ARTFIXdaily News Feed - Breaking News from the Art World

Putin Skips France Visit After His Cultural Tour Cancelled

Guardian / October 12th, 2016

Vladimir Putin has postponed a cultural visit to France hours after French President Francois Hollande suggested Russia could face war crimes for its latest bombings in Syria. Hollande said he would have to talk about the Syrian conflict with Putin if he visited, instead of a planned tour of ...

Treasure Hunters Zero In On $62 Billion of Lost Nazi Loot

Daily Mail / October 10th, 2016

The Daily Mail reports that a pair of treasure hunters claim they are near to recovering $62 billion in Nazi loot left behind by Hilter's forces as they fled a Czech town in 1945.   In Štěchovice, about 20 miles from Prague, Josef Mužík and his partner have been on a decades-long search ...

France Proposes Unprecedented $3.2 Billion Culture Budget

The Art Newspaper / October 5th, 2016

The Art Newspaper first reported that France’s Minister of Culture and Communication, Audrey Azoulay, plans to increase cultural funding by 6.6% to a total of $3.2 billion next year—the largest amount of government money promised for the arts in the country’s history.  Azoulay said in a ...

FBI Suspect in Gardner Museum Heist Remains Silent on His Deathbed

NBC / October 3rd, 2016

The lawyer for a Connecticut mobster suspected to have ties to the notorious $500 million Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist in 1990 says he doesn't expect a deathbed confession from his client. Hartford attorney A. Ryan McGuigan tells the Boston Globe he visited the hospital where ...

Met Sued Over Picasso Painting Sold During Nazi Era

New York Times / October 2nd, 2016

The estate of a Jewish industrialist and art collector from Germany sued the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday for the return of a Pablo Picasso painting in the museum's collection, reports the New York Times. Laurel Zuckerman, the great-grandniece of the collector, is seeking more than $100 ...

Two Stolen Van Goghs Recovered 14 Years On

CNN / October 2nd, 2016

Two paintings stolen from Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum 14 years ago have been recovered in Italy. Thieves used a ladder to the museum's roof and broke in with sledgehammers in December 2002. Security systems were working and guards were on patrol, adding to the mystery of the crime. "After all ...

Neue Galerie Returns Nazi-Seized Artwork and Then Buys It Back

New York Times / September 28th, 2016

The Neue Galerie in Manhattan, co-founded in 2001 by cosmetics scion and art restitution advocate Ronald S. Lauder, announced an unusual settlement on Tuesday. A painting from the Neue Galerie collection, Nude, 1914, by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, was found to be Nazi loot from a Jewish family ...

Wildenstein Family Denied Second Delay in Tax Fraud Trial

Bloomberg / September 26th, 2016

Bloomberg reports that a French judge has denied the wealthy art-dealing Wildenstein family a second delay in their fiscal fraud trial. Two members of the Wildenstein clan had sought a stay on the trial in criminal court while a civil case was completed first. Guy Wildenstein is accused of ...

A New Private Museum to Open in Hudson Valley

Bloomberg / September 14th, 2016

Collectors Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu could be planning to open a 20,000-square-foot private exhibition space in Cold Spring, N.Y., where their 400-piece collection of postwar Italian art will be on view, first reported Bloomberg. The couple also owns 500 pieces of Murano glass. Their ...

After a Near-Derailment, Exhibition of Masterworks from Tehran's Hidden Art Collection Heads to Berlin

DW / September 8th, 2016

Berlin's Gemäldegalerie will be the first-ever foreign venue for sixty 20th-century European and American masterworks, along with key works by Iranian artists, recently unveiled from the hidden collection of Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA). From December 4, 2016, to February 26, 2017, ...

Victoria and Albert Museum Director Reportedly to Resign Over Brexit Concerns

Guardian / September 4th, 2016

The director of London's Victoria and Albert Museum, Martin Roth, is expected to resign this week and return to his native Germany in a decision fuelled by his disillusionment at the Brexit vote. Roth was appointed in 2011, becoming the first foreign director of the V&A since it was founded ...

Portrait Bought Online for $500 Deemed a Lost De Kooning

Telegraph / August 24th, 2016

On the BBC series Fake or Fortune? art expert Philip Mould helped a Belgian couple discover that a portrait they bought online for 450 euros was a lost early work by Dutch abstract artist Willem de Kooning. The painting of a child could be worth £50,000 ($113,000), say the ...

New Book Compiles the Best in Botanic Imagery

PHAIDON / August 24th, 2016

Plant: Exploring the Botancial World is a new compilation of 300 of the most beautiful and pioneering botanical images ever made. From Phaidon, the 353-page book will be released in September and includes a seminal Georgia O'Keeffe painting, exquisite images assembled by the Royal Botanic Garden ...

Sebastian Smee's The Art of Rivalry Covers Riveting Relationships of Modern Masters

Indiebound / August 16th, 2016

The Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize winning art critic Sebastian Smee has penned a spellbinding 416-page tome about eight of modern art's most hallowed names -- and the artists' very complicated relationships with each other. The book The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, ...

Researchers Use Particle Accelerator to Reveal Hidden Degas Painting

Scientific Reports / August 4th, 2016

Edgar Degas once painted over one of his works -- a typical enough practice for any artist. Yet, when the great Impressionist painted Portrait Of A Woman around 1870, he skipped painting a middle layer over the previous painting. Degas just rotated the canvas, painting another portrait ...

New Dali Museum Opens in California

SFGate / August 3rd, 2016

Spanish painter Salvador Dalí was a familiar face in Monterey, California, in the 1940s. He resided for 7 years in the coastal town. This summer, over 540 works by the famed Surrealist artist entered the Museum of Monterey, renamed Dalí17 Museum. The artist's etchings, lithographs and ...

Bavarian State Sold Some Stolen Art to Nazi Families

Sullivan & Worcester blog / June 27th, 2016

The Monuments Men, the group portrayed by George Clooney and others in the 2014 movie, made a huge effort to find Nazi-looted artwork during the Second World War. But the Allies left the actual restitution to the countries from which the art was looted.   Apparently, the Allies returned ...

Christie's Auction in London Brings a Soft Total on Eve of Brexit Vote

Bloomberg / June 22nd, 2016

On the eve of the referendum that decides whether the U.K. stays in the European Union, Christie's had its smallest tally for a major evening sale of Impressionist and modern art in more than a decade. The sale total came to 25.6 million pounds ($37.8 million), well below its presale ...

Lost Gauguin Still-Life Surfaces in Connecticut

Art Newspaper / June 16th, 2016

Connecticut's Litchfield County Auctions has discovered a long-lost still-life by Paul Gauguin. The work was consigned by a retired Manhattan antiques dealer who had purchased it from a collector in the 1980s; he then hung the painting for 30 years in his own home without knowing the artist. ...

Senate Bill Aims to Help Repatriate Nazi-Looted Art

New York Times / June 9th, 2016

U.S. lawmakers are considering passing a bill to help minimize legal loopholes and statutes of limitations on art looted by Nazis over 70 years ago. A Senate judiciary subcommittee hearing included testimony about how to "provide the victims of Holocaust-era persecution and their heirs ...