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Today In Chutzpah: This Couple Tried To Shoplift A Basquiat

An as-yet-unidentified man and woman walked into Taglialatella Galleries in Manhattan, headed to a Basquiat screen print, searched it on their phone, took it off the wall and tried to walk right back out.  A gallery assistant stopped them, though they did manage to steal a two-thirds-empty bottle of whiskey. - Hyperallergic

The Latest AI Superpower? Describe An Image And The Computer Will Create It

In each case, the text at the bottom of the image was the prompt fed into the program, and the picture above, the output. Just to stress: that’s all it takes. You type what you want to see and the program generates it. - The Verge

Why Is Russia Looting Ukraine’s Museums?  It’s Not Just Greed

"These latest thefts are in keeping with Putin's attempts to erase Ukraine's independent history and promote his own expansionist model of a new Russian empire. ... These works have been chosen to undermine Ukraine's national identity. Paintings by western European artists have not been targeted." - The Guardian

Former Director Of The Louvre Is Officially Indicted For Complicity In Fraud And Money Laundering

The charges against Jean-Luc Martinez, who stepped down last year, concern five antiquities allegedly taken illegally from Egypt and sold to the Louvre Abu Dhabi. - Artnet

New Technology Makes Lost Cities Of The Amazon Visible From The Air

Perched in a helicopter some 650 feet up, scientists used light-based remote sensing technology (lidar) to digitally deforest the canopy and identify the ancient ruins of a vast urban settlement around Llanos de Mojos in the Bolivian Amazon that was abandoned some 600 years ago. - Smithsonian

Inigo Philbrick — The Rise And Ruin Of A Talented And Charismatic Art Dealer

He had knowledge, taste, charm; two high-profile galleries; a beautiful partner and baby daughter. Now he's in prison for fraud, internationally reviled, and owes $86 million. As one friend-turned-victim puts it, through "a toxic mix of arrogance and alcohol, ... he's sabotaged his entire life for short-term greed. It's just stupidity." - The Guardian

“We Need A National Memorial To Gun Violence, Now.”

"It must be close to the Capitol, close enough to implicate and shame those inside it on a daily basis. ... After every mass shooting, turn on the lights and the microphones, and let no political leader who makes the symbolic pilgrimage escape speaking actual truth on the site." - MSN (The Washington Post)

Ex-Director And Curators At The Louvre Detained For Questioning In Antiquities Trafficking Case

Jean-Luc Martinez, who stepped down as director last year when his contract wasn't renewed, as well as the head of the museum's Egyptian art department and the editor of the journal Revue d'Egyptologie, were questioned about items sold to the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Met Museum. - ARTnews

What Guston’s Cartoon Klan Tells Us

Guston didn’t know what to say about the Klan or about racial violence, except that he knew to fear it as a Jew, and to both oppose and feel implicated in it as a white American. Nearly 50 years after he painted The Oracle, I can’t honestly say I know more. - The Atlantic

LA MoCA Imports New Chief Curator From Tate Modern

An L.A. native, Clara Kim has been senior curator of international art at Tate Modern since 2016, where she organized an acclaimed survey of artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen in 2020 and Kara Walker’s lauded Turbine Hall commission, Fons Americanus, in 2019. - ARTnews

Is That Long-Lost Painting The Italian Police Just Recovered Really A Titian?

The Carabinieri say so, but at least two prominent art professionals disagree: Titian scholar Andrea Donati ("sensationally wrong ... I cannot even see the shadow of Titian in this portrait") and art historian and former Italian culture minister Vittorio Sgarbi ("If that's a Titian, I'm Napoleon!"). - Smithsonian Magazine

Italian Police Find Missing Titian After Two Decades

Discovered by a Turin branch of the cultural heritage unit, a subsidiary of the Italian state police known as the Carabinieri, the 16th-century work, titled Portrait of a Man with a Beret, first went missing two decades ago from an undisclosed location. - ARTnews

A Deconstructivist Guide To The Universe

The emergence of deconstructivism – an ungainly portmanteau of the mid-to-late twentieth-century philosophical movement, deconstruction, and 1920s Russian constructivism – suggested that the avant-garde's apparent demise may have been rather exaggerated. - Dezeen

Beeple’s Twitter Was Hacked, And A Lot Of Money Was Lost

"Teasing a fake Louis Vuitton x Beeple collaboration, the hacker first tweeted out a raffle entry and then a link where followers could claim one of 200 free NFTs Beeple was supposedly offering, ... possibly resulting in the loss of over $438,000 worth of cryptocurrencies and NFTs." - ARTnews

Canadian Government Wants To Spend $800 Million On Rebuilding BC Museum?

It has become a hot political issue: $789-million to build a new museum? That feels like a lot to some British Columbians, particularly as the pandemic drags on, family doctors are quitting while citing low pay, and affordable housing remains a pipe dream out here. - The Globe & Mail (Canada)

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