospective students, as well as parents, teachers, counselors and guests. The event takes place on Sunday, March 8, 2020 from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

To learn more, please click here. 

ARC Associate Living Master Arina Gordienko has been featured in Realism Today as the Realism Ambassador of the Week!

"Arina is dedicated to realistic traditions in painting, combining traditional classical techniques with realistic yet imaginative and often surreal compositions and a contemporary palette. The subjects of her works are placed in the middle of nowhere, without any signs of a particular place or time. She depicts human emotions and feelings in an unusual environment, often on the border of the capacity of perception."

To read the full article, please click here.

ARC Approved Atelier Charles Cecil Studios was recently featured on a segment of the CBS Sunday Morning News.

Correspondent Seth Doane talks to Charles Cecil and the students of the atelier who are keeping the sight-size method and other classical techniques of creating fine art alive.

To watch this fascinating glimpse inside the Charles Cecil studios, click here. 

The ARC Approved New York Academy of Art is offering a Master of Fine Arts and Certificate of Fine Art Program. The application deadline is March 15, 2020.

The Master of Fine Arts is a specialized degree at the graduate level for students seeking advanced education in fine arts. It is a concentrated two-year, 60-credit program that requires 85% of coursework to be completed in studio art.

The Certificate of Fine Art (CFA) Program is a one-year, 36-credit studio sequence that provides students the opportunity to develop their personal vision and specialized skills within an active and inspiring fine arts school.

To learn more about the programs and apply, please click here.