Category: visual

“Egypt’s general prosecutor ordered that the government’s head of fine arts be detained for four days pending an investigation into the theft of a Van Gogh painting worth an estimated $55 million, state media said. Mohsen Shaalan, first undersecretary at the Culture Ministry, and four other officials have been accused of ‘negligence and failing to carry out their employment duties’.”

“There are more than 3,000 murals in Philly today; it’s a challenge to walk through Center City without passing a painting. The murals are collaborations between the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and local citizens – who get involved to beautify their communities, connect with neighbors and fight graffiti and crime.”

“Many young directors see museums as modern-day ‘town squares,’ social places where members of the community may gather, drawn by art, perhaps, for conversation or music or whatever. They believe that future museum-goers won’t be satisfied by simply looking at art, but rather prefer to participate in it or interact with it.”

“Art buyers have long been wary of the prices dealers charge in a notoriously opaque market. Sellers of art also are increasingly becoming suspicious.”

“Experts from the Courtauld Institute in London have now removed the black grime, uncovering paintings whose “exceptional” artistic quality and sheer beauty are said to be superior even to some of the better Roman paintings at Herculaneum that were inspired by Hellenistic art.”

“The culture and tourism ministry says the citadel is not among the 92 sites and museums to open by moonlight Aug. 24 — the one night a year the public can enter monuments after sundown. A ministry statement Friday said guards demanded more than their legal pay to work at night. Guards claim they were asked to work for free, and then offered less than last year.”

“Egypt’s top prosecutor, Abdel Meguid Mahmud, said none of the alarms at the Khalil Museum and only seven out of 43 security cameras were working. He said that the broken alarms and cameras had not worked for some time.”

“The artists’ idea of suspending nearly 6 miles of fabric over the Arkansas River has met with stout resistance. And the notion that the state might send them packing is unsettling — even embarrassing — to many in the region’s arts establishment.”

“A judge on Friday rejected Fisk University’s latest attempt to sell to an Arkansas museum a joint stake in a 101-piece collection donated to the school by the late artist Georgia O’Keeffe.”

“Broad will not say until Monday, after the Grand Avenue Authority casts the final vote on the proposal, whether he’ll build the museum downtown or at a site offered by the City of Santa Monica.”