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Auction Series Could Hit $2.5 Billion Estimate
Telegraph / May 5th, 2015
Impressionist, modern and contemporary art hitting New York auction blocks could bring a record $2.5 billion for the sale series. The record for the series is $2.26 billion achieved just last fall. This May, big-ticket artworks and hefty guarantees on offered lots are boosting the sale total ...
Protesters Shut Down Guggenheim During May Day Occupation
Hyperallergic / May 3rd, 2015
A group of protesters occupied the Guggenheim Museum in New York City on Friday, causing the institution to shut down as they spread their message through flyers, a parachute and demands for talks with a board member. Some of the activists were from Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction (known as ...
Accused Fraudster in $11M Scam Gets Jail Time for Bullying Art Dealer
Courthouse News Service / April 30th, 2015
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge William Alsup sentenced accused art thief Luke Brugnara to jail for 21 days after he bullied a witness on the stand, reports Courthouse News Service. Brugnara, who is representing himself, landed contempt "for abusing the art dealer he allegedly conned ...
Few Museum Visitors Spot Fake Fragonard Painting
BBC / April 29th, 2015
The UK's Dulwich Picture Gallery has revealed the identity of a "fake" painting hung in the museum for a "spot-the-fake" challenge. Just ten percent of 3,000 museum visitors polled correctly identified the replica picture, placed amongst 270 artworks on display. Jean-Honore Fragonard's "Young ...
NYC's Museum of Biblical Art Will Close Its Doors, Despite Crowds for Recent Exhibition
ArtfixDaily / April 29th, 2015
Visitor attendance has been high for exhibitions at New York's Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA). But the popularity of the current show Sculpture in the Age of Donatello is not keeping the museum afloat. The museum's board announced this week that MOBIA will shut down in June after the 23 ...
Inside the Sordid Saga of Russian Billionaire Rybolovlev Taking Down His Art Dealer
Bloomberg / April 28th, 2015
In February, Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier thought he was meeting his top cient, Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, to work out the final payment for Mark Rothko’s No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red). Considered to be among the finest works in the abstract expressionist's oeuvre, the Rothko was to ...
Rediscovered Francis Bacon Self-Portraits Offered at Auction
BBC / April 26th, 2015
Two self-portraits by Francis Bacon that were hidden away in a private collection for decades will be offered up at auction. Titled Self-Portrait 1975 and Three Studies for Self-Portrait (1980), the paintings were known to scholars but their whereabouts were not recorded. Descendants of the ...
Former Assistant to Jasper Johns Sentenced to Prison
NY Daily News / April 23rd, 2015
The ex-assistant to famed abstract expressionist Jasper Johns was sentenced to 18 months in prison Thursday for swindling the artist. James Meyer, of Salisbury, Conn., stole 22 paintings from Johns and sold them out of a Lower Manhattan studio for a profit of $4 million between 2006 and 2011. ...
Norman Rockwell''s 'Rosie the Riverter' Model Dies
USA Today / April 23rd, 2015
The woman who inspired many during World War II after posing as the model for Norman Rockwell's painting 'Rosie the Riveter' died on April 21 in Simsbury, Conn. Mary Doyle Keefe was 92. Keefe was a 19-year-old telephone operator from Vermont when she posed for Rockwell. With a sandwich ...
Trove of Missing WPA Artworks Discovered in California
NBC / April 21st, 2015
Dozens of missing artworks commissioned by the U.S. government during the Great Depression have been found. Attics, basements and storage areas of California libraries yielded some of the lost art. Investigators with the Inspector General’s office of the General Services Administration ...
Mobster Allegedly Offered to Sell Gardner Paintings
Boston Globe / April 20th, 2015
A federal prosecutor said in court Monday that a 79-year-old Connecticut crime figure offered to sell two artworks stolen 25 years ago from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Robert Gentile allegedly offered the pair for $500,000 shortly after his release from prison last year. The ...
A. Alfred Taubman, Former Sotheby's Chairman, Remembered
LA Times / April 19th, 2015
Billionaire shopping mall magnate A. Alfred Taubman, who was jailed late in his career for a scandal that shook the art world, died at his Michigan home on Friday. He was 91. Founder of Taubman Centers, Taubman's pioneering development of the indoor mall concept gave him a personal fortune of ...
Take a Tour Inside the New Whitney
NY Times / April 19th, 2015
The new Whitney Museum of American Art opens May 1 in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan. Will architect Renzo Piano's design become both an iconic symbol in the New York cityscape and a major art destination on the edge of Chelsea? Take a look at the $422 million building with the New ...
NYC Prosecutors Seek Custody of $100M in Artifacts
Telegraph / April 16th, 2015
New York City prpsecutors are asking a judge for custody of a trove of 2,622 Hindu and Buddhist treasures plundered from South Asia and seized by U.S. authorities. New York storage facilities were raided from 2012 to 2014 to recover the relics as part of the investigation of art dealer Subhash ...
France Says Au Revoir to Rare Rembrandts
Bloomberg / April 7th, 2015
Two portraits by Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn may leave France as the cash-strapped state and the Louvre both cite a lack of funds to retain them. Owned by French banker and wine-making baron Eric de Rothschild, the pair of masterworks may be sold abroad for as much as 150 million euros ...
Is Egypt's Equivalent of the Mona Lisa a Fake?
History / April 7th, 2015
Francesco Tiradritti, a professor at the Kore University of Enna who serves as director of the Italian archaeological mission to Egypt, has dropped a bombshell: He believes “Meidum Geese” was most likely painted not during the 4th dynasty of ancient Egypt, but in the 19th century, reports ...
Motion to Dismiss Lawsuit Denied in Cranach Case
LA Times / April 6th, 2015
The Norton Simon Museum will face continued legal action over ownership of a pair of 16th-century Adam and Eve paintings. The works by Lucas Cranach the Elder were looted by the Nazis, and bear a complicated provenance that stretches to the Russian Revolution. Since the 1970s, the pair has ...
Randolph College Sells Paintings by Edward Hicks and Ernest Martin Hennings
Newsadvance / April 4th, 2015
Randolph College has sold two more works from its collections. Unnamed buyers have acquired Ernest Martin Hennings’ “Through the Arroyo” and Edward Hicks’ “A Peaceable Kingdom,” college president Bradley Bateman announced Thursday. The buyer of the Hennings painting will loan it back ...
School's Thomas Hart Benton Painting Heads to Museum
News Tribune / April 5th, 2015
A painting by Thomas Hart Benton that was hidden in storage by a suburban Kansas City school will go on public view at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. "Utah Highlands" will be on long-term loan at the museum in Kansas City, starting in late April. "It is fitting that this painting has found ...
Bidders Clamor for Every Lot in Lauren Bacall Collection
ArtfixDaily / April 1st, 2015
It was a white glove sale for the first and second day of the Lauren Bacall Collection at Bonhams. All 740 lots sold as 1,500 bidders from 34 countries participated in this highly anticipated auction which brought a total $3.64m. The saleroom on March 31 and April 1, 2015, remained packed and ...