Category: visual

“Ms. True was speaking in the Rome courtroom where she is on trial with the American antiquities dealer Robert Hecht on charges of conspiracy to traffic in antiquities looted from Italian soil. In Italian legal proceedings, defendants are allowed to make spontaneous comments, and Ms. True’s remarks came in response to testimony by Daniela Rizzo, an archaeologist and prosecution witness.”

“The Indianapolis Museum of Art pioneers a new wave of transparency with a database you can check to see what’s going and what’s gone. The database at www.imamuseum.org/explore/deaccessions runs from scraps of lace to French paintings and, coming soon, African and Asian art.”

Christie’s has been “sued by a Florida art collector over claims the auction house failed to sell as promised a self-portrait by Irish painter Francis Bacon for at least $40 million.”

“Works of art that belonged to Gianni Versace sold at a London auction on Thursday for almost three times the presale estimate, despite the fact that a star attraction had been pulled on suspicions its was stolen.”

“Office of National Statistics figures released this week show that between February 2008 and February 2009 the number of architects claiming benefits rose by 760% from 150 to 1,290 – the biggest increase among recorded professions. The second biggest increase was among architectural technologists and town planning technicians.”

To honor the 200th birthday of the great naturalist and the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species, London’s Natural History Museum has inlaid on a ceiling the cross-section of an entire 200-year-old oak – 17 feet long and 5 mm thick. Artist Tania Kovats says she was inspired by Darwin’s tree-of-life diagram.

Architects’ “10 strategies for creating a metropolitan area known as Grand Paris” mark the city’s “first major redesign since the Napoleonic era. Their ideas range from the prosaic to the fanciful. But they all say that Paris – its public transit system saturated, its periphery spoiled by ugly housing projects, and its suburbs an undefined sprawl of disconnected towns – does not work.”

“Firing back at an appellate court decision that ruled that Chicago’s landmark law is unconstitutionally vague, the city has appealed the decision to the Illinois Supreme Court, citing numerous cases nationwide in which courts have rejected vagueness challenges to laws comparable to Chicago’s.”

“The ‘Hope’ series of Barack Obama campaign posters, used in the runup to his election as U.S. president in November, was voted the design of the year in a U.K. competition. Created by the artist Shepard Fairey, the posters beat 90 runners-up in the Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2009 contest organized by London’s Design Museum.”