Category: visual

“Less than three weeks after Hawass made the perhaps fateful decision to formally enter the Mubarak government by accepting an invitation to become minister of antiquities (a new post), Hawass’s power and influence are being strenuously tested.”

“Over the last three weeks seven of the 21 trustees resigned from the board, and on Monday the museum furloughed 32 employees — half of the staff. Future exhibitions have been put on hold, the museum has effectively eliminated its curatorial and development departments.”

“The two-week set of major winter auctions in London that concluded Friday resulted in some of the strongest prices for contemporary art seen since the recession. Wednesday, Christie’s sold $99.2 million worth of contemporary art, the most expensive batch of new art it has sold in London since the market reached a peak nearly three years ago.”

“The picture the documents paint is that of an irascible man who went about town carrying personal weapons – a sword and dagger, and even a pistol – without a written permit, boasting that he enjoyed the protection of the ecclesiastical authorities who commissioned some of his most famous works.”

Claiming to have new evidence, taken from the documentary film The Art of the Steal, of misconduct by Pennsylvania’s Attorney General, the group Friends of the Barnes Foundation has asked a court to reopen a lawsuit aimed at stopping the project.

“The first thing Cézanne did was to suck all the merriment out of such scenes, and substitute instead an atmosphere of quiet, almost reverential, absorption. [He] was no puritanical killjoy. His business was to restore artistic vitality to subjects that had hardened into cliché and class-based prejudice.”

“A statement from Hawass’ ministry said a protester had found the 7 centimetre (2.8 inch) long limestone statue lying on the ground outside the museum in central Cairo during the demonstrations.”

“Cairo authorities said Monday they had recovered a pharaonic heart scarab and a tiny statuette, two of several ancient treasures looted from the world-famous Egyptian Museum during the country’s uprising.”

“Despite reports that it gives off hazardous porcelain dust and that there are traces of lead in the paint, one of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s works, Sunflower Seeds, sold at Sotheby’s in London Tuesday evening for £349,250 ($559,394).” That’s about $5.60 per seed.

“A type of bright yellow pigment used by Vincent van Gogh in some of his most famous paintings turns brown in the presence of sunlight, because of a previously unknown chemical reaction, a study has found.”