Category: visual

“Berlin’s court of appeals upheld an earlier ruling that Peter Sachs, the son and heir of Hans Sachs, is the rightful owner of the collection, which is valued at 4.5 million euros ($6.3 million). Yet the appeals court overturned a decision that Sachs is entitled to demand the return of the posters,” which are in the Deutsches Historisches Museum.

For example: “The Art Institute of Chicago is looking forward to a rise in its endowment of 12% from last year, when it suffered a loss of nearly 24%,” while “[t]he Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is estimating a budget decrease of $2m, despite a 13% boost to its endowment.”

After a year of cratering endowments and slashed budgets, “a mood of cautious optimism prevails among those at the helm of America’s leading art museums.”

“‘These figures were much better than we expected,’ Edward Dolman, Christie’s chief executive, said in a telephone interview. ‘The art market is vulnerable and we thought we’d be down 50 percent, as we were in the last recession in 1991.'”

There was the Lucian Freud drawing accidentally put through a shredder at Sotheby’s. The Qing dynasty vases shattered by a man who tripped on his shoelaces. The de Chirico painting damaged by a wrecking ball demolishing the house next door. The Impressionist canvases that were carted off with the trash. Says one art insurer, “These are the ‘oops’ claims.”

At the Met Museum, for instance, there are two 15th-century pieces, a marble statue shattered in 2002 and a terra cotta relief broken in 2008, whose repair is taking years to complete. And often, so as to fend off torrents of unsolicited advice, such work must be done away from the public and the press.

The Daily Beast offers a slideshow of mishaps, “from a broken Michelangelo to an erased Shakespeare portrait.”

“The grants,” to 26 arts institutions taking part in the project “Pacific Standard Time,” “nearly double the foundation’s financial commitment to the exhibitions. Most of the grants … will support art shows and catalogs initiated by an earlier, $3.6-million round of Getty research and planning grants.”

“Instead of waiting for an economic rebound, three Chicago architects have formed an unusual alliance with one of the city’s largest developers to hunt for work in growing overseas markets like China.”

“Vicki Behringer is an artist and a journalist. You know, when you watch a television story of a trial and see drawings or paintings of the witnesses and the judge, well, Behringer is painting those each day in the federal trial challenging Proposition 8, California[‘]s ban on gay marriage.”