Category: visual

“Australia has launched a draft code regulating the sale of Aboriginal art, worth as much as A$500 million ($330 million) per year. It aims to outlaw so-called carpetbagging, when dealers exploit artists and buy their work cheaply for alcohol or drugs.”

“Italian police have recovered 10 masterpieces, including a painting attributed to an artist who worked on the Sistine Chapel, that were stolen in 2004 from an ancient religious complex in Rome, officials said Tuesday… The works were wrapped in newspapers and hidden in the trailer of a suspected art smuggler, police said.”

As the painter sat at the deathbed of his wife and model, Camille Doncieux, he later wrote, “I was surprised… by the colors that death brought to her immobile face… [and] “found myself desiring to reproduce the last image of she who would leave us forever.” The result was his last major figure painting.

“Armchair tourists who are used to travelling the globe with Google Earth can now use the same technology to crawl all over the masterpieces in one of the world’s most famous galleries: the Prado. The Madrid museum and the internet search giant today unveil the first use of Google’s mapping programme to allow art lovers to get so close to their favourite paintings that even the brush strokes are visible.” Fourteen paintings, including “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” are on view.

“Art colleges are behaving irresponsibly, [some artists] say, by raising students’ expectations that they will ‘hit the big time’. This is particularly unfair as the country enters a recession and the art market shrinks, they argue.”

“French President Nicolas Sarkozy says the country’s national museums and monuments will soon stop charging admission to visitors under 25. Sarkozy says the measure will go into effect April 4.”

“‘We have begun to implement a companywide reorganization, which includes significant staff reductions, not renewing many consultants’ contracts and the continuation of other cost-reduction initiatives, that will ensure we remain competitive and profitable in 2009,’ Christie’s said in a statement on Monday, without saying how many positions might be cut or giving any further details.”

Are federal institutions — or museums, for that matter — supposed to move at lightning speed? Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Jan. 7 letter to the National Portrait Gallery, decrying the wording on the label accompanying the new portrait of President Bush, has already resulted in the promise of a revision.

“For more than two decades, they’ve been out of public view, feared lost, feared destroyed, feared – at the least – grotesquely faded or damaged. But from a cluster of nondescript plastic tubs stuck in an out-of-the-way storage room in the bowels of a Center City office tower, they were ferreted out at last, still bright and essentially unmarred.”

“Fourteen months after Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau began investigating art dealer Lawrence Salander, a New York state grand jury is considering criminal charges. … Hundreds of creditors have filed claims in U.S. bankruptcy court, including Lawrence Salander’s ex-wife, artists and their relatives who did business with him, gallery employees, business partners, lenders such as Bank of America and clients.”