ARTFIXdaily News Feed - Breaking News from the Art World

Sargent Paintings Exit New York's Players Club

New York Post / July 24th, 2012

A crumbling facade is blamed for the sale of two historic portraits by premier American artist John Singer Sargent from a designated National Historic Landmark building.

Herbert Vogel, Art Collector, Remembered

New York Times / July 23rd, 2012

A postal clerk with an eye for modern art, Herbert Vogel, has died at 89. He amassed a remarkable collection of art---5,000 pieces in all---with his wife Dorothy, a librarian. The couple left their entire collection to...

Chief Joseph War Shirt Brings $877,500 at Auction

Las Vegas Review Journal / July 23rd, 2012

A Chief Joseph war shirt fetched $877,500 at the 317-lot Coeur d'Alene Art Auction in Reno. Top-sellers also included the painting "Scout's Report," by Howard Terpning, hammered down...

A $29 Million Tax Bill for Art Valued at Zero

New York Times / July 22nd, 2012

Heirs of art dealer Ileana Sonnabend are in a bind for inheriting a 20th-century masterwork by Robert Rauschenberg. Next month lawyers for the heirs will go head to head with the Internal Revenue Service over the value of Rauschenberg's "Canyon."

Stolen Matisse Recovered by FBI in Miami

Reuters / July 22nd, 2012

A painting by Henri Matisse stolen from a Venezuelan art museum in 2002 was recovered during a FBI sting at a Miami Beach hotel. Valued at...

NH's White Mountains Museum to Feature Women Artists Collection

Yahoo / July 18th, 2012

Women artists associated with the 19th-century "White Mountain School" will be featured in a new museum set to open at New Hampshire's Plymouth State University. A collection of 19 landscape and still-life paintings by...

Rare Cyrus Dallin Sculpture Recovered Decades After Heist

Boston.com / July 17th, 2012

Police have recovered a bronze by famed sculptor Cyrus Dallin more than three decades after it was stolen from a Boston-area school. A Boston art dealer contacted the Cyrus Dallin Art Museum about the piece while doing an appraisal for...

Metropolitan Museum of Art Boasts Record Attendance for New Galleries, Exhibits

ArtfixDaily / July 16th, 2012

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that 6.28 million people visited the Met during the fiscal year that ended on June 30.

Botticelli Entangled in Salander Bankruptcy

Businessweek / July 13th, 2012

A painting attributed to Sandro Botticelli and valued at $9.5 million may be sold in order to pay some creditors of Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, which declared bankruptcy over four years ago in New York’s biggest-ever art fraud.

Billionaire Buyer of Munch's "Scream" Revealed

Vanity Fair / July 12th, 2012

Multiple sources are reporting that the mystery buyer of the world's most expensive artwork is private-equity mogul...

Art Thief Myles Connor Jr. Charged for Hold-up

Providence Journal / July 11th, 2012

Notorious art thief Myles J. Connor, Jr., 69, was arrested for holding up two women at a convenience store in Rhode Island last Thursday. In 1998, Connor came into the spotlight when he asked the FBI for $5 million in exchange for...

Knoedler Gallery Sued by Another Collector

Businessweek / July 10th, 2012

Once New York's oldest commercial art gallery, defunct Knoedler is again the target of a lawsuit by a collector. A former Bear Stearns director is suing Knoedler for allegedly selling him a fake...

Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia

Wall Street Journal / July 9th, 2012

Paradise is explored as a theme in the Philadelphia Museum of Art's major exhibition "Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia," on view through Sept. 3. This sumptuous display of late 19th and early 20th century European masterworks reflect visions of a rural, idyllic Arcadia as once imagined by...

German Billionaire Donates American Art Collection to Museum

Seattle Times / July 8th, 2012

A German billionaire and his wife are donating their collection of Western American art to the Tacoma Art Museum.

100 Caravaggios Supposedly Found by Art Historians

Telegraph / July 5th, 2012

Italian art historians say they have discovered a trove of 100 previously unknown works by Renaissance master Caravaggio. From a Milan castle, the paintings and sketches could be worth...

$2 Million Rodin "Kiss," Record-Breaking Constable Among London Sales

ArtfixDaily / July 3rd, 2012

At the Masterpiece London fair, Sladmore Gallery sold a bronze of Auguste Rodin's “The Kiss,” cast during the artist's lifetime, to a Swiss collector for $2 million. On July 3, Christie's sold an important work by English landscape artist John Constable for an auction record of...

Girlfriend of Thomas Kinkade Says Artist Wanted a Museum

CBS News / July 2nd, 2012

The widow and girlfriend of artist Thomas Kinkade are facing off in court over his $66.3 million estate.

National Gallery of Art Restores Gilbert Stuart Portraits of Founding Fathers

Huffington Post / July 2nd, 2012

The National Gallery of Art's portraits of George Washington and John Adams are among a select group of 16 Federal-era paintings in its collection by American master Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828) that are being conserved. New details are emerging under layers of old varnish...

Maine Landscapes by Frederic Church on View this Summer at the Portland Museum of Art

ArtfixDaily / July 1st, 2012

This summer the Portland Museum of Art presents Maine Sublime: Frederic Edwin Church’s Landscapes of Mount Desert and Mount Katahdin, an exhibition exploring the half-century during which the famed American landscape painter traveled to and was inspired by the landscapes of Maine.

Bigger Not Always Better for Many Museums

New York Times / June 28th, 2012

A new study shows that cultural institutions are prone to overexpanding, and the results are sometimes financially disasterous. According to the study by the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago, more than $16 billion was spent by...