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Sotheby's Show, Getty Honor Cancelled After Harassment Claims Against Architect Richard Meier
New York Times / March 14th, 2018
The New York Times reported Tuesday that renowned Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier has been accused of sexual harassment by 5 women. In the wake of the allegations, Sotheby's closed an exhibit of collages and silk-screens by Meier at its S2 Gallery in New York. Cornell also ...
LA's MOCA Fires Chief Curator Helen Molesworth
Los Angeles Times / March 14th, 2018
The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA) has ousted its chief curator, Helen Molesworth, first reported the LA Times. An email sent Monday to MOCA trustees from Director Philippe Vergne, and obtained by the Times, implied that Molesworth resigned. But from an email with artist ...
Nearly $2 Million in Hudson River School Paintings Stolen From Warehouse
New York Daily News / March 13th, 2018
An art owner notified police last summer that his collection of 19th-century paintings worth nearly $2 million was missing from a Brooklyn storage facility. The Hudson River School works were stored within the Crozier Fine Arts warehouse, which was sold to Iron Mountain in 2015. NYPD is ...
Digital Art Jumps on the Blockchain Bandwagon
fivethirtyeight / March 8th, 2018
From fivethirtyeight: "A small triumvirate of artists, technologists and financiers are using the blockchain to render art rare and then selling it. In the process, they’ve figured out a way to make digital art valuable... Technology like the blockchain, they say, democratizes art by creating ...
Hearst Castle Tour Guides Help Identify Artist of 17th-Century Painting
San Luis Obispo / March 7th, 2018
Two tour guides at the historic castle built by media mogul William Randolph Hearst have helped unravel the mystery of attribution behind a 17th century artwork in the museum's collection. On a tour, a ray of sunshine illuminated a previously unnoticed or overlooked monogram and inscription on ...
UK Art Dealer Indicted in $50 Million Money-Laundering Scheme
Bloomberg / March 6th, 2018
U.S. prosecutors contend that a $50 million international stock-manipulation scam went bust when an undercover FBI agent was offered a Picasso to launder illicit profits. Six people and four companies have been named in the indictment handed down in Brooklyn, New York, on Monday. “The ...
Major Gift Expands Mennello Museum of American Art
Orlando Sentinel / March 4th, 2018
A new donation of artwork — the biggest in the history of the Mennello Museum of American Art — will help spur growth in Orlando's downtown, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The over $8.75 million donation in art from museum co-founder Michael A. Mennello was announced Saturday. Orlando ...
$20 Online Find Soars to $806,000 at UK Auction
ArtfixDaily / March 2nd, 2018
A speculative £15 ($20) bid in an online antiques sale turned out to be a major discovery, ending up as a star lot at auction last month when the early porcelain teapot soared to 575,000 pounds with fees (about $806,000) as the winning bid for an American museum. The 2016 web ...
ARTFIXdaily Closed for Maintenance, Feb. 26 Week
ArtfixDaily / February 25th, 2018
ARTFIXdaily will be closed for maintenance from Feb. 26 to March 2. Subscriber e-newsletter service will resume on March 5. Coming up: Armory Week in New York. This year, the fair dates have shifted, causing a spread over two weeks for the suite of popular art fairs. The Armory ...
Before Twitter, There Was 'The Tiff,' a Cutting-Edge Painting that Captured a Moment
ArtfixDaily / February 22nd, 2018
A brief exchange, perhaps heated, executed quickly to capture a moment. Sounds like a Twitter tweetstorm, but the subject here is a 19th-century painting once titled The Tiff, painted en plein air, a direct rendering out-of-doors of a couple's conversation in a sun-dappled garden. Executed at ...
Supreme Court Rules Against Terrorism Victims Who Sought Items From Chicago Museums
Chicago Tribune / February 21st, 2018
The Supreme Court denied a transfer of Persian artifacts from Chicago museums to U.S. survivors of a 1997 terrorist attack as part of a court judgment against Iran. The court ruled 8-0 Wednesday against the victims of the suicide bombing in Jersualem. The victims sought to claim Iran's ...
Mystery Lingers Over Fate of Huguette Clark's Bellosguardo
Independent / February 20th, 2018
Huguette Clark, the copper heiress who died at age 104 in 2011, left a will that envisioned her California mansion be turned into an arts nonprofit. Years later, the fate of the reclusive multimillionaire's 23-acre estate in Santa Barbara is still not clear. Her oceanside Bellosguardo estate ...
Man Charged With Stealing Terracotta Warrior's Thumb
New York Times / February 19th, 2018
A Delaware man has been charged with stealing the thumb of a $4.5 million terracotta warrior figure on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Michael Rohana was attending a Christmastime ugly sweater party at the museum when he entered the closed-off loan exhibition room, took a ...
Michelangelo's Tuscan Villa Is Still For Sale
Travel + Leisure / February 14th, 2018
If you missed the once-in-a-lifetime Michelangelo exhibition at the Met this winter, which drew some 700,000 visitors, there is another chance to get close to the Italian Renaissance master. Villa Michelangelo, the ten-bedroom "farmhouse" that the artist bought in 1549 is seeking a new owner, ...
NEA Grants $26M to Arts Projects Nationwide
ArtfixDaily / February 14th, 2018
On the heels of an announcement that the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awarded 1,134 grants totaling $26.68 million to organizations and individuals in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico so far in FY 2018 -- came some bad news. President Trump’s FY ...
Locals to Continue the Fight Against Berkshire Museum Art Sales
Berkshire Eagle / February 13th, 2018
A group of locals from Lenox, Mass., who were blocked from a legal challenge of the Berkshire Museum's plan to sell 40 artworks, are "stunned" by the state attorney general's agreement on Friday to allow up to $55 million in art sales, pending court approval. The residents plan to continue the ...
Robert Indiana's Sculptural 'LOVE' Returns to Philadelphia, Descends on Hong Kong
ArtfixDaily / February 13th, 2018
In time for Valentine's Day, Robert Indiana's iconic 'LOVE' sculpture returned to the City of Brotherly Love. The piece was paraded on a flatbed truck around Philadelphia on Tuesday before its reinstallation at John F. Kennedy Plaza, known as LOVE Park, which is undergoing a ...
Big, New Picasso Museum to Open in Southern France With Rarely-Seen Works
Smithsonian / February 12th, 2018
A stepdaughter of Pablo Picasso plans to open a museum in the Southern French city of Aix-en-Provence by 2021. Catherine Hutin-Blay, the 70-year-old daughter of Picasso’s second wife, Jacqueline Roque (1927-1986), will display some 2,000 works that she inherited from her mother, in the former ...
Lawsuit Erupts Over Portrait of Jackie Kennedy Onassis as Teen
Newsday / February 12th, 2018
A lawsuit was filed in federal court by relatives of former First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis after a 1950 portrait of her that was allegedly stolen decades ago surfaced at a Long Island art gallery. The relatives contend that the painting of Jackie at age 19 was stolen in the 1960s ...
Berkshire Museum Gets Green Light From State to Sell Art
New York Times / February 11th, 2018
The Berkshire Museum and the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office came to an agreement that will allow the museum to sell artworks from its collections, while one work by Norman Rockwell will be sold to an institution that will keep it in public view, pending court approval. Norman ...