It's time once again to vote for Eureka Springs as one of the nations Top Arts Destinations. The annual poll is sponsored by American Style Magazine. Eureka Springs has been in the top twenty-five for the past several years in the small city categories. Last year we were number ten and ranked higher than Carmel, CA, Laguna Beach, CA, and Aspen, CO. Let's hit the top five this year. Please vote by going to www.surveymonkey.com/s/3YYDSTL

About the Magazine: "AmericanStyle" is a full-color, quarterly consumer magazine focused on contemporary craft, craft collectors and the artists who create studio craft art. Readers explore eclectic lifestyles of artists, elegant homes of craft collectors and features about "the art of creative living." City Arts Tours and small Arts Walks. American Style promotes awareness of the economic and aesthetic contributions that art and craft bring to our homes and communities. Each year, cities compete to be included in AmericanStyle's Top 25 Arts Destinations edition."

The Arkansas Arts Center announced today that it will host the exhibition Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London in the summer of 2013.

The exhibition is organized by the American Federation of Arts and English Heritage. It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities with additional funding from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.  The exhibition is locally presented by the Bank of the Ozarks and the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

Arkansas Arts Center Executive Director Todd Herman stated, “The exhibition Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London will offer Arkansans a rare opportunity to view first-hand masterworks by some of art history’s leading artists. For example, this exhibition will mark the first occasion that a Rembrandt painting—and a famous one at that—will have been on view in Arkansas.”Herman said, “I am very excited that we will be able to bring these masterworks to Arkansas during the culmination of the Arkansas Arts Center’s 50th Anniversary.  In many ways, 2013 will mirror the Arkansas Arts Center’s first year in 1963 when it opened its doors to the public, held the Beaux-Arts Ball and featured an exhibition of Old Master European paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  In 2013, the Arkansas Arts Center will celebrate our 50th Anniversary, host Tabriz and present the Kenwood House exhibition.”Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London showcases 48 masterpieces from the collection known as the Iveagh Bequest.  These magnificent paintings reside at Kenwood House, a neoclassical villa in London.

The tour of Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London will provide a unique opportunity to view superb paintings outside the United Kingdom.  Most of these paintings have never travelled to the States before, and many of them have rarely been seen outside Kenwood.  The highly acclaimed works represent the greatest artists of their periods, including Rembrandt van Rijn, Thomas Gainsborough, Anthony van Dyck, Frans Hals, Joshua Reynolds, J.M.W. Turner and more.

Chief Executive for English Heritage Simon Thurley commented, “The collection of works of art on display at Kenwood is one of the most important in England, and we are thrilled that works from this collection will travel across the Atlantic for the first time and find new audiences in the United States.”Donated by Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh (1847–1927) and heir to the world’s most successful brewery, the collection features portraiture, landscape and 17th-century Dutch and Flemish works typically found in English aristocratic collections. In addition to the masterworks from the Iveagh Bequest, the exhibition includes several works acquired specifically for Kenwood.

While the exhibition is on tour, Kenwood House will be undergoing a major repair and conservation program. The renovation will be complete in 2013.

American Federation of Arts Director Pauline Willis remarked, “We are extremely proud to be able to give greater exposure to this magnificent selection of paintings while Kenwood undergoes a major refurbishment.”Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London will only travel to four venues in the United States, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum and the Arkansas Arts Center.

Prior to the opening of the exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Rembrandt’s haunting masterpiece Portrait of the Artist will be on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (early April–late May 2012) in New York. It will hang near the museum’s own Self-portrait by Rembrandt (1660), providing a rare opportunity to compare the two works, which, although close in date, are very different in scale, format and expression.

The exhibition will be on view at the Arkansas Arts Center June 6 – September 8, 2013.  The Arkansas Arts Center will be the last venue of the tour.

Contact: 501-372-4000

Location: Arkansas Arts Center – 9th and Commerce, Little Rock, AR  72202

Gallery Hours:  10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday - Saturday                            11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday

Closed Monday & Major Holidays