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Court Will Review Whether Spain Can Be Sued Over Art Nazis Took
Bloomberg / January 3rd, 2010
A ruling that Spain can be sued in the U.S. by a California man seeking to recover a Pissarro painting stolen by the Nazis from his grandmother will be reconsidered, a federal appeals court in San Francisco said. Claude Cassirer sued Spain and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation four ...
ArtInfo's Decade in Review
Artinfo / January 3rd, 2010
From the game-changing debuts of London's Tate Modern and Art Basel Miami Beach to the once-astronomical market prices achieved for works by artists Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, the 2000s had many defining moments on the contemporary art scene. Art world scandals, soaring auction records, and ...
Best museum shows of 2009
Wall Street Journal / December 30th, 2009
American museums organized so many notable shows in 2009 that it's hard to decide which were truly outstanding, which merely excellent. "Truly outstanding" by any measure was "Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston—an intelligent, elegantly ...
The top 10 phenomena in visual arts in 2000-2009
Blog - Daily Loaf / December 30th, 2009
From art critic Jerry Saltz spurring debates on Facebook to Damien Hirst selling a reported-$100 million, diamond-encrusted "For the Love of God" skull, the visual arts over the past decade have continued to thrill audiences. Other memorable events and trends: more collector museums, such as LA's ...
National Trust saves a British Baroque manor
Luxist / December 30th, 2009
The National Trust of Britain and it's American arm, The Royal Oak Foundation, have raised nearly $5 million to save Seaton Delaval Hall in Newcastle. The 1731 landmark was designed by famed architect Sir John Vanbrugh (who designed Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard), and is said to be one of ...
Wine collector contends some of his bottles smell phony
LA Times / December 30th, 2009
William Koch didn't mean to turn the wine world upside down. The Palm Beach billionaire developed a taste for wine as a young man and, as he accumulated wealth, built a 40,000-bottle wine collection. Among that collection: a 1787 Lafite Bordeaux with Thomas Jefferson's initials etched into the ...
Top 10 auction prices of 2009
Bloomberg / December 29th, 2009
While the art market shrank in 2009, many individual artworks achieved strong results at auction. The highest price paid in the decorative arts category went to an Art Deco armchair with lacquered wood arms shaped as dragons. The Eileen Gray-designed chair raised 21.9 million euros ($28.1 ...
How two middle-class civil servants amassed a world-class art collection
Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle / December 29th, 2009
The bathroom wall of a rent-stabilized apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where a postal worker and librarian couple have lived since 1963, was decorated with a pencil drawing by the artist Sol LeWitt. Until a few years ago, when Herb and Dorothy Vogel donated the bulk of their 4,000 ...
Inside The Phillips Collection: Blake Gopnik scrutinizes glassware in Renoir's 'Luncheon'
Washington Post / December 29th, 2009
One detail in Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party" always stops me cold: the few gorgeously painted glasses at the front edge of its table. The glasses are an antidote for the staginess of the rest of "Luncheon," a small and striking detail that distracts viewers from the ...
Suit over Yale's Van Gogh imperils billions in other art
ABC News / December 29th, 2009
The ownership of tens of billions of dollars of art and other goods could be thrown into doubt if a lawsuit seeking the return of a famous Vincent Van Gogh painting is successful, according to a court filing by Yale University. The university sued in federal court in March to assert its ownership ...
California's Claremont Museum shuttered, goes virtual
ABC News / December 28th, 2009
The Claremont Museum of Art has closed its doors. The museum, in a historic Southern California lemon packing house, was in the planning stages for 20 years, but it was only able to stay open for two years because of the recession. Modern artworks by artists such as Millard Sheets will go into ...
Curator: One of the 50 best careers of 2010
US News and World Report / December 28th, 2009
Despite a high level of competition for positions, as well as low pay and job cuts due to the recession, in the coming decade, the number of museum curators is expected to rise by 23 percent, well above the average rate for all careers. Between 2008 and 2018, there will be 2,700 new positions ...
Famous nickel may fetch $3 million
Numismaster / December 28th, 2009
Collectors will have the rare opportunity to ring in the New Year at the Florida United Numismatists convention with the Heritage auction featuring, among other rarities, one of the five known examples of the 1913 Liberty Head nickel. This is a coin whose name packs lots of moxie, and has a ...
Global hunt on for Horace Walpole's lost treasures
Telegraph / December 28th, 2009
As the most avid collector of his day, Horace Walpole (d. 1797) spent more than 50 years amassing one of the world's greatest art collections. Housed at Strawberry Hill, Walpole's neo-gothic mansion in west London, the vast collection of 10,000 objets d'art and curiosities encompassed ...
WaPo's Blake Gopnik picks the Best of the Decade in Art
Washington Post / December 27th, 2009
Exhibitions on artists Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, and Correggio, as well as Renaissance tapestries and Ottoman costumes, top the Washington Post critic's list. The latest trend: Museums have slowly been heading away from mega-shows and back toward the mega-art they already own and used to focus ...
Ex-Brooklyn Museum manager swiped $620,000
NY Daily News / December 27th, 2009
A former Brooklyn Museum manager admitted Wednesday he stole more than $620,000 by cutting checks to phantom employees. Dwight Newton was able to carry out the scheme undetected for more than three years while in charge of payroll and accounting at the venerable institution. Under the plea ...
Cézanne and American Modernism opens in Baltimore this February
Art Daily / December 27th, 2009
The Baltimore Museum of Art’s new exhibition, Cézanne and American Modernism, brings together 16 dazzling landscapes, still lifes, and portraits by the French master with more than 80 paintings, watercolors, and photographs by artists such as Max Weber, Alfred Stieglitz, and Marsden Hartley to ...
Found: the clue to van Gogh’s ear
Times Online / December 27th, 2009
The mystery behind the most famous mutilation in art history may finally have been solved. A scholar has found evidence that a distraught Vincent van Gogh slashed his ear after learning that his brother, Theo, on whom he depended financially and emotionally, was about to get married. Martin ...
Home for sale near Winlsow Homer's Maine studio
Luxist / December 23rd, 2009
This waterfront residence is on Winslow Homer Road and faces a coastal scene that could have inspired one of the great artist's paintings. Clipperways is a grand shingled home on Prout's Neck in Scarborough, Maine. Built over one hundred years ago, this six-bedroom reflects traditional New ...
The art of Christmas cards, some riled scrooges
Bloomberg / December 23rd, 2009
Here’s a piece of yuletide trivia: the first Christmas card was dreamed up by an art bureaucrat. It was Sir Henry Cole (1808-1882), first director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who -- daunted at the thought of writing piles of greetings -- came up with the idea in 1843. That card depicted a ...