"The Italian press has dubbed it the 'sack of RAI.' Investigators believe disgruntled former staff members stole a trove of artworks worth an estimated $30 million from the Italian public broadcasting company Rai over a period of decades." - Artnet
It belongs to Alvin Hall, 68, a broadcaster, financial educator and author, who, through good timing, taste and a bit of luck, began collecting in the 1980s and has been able to buy masterpieces by artists whose work is now worth much more. - The New York Times
The $93 million building by Morphosis Architects, the 80-personstudio founded by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne, was designed to be many things: the new home for a contemporary art museum — more than a decade in the works — that will nearly double exhibition space and raise the institution’s profile, for one. - Los Angeles Times
About his research at the palace, Gregory Buchakjian told Hyperallergic, “It’s a big house. There are no labels. It’s not a museum … Some paintings had labels, but they were not necessarily correct.” - Hyperallergic
A few days ago, David Zucchino's book on the 1898 Wilmington Massacre won a Pulitzer Prize. Now, a new statue is about to go up on the North Carolina-Wilmington campus, acknowledging and permanently memorializing the coup and massacre. The challenge for artist Dare Coulter: "'How do you depict Black joy, resilience,"'but also convey the horror of the massacre." -...
Now, their plans are becoming reality. According to Christo's nephew, "A photo montage of how it would look was done but they never proposed actually doing it because they thought they would never get the necessary permission." They're both gone, but the permission has been given. - The Guardian (UK)
It's been an expensive and draining series of legal battles. "After three years of courtroom hostilities, the estate of the artist Robert Indiana and the artist’s former business partner said Friday that they had agreed to settle the legal disputes that cost the estate millions of dollars and clouded the market for a man known for such works as...
English Heritage commissioned six portraits to emphasize the history - including Roman emperor Septimius Severus, who ordered the strengthening of Hadrian's Wall while on a trip to Britain. English Heritage's curatorial director: "African figures from the past have played significant roles at some of the historic sites in our care but many of their stories are not very well...
The collection certainly demands a change: "The current facility, which opened in 1997, originally housed a collection of 40 O’Keeffe paintings. The museum had always been looking to expand, Hartley said, but as the years went on and the museum’s permanent collection size increased to more than 3,000 works — the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation donated 981 additional items in...
Art historian Gregory Buchakjian did his Master's thesis at the Sorbonne on the art collection of the Sursock Palace, where he identified two unattributed canvases as the work of the 17th-century Italian painter. With the decades-long turmoil in the Lebanese capital, Buchakjian and the rest of the world forgot about those two paintings — until the catastrophic explosion in...
"Most drivers are on the road for weeks, sometimes months at a stretch, living a nomadic life and often sleeping and eating in their vehicles. Their trucks become their travel companions and their homes, and the drivers go to great lengths to beautify them. … Hand-painted symbols, elaborate patterns, and quirky slogans with bold typography coalesce into vibrant, idiosyncratic...
"He brought back enough loot from his conquests to fill what would soon become the Louvre Museum. And his ravenous and methodical art seizures — a cultural legacy now being highlighted in 200th-anniversary commemorations of his death — paved the way for similar French excesses in sub-Saharan Africa a century later. Yet many of those works were returned after...
"The exquisite set of Raphael tapestries currently on display in the grand gallery of Madrid's royal palace has survived five tumultuous centuries of wars, rebellions, bombs, bullets and fire – only to find itself menaced by the more quotidian threat of opportunistic pigeons and their droppings. … The need to ventilate the gallery, which gives on to the...
"Located just a few meters from the seashore , the structure, a public building" — known then as a basilica (not to be confused with the later, Roman Catholic use of the term) — "was divided into three sections: a main hall and two side parts. According to the archaeologists, the main hall was surrounded by massive marble columns...
When the artist is the instigator of damage (to their own work, or that of another, such as Robert Rauschenberg erasing a Willem de Kooning work), the act of vandalism becomes part of an artistic strategy. - The Art Newspaper
