While most major museums have some fakes in their collections, few like to advertise the fact. But in an unusual move, the Brooklyn Museum is planning an exhibition for 2009 that will call attention to a group of forgeries among its collection of Coptic sculptures.
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Two committees of the Association of Art Museum Directors are looking into ethical issues surrounding the Denver Art Museum's April purchase of an 1892 painting by famed American painter Thomas Eakins.
To fund the acquisition, the museum struck an unorthodox deal with billionaire Denver collector Philip Anschutz. In return for a financial donation, he received 50 percent ownership in the painting as well as 50 percent ownership in a major work already in the institution's collection.
Millicent Gaudieri, the New York- based association's executive director, confirmed the inquiries but was careful to not call them an investigation. read more »
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To fund the acquisition, the museum struck an unorthodox deal with billionaire Denver collector Philip Anschutz. In return for a financial donation, he received 50 percent ownership in the painting as well as 50 percent ownership in a major work already in the institution's collection.
Millicent Gaudieri, the New York- based association's executive director, confirmed the inquiries but was careful to not call them an investigation. read more »
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In an age when it can feel as if trash is about to breach the levees and flood the entire cultural landscape, two announcements have offered evidence of the surprising healthiness of the nation's appetite for the highbrow.
The first was that the British Museum has overtaken Blackpool Pleasure Beach to become Britain's most popular cultural attraction. In the past year 6.04 million visitors crossed the threshold, trumping Blackpool on 5.5 million and Tate Modern with 5.23 million.
The second piece of news was even more important for staff at the museum and those who care about its fortunes. Neil MacGregor, the director and the man who has overseen the transformati read more »
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The first was that the British Museum has overtaken Blackpool Pleasure Beach to become Britain's most popular cultural attraction. In the past year 6.04 million visitors crossed the threshold, trumping Blackpool on 5.5 million and Tate Modern with 5.23 million.
The second piece of news was even more important for staff at the museum and those who care about its fortunes. Neil MacGregor, the director and the man who has overseen the transformati read more »
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Three drawings by Spain's Francisco de Goya, presumed lost for 130 years, have fetched more than £4m at auction.
The three sketches, drawn between 1812 and 1829, had not been seen since 1877.
The top lot, Bajar rinendo (Down they come), shows four women fighting. It sold for £2,2m, a world record auction price for a Goya work on paper.
The auction, at Christie's in London, also saw La Surprise, by French artist Jean-Antoine Watteau, sell for £12.3m - another world record. read more »
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The three sketches, drawn between 1812 and 1829, had not been seen since 1877.
The top lot, Bajar rinendo (Down they come), shows four women fighting. It sold for £2,2m, a world record auction price for a Goya work on paper.
The auction, at Christie's in London, also saw La Surprise, by French artist Jean-Antoine Watteau, sell for £12.3m - another world record. read more »
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The new 32,000-square-foot building includes 12,000 square feet of state-of-the-art workspace, scientific labs and storage facilities. There are also education and meeting spaces and two small exhibition galleries for Clark-organized focus shows. Michael Conforti, the Clark's longtime director, hopes that the building will be more than a destination for art and architecture aficionados.
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One of the most sensational bequests of great paintings to the British people since the foundation of the national museums is now on public view at Tate Britain, London. Eighteen masterpieces - many of them barely, or never, seen in public over the past 50 years - have been left to the National Gallery and the Tate by Simon Sainsbury, great-grandson of the founder of J Sainsbury grocers.
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A long legal battle over an Art Deco table owned by Ronald O. Perelman is just now being settled and is awaiting the judge's final disposition. The dispute began when Perelman began to suspect that the table was a fake, and escalated when he refused to pay for more art objects sent to him by the dealer who supplied the table.
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According to the editor of Art Monthly, its latest cover is an effort to "restore dignity" to the discourse about the artistic portrayal of children. To its critics, including the Australin Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, it is "disgusting". What it has achieved is to bring to the boil a simmering row over the difference between art and pornography in a country with a long tradition of censorship
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The Italian government has been forced to declare a state of emergency at the archeological site of Pompeii because of its severe state of disrepair.
"To call the situation intolerable doesn't go far enough," said Culture Minister Sandro Bondi on Friday. She took office in Silvio Berlusconi's new conservative government in May. read more »
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"To call the situation intolerable doesn't go far enough," said Culture Minister Sandro Bondi on Friday. She took office in Silvio Berlusconi's new conservative government in May. read more »
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The transformation of London, a sleepy backwater for two decades, into an art capital that rivals New York has never been more apparent than in this past fortnight of auctions, with record prices fetched for works by artists ranging from Monet to Francis Bacon.
The weak dollar has made London an attractive place for Americans to sell. This city has also gained cachet as the stomping ground for rich denizens of the former Soviet Union, like the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich or the Ukrainian steel magnate Victor Pinchuk, both serious art collectors. read more »
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The weak dollar has made London an attractive place for Americans to sell. This city has also gained cachet as the stomping ground for rich denizens of the former Soviet Union, like the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich or the Ukrainian steel magnate Victor Pinchuk, both serious art collectors. read more »
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You buy a valuable painting from a reputable dealer and hang it on your wall. Years later, you learn that the painting was once stolen, decades before you bought it. The original owner sues you, and before you know it you've both lost your investment and racked up tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. You can sue your dealer to try to recover your loss, but that drags the legal mess out even longer.
Disputes over ownership of artworks are common, often protracted, and costly. Well-publicized cases involving theft and Holocaust restitution have drawn attention to the risks involved in not knowing every place your art has been. But collectors can find themselves dragged in read more »
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Disputes over ownership of artworks are common, often protracted, and costly. Well-publicized cases involving theft and Holocaust restitution have drawn attention to the risks involved in not knowing every place your art has been. But collectors can find themselves dragged in read more »
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Artist Frans Hals' painting, Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen, has exceeded its estimated price and sold for £7m at a Sotheby's auction in London.
The 1638 oil on oak panel had initially been expected to fetch between £3m to £5m at the Old Master Paintings sale.
JMW Turner's Pope on the Thames at Twickenham sold for £5.4m - the fourth highest price for a work by the artist ever achieved at auction. read more »
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The 1638 oil on oak panel had initially been expected to fetch between £3m to £5m at the Old Master Paintings sale.
JMW Turner's Pope on the Thames at Twickenham sold for £5.4m - the fourth highest price for a work by the artist ever achieved at auction. read more »
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A stone club from British Columbia dating to possibly 1800 BC could be leaving the country by the end of the year if a Canadian institution doesn't buy it.
Late last month, after reviewing a report from an expert examiner, the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board agreed to a six-month delay on the export of the rare sculptured club to who is presumed to be an American buyer. The delay is to give a Canadian museum, gallery or “public authority” time to prepare a cash offer. It could be expensive: The club's value, as indicated on the application for an export permit made this year, is $250,000 (U.S.) read more »
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Late last month, after reviewing a report from an expert examiner, the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board agreed to a six-month delay on the export of the rare sculptured club to who is presumed to be an American buyer. The delay is to give a Canadian museum, gallery or “public authority” time to prepare a cash offer. It could be expensive: The club's value, as indicated on the application for an export permit made this year, is $250,000 (U.S.) read more »
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The great tradition of flower painting in western art seems to have ended more than a century ago, in a series of tremendous bangs amid an obbligato of whimpers. Bang number one has to be the explosion of Van Gogh, 11 paintings in all, probably. The first four, studies of drying sunflower heads, were painted in Paris in 1887. Of the seven he painted in Arles a year later, the first were intended as decorative panels for the house he shared with Gauguin. He wrote to Theo Van Gogh: "If I carry out the plan there will be a dozen panels ... a symphony in blue and yellow." The decorative purpose of the panels explains their shallowness of field, simplicity of composition and brushwork. He trie
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According to auctioneers, works by Edvard Munch have significantly increased in price as a direct result of the 2004 robbery of the artist’s The Scream and Madonna. In May, Munch’s Girls on a Bridge, 1902, sold for $30.8m at Sotheby’s, tripling the painter’s previous auction record. The same work was sold in 1996 for $7.7m.
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Construction workers have begun dismantling the scaffolding that has encased the Guggenheim Museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for nearly three years. Restoration architects and mechanical engineers have worked to repair the curving, eggshell exterior of the building, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and celebrates its 50th anniversary this fall.
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It began with a pair of tights and two rings. It will become the world's largest public art project: five huge sculptures dotted around a region attempting to rejuvenate itself.
The Tees Valley Giants, unveiled today, are the work of Turner prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor and one of the world's leading structural engineers, Cecil Balmond. The pieces will be placed, over the next ten years, in Middlesbrough, Stockton, Redcar, Hartlepool and Darlington. read more »
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The Tees Valley Giants, unveiled today, are the work of Turner prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor and one of the world's leading structural engineers, Cecil Balmond. The pieces will be placed, over the next ten years, in Middlesbrough, Stockton, Redcar, Hartlepool and Darlington. read more »
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The long-awaited formal opening of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens has now been scheduled for September, after a series of delays. The gallery housing the Parthenon marbles, at the top of the museum, with a view towards the actual Parthenon 300m away, will be finally unveiled, although many of the other displays are not expected to be completed until next year.
After years of discussions, the museum has now decided how it will present the marbles. The originals are being displayed alongside plaster casts of the pieces removed from Greece, most of which are in the British Museum in London. read more »
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After years of discussions, the museum has now decided how it will present the marbles. The originals are being displayed alongside plaster casts of the pieces removed from Greece, most of which are in the British Museum in London. read more »
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