Category: visual

“Christian Levett, the 41-year-old son of an Essex bookmaker, is to throw open the doors of the Mougins Museum of Classical Art next month for visitors to admire approximately 700 works spanning 5,000 years that he has acquired over the past seven years.”

“Cable networks are now showing practically nonstop footage of antiques dealers crawling around attics and warehouses and giving high appraisal values to stunned owners. During the last year at least 11 new reality series have documented the business.”

“Over the past few decades, in Tennessee, archaeologists have unearthed an elaborate cave­-art tradition thousands of years old. The pictures are found in dark­ zone sites–places where the Native American people who made the artwork did so at personal risk, crawling meters or, in some cases, miles underground with cane torches.”

“Since its foundation in the early years of the 20th century, the modern art collection belonging to the city of Milan has changed its name and moved premises so often that at certain moments even the Milanese themselves would have been hard pressed to say what it was called and where to find it.” Now they need only look next to the Duomo.

“The project, the Umm el-Fahem Museum of Contemporary Art, is just one among the many developments in a trend that is quietly taking shape in Israel. While political negotiations for peace in the Middle East have all but stalled, Israelis are slowly discovering Palestinian art, helping build ties and encourage dialogue between the two peoples.”

“The delay in announcing the losses has inevitably reduced the chance of recoveries. The perfunctory details of the objects and the poor quality images of the missing items suggests that the museum (the world’s most important collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts) has poor records and that its contingency planning for an emergency was woefully inadequate.”

In court, the private jets have been a constant theme. Gallery bookkeeper Maryann Cohen brushed off a question about Mr. Salander’s huge travel bills, saying he “did like private jets.”

Let’s just say there are significant politics, and complicted logistics, behind scoring a Park Avenue show. “Park Avenue’s basically an extension of the big galleries. It becomes a commercial venue.”

“Six stolen icons handed over by London’s Temple Gallery are to be returned to Greece. Richard Temple, who has dealt in icons for half a century, had bought them in good faith from a European intermediary whom he says he has dealt with over many years.”

“As is the case with most catalogues raisonnés, the authors decline to give reasons to their decisions. It’s standard.” Foundations might fear litigation, or risk tipping off forgers on what their evaluators are looking for, if they were more forthcoming in their deliberations. Yet such silence also gives artist foundations complete authority with little accountability.