Museum Visitor Trips, Shatters Chinese Vases At the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, "an unfortunate visitor tripped over his shoelace and fell on to three Qing dynasty vases, shattering them. The vases had been placed - rather optimistically, perhaps - on a windowsill on a staircase." The Guardian (UK) 01/31/06

In NYC - An Uninspired Conventioneer A huge planned expansion of New York City's Javits Convention Center isn't urban architecture at its most inspired. Partly it reflects the failure of large government projects. "Although Richard Rogers's design is more promising than, say, the defunct Jets stadium proposal ever was, it reflects a narrow view of how cities grow. For the time being, bold urban planning remains a chimera here." The New York Times 01/31/06

African American Museum To Have A Home On national Mall A new African American history museum will be built on a site in the capitol's Mall. "The five-acre site has belonged to the government since 1791 and was endorsed by both the major plans for downtown Washington, the L'Enfant Plan of 1791 and the McMillian Plan of 1901, as an suitable place for a building. It was considered as a location for the State Department and the World War II memorial." Washington Post 01/30/06

African American History On The Mall A decision about where a new museum in DC celebrating African-American history is to be made this week. "The country has always been reluctant to come to grips with the slave part of its history. Washington, more than any other city, has that contradiction. People look at the South with the cotton plantations and sugar plantations and say, yes, slavery. But the idea of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as slaveholders is a much more difficult idea. You don't sit in Lafayette Square and think about the slave auction block." Washington Post 01/30/06

Piano's Remake Of LA Museum Comes Into Focus Renzo Piano fills in more details of his design for the makeover of the LA County Museum of Art. "I was yesterday in New York where we're working on the Whitney Museum. So different! There is no reason to repeat yourself — unless you are a stupid guy. There is always a new story to tell." Los Angeles Times 01/30/06

• LA County Museum Plan Tests Architect's Reputation "Renzo Piano Building Workshop is the firm you hire when what you need from your architect is clarity, craftsmanship and refinement. But the latest version of the architect's scheme for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art suggests that in this case, the combination of a tight budget and an ill-matched collection of existing buildings is severely testing those skills." Los Angeles Times 01/30/06

Italy Says Talks With Met Museum Have Soured An Italian culture ministry lawyer says talks between his government and the Metropolitan Museum on disputed artifacts have soured. " 'I'm very worried,' said Maurizio Fiorilli, a ministry lawyer involved in the talks, saying the Met's lawyers are demanding excessive proof that the objects were stolen. The Met said it doesn't see any snag in the talks and expects to send Italy a proposal for a settlement next week." Bloomberg 01/27/06

Detroit Museum Takes Disputed Painting Out Of Storage The Detroit Institute of Art has filed suit to keep a disputed Van Gogh painting that a family claims was stolen from them by the Nazis in World War II. "In the wake of the publicity surrounding the controversy, the museum took 'The Diggers' out of storage late in the day Thursday so weekend museumgoers could see it." Detroit Free Press 01/27/06

Faking Russia Someone is flooding the Russian art market with fakes. "Fueled by the country's burgeoning wealth and the desire for prestigious assets with patriotic cachet, Russia's upper class has driven the market for Russian art to unprecedented heights. The frenzy has also attracted some very skilled and knowledgeable crooks." Washington Post 01/28/06

Fossil Museum Criticized For Lamentable Collection Practices Seattle's Burke Museum is coming under fire for its collection. "A team of outside experts that examined the museum's collection concluded last week that the excavation site of many specimens was so poorly described in museum records that the bones and fossils have little scientific value. The team also questioned whether the museum had the proper permits to collect fossils from federal, state and tribal lands." Seattle Times 01/28/06

Vancouver Art Gallery's Big Plans The museum has outgrown its current building and plans to build someplace new. "The gallery, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, seems to have its sights set on a world-class facility that would reflect its ambitious programming and reputation in the contemporary arts. That is why the master planning summary included photos of the Denver Art Museum, the Guggenheim and the Mori Art Center in Tokyo." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/28/06

Getty Villa Reopens Under A Cloud "Today the Getty Villa in Malibu reopens after a closure of more than eight years. The villa, where the oil tycoon JP Getty lived and which housed his original collection of art and antiquities, has remained the spiritual home of the world's richest art institution... The grandeur of the villa, refurbished at a cost of $275m (£155m), does not disappoint... But overshadowing the opening is a scandal. Marion True, curator of antiquities for the Getty Trust and coordinator of the villa's programmes, is on trial in Italy on charges that she conspired with antiquities dealer Robert Hecht to export illegally excavated treasures." The Guardian (UK) 01/28/06

Christie's of Arabia It's not a new development, but increasingly, it has become impossible to ignore the fact that the world of high art (and the acquisition of large amounts of it by private collectors) has expanded well outside its traditional Western borders. A milepost will be planted this spring, when Christie's opens its newest auction house - in Dubai. Financial Times (UK) 01/27/06

Constable: The Theme Park "Think of the potency of combining one of Britain's greatest artists with the twin national obsessions of food and gardening. Rumpelstiltskin couldn't do it better. Hence the rather eclectic nature of the planning application for 'Horkesley Park' - an interactive experience of 'the life and times of John Constable', to include a Fine Art 'outstation' of the National and other leading galleries, side by side with a Suffolk Punch breeding centre, a Farming Yesteryear exhibition, a Food Experience, gardens dedicated to the great plant collectors and an authentic Chinese garden." Financial Times (UK) 01/28/06

Selling The Sellers So You'll Buy The Sale Sotheby's had a rough time of it this past week when it attempted to auction off an impressive array of still lifes and landscapes from the house's "old masters" department. "Only half the offerings sold, bringing in a total of $5 million, below the $7 million-to-$10 million presale estimate. This was, however, only a small portion of two days of back-to-back old-master auctions at Sotheby's, Thursday and yesterday, which brought more than $70 million." So what makes one auction a success and another a failure? It's about far more than the quality of the art. The New York Times 01/28/06

Art As Black Market Collateral As prices for contemporary art sold at auction have spiralled out of control, the number of major art heists has been rising as well, and there's a very real connection between the two events. "Art is often stolen for use as collateral in arms and drugs deals or as a commodity that can be exchanged between criminal organisations... Art works often circulate in criminal networks... for years, only turning up by chance when police raids aimed at other illegal activities uncover them. But it is not uncommon for insurance companies to pay a ransom for the return of valuable works, and this underpins their value as illicit goods." Financial Times (UK) 01/27/06

Getty Museum Director In Rome For Talks With Government New Getty Museum director Michael Brand has this week's reopening of the Getty Villa on his plate. But he's not in LA. He's in Italy meeting with Italian culture minister Rocco Buttiglione to discuss contested items in the Getty's collection. "The Getty's objective is to develop a fuller sense of all the evidence available regarding the objects in question. We want to be in a better position to continue our dialogue with the Italian government."
Los Angeles Times `01/27/06

Will A Plan To Raise Venice Kill It Instead? Scientists are about to test a theory to raise Venice 30 cms by pumping water back into the soil. The idea is to pump water down 700 metres. "We have calculated that if we pump in 18 million cubic metres of clean sea water 24 hours a day for 10 years, we will raise Venice 30 cms." Critics aren't so sure: "This is science fiction. It is too difficult and expensive to find out what the layers of the subsoil are really like at that depth, and raising the city would not be the same as the city subsiding; it would behave quite differently and could rise unevenly, doing untold damage." The Art Newspaper 01/26/06

Anonymous Buyer Goes Dutch (BIG Dutch) At Sotheby's An anonymous buyer goes on a spending binge at Sotheby's Thursday, spending "$4.27 million for a much-watched Rembrandt portrait and another $1.87 million for a Jan Steen and a Gerrit Dou." The New York Times 01/27/06

Pollock Owner Gives FBI Name Of Person He Says Stole Painting The owner of a Jackson Pollock painting stolen a few months ago from Sranton's Everhart Museum has given the FBI the name of a person he believes took the painting. "The thief or thieves who broke into the Everhart on Nov. 18 swiped two artworks: an oil by Pollock that could be worth millions of dollars and a less valuable silkscreen by Andy Warhol." Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 01/26/06

Australian Police Seize Artwork "Police have seized a burnt Australian flag that was displayed as part of a Footscray art exhibition in Melbourne. The move came as Prime Minister John Howard declared yesterday that while burning the Australian flag was offensive, it should not be made a criminal offence." The Age (Melbourne) 01/26/06

Detroit Museum Sues To Keep Van Gogh The Detroit Institute of Art "went to court Tuesday to protect what museum leaders say is its rightful ownership of an 1889 painting by van Gogh worth at least $15 million, by one estimate. The DIA took the action after failing to resolve a long-simmering dispute with the heirs of a Nazi-era Jewish collector, who claim that the painting, which has been in the DIA's collection since 1970, belongs to the family." Detroit Free Press 01/26/06

Expert: Keep Marbles In Britain A leading archaeologist is against Britain returning the Parthenon Marbles to Greece. Even loaning them. "It is not an option. What are we going to do — send in the SAS to bring it back? If we loan it, it is not going to come back." CBC 01/26/06

Getty Villa Reopens "The concept of a sizable museum devoted solely to the art of ancient Greece, Rome and Etruria (the region of modern Tuscany and Umbria) is inspired. For one thing, the modern notion of an art museum as a place of public enlightenment grew, like America itself, from the 18th century European revival of classical ideals. Ours is likewise an era when nothing succeeds like ostentatious displays of power. Expect the remarkable Getty Villa to be an enormous popular hit." Los Angeles Times 01/26/06

Discovered: Two Caravaggios Two paintings in a French church have been declared Caravaggios. "It is thought the paintings were probably bought by a French ambassador to Rome, and friend of Caravaggio. The works were kept under the organ loft in the church of Saint Anthony in Loches, until in 1999 a curator expressed an interest in a coat of arms on the works. It turned out to belong to Philippe de Bethune, a minister of France's King Henry IV, an enthusiastic art collector who befriended Caravaggio in Rome." BBC 01/26/06

Painting Goes Missing At Sotheby's A painting worth an estimated £500,000 has disappeared from Sotheby's auction rooms in New Bond Street, London. The company won't say what the work is or who it belongs to. The Guardian (UK) 01/26/06

Art Thief - Snared By Cellphone How did Robert Mang get caught for stealing Cellini's priceless saltcellar? "After holding the Cellini masterpiece, valued at roughly $60 million, for nearly three years and making two attempts to collect about $12 million in ransom, Mr. Mang was identified as the culprit late last week. On Friday, the police had circulated security camera images of him buying a cellphone that he used to send a text message." The New York Times 01/26/06

Constantinople's Ancient Port Discovered Working on an ambitious train tunnel to connect Asia and Europe, workers stumble on "the original port of Constantinople, a maze of dams, jetties and platforms that once was Byzantium's hub for trade with the near east." The Guardian (UK) 01/25/06

Peru Wants Machu Picchu Artifacts For Tourism "The Peruvian government is threatening to sue Yale University for the return of all the artifacts found at Machu Picchu. There's no dispute that Peru gave Bingham permission to take the artifacts to Yale for further study. But Peruvian authorities say they have documents specifying that the material had to be returned within 18 months. It has now been more than 90 years. Yale says that Peruvian law in the 1900s "gave Yale title to the artifacts at the time of their excavation and ever since." Yahoo! (Businessweek) 01/25/06

Lottery Turns Down Liverpool Museum Funding The UK's Heritage Lottery Fund has turned down funding for a futuristic museum on Liverpool's waterfront. The Fund "said it would not be giving the project the £11.4m it asked for, saying the plans were not detailed enough." Planned exhibits in the building wwould "cover social history and popular culture, and will look at Britain and the world through the eyes of Liverpool." BBC 01/25/06

French Court Rejects "Original" Defense In Duchamp Urinal Case A French court convicts a 77-year-old French man for attacking artist Marcel Duchamp's famed porcelain urinal with a hammer, "rejecting the defendant's contention that he had increased the value of the art work by making it an 'original'." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/25/06

Clifford: Scotland Should Blow The Bank On Michelangelo Timothy Clifford, the outgoing director of Scotland's National Galleries says the country's museums should raise enough money to by an Italian masterpiece. He said "there was no need for the galleries to buy more Scottish art, partly because they could rely on wills and gifts to build up their collection. However, spending £10 million on a Michelangelo drawing would break the galleries' annual acquisitions budget of £1.25 million several times over, and would need a huge fundraising campaign." The Scotsman (UK) 01/23/06

Another London Bronze Stolen A large bronze sculpture has been stolen from a London campus. This follows the theft of a large Henry Moore three weeks ago. "Police said 20 art thefts had happened in London in the past six months. Officers fear thieves are targeting valuable artworks worth millions of pounds so they can melt them down and sell them on as scrap metal at a fraction of the price." BBC 01/24/06

• Police: Soaring Metal Prices Are Behind London's Big Sculpture Thefts "Soaring scrap prices have opened up an opportunity for gangs to pocket a quick profit. The Henry Moore sculpture, taken in mid-December, was believed to be worth around £5,000 if melted down; the Chadwick may fetch as little as £1,000. Reduced to its metal content, the figures are worth only a fraction of their art market value but neither police nor art dealers believe such large objects would be stolen to order for a private collector. In many cases, the sculptures have been severely damaged." The Guardian (UK) 01/25/06

The Klimt Attorney Los Angeles attorney Randol Schoenberg has spent the past 7 1/2 years arguing that five Gustav Klimt paintings in Austria looted by the Nazis ought to be returned to a California woman. "For Schoenberg — kinetic, restless and intense, with the boundless snap of a Spencer Tracy character — the case is far more than a simple legal wrangle, it's an obsession." Los Angeles Times 01/23/06

Explosion Rips Finland's National Museum The blast happened Monday night. "The investigation indicates that the explosion happened in a storeroom next to the silverware exhibition. The storeroom contains the museum's master electricity switchboard." Newsroom Finland 01/24/06

The Man Who Stole The Cellini So who was it that stole the Cellini saltcellar from a Vienna museum? The suspect "was a funny guy. He had collected sculptures in his youth and had a feeling for them. He also ran an alarm firm and was an expert in alarm systems. He knew exactly how to steal it. He told us afterwards it [the theft] was all rather spontaneous." The Guardian (UK) 01/23/06

An Indian Artist Takes World Stage Tyeb Mehta is India's most successful artist. "Mehta's career has mirrored the changing fortunes of contemporary Indian art over the last six decades, from the intellectual fervor of its birth at Indian independence in 1947, to a lifetime of aesthetic and financial struggle, to the improbable rise of the Indian art market in the last few years." The New York Times 01/24/06

Ancient Tomb Under Roman Forum A 3000-year-old tomb has been found underneath Rome's Forum. "Archaeologists were excavating under the level of the ancient forum, a popular tourist site, when they dug up the tomb, which they suspect is part of an entire necropolis." Yahoo! (AP) 01/19/06

Iowa Historical Museum Fires Director The director of Iowa's State Historical has been fired after performance of the museum failed to live up to expectations. "His work gained little public attention, and attendance by school groups in 2005 fell to its lowest mark in seven years, according to a department report." Des Moines Register 01/22/06

Museum Removes Five Klimts After Anonymous Threat Vienna's celebrated Belvedere Museum has taken down five paintings by Gustav Klimt after receiving an anonymous threat from an individual who threatened to destroy them. "Sources in the gallery said the mail had threatened the paintings would be destroyed to stop them being restored to heiress Maria Altmann, niece of their orginal Jewish owner who was driven out of Vienna and stripped of his possessions by the Nazis in 1938." The Belvedere had agreed to return the paintings earlier in the week. Monsters & Critics (UK) 01/20/06

Native Galleries Welcome In Toronto, But What Do They Accomplish? The Royal Ontario Museum has finally opened its long-awaited gallery focusing on the history of native peoples in Canada. The gallery seems primed for success, but it brings up an uncomfortable irony for North America's aboriginals: having been forced from their land, mistreated for centuries, and generally denied the opportunity to reestablish their native culture, native peoples are now forced to view their history through the prism of the white man's museums. "How can the museum transcend the guilty legacy of cultural vandalism that haunts it?" The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/21/06

Police Recover $60 Million Stolen Salt Shaker "Austrian police have recovered a $60m 16th Century figurine stolen in 2003 called Saliera, or salt cellar, after a suspect turned himself in. Experts established it was an authentic work by Florentine master Benvenuto Cellini... It was found on Saturday, buried in a wooden case near Zwettl, a town about 55 miles north of Vienna." BBC 01/22/06

Is NYC's Armory Project A Zero-Sum Game? The announcement that New York's eye-catching Seventh Regiment Armory will soon be transformed into a 55,000-square-foot "visual and performing arts institutions" was greeted happily across much of the city's arts world. But not everyone is happy: "for dozens of dealers and show organizers across the country and abroad, the cavernous Park Avenue space [has been] a crucial sales point for their wares." The New York Times 01/21/06

Regimental Theory - Big New Arts Center For Manhattan New York's Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue, "home to art and antiques fairs, is to be turned into a visual and performing arts centre in an ambitious $50 million renovation." The Art Newspaper 01/20/06

Guggenheim Hires Its First Curator Of Asian Art "The Guggenheim has been seeking to open a branch in Asia, exploring partnerships in Hong Kong and Singapore, among other possibilities, and the creation is an indication of the institution’s commitment to expanding Asian programming and acquisitions." The Art Newspaper 01/20/06

Marbles In Play? Now that Athens is opening a museum in which it hopes to display the Elgin Marbles, will Britain consider returning its marbles? Not really. "Anyone who saw the condition of the west frieze in Athens next to the Elgin Marbles in London would immediately decide that the Marbles in London should stay there." BBC 01/19/06

Reining In Museum Architecture's Mission Creep When the new home of New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art is completed sometime in 2007, Nicolai Ouroussoff expects it to have a profound influence on an art scene that has sometimes forgotten that art and architecture are supposed to work together. "It is now razor-clear that the building will do more to freshen the bond between Manhattan's art and architecture communities than any building since Marcel Breuer's Whitney Museum of American Art opened on Madison Avenue four decades ago." The New York Times 01/19/06

What We Lack In Prestige, We Make Up For In Quantity Los Angeles is not a city known for its art fairs, but organizers of the new Art Week Plus are hoping that the confluence of four smaller fairs can lead to a whole greater than its sum. "Each fair has its own opening gala, designed as much for hobnobbing as art viewing. And along with pushing Rubenses and Rauschenbergs, promoters are touting the celebrity angle." Los Angeles Times 01/19/06

Iraq's Plundered Art After initial reports of looting of Iraqi art died down, so did concern. "Gradually, however, the extent of the loss and damage to Iraq's heritage across the country became clearer. Many of the Iraq National Museum's major pieces, too big and heavy to move, had been smashed. At Mosul, 16 bronze Assyrian door panels from the city gates of Balawat (9th century BC) had been stolen, as had cuneiform tablets from Khorsabad and Nineveh. In Baghdad, the National Library and State Archives building was burned down and the national collections of contemporary Iraqi and European art, including works by Picasso and Miró, were looted. Even more serious, perhaps, has been the damage to Iraq's archaeology." The Guardian (UK) 01/19/06

Two Paintings Authenticated As Rembrandts Copenhagen's National Gallery has discovered that two paintings thought to be fake Rembrandts are in fact real. "International art experts have re-evaluated 10 canvases that bear Rembrandt's signature but were kept in storage for years because they were thought to be copies by his students. The five experts concluded that two of the paintings were by Rembrandt." The Guardian (UK) 01/18/06

Serra Sculture Missing A 38-tonne Richard Serra sculture is missing from a leading Spanish museum. "The Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid bought the huge Serra sculpture in the 1980s at a cost of more than $200,000." BBC 01/18/06

Washington Painting Could Go For $15 Mil "A life-size 1779 portrait of George Washington, projected to sell for as much as $15 million at Christie's International, will be one of the highlights of this week's Americana auctions in New York. Christie's and Sotheby's Holdings Inc. are hoping to bring in $61.5 million during the auctions that begin Friday." Los Angeles Times (Bloomberg) 01/18/06

Egyptian Sculptures Find Themselves Unexpectedly Popular Two ancient Egyptian sculptures recently set back-to-back records, selling at auction for $2.25 million and $2.8 million within the space of an hour. The sale prices may have surprised many, but the Texas-based Kimbell Art Museum, which bought the more expensive piece, believes that it is one of the few surviving works of art which can put a face on a notoriously remote civilization. The Christian Science Monitor (Boston) 01/18/06

Calatrava's City Canvas Architect Santiago Calatrava has been using Valencia, Spain as his canvas, building one of Europe's biggest performing arts palaces. "It's a flashy new culture palace all right, designed by one of the world's premier league 'starchitects', Calatrava, and it could well do for Spain's third city what Frank Gehry's Guggenheim did for Bilbao. But there are some key differences. First and foremost, Valencia is Calatrava's home town. He was born there, grew up there, studied there and even published a book on the city's architecture. And although his office is based in Zurich, Calatrava has been building in Valencia for most of his career." The Guardian (UK) 01/18/06

Looking At Beck's Art What's competing for this year's Beck's Futures prize? Here's a gallery of the nominated work... The Guardian (UK) 01/18/06

Britain's Museum Crisis "Since 1993, the acquisitions budgets of the British Museum, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum have dropped by 90 per cent. The Government says that museums can decide how much of their grant-in-aid they spend on purchases, but this is specious, because they are so cash-strapped that they cannot afford to allocate more to acquisitions." The Telegraph (UK) 01/18/06

How New York Became The Center Of The Art World "To be sure, cultural power customarily follows financial power. From this perspective, it is hardly surprising that postwar New York should have assumed the preeminence that Paris had enjoyed in 1900, or Rome in 1600. But what was remarkable was that a country with such a long record of philistine indifference to visual culture could move in a single generation from art’s provincial periphery to its very epicenter." Commentary 01/06

American Says Klimt Paintings Should Remain In Austria The American woman who won ownership in an Austrian court of five Gustav Klimt paintings that had been looted by Nazis from her family, says she'd like the paintings to remain in Austria. But the Austrian culture minister says that "Austria could not afford to buy back the paintings, citing media reports that Adele Bloch-Bauer I, also called the 'Golden Adele', alone was worth between 70 million and 100 million euros. 70 million euros amounts to the whole budget for all museums in Austria -- all public museums'." Reuters India 01/17/06

Austrian Court Awards Klimt Paintings To Californian Woman An Austrian court has ruled that Austria should give back five paintings by Gustav Klimt to a California woman says were stolen from her Jewish family by the Nazis. "The Austrian arbitration court determined the country is legally obligated to give the paintings to Maria Altmann, the heir of the family who owned them before the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, the Austria Press Agency reported." ABCNews.com 01/16/06

Oakland Museum Gets New Director Lori Fogarty has been named director of the Oakland Museum. "Since 2001 Fogarty, 43, has directed the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, where she led a $19.5 million expansion and fundraising effort." She'll oversee a planned expansion in Oakland. San Francisco Chronicle 01/16/06

New York's New Antiquities Theft Unit Manhattan's attorney general has appointed a special unit “dedicated to investigating and prosecuting antiquities theft and trafficking”. It will be headed by Matthew Bogdanos, "better known as the US Marine Corps Reserves colonel who led the investigation into the looting of the Baghdad Museum and helped recover more than 5,000 artefacts." The Art Newspaper 01/13/06

Barnes Move Is Years Away When will the Barnes Collection move from its current home in to Philadelphia? Well, not even the foundation knows for certain, but it would seem that the transplant won't happen until mid-to-late 2009, or perhaps even early 2010. Philadelphia Inquirer 01/15/06

How Documentarians Became Artists Photographs celebrating "real life" - gritty, unadorned reality undisturbed by notions of art or beauty - are the hottest thing going these days. But are such snapshots of life really the type of thing that belongs in a gallery alongside more traditional genres? "In these unelitist times, most of us would now question the old distinction between art on the one hand and photography (and documentary film) on the other... We don't usually look for sociological information from drawings and sculptures. But there are times of crisis when artists are commissioned to do their bit for the nation, and even before the war, in the early 1930s, Benjamin Britten, WH Auden and William Coldstream were all contributing to the documentary movement. Art was to be brought to the people, and the people into art." The Guardian (UK) 01/14/06

Using Art To Attract Celebrity, Cash, and Youth A new generation of art enthusiasts is coming of age (as are their investment portfolios,) and museums are scrambling to find new ways to integrate the new blood into their existing mix. "All the major museums in New York sponsor junior groups," which seem to exist mainly to throw lavish parties and attract celebrities and cash. "Junior museum boards were originally closed, invitation-only groups aimed at the children of established donors. Over the years, however... the boards have opened wider. Today the junior groups are open to anyone who can pay the annual dues (which range from $500 to $1,000), and foot the $150 to $200 needed to attend the galas. And each party is more opulent than the last." The New York Times 01/15/06

Hecht Speaks Out As Prosecution Continues To Lay Out Its Case Art dealer Robert Hecht, accused of illegally trafficking in stolen art, is firing back at prosecutors in his trial in Rome, saying that he is being made a scapegoat for the crimes of others. "Mr. Hecht, 86, spoke during a recess in a long trial hearing. Inside the courtroom, a Rome prosecutor, Paolo Ferri, continued to build his case, detailing a web of connections among dealers who he said traded in freshly dug-up artifacts by routing them through Switzerland or prominent auction houses and into the collections of museums and private individuals." Hecht and Getty Museum curator Marion True are both being prosecuted in the case. The New York Times 01/14/06

Donor Forces Met To Cancel Sculpture Auction "Acceding to a request from an angry donor, the Metropolitan Museum of Art [has] canceled plans to sell a large steel sculpture by the Spanish artist Eduardo Chillida - the only work in its collection by that artist... The sculpture was donated to the Met in 1986 by Frank Ribelin, a Dallas collector. Mr. Ribelin contacted The New York Times on Thursday to complain that the Met had never informed him of the planned sale and that he had learned of it only after a friend pointed it out to him at Sotheby's Web site." The New York Times 01/14/06

Do We Need All Those Galleries? Those Museums? "Do galleries have to run or look the way they do? How inevitable is the repeating cycle of solo and group exhibitions and the steady movement of artworks from galleries to museums, auction houses and collectors' homes? How can you slow, expose or disrupt the delivery mechanism - maybe even avoid it altogether occasionally - to reassert art as a process and a mind-set rather than a product?" The New York Times 01/13/06

In LA - Immersed In Images "Los Angeles has recently been home to several large-scale immersive image environments. A cynical perspective would suggest this is due to museums’ waning importance and the subsequent need to attract viewers with big, sparkling, cinematic images. Further, the easy mixing of disparate cultures and histories in massive mash-ups of artists and image-based technology suggests a utopian global village and a narrative of unity and harmony wrought by digital tools." On the other hand, maybe not... LAWeekly 01/12/06

Scientists Warn Michelangelo Church In Danger Scientists are concerned that quarry blasting will damage a church Michelangelo worked on. "A large crack has already ripped through the marble pavement, ancient tombs, altar and baptismal font of the Romanesque Pieve della Cappella in Fabiana, near Lucca. The church nestles midway up the Altissimo hill, at the foot of which Michelangelo Buonarroti arrived in 1517 in search of the area's distinctive marble that he intended to use for the façade of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence." The Independent (UK) 01/11/06

Baker's Dozen For Beck's Prize Artists for this year's Beck's Futures prize have been chosen. The thirteen artists up for the £20,000 award include sculptors, film-makers and illustrators working in the UK. BBC 01/12/06

How Rauschenberg Became Picasso "Like Picasso, Rauschenberg has been an art machine; just keep the wheels rolling and sooner or later inspiration will strike. And it will probably take others to tell you when it's really happened. How unlike the Duchampian constipation-mode of creation. Another rule for art: You gotta have product; lots and lots of things to sell. And then it dawns on you that the curatorial lack of discrimination mirrors Rauschenberg's own system. This is not good." Artopia (AJBlogs) 01/06/06

Kimmel Center Vs. Vinoly (Damn, It's Tough To Make A Great Building) Architect Rafael Viñoly and managers of Philadelphia's Kimmel Center are fighting over design deficiencies. "The managers of the Kimmel Center, the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, blame Mr. Viñoly’s firm for going $23 million over budget in the center’s construction. The case sheds light on an issue that has dogged architecture firms that attempt massive and politically difficult urban projects, while at the same time attempting to deliver state-of-the-art design." New York Observer 01/11/06

Philly Museum Branches Out Into Korean Art "Responding to growing involvement from the local Korean-American community and an increasing awareness nationally of Korean art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has hired its first curator of Korean art. Hyunsoo Woo, 36, formerly of the Japan Society in New York and the Brooklyn Museum, started work Monday as the museum's associate curator of Korean art - making the museum one of just a few in the United States to have a full-time staffer devoted to Korean art." Philadelphia Inquirer 01/11/06

Drawing Center Lands In Fish Market New York's Drawing Center was to be part of the World Trade center project until controversy torpedoed the deal. Since then the center has been hunting for a home. "Scouring abandoned buildings, vacant parking lots and high-rises, they fell in love with some locations and flatly rejected others, while learning the perils of what its president calls a 'lack of nimbleness' by losing out to quick bidders." Now a home has been found - in the old Fulton Fish Market. The New York Times 01/11/06

The Rauschenberg Franchise "Robert Rauschenberg may be the American Picasso. He is a Dionysian maverick of experimentation, openness, visual wit, and roguish nerve; an artist who cannot be diminished by others but who can only diminish himself; someone whose envelope-pushing has been inspirational for generations. As Jasper Johns generously avowed, 'Rauschenberg was the man who in this century invented the most since Picasso'." Village Voice 01/06/06

German University To Return Piece Of The Parthenon "A German university plans to give back a fragment of the Parthenon sculptures, marking the first time any piece of the statues held outside Greece has been returned to Athens, the Culture Ministry said Monday." Chicago Tribune (AP) 01/10/06

Museums Are Good For Your Health? Visiting a museum is a good way to relieve stress, says a new study. "Analysis of 28 City high flyers who spent their lunch break viewing art found their stress levels fell by 45% after 40 minutes at the Guildhall art gallery in London." The Guardian (UK) 01/09/06

Peru Vs. Yale "Yale historian Hiram Bingham rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911, and, backed by the National Geographic Society, returned with large expeditions in 1912 and 1915, each time carting out - with supposed special permission from Peruvian President Augusto B. Leguía - crates filled with archeological finds. But now, Peru is threatening to sue the Ivy League school, claiming the permission was either given illegally or misunderstood." Christian Science Monitor 12/29/05

Crowded Out - The Modern Museum Museums are now so crowded it's impossible to really see art. "The more I watch viewers thronging to sample the latest blockbuster shows, or the permanent collections at the Prado, the Louvre and the National Gallery, the less convinced I am that they are giving art any sustained attention. Most visitors move through exhibitions and museums with disconcerting speed. Pausing now and again in front of particular images before resuming the onward march, they do not seem prepared to scrutinise anything for a substantial length of time." New Statesman 01/09/06

Figure It Out - The Leipzig School "Figurative art that was deprecated as hopelessly passé in Paris and Düsseldorf never lost its grip in Leipzig. The city prided itself on being the birthplace of Max Beckmann and (if you looked back a few centuries and across Saxony to Wittenberg) on a painterly lineage begat by Lucas Cranach." New York Times Magazine 01/08/06

Norman Foster Takes New York "In the city that perfected the skyscraper then repeated the formula endlessly, Foster is the European who has taken on the apparently impossible task of rescuing the high-rise from creative exhaustion. His just-completed new headquarters for the Hearst magazine empire, on Eighth Avenue, close to Central Park, succeeds in doing that, and deservedly is getting astonishingly enthusiastic coverage." Scotland on Sunday 01/08/06

Needed: A Smithsonian Showplace Some of the Smithsonian's museums suffer from a lack of physical prominence. What's needed? A central exhibition facility, and Blake Gopnik nominates: "The Smithsonian's glorious 1881 Arts and Industries Building, shuttered since early 2004 and neglected or underused for many years before. In architectural terms, it is one of the most important landmarks in Washington." Washington Post 01/08/06

Assessing The Cleveland Museum's New Director He is not a household name, even within the art world, and so he might have seemed an underdog for a major directorship at one of America's leading museums. But Steven Litt is impressed anyway. "In choosing Timothy Rub of Cincinnati as its next director, the Cleveland Museum of Art picked an arts manager who has not yet achieved cultural stardom... Rub transformed local perceptions about the 125-year-old [Cincinnati Art Museum,] long viewed as an elitist institution on a hilltop in Eden Park, overlooking the rest of the city... The new director will need those skills in Cleveland. Rub, whose appointment begins in April, will take over the massive, $258 million expansion and renovation the museum launched in October." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 01/08/06

• Previously: Tim Rub To Head Cleveland Museum Cincinnati Art Museum director Timothy Rub has been named director and chief executive officer of the Cleveland Museum of Art. "During his six years in Cincinnati, Rub oversaw the creation of the $10 million Cincinnati Wing, renovations of the courtyard and auditorium, reinstallation of the African and American art collections, and free general admission." Cincinnati Enquirer 01/06/06

Cultivating The Nightclub Set Fresh off the high of the inevitable crowds that greet a newly expanded and renovated museum, Minneapolis's Walker Art Center has launched a new initiative designed to draw in a more diverse crowd than would normally spend its free time at a modern art museum. "To put it plainly, the Walker doesn't feel like any other museum. It feels, for lack of a better word, alive. Every Thursday, [when the museum scraps its admission charge and stays open late,] the Walker's contorted, dreamlike corridors bustle with activity. People are on dates; some are even dressed up, though not in the suit-and-tie sense. It's more like they're going to a nightclub -- you're likely to see miniskirts, fur boots, and overpriced vintage T-shirts. But remember, you're supposed to be looking at the art." Minneapolis Star Tribune 01/05/06

Fountain Freak-Out: Art or Vandalism? "The Dada movement made its name in the early 20th century by trying to destroy the conventional notion of art. Taking literal inspiration from their exploits this week, a latter-day neo-Dadaist took a small hammer to Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain,' the factory-made urinal that is considered the cornerstone of Conceptual Art. The assailant, a French performance artist named Pierre Pinoncelli, was immediately arrested after his act of vandalism... The porcelain urinal was slightly chipped in the attack and was withdrawn to be restored... Mr. Pinoncelli, 77, who urinated into the same urinal and struck it with a hammer in a show in Nîmes in 1993, has a long record of organizing bizarre happenings. Police officials said he again called his action a work of art, a tribute to Duchamp and other Dada artists." The New York Times 01/07/06

Art Borne Of Sickness Moscow's 1200-bed Children's Clinical Hospital has quietly become an international pioneer in the field of art therapy, simply by encouraging its young patients to engage their creativity, even as they struggle through batteries of tests and exhausting medical treatments. Now, a Russian foundation is displaying the art created by the young patients in a space normally reserved for "serious" art. "The artworks, which include elaborate beadwork, went on display at the Russian Abroad Foundation, a gleaming new library and research and cultural center that is the creation of Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn and was built with the backing of Moscow's mayor." The New York Times 01/07/06

Italy And The Returning Artifacts Game While Italy is getting aggressive about demanding the return of artifacts it believes have been stolen, othe countries are pressing Italy to return objects it has taken. Ethiopia, for one, has some claims it would like to talk about... Los Angeles Times 01/06/06

Tim Rub To Head Cleveland Museum Cincinnati Art Museum director Timothy Rub has been named director and chief executive officer of the Cleveland Museum of Art. "During his six years in Cincinnati, Rub oversaw the creation of the $10 million Cincinnati Wing, renovations of the courtyard and auditorium, reinstallation of the African and American art collections, and free general admission." Cincinnati Enquirer 01/06/06

The Turner From The Inside Louisa Buck was a judge for this year's Turner Prize. "Critics of the prize, such as the tedious Stuckists, say that it is an inside job. Well you wouldn’t ask someone who knows nothing about dogs to judge Crufts, would you? All I can say is that I had my eyes opened and my mind changed on several occasions." The Art Newspaper 01/05/06

Billionaire To Open Russia's First Private Museum Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian mining and oil billionaire is making the investment. "Mr Vekselberg’s new museums will display works drawn from his own holdings which include the Forbes Fabergé collection of Imperial eggs purchased from Sotheby’s in a private sale in 2004 for an undisclosed price which sources estimate at around $120 million. They will also show art belonging to other Russian collectors." The Art Newspaper 01/05/06

You Mean That Building Doesn't Suck? A new pamphlet purporting to lay out the four greatest skyscrapers in the world has included San Francisco's TransAmerica Pyramid on its list. Bay Area architecture critics are stunned. "There's nothing brilliant about concrete and steel piled high in ever-narrower amounts. Nor is 'exquisite' the word that best describes an ungainly triangle with ear-like elevator shafts sticking out on two sides. And hey, I'm just picking at architectural nits. When the Pyramid was proposed in 1969, critics recoiled at the whole idea -- viewing it as a threat to the very integrity of the city they loved." San Francisco Chronicle 01/05/06

Portugese Museum Discredits Its Own Rembrandts "Two oil paintings purported to have been the work of Rembrandt have been shown to be fakes, the director of the museum where they are kept has said. The works were donated to the municipal museum in Faro, southern Portugal, in 1944 and were displayed for 25 years despite doubts over their authenticity. Tests have now shown the 17th Century Dutch master could not have painted them... because they used pigments not available until the 19th Century." BBC 01/05/06

New Art Center Planned In Boston "In 1988, with just $1,800, volunteers founded the Zullo Gallery in [Medfield, Massachusetts, outside of Boston.] The nonprofit space has remained on a shoestring budget ever since. But nearly 18 years and over 75 exhibitions later, Zullo is ready to take its biggest step yet. Plans are underway to create the Zullo Gallery Center for the Arts. In the works are expanded hours, year-round art classes for adults and children, more live music, special events ranging from film screenings to artist demonstrations, and an in-gallery cafe that will spill out onto a rooftop deck." Boston Globe 01/05/06

Seattle Museum Closes For Construction This week the Seattle Art Museum closes its main building for 16 months to construct an expansion. "Downtown, the museum will have 300,000 square feet, tripling the exhibition space and providing a free-admission, wrap-around public corridor full of art and art events. Besides that, there's plenty of room for further expansion. The building is 16 stories high, and initially the museum will occupy only the bottom four floors and rent out the rest to Washington Mutual. When SAM needs more room, it can hand the bank its walking papers for eight more floors. (The top four belong to the bank.)" Seattle Post-Intelligencer 01/03/06

• Seattle Art Museum Fires Guards Two Seattle Art Museum guards were fired Wednesday for threatening to walk out, which the museum perceived as a security breach. Seattle Post-Intelligencer 01/05/06

Selling To Buy More? Hmnnn... "Now that we have become such meticulous conservators of the past, museums and galleries have become overloaded with objects they lack the space to display and which have apparently minimal significance. Major national institutions are constitutionally forbidden to sell items, and laws relating to charitable bequests exert further restrictions. But elsewhere, if the trustees see fit, there is nothing to prevent the disposal of such stock - euphemistically described as 'deaccession'." The Telegraph (UK) 01/04/06

NY Galley Owners Fight, Then Get Busted On Tax Evasion "A feud between Upper East Side gallery owners whose clients include some of New York's wealthiest collectors has resulted in both admitting to tax violations." The New York Times 01/04/06

NY Curator Named To Head Miami Museum Terrence O'Tiley, chief curator of architecture and design for the Museum of Modern Art, has been named director of the Miami Art Museum. "He inherits a museum about to embark on its biggest mission to date: building a new home in Bicentennial Park and expanding the museum to fulfill the prominent cultural role voters and civic leaders envision. In 2004, Miami-Dade voters approved $275 million in county bond money to fund two museums -- MAM and the Museum of Science -- at Bicentennial Park." Miami Herald 01/04/06

The Louvre's Record Year (WithThe Help Of The Da Vinci Code?) The Louvre saw a record 7.3 million visitors in 2005. The previous record of 6.7 million visitors was set in 2004. Officials attribute the increased numbers in part to the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, and expect the forthcoming movie will result in even more visitors. CBC 01/03/06

The Art Of Ads "The Advertising Icon Museum, to open in the fall of 2007, will feature hundreds of toys, dolls, display figurines, cereal bowls, coffee mugs and ashtrays depicting almost a century's worth of fictional characters hawking everything from food and beer to household appliances and financial services. Electronic and printed displays will walk visitors through the evolution of commercial advertising in the United States and the importance icons have had in reaching customers, first in printed ads and later from the television screen." Kansas City Star (AP) 01/03/06

The Big Business Of Art theft The Art Loss Register lists 160,000 stolen works of art. "Art theft is big business. Interpol reckons that it ranks fourth among the highest-value criminal activities, after drugs, arms smuggling and money laundering. The FBI puts its value at $5 billion a year." Los Angeles Times 01/02/06

Antiquities And The Rules Of The Game "The laws governing the antiquities trade are now so complicated that no one can be sure of them, and the chain of ownership for any given object--even when it is traceable--may be so tangled that nobody knows who officially owns what. But there is more at stake today than the fate of an antique vase or even a curator's freedom. What hangs in the balance is the very future of museums. Or to put it another way, "Whither the Elgin Marbles?" OpinionJournal.com 12/30/05

Italian Restorers Try To Patch Relations With Greece Italian restorers are working to try to repair a priceless ancient Greek statue, and the results of their work will have diplomatic consequences. "In an incident that went almost unnoticed at the time, the authorities in Athens last year suspended all further digs by Italian archaeologists in Greece and slapped a five-year ban on an Italian lecturer. The sanctions were imposed after officials learned that the 4th century BC statue, found in an Italian dig on Crete, had fallen and been smashed in transit." The Guardian (UK) 01/03/06