Value To Be Determined By Expert Blather Art prices have been skyrocketing in recent years, and not only in the case of works by the old masters. "Boosted by an influx of Asian buyers keen to hoover up the classics of the modernist canon, the recent sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in London broke many records," and the new high water marks likely won't last long. But commerce aside, assigning value to art is a tricky business, especially in the long term, because "by far the most important factor in making art works valuable is what experts say and write about them." The Times (UK) 03/01/06

Those Shadowy Auction Winners "One of the great contradictions of the art market is that it simultaneously has a thirst for publicity and an obsession with secrecy... Once a work of art has been sold, a veil begins to descend. Auction houses often trumpet big prices, yet they rarely reveal details about buyers. Meanwhile, dealers at fairs often refuse to confirm that a sale has taken place, let alone identify their clients. Artworks suddenly move out of sight into the discreet world of anonymous collectors, sometimes vanishing for generations." So a new book devoted entirely to some of the world's more reclusive collectors is bound to make a big splash. The Telegraph (UK) 03/01/06

The Story Behind The Oils Most art collectors are content merely to own a painting, and perhaps to look at it on a regular basis. But when Mark Archer purchased a portrait of a woman in a red scarf for £2,800 at the London Art Fair two years ago, he found that the painting would not leave him alone. His investigation into the relatively obscure artist and her subject led to an intriguing storyline involving obsessive love, public nudity, and a tragic suicide. Financial Times (UK) 02/28/06

Drunken Guests Attack Art At Milwaukee Museum The Milwaukee Museum's beautiful Calatrava home is a popular place for parties. But "a recent martini fete held there turned into an overcrowded, drunken affair. Some unruly guests accosted artworks, which have been taken off display for a checkup. People threw up, passed out, were injured, got into altercations and climbed onto sculptures at Martinifest, a semi- formal event organized by Clear Channel Radio and held at the museum Feb. 11, according to several people who attended or worked at the event." Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 02/28/06

Boy Sticks Gum On Museum Painting At the Detroit Institute of Arts on Friday, "a mischievous 12-year-old boy visiting the museum with a school group took a piece of barely chewed Wrigley's Extra Polar Ice out of his mouth and stuck it on Helen Frankenthaler's 1963 abstract painting "The Bay," damaging one of the most important modern paintings in the museum's collection and a landmark picture in the artist's output." Detroit Free Press 02/28/06

In Toronto - Body-Watching An exhibition of plastinated bodies has been a huge hit in Toronto. "Officials announced that a total of 458,726 visitors paid anywhere from $15 to $25 each to attend Body Worlds 2, the controversial exhibition of 200 plastinated body parts and cadavers (including 20 whole bodies), that had its first-ever Canadian premiere at the centre last September." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/28/06

Scientists Find Lost Civilization Under Volcano Scientists say they have found traces of a lost civilization in Indonesia buried by a volcano almost 200 years ago. "Mount Tambora's cataclysmic eruption on April 10, 1815, buried the inhabitants of Sumbawa Island under searing ash, gas and rock and is blamed for an estimated 88,000 deaths. The eruption was at least four times more powerful than Mount Krakatoa's in 1883." Yahoo! (AP) 02/27/06

Needed: A Better Return Policy For America's Museums The Metropolitan Museum is returning a 2,500-year-old krater to Italy. The Getty is negotiating on artifacts in its possesion. And Boston's Museum of Fine Arts may be next. So are America's museums, one by one, going to have to make deals to cleanse their collections of items of dubious provenance? What is really needed is a plan to deal with the whole mess in an orderly way... OpinionJournal.com 02/28/06

Duchamp - Fountain Of Grace The fuss over a bad performance artist who damaged Marcel Duchamp's iconic "Fountain" last month may have for some obscured Duchamp's importance. "Duchamp is invariably referred to as an "anti-artist" and an "iconoclast." This is entirely false. Duchamp was a great art adviser to collectors. He wasn't against art at all; he was against the hypocritical aura surrounding it." Village Voice 02/28/06

Munch Theft Linked To Another Armed Robbery "Police [in Norway] believe they have discovered a new link between the brutal raid on the Norwegian Cash Service (NOKAS) office in Stavanger, which resulted in the shooting death of a police officer, and the armed theft of two paintings by Edvard Munch... One of the weapons used during the commando-style NOKAS robbery on April 5, 2004 and the pistol used in the Munch robbery, likely stem from the same break-in... in January 2004." Aftenposten (Oslo) 02/27/06

What's Really Driving The Battle Over Antiquities? With criticism coming from all sides over the issue of antiquities acquisition, some of the more prominent people at the helm of America's great museums are making a concerted effort to explain to the public their role in the art collection process, and to allay concerns that the works on display may be ill-gotten gains. "In large part, [the drive to 'repatriate' works of art] has grown out of a growing antiquities debate: is knowledge better served by collecting and exhibiting objects in museums or preserving them in their original archaeological context?" The New York Times 02/28/06

Selling Off Donald Judd "In an effort to create a $20 million endowment for the support of its permanent installations in New York and Texas, the Donald Judd Foundation has decided to sell about 35 Judd sculptures at Christie's in New York on May 9." But not everyone is happy about the idea... The New York Times 02/24/06

History vs. Innovation in SoCal Pasadena, California, is on the verge of a building boom, and fans of daring architecture will likely be pleased by what is to come. "But what's avant-garde to some could be an assault to others... It's either a step into the future, or the early stages of an aesthetic identity crisis." Los Angeles Times 02/26/06

Gallery Owners Win Dispute Against Thomas Kinkade An arbitration panel ruled against the so-called "Painter of Light." "The dealers and other ex-dealers allege that Kinkade used his religious beliefs — and manipulated theirs — to induce them to invest in Thomas Kinkade Signature Galleries, independently owned stores licensed to deal exclusively in his work. They also allege that they were stuck with unsalable inventory, forced to open additional stores in markets that could not sustain them and undercut by discounters that sold Kinkade prints at prices they were forbidden to match. And they accuse the artist of scheming to devalue Media Arts Group before he took the company private for $32.7 million in early 2004, renaming it Thomas Kinkade Co." Los Angeles Times 02/24/06

Michelangelo's Lost Fresco? That the residents of the Italian town of Marcialla have long believed that a fresco in their local church was painted by a young Michelangelo would come as no surprise to many scholars in the art world. That the villagers may be right, however, is a shock of the highest order. "At the end of last year, a stone slab forming part of the altar was heaved aside to reveal the first visible evidence for the claim: a monogram with the letters M, B and F intertwined." The Guardian (UK) 02/25/06

Brazilian Museum Robbed Of Four Masterpieces "Gunmen overpowered security guards and stole paintings by Picasso, Dali, Matisse and Monet from a Rio museum Friday, using the cover of a Carnival crowd to make their getaway, Brazilian authorities said. The thieves entered the Chacara do Ceu museum as a samba band performed on the street outside and stole Pablo Picasso's The Dance, Salvador Dali's The Two Balconies, Henri Matisse's Luxemburg Garden and Claude Monet's Marine. The paintings were considered the most valuable pieces at the museum." The Globe & Mail (AP) 02/25/06

Museums Strike Back On Antiquities "Over the last decade the benign image of the antiquities collector has given way to a far more sinister one. Once cast as generous lenders and donors — the lifeblood of American museums — such collectors are now seen as central cogs in a conspiracy to move artifacts looted from foreign soil into museum display cases... Museum officials argue that the public has forgotten why collectors are so important and, by implication, what museums are all about. To make their position clear, they have drawn up new ethical guidelines for loans of antiquities that vigorously defend the museum-collector relationship." The New York Times 02/25/06

• Nothing's Changed, Except That You Got Caught Museums are falling all over themselves to tell the world that, while they may have been taken by surprise when the rules surrounding antiquities acquistion changed recently, they are more than willing to adapt. The truth, says Guy Dammann, is that the rules haven't changed at all. "What has changed [is] the willingness of the museum to follow them." Culture Vulture (The Guardian) 02/26/06

First Told: The Destruction Of Grozny's Museum In 1994 in Grozny, Chechnya, the city's Museum of Fine Art was obliterated during the war. The destruction "has gone unreported, despite the fact that it is the first museum in Europe to be destroyed since 1945. A delegation found that about 90% of buildings in the city, once home to 500,000, have been partially or totally destroyed, mostly as a result of Russian bombing. The Museum of Fine Arts, which housed a collection of more than 500,000 artefacts and works of art, was one of them." The Art Newspaper 02/23/06

Met Museum's Illicit Antiquities Problem Reaches Further Into Museum Community New York's Metropolitan Museum is returning 21 works of art to Italy. But "while Italy secured a victory in this instance, the Met remains enmeshed in a broader tangle of donors, trustees and curators, some of whom have dealt in illicit antiquities, according to Italian and U.S. court decisions. At least three members of the Met's board or its curator- appointed committees have bought smuggled artifacts for their personal collections, according to rulings in three Italian and U.S. cases since 1999." Bloomberg.com 02/23/06

Italians: Next Stop, Boston's MFA Encouraged by their success in getting the Metropolitan Museum of Art to return art treasures, "Italian police will travel to Boston next month aiming to persuade the Museum of Fine Arts to return at least two dozen objects they contend were stolen." Boston Globe 02/23/06

A Long Lost Michelangelo? Is the fresco on a wall of a church in Chianti, Italy a lost Michelangelo? "Stylistic verification of the claim will be difficult because the central part of the fresco was damaged by damp and painted over. But at least one scholar has said there is something of Michelangelo in the muscularity of the thief who stands on the right of the painting." The Guardian (UK) 02/23/06

Britain Bans Sale Of Canalettos Abroad The UK has extended a ban on the sale of two Canaletto paintings that would be exported abroad. "Experts told the Department for Culture, Media and Sport the paintings were of such national importance it should try to keep them in the UK. About £6m is needed to match an offer received from abroad to ensure the paintings remain." BBC 02/21/06

Met Signs Return/Loan Deal With Italy "The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Italian government have signed a watershed accord on Tuesday under which the Met will return 21 artifacts that Italy says were looted from archaeological sites within its borders. In exchange for yielding the works to Italy — including a prized sixth-century B.C. Greek vase known as the Euphronios krater and a set of Hellenistic silver — the Met will receive long-term loans of prestigious objects from Italian collections." The New York Times 02/22/06

• Met Trustee To Talk Italian Artifacts A major Metropolitan Museum trustee agrees to talk with the Italian government about disputed artifactgs in her collection. "The Met's director, Philippe de Montebello, said the trustee, Shelby White, had told him last week that she was willing to meet with Italian cultural officials to discuss eight works she owns that the Italians believe were illicitly excavated and removed from the country. 'She wants to do the right thing and she is eager for this to be behind her'." The New York Times 02/22/06

A First: War Crimes Against Architecture Slobodan Milosovic is on trial for war crimes. Among the charges? “The intentional and wanton destruction of religious and cultural buildings of the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat communities. This is the first time that anyone has been properly charged in a court of law for wartime attacks on architecture as well as civilians, and a direct connection noted between the two." The Times (UK) 02/22/06

Quarry Plans For Prehistoric Site Shelved Plans to quarry gravel from the UK's biggest prehistoric site have been rejected. The site has been "ranked the complex as a "northern Stonehenge". Although short of dramatic stone relics, the area is rich in burial mounds, traces of settlements and an formal avenue which may have been used for ceremonial funerals." The Guardian (UK) 02/21/06

An Oath For Better Building Too many buildings get built where they don't belong or where they aren't wanted. So how about a Hippocratic Oath for architects... Chicago Public Radio 02/20/06

UK Heritage Battered By Climate Change The UK's historical buildings are being damaged by climate change. "Every decision we now make that hasn't factored in climate change is a potential mistake that could cost us time and money to put right later on. This isn't just to do with protecting an 18th-century house," he adds. "It's us saying: this is what our experience is telling us about the whole environment." The Guardian (UK) 02/21/06

Germany Returns Parthenon Fragment To Greece Last month, a German University returned a piece of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece. "On the front, it is simply cut, with the outline of part of a male foot, and on the back is a modern incised inscription, in Greek, with the word “Parthenon”. It was not until 1948 that archaeologist German Hafner recognised that it was the heel of figure number 28 in block viii of the north frieze." The Art Newspaper 02/20/06

Italy Accepts Met's Offer To Return Art Italy has accepted the Metropolitan Museum's offer to return 20 artifacts. "The agreement reached in Rome between Italian officials and the director of the Western Hemisphere's biggest art museum, Philippe de Montebello, may pave the way for other such accords between U.S. museums and countries with rich archaeological resources." Bloomberg.com 02/20/06

• Inside The Met's Italian Decision The Metropolitan Museum's decision to return artifacts to Italy was Not a decision arrived at recently. "Documents in the case show that much of that evidence had circulated for years — and that while the Met until recently cast skepticism on the Italian claims, it had concluded as early as 2003 that the silver should be returned." The New York Times 02/20/06

Tate Britain's Excellent Year Tate Britain had the "highest rise in visitor numbers among the country's leading tourist attractions. The total number of visitors that passed through the Millbank gallery was 1,733,120 - up 58 per cent in 12 months. By contrast, almost all other leading attractions in London slumped after the 7 July bombings. The National Gallery had 15 per cent fewer visitors, the London Eye was down 12 per cent and the Tower of London by 9 per cent." The Independent (UK) 02/21/06

de Montebello: Art Patrimony Laws Backfire On Countries Metropolitan Museum director Philippe de Montebello on returning artwork to countries of origin:"Perhaps those countries will realize that the tougher their patrimony laws, the more they are victims of illicit looting. Are you suggesting that allowing countries to prohibit the export of artwork they deem to be part of their national heritage needs to be re-examined? Of course. Can you imagine if every Rembrandt were in Holland and every Poussin in Paris? It is safe to diversify a stock portfolio; it is also safe to diversify the shared heritage of mankind." New York Times Magazine 02/19/06

A Debate Over Paintings Said To Be Pollocks A few weeks ago a scientific study of a set of paintings said to be by Jackson Pollock was released, contending that the paintings were not authentic. But other experts disagree with the findings. "By authorizing only journalistic summaries of Taylor's work, the Pollock Krasner Foundation has prevented disinterested scholars from reviewing his analysis. Instead, it has bolstered a negative view of the newly discovered paintings without giving anyone else a fair shot at critiquing." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 02/19/06

A Cincinnati University Builds Legacy "Over the past two decades, Ohio has become an important venue for innovative buildings by star architects from around the world. Public agencies, museums and universities have used edgy, forward-looking buildings to change perceptions, to erase regional isolation and to broadcast optimism about the future. The newest sign of the trend is the nearly completed Campus Recreation Center at the University of Cincinnati." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 02/19/06

A Chicago Sullivan, Back In Focus One of architect Louis Sullivan's Chicago masterpieces is being restores. "For architecture lovers, the restoration is a revelation, like hearing the finale of a Beethoven symphony for which the music was long lost. But the job has implications that reach far beyond the southeast corner of State and Madison Streets. It proves that sensitive preservation architects and skilled craftsmen still can do this kind of thing, even though skeptics claim otherwise." Chicago Tribune 02/19/06

UK's Largest Ever Museum Donation Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover is to give £10 million to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the largest donation ever made to a UK museum or gallery outside London. The Art Newspaper 02/17/06

A New Era For The Photography Market? "When Sotheby's announced this week that 'The Pond — Moonlight,' a platinum print by Edward Steichen owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, had sold for almost $3 million to an anonymous buyer, it was as if continents had shifted in the photography world." The New York Times 02/17/06

The Museum Muhammads - What To Do? Many museums have depictions of Muhammad in their collections. So what to do now that the cartoon controversy has escalated? Los Angeles Times 02/17/06

LA In NY Los Angeles art dealers say they're under-represented in the annual New York Armory Show. "This year, a group of L.A. dealers have had enough. They’ve organized their own show — called L.A. Art — in New York the same days as the Armory Show, March 9-13. The organizer of the show, says the bias against L.A. dealers left them with no choice. 'Absolutely, Los Angeles is underrepresented'.” LAWeekly 02/16/06

Hayward's New Chief London's Hayward Gallery, part of the prestigious South Bank Arts Centre, has plucked its new director from San Francisco's Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. Ralph Rugoff, who is "known for organizing unorthodox group exhibitions and writing provocative essays on contemporary art," will take up the post in late spring. Los Angeles Times 02/16/06

An Art Center The Frozen North Can Call Its Own "Cities are both real and imagined places. What's interesting about Winnipeg and the reputation of its visual artists -- both those who have left and those who continue to live here -- is that the real and the imaginary have become indistinguishable. Because of the emergence on the international art scene of a group of artists... Winnipeg is now viewed in New York, Los Angeles and London as a place that has produced an inexplicable number of good artists... What is unquestionably true, however, is that Winnipeg has developed a keen sense of itself as an art city, and the success of their peers is a model on which the current crop of artists can imagine how they might flourish in the rough-and-tumble art world." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/16/06

Detroit Museum Gets Big Bequest An heiress to the Ford Motor Co. fortune has bequeathed a $15 million collection of classic paintings to the Detroit Institute of Arts. Included in the collection are works by Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, and Degas. Detroit Free Press 02/16/06

Breaking News: TV Station "Pollutes" Chicago Loop Chicago's downtown Loop has been undergoing a dramatic revitalization in recent years, capped by the unveiling of the lakefront Millenium Park and Frank Gehry's towering bandshell. But the latest architectural addition to the Loop has some observers profoundly unhappy. The perpetrator is Chicago's WLS-TV, which has constructed a 42-foot monolith that it says mimics some of the art found in Millenium Park. Alan Artner begs to differ. "[WLS's creation] takes back the language into advertising and plays with it to pretend it, too, is art. But it's not. It's pollution that along with the rest of the frills added to the exterior of the building brings the sensory irritation of ABC studios in Times Square to North State Street." Chicago Tribune 02/16/06

Rare Blake Watercolor Sale Irks Experts A major find of 19 watercolors is about to be broken up and sold at auction. "The watercolors — illustrations created in 1805 by the poet and artist William Blake for a 1743 poem — are being heralded by scholars as the most important Blake discovery in a century," and experts are upset at the prospect of the sale. The New York Times 02/16/06

A Prize Collection Under A Cloud The Metropolitan Museum hopes to get the major part of Shelby White's collection of antiquities. But an Italian "investigation into Ms. White’s collection seems to keep expanding. The stock of old evidence that Italian investigators are using becomes more dangerous to Ms. White’s collection as more of her pieces receive widespread notice. That is sure to happen as more than a dozen pieces in her collection—which has been admired by curators as one of the most impressive in the world, even as it has been disparaged by archaeologists as plundered treasure without provenance—are displayed at the Met, where she is a trustee." New York Observer 02/15/06

A Record Price For Turner? Auction watchers are predicting a record price for a JWM Turner when it comes up for sale this week. "The Blue Rigi: Lake of Lucerne, Sunrise, is predicted to fetch more than £2m when it goes under the hammer at Christie's auction house on 5 June. The current record for a Turner watercolour on paper is £2.04m, set in 2001 by Heidelberg with a Rainbow." BBC 02/15/06

Does St. Louis Museum Have Stolen Mask? Allegations have surfaced that the St Louis Art Museum has an ancient Egyptian mask in its collection that was stolen from a warehouse in Saqqara, Egypt in the 1980s. The Art Newspaper 02/15/06

• St. Louis Mask Has A History In Dispute The St. Louis mask was the subject of accusations as recently as Jan. 19, when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's David Bonetti reported that a "one-time forger and art smuggler" named Michel Van Rijn claimed that the mask was stolen in the 1990s. Modern Art Notes (AJBlogs) 02/15/06

Seattle's New Sculpture Al Fresco Seattle's new $85 million sculpture park is being built on the city's downtown waterfront. "Seattle's park will be free, fenceless and in the heart of the city. Officials hope the easy access will encourage a greater appreciation of the arts from people cycling, jogging or just strolling through the area. The collection will mix seminal works from sculptors Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Serra and Mark Di Suvero with with newly commissioned sculpture from Louise Bourgeois and Mark Dion, among others." Los Angeles Times (AP) 02/14/06

Report: US Museums Are Minor Players In Antiquities Trade A report by the Association of Art Museum Directors seeks to put American museums' antiquities collecting in perspective. "The report states that 53 member institutions actively collect antiquities and altogether spent an average of $7 million per year purchasing antiquities over the last five years. This total is less than 10% of the global annual trade in antiquities, the report states, basing that figure on published reports that estimate the global trade anywhere from $100 million to $4 billion." The point is that the collecting activities of American museums are not driving the international antiquities trade. The Art Newspaper 02/14/06

Gehry: Toronto Missed Its Chance For Architectural Greatness Frank Gehry says his hometown Toronto has missed out on being a great architecture center, even though several prominent projects are now underway. " 'It's like every other community. There's very little social planning; it seems to be more a world of opportunism and entertainment. ... It doesn't feel right, but I think I am just fuddy duddy because of my age,' said Gehry, who is 77." CBC 02/14/06

American Museum Collections In Peril "A survey of 3,370 institutions by the nonprofit group Heritage Preservation found that some 612 million artifacts - from photographs and paintings to nature specimens and pottery - are at risk of deterioration because they aren't cared for properly. Nearly 60 percent of institutions surveyed acknowledged that light has damaged their collections, while 53 percent said moisture caused problems. And 26 percent of those surveyed have no special controls in place to protect their collections from light, temperature, and humidity. Perhaps most strikingly, 80 percent of the institutions surveyed don't pay anyone to preserve their collections. Christian Science Monitor 02/15/06

Cautionary Tale: Star Building Buzz Fades Fast Three years ago, Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center opened a new building designed by star Zaha Hadid. There were crowds and there was lots of attention. But now the crowds have gone and the attention has faded. "This would-be icon stands as a cautionary tale: In an age when celebrity architects are courted by cities and institutions desperate to make a splash, brand-name buzz can fade quicker than a fresh coat of paint." San Francisco Chronicle 02/14/06

Pictures Of The Prophet Everywhere Are depictions of Muhammad strictly prohibited? "Art's history disputes this. True, that strict taboo today is honored now by almost all Muslims, but old paintings of the prophet -- finely brushed expensive ones, made carefully and piously by Muslims and for them -- are well known to most curators of Islamic art." Washington Post 02/14/06

A Time To Reinvent The Getty? "Museums win some, lose some. But over the years, the Getty has lost more than makes sense. The sports analogy for New Yorkers is the Knicks: rich, plagued by internal conflicts, infuriating, forever failing to meet sky-high expectations. But change is opportunity. The Getty should now go on a mission." The New York Times 02/13/06

Scholars Worry About Cooper-Hewitt Archive Plans The Cooper-Hewitt Museum is considering moving some of its archives from its museum on Fifth Ave. in new York to another Smithsonian facility. But critics "argue that the Cooper-Hewitt offers the rare advantage of relating objects in the museum itself to documents, photographs and other materials in the archive." The New York Times 02/14/06

Record London Art Auctions Last week's London auctions set records. "The winter auctions, featuring artists from Edvard Munch to Francis Bacon, were London's biggest ever, exceeding 1989 totals before art prices last crashed. U.S. and Asian buyers pushed sale totals 5 percent above auctioneers' top estimate of 245 million pounds. Last February's total was 170.6 million pounds." Bloomberg.com 02/13/06

Valentine's Art With A Message Chocolate too gooey to express your sentiments on Valentine's Day? Then consider some art with a twist on the message... Seattle Post-Intelligencer 02/14/06

Spain's Architectural Renaissance Architecture in Spain under Francisco Franco was dreadful. "Franco's idea of great architecture was a deadening, nationalistic sort of classical kitsch. Modern architecture, for the most part, was just something for the tourists -- mile after banal mile of hotels that were degrading to local culture and the fine beaches they were built on. And, yet, here we are. Spain today is an international stage for architectural innovation and experimentation." Washington Post 02/12/06

Richard Rogers And His Swirl Of Projects Now in his 70s, architect Richard Rogers has more projects than he has time. There's the huge addition to New York's convention center, of course. "There are big projects, like Madrid Airport, or Terminal Five at Heathrow, or the competition to redesign Darling Harbour, Sydney (they're down to the last five); and there are small ones, like a £60,000 house (to prove that inexpensive housing can be other than Disneyfied), or a Maggie's Centre, up the road from the office." The Observer (UK) 02/12/06

Big Building, No Buzz A new 1000-foot tower is rising in Chicago. But "hardly anybody is talking about Waterview Tower, even though construction just started on the 82-story skyscraper at the southwest corner of Wacker Drive and Clark Street. The lack of buzz is enough to make you wonder: Is it because the design is good but kind of tame or because Chicagoans have become totally blase about great height? 'Ho hum. Another tower taller than New York's Chrysler Building. Who's the next pol to get indicted at City Hall'?" Chicago Tribune 02/12/06

We've Got The Thieves, But Where's The Loot? It's been a year and a half since gun-toting thieves charged into Oslo's Munch Museum and left with two masterpieces by the museum's namesake. "Six men stand accused of the crime; their trial is set to begin tomorrow. But the laborious, complicated investigation has stumbled in a fundamental and profoundly frustrating way. The police may have the thieves, but they don't have the paintings." The New York Times 02/12/06

Looted Paintings Returned To Germany "The United States returned three paintings stolen at the end of World War II to the mayor of the western German town that owned them. U.S. Ambassador William Timken handed over the 19th-century works by Heinrich Buerkel to the mayor of Pirmasens at a ceremony Friday in Berlin. Officials say the three paintings, now valued at $125,000, were among works believed stolen on March 22, 1945, as U.S. forces pushed into Germany. They were recovered after they turned up in an auction in the United States last year." Forbes 02/10/06

Give 'Em An Inch, And They'll Take All Their Art Back "With a proposed settlement from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in hand, Italian authorities are escalating their demands for the return of allegedly looted antiquities from other American museums... Italian investigators say they have identified hundreds more allegedly looted objects at U.S. museums. An additional 10,000 objects mentioned in the records have not yet been located." Italy is very serious about recovering as many of the objects as possible, and is willing to go to court if negotiations with the museums involved do not result in a satisfactory resolution. Los Angeles Times 02/11/06

Trump Breaks Sky In Chicago Donald Trump's new 92-story skyscraper is under construction in Chicago. "The heart beats faster at the prospect of Chicago reaching into the sky. Busting into the clouds is in the city's blood. Nothing like this has happened since the boxy, black mass of the 1,450-foot Sears Tower, once the world's tallest building and still the nation's tallest, soared above the gritty Loop in 1974." Chicago Tribune 02/10/06

Lauder - Where's The Provenance? Ronald Lauder is chairman emeritus of the Museum of Modern Art, former treasurer of the World Jewish Congress and, most important, a major advocate of Holocaust-era art restitution. But "despite his high-profile advocacy for openness — including testimony before Congress in 1998 — Lauder has never publicly listed the works in his own collection, many of which are by painters who were popular with Jewish collectors before the Holocaust. And a museum that he founded has failed to fulfill its pledge to post provenance information for its collection." The Forward 02/10/06

• Fallout From A Previous Lauder Story Jan Herman points out that the last reporter who tangled with Lauder was David D'Arcy. "D'Arcy's contract with National Public Radio "was terminated after a piece he did on Holocaust art theft and the Museum of Modern Art sent MoMA board chairman Ron Lauder so far around the bend that museum officials accused D'Arcy of 'shabby reporting' and pressured NPR to repudiate it." Straight Up (AJBlog) 02/10/06

Pollocks To Be Retested For Authenticity The Pollock-Krasner Foundation says that six Jackson Pollock paintings tested and spotted as frauds by physicist will be retested. "All of Jackson Pollock's poured paintings analysed by my research group are composed of a highly specific and identifiable form of fractal patterning. Pollock's specific fractal signature has not been found in the submitted paintings. The analysis has also revealed that the patterns vary between the paintings, indicating that they may have been painted by different hands."
BBC 02/10/06

McMichael Plucks Frick Director "Thomas J. Smart, director of collections and exhibitions at [Pittsburgh's] Frick Art & Historical Center since July 1999, will leave the museum to become executive director of The McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Toronto, Ontario... The McMichael collection includes First Nations and Inuit artworks and is the foremost venue in Canada for paintings by the Group of Seven, landscape artists who were active in the first half of the last century." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 02/09/06

The Science Behind That Fresh-Looking Landscape The science of art conservation is sort of like working a jigsaw puzzle without knowing for sure what the final picture is meant to look like. "Over and above conservators' hands-on skills, scientists need to know the standard form of materials under study and be able to recognize what is novel or unusual about the composition of an object, whether sculpture, watercolor, painting or any combination of these." Washington Times 02/09/06

Computer Turns Up Fake Pollocks? A physicist has used computer pattern analysis to identify consistent patterns in the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock. He's "determined that half a dozen small paintings recently discovered and claimed by their owner to be original Pollocks do not exhibit the same patterns." The New York Times 02/09/06

Soviet-Era Preservation Moscow has been tearing down much of its Soviet-era architecture. But now "Moscow is seeing a rash of cool industrial conversions that draw inspiration from projects like London's Tate Modern. It has yet to turn the tide of destruction but embattled preservationists believe it's a sign of hope for the future:" The Guardian (UK) 02/08/06

Score One More For The UK Export Ban Strategy "A gold coin dating to Anglo-Saxon times has been bought by the British Museum for more than £350,000. The deal by the central London museum makes it the most expensive British coin ever purchased... When the owner put it up for sale last year, the Government put a temporary export ban in place hoping it would be saved for the nation. The National Heritage Memorial Fund provided £225,000 of the £357,832 total cost." BBC 02/08/06

Discovered - 27,000-Year-Old Cave Paintings "An amateur caver has discovered prehistoric human remains and cave art in western France believed to date back 27,000 years, several thousand years older than the world-famous paintings at Lascaux." The Guardian (UK) 02/08/06

Can 5 Million Austrians Buy Back A Klimt? An Austrian publisher, Hubertus Czermin, is tryin to mount a public campaign to save a Gustav Klimt painting that was recently awarded to the family of a victim of the Nazis. He's urging "5 million Austrians - 60% of the population - to each donate €20 (about £14) to raise the estimated €100m needed to buy back the work." The Guardian (UK) 02/07/06

Dutch Agree To Return Old Masters The Dutch government will return more than 200 paintings to the family of a Jewish art dealer. The paintings were looted by Nazis in World War II. "The paintings, by Rubens, Rembrandt, Goya and other well-known painters, are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. They will be returned to the family of Jacques Goudstikker, a major pre-war art collector who fled the Netherlands shortly before the German invasion in May 1940." CBC 02/07/06

Knight: New Director Lands In America's Most Interesting City For New Art That's what Los Angeles has become, claims Christopher Knight: "Los Angeles has emerged as America's most interesting and exciting production center for new art. Meanwhile, New York has consolidated its position as art's primary consumption center. What this dichotomy means for art museums is significant. New York's museums are ruled by patterns of consumption. Because of it, their contemporary art programming is a shambles — mostly safe, conservative, star-driven, geared toward cultural tourists, oriented toward the bottom line. It's the art equivalent of popular entertainment, with the museum as Hollywood movie studio. By contrast the most consistently vivifying contemporary art programming will be found in LA, which reflects the city's prominence as a production center." Los Angeles Times 02/07/06

Hermitage Working On $100 Million Expansion The Hermitage Museum says it will complete a $100 million expansion within three years. The new complex "is a state-of- the-art museum space that will allow us to experiment with different methods of exhibiting art works." Bloomberg 02/07/06

Belgian Town Bans Saddam Picture Officials in a Belgian town have banned an artwork depicting Saddam Hussein. "The piece, called Saddam Hussein Shark, shows the handcuffed ex-Iraqi ruler suspended in liquid and wearing nothing more than underpants. The mayor of Middlekerke, Michel Landuyt, said the work could 'shock people', including Muslims." BBC 02/07/06

The Art Fair Problem Though art fairs like Frieze and Art Basel Miami are doing well, there is mounting evidence that many traditional art fairs are struggling to survive... The Art Newspaper 02/04/06

Dutch To Consider Art Return The Dutch government is deciding whether to return a major art collection to the descendants of a Jewish art dealer whose holdings were taken by the Nazis... Los Angeles Times (AP) 02/04/06

Two Ways To Teach Art Two art schools in Adelaide, Australia illustrate competing approaches to making art. "Put at its crudest, one is identified with the painterly tradition; the other is all-inclusive, taking in everything from performance and video to glassmaking. The latter is our major art school, SA School of Art, where teaching artists to think is deemed as important as teaching technique. In contrast is the Adelaide Central School of Art, where the focus is on training and technique." Adelaide Advertiser 02/04/06

The China Factor - Getting In To Western Art "China's spectacular economic rise over the past quarter-century has started to create enormous wealth, and prices for Chinese art have risen steeply, especially in the last three years. But Chinese art collectors have barely begun to show interest in Western masterpieces. Few doubt that in the years to come, wealthy Chinese on the mainland and in Hong Kong will become important buyers of Western art." The New York Times 02/04/06

Important Art - Return To Sender? (A List) Numerous important artifacts in major museums have disputed ownership. Roger Atwood makes a list... The Guardian (UK) 02/03/06

Negotiating The Met's Return Policy The Metropolitan Museum has agreed to send disputed artifacts back to Italy. So now the negotiating for how and when intensifies. "The Met has requested that it be allowed to keep the krater and a disputed set of Hellenistic silver at least through the end of next year so that the objects can be on display for the opening of the museum's expanded Roman galleries in spring 2007. The two sides are also still discussing the possibility that the vase, which the museum bought for $1 million in 1972, might be allowed to return to the Met at some point as a loan from the Italian government and remain in the United States for as long as four years." The New York Times 02/04/06

Chinese Art Takes Center Stage "Chinese work has seized the imagination of the Western art world for several reasons. There's the sense that Chinese artists have sprung up seemingly full-blown since the end of the repression and censorship of the Cultural Revolution. There's a fascination with a country that's become a world economic powerhouse. And there's the intoxicating fascination of new love: Chinese artists are spending as much time and energy trying to figure us out as Western art lovers are trying to figure them out." Boston Globe 02/05/06

The New Art History "College art-history textbooks are undergoing an extreme makeover. Publishers and editors, stung by criticism that they have lost touch with their young readership and driven by market forces that may have little to do with fresh artistic scholarship, are literally rewriting art history—more often and more aggressively than ever before." ArtNews 02/06

LA County Museum Hires Michael Govan As Director "Govan, 42, is a well-known figure in the art world who rose from deputy director at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York to the top job at Dia, a leading cultural institution that collects contemporary art, supports massive outdoor projects in the American West and maintains large exhibition spaces in Manhattan and Beacon, N.Y. During his 11-year tenure, he is credited with transforming Dia from a highly specialized source of funding for individual artists' projects into an institution that brings contemporary art to a broader audience." Los Angeles Times 02/04/06

Austria Won't Buy Klimts Austria says it won't buy five paintings by Gustav Klimt stolen by Nazis that were awarded to the family of the original owner. "Austria's minister in charge of education and culture, said the government wanted to acquire the masterpieces but decided it could not afford the $300-million price tag. Last month, an arbitration court awarded the paintings to Maria Altmann of Los Angeles, who says they were looted from her family by the Nazis." Los Angeles Times 02/03/06

Britain's Largest-Ever Art Heist? "Antiques and art treasures, possibly including works by Picasso, Rubens and Titian worth millions of pounds, have been stolen from the 17th century Wiltshire mansion of the reclusive multi-millionaire Harry Hyams in what police believe could be Britain's biggest ever burglary. Precise details of what was taken have not been released, although there have been estimates that property worth between £20m and £30m was stolen." The Guardian (UK) 02/03/06

Met Offers To Return Euphronios Vase To Italy Th Metropolitan Museum has offered to return the 2,500-year-old Euphronios krater to Italy. "The museum pledged to return the vase and 19 other disputed antiquities after weeks of negotiations with Italy, which will now consider the offer. Under the proposal, the vase, 15 pieces of Sicilian silver and four other ancient vessels would be returned to Italy in exchange for long-term loans of other prized antiquities, and the Met would assert that the objects were all acquired in good faith." The New York Times 02/03/06

Greening The Skyline, For Health And Profit Can towering skyscrapers and natural beauty ever really coexist? A new generation of architects doesn't see why not, and the corporations that populate high-rises across America are beginning to see the benefits of a different kind of urban planning. "Not so long ago, green construction was largely dismissed as prohibitively expensive and as just so much political correctness. But the arrival of the Condé Nast tower in Times Square in 1999, designed by Fox & Fowle and billed as the first green skyscraper in New York, sent the message that corporate America saw something to gain from the green model." The New York Times 02/02/06

A New Look At Abstract Expressionism A new documentary focusing on the revolutionary changes that hit the American art scene beginning in the 1960s has an intriguing premise: that artists of the era consciously abandoned any attempt to cater to existing public interests and began creating art that viewers would simply have to "catch up" to. But in the years since Warhol, Stella, Hockney, and others burst onto the scene, much of the museum-going public has managed to embrace the revolutionary style they embodied. Boston Globe 02/02/06

Art Loss Register Helps Find Long-Missing Paintings "The mystery surrounding the theft of seven French Expressionist paintings from a wealthy American collector almost 30 years ago has been solved by a London court case. The canvases, worth at least £20m, are thought to have shuttled back and forth for decades between Massachusetts, Monaco, a Swiss bank vault and the British offices of Sotheby's." The Guardian (UK) 02/02/06

Crafts Council On The Precipice Of Disaster England's Crafts Council "is in crisis, victim of a miasma of resignations, rows and inertia that swirls round one of the worst policy mistakes made by the arts establishment since Labour took power in 1997. Where did it all go wrong?" The Telegraph (UK) 02/01/06

Peru Not Happy With Yale Exhibit "By any conventional measure, Yale's exhibition about Machu Picchu would seem a windfall for Peru. As one of the most ambitious shows about the Inca ever presented in the United States, drawing over a million visitors while traveling to half a dozen cities and back again, it has riveted eyes on Peru's leading tourist attraction. Yet instead of cementing an international partnership, the exhibition... has brought a low ebb in the university's relations with Peru. At issue are a large group of artifacts that form the core of the show, excavated at Machu Picchu in a historic dig by a Yale explorer in 1912. The government of Peru wants all of those objects back." The New York Times 02/01/06