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German Art Advisor Achenbach Gets 6-Year Prison Term
DW / March 16th, 2015
A district court in Essen has found the once-prominent German art advisor Helge Achenbach guilty on 18 counts of fraud. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison for overcharging his wealthy clients millions of euros for artwork. Known as a gregarious networker and for his lavish lifestyle, ...
Kanye West to Receive Honorary Doctorate from School of the Art Institute of Chicago
billboard / March 15th, 2015
Rapper, music producer, songwriter, film director, fashion designer, entrepreneur and husband to Kim Kardashian -- Kanye West is about to acquire a another title. He's a visual artist who newly boasts a doctorate. West told France's Clique TV that he will soon receive an honorary degree from ...
Court Orders Worldwide Asset Freeze in Case of Russian Billionaire vs Art Dealer
FT / March 12th, 2015
A temporary order from a Singapore court puts a freeze on the assets of Swiss businessman Yves Bouvier who owns mega-sized shipping and storage facilities. Bouvier is known in the art world as the king of freeports, those massive storage facilities that the super-rich use to hold and trade art, ...
Colonial Williamsburg Offers to Help Protect Iraq's Artifacts, Cyber Attack Follows
ArtfixDaily / March 12th, 2015
The website of Colonial Williamsburg -- www.history.org -- was hacked last weekend in one of several cyber attacks on U.S. websites by a group claiming to be Islamic State. The incident followed an event at Colonial Williamsburg where president Mitchell Reiss, a former senior U.S. ...
New Location of SF's Mexican Museum Moves Forward
BizJournal / March 11th, 2015
New York developer Millennium Partners says it will go ahead with the groundbreaking of its Mexican Museum Towers in San Francisco. The $500 million luxury condo and office highrise will also be the future home of the Mexican Museum, now located at Fort Mason Center on the waterfront. The ...
Facebook Does Not 'Like' All Art
WaPo / March 10th, 2015
A French schoolteacher posted an image of Gustave Courbet's "L'Origine du Monde" on Facebook only to have the famous painting of lady parts from the Musee d'Orsay collection censored by the social media giant. He has now sued Facebook in a Parisian court. The court agreed to hear the case in ...
Artists Stage Unauthorized 'Die-in' at Armory Show
NYT / March 8th, 2015
A group of artists staged an unauthroized performance piece about the death of Eric Garner during the Armory Show's busy Saturday run in New York. Voices echoing Garner's last words, "i can't breathe," were heard around the show floor. Garner died after being put in a chokehold by a ...
Dubai Plans $136 Million Museum of the Future
Gulf News / March 8th, 2015
Museum of the Future, a planned exhibition space and research center, has been announced by Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. To be built near the Emirates Towers skyscrapers, the $136 million museum is designed to look like a giant contemporary water pitcher. ”The ...
Tire Mogul Behind $23 Million Gift to Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland / March 5th, 2015
Cleveland Museum of Art is close to reaching its $320 million capital campaign goal for an expansion and renovation. On Wednesday, the identity of one of its biggest donors was made public in an effort to increse awareness of the fundraiser before year's end. Since 2002, $297.1 million has ...
American Modernism Highlights of Armory Arts Week
ArtfixDaily / March 5th, 2015
Armory Arts Week is now in full swing, kicking off the international spring arts season with an array of fairs, events and parties around New York. Leading the headlines are the contemporary art attractions, but The Armory Show and The Art Show (both through March 8) also are offering ...
Copyright Issues Blur Google's Attempt to Make All Art Available
Washington Post / March 4th, 2015
Four years since its launch, Google Art Project has digitized some 45,000 artworks from museums around the world. It's a drop in the bucket. The copyright system is keeping many works out of the online realm even in an age when major museums like the Met and Smithsonian are digitizing their ...
Billionaire William Louis-Dreyfus to Gift Art Collection to Harlem Nonprofit
Barron's / March 4th, 2015
Some fifty years of collecting 3,500 artworks will culminate in a grand gift to a Harlem school. Paris-born billionaire William Louis-Dreyfus, 82, says his collection will be sold periodically to benefit school children. His bequest includes works by about 170 artists, from big names ...
Rare Painting by Hokusai Purchased for New Museum in Japan
Japan Times / March 4th, 2015
Known the world-over for his "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa," Hokusai (1760-1849) will be celebrated with a new museum in Tokyo and the acquisition of a rare painting by the famed ukiyo-e woodblock print artist. Tokyo’s Sumida ward, in the north of the city, announced ...
Whitney Museum to Kick Off New Digs with 'America is Hard to See'
ArtfixDaily / March 3rd, 2015
On May 1, New York will fete the Whitney Museum's debut in a new downtown building with the largest display ever of its collections. First up will be the exhibition America is Hard to See, a vast survey of art in the United States with approximately 650 works by some 400 artists, spanning ...
Missing Picasso Painting Recovered at Newark Airport
Vanity Fair / March 1st, 2015
When a FedEx shipment arrived in Newark with a package marked “art craft/toy” with a listed value of $37, and a message reading “Merry Christmas” it seemed innocuous, writes Melissa Locker in Vanity Fair. However, when customs officials opened the box, they found a painting by Pablo Picasso, ...
Did ISIS Destroy Replicas at Mosul Museum?
channel 4 / February 28th, 2015
The attack on antiquities by ISIS militants at the Nineveh Museum in Mosul, Iraq, last week might not have been as damaging as appears in the video. Experts say many of the statues destroyed in the propaganda piece were actually replicas. An Assyrian winged bull sculpture dating from ...
Elizabeth Taylor Trust Sues Christie's Over Jewelry Sale
Page Six / February 26th, 2015
The estate of a Hollywood legend and Christie's auction house in a legal tangle over a $8.8 million sale that was caanceled. Actress Elizabeth Taylor’s Taj Mahal necklace (a 40th birthday gift from Richard Burton) was part of the $183.5 million auction of her jewels in 2011 ...
ISIS Destroys Ancient Artifacts at Mosul Museum
ArtfixDaily / February 26th, 2015
Artifacts from the birthplace of civilization were destroyed by Islamic militants. A 5-minute video posted Thursday shows fighters smashing statues dating from the Assyrian and Akkadian empires at Iraq's largest museum. A man in the video cites Mohammed's destruction of idols in Mecca as ...
Hawaii's Iolani Palace Recovers Long-Lost Furnishings
ArtfixDaily / February 25th, 2015
Parisian-made china and Sheffield plate silverware that once graced King Kalakaua's table are among a trove of furnishings that have recently been returned to Iolani Palace, the royal residence in Hawaii. Sold off at auction in the early 1900s, the dispersion of royal property followed ...
Historians Capture World Heritage Site with 3D Laser Scanner
Live Science / February 24th, 2015
Historians Charles Matz and Jonathan Michael Dillon went to the Muslim holy city of Harar in Ethiopa to take 3D scans of the city's historic structures. They captured the crumbling contours of the UNESCO world heritage site, and in the process, created a new form of art by also digitally ...