Portrait of a Lady, by Baroque artist Giuseppe Ghislandi, was part of the trove of works belonging to Amsterdam art dealer Jacques Goudstikker which Hermann Goering bought up in a forced sale. Dutch journalists noticed the painting in a real-estate-listing photo in Argentina, but it was gone when police arrived to search. - AP
Crop art — works using corn kernels, sunflower seeds, or other agricultural products as their media — has long been a feature of the Minnesota State Fair. Next month, nine works, the pick of this year’s (ahem) crop, will be on display at the museum. - The Minnesota Star Tribune
Gone for the most part are the -isms that defined artistic movements in the 20th century: Cubism, Surrealism, Fauvism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism. Manifestos too are increasingly rare. - ARTnews
“The museum … needs a refurbishment to preserve its more than 200 paintings and nearly 500 drawings by Vincent van Gogh, but two years of negotiations with the (Dutch culture) ministry over funding have reached an impasse.” - The New York Times
So says the owner of the works, Yaniv Cohen, who claims he was given them by his wife’s grandmother, whose father acquired them secretly from Malevich in Odesa early in the Stalin era. That’s supposedly why there’s no previous record of the works’ existence. Scholars are unconvinced by this explanation. - BBC (MSN)
In April, the government announced the pilot launch of the pyramids area development project, leading to changes at the world’s most famous archaeological site. - Smithsonian
Particularly problematic are the flat roofs and terraces that make Fallingwater so indelible — and provide the perfect place for water to pool. - Washington Post
That’s the question Miami artists are asking in an anti-Alligator Alcatraz show that is an attempt to create "an activating power,” not "just going to have the work sit here.” - Hyperallergic
The remains of the sunken city include "partially preserved pre-Roman statues of sovereigns and sphinxes, such as a beheaded Ptolemaic granite sculpture and an incomplete sphinx with a cartouche bearing the inscription of Ramesses II.” - Hyperallergic
“Guédelon has quarriers, stone cutters, masons, joiners, blacksmiths, tilers, painters, carpenters, ropemakers, wheelwrights, carters and basketmakers – 60-odd artisans in all – building cob and rubblework walls, firing tiles, blending dyes and pigments, braiding rope and forging and beating nails, hinges and decorative ironwork.” - The Guardian (UK)
Mostly, they’re knuckling under. One might, if one were a student of history, think of this as totalitarian. “The chilling effect on museum programming at the heart of artistic experimentation and the historic role of art to occasionally provoke strong reactions in viewers.” - The New York Times
It is noteworthy that as strikingly photographic, familiar, dramatic — what have you — the painting is, one source of its pleasure has nothing to do with the content of the image but its shape, a shape that forces the viewer to find the rhymes. - MITPress
