Category: visual

The Hispanic Society of America has recalled 38,000 coins from the American Numismatic Society (ANS) which have been on loan for more than half a century–and appears to be preparing to sell them.

“Did international auction house Sotheby’s bring famed contemporary artist Damien Hirst’s works to India because a ‘mountain’ of unsold works lies in wait in London?” one of India’s leading news agencies asked.

Eight main art auction houses operate in Australia, including international company Sotheby’s. “There is room, soon, for one guy to go missing. Don’t ask me who’s going to go, but someone’s going to get the stitch. There are a lot of high bills that need to be paid.”

“The director of the Josef Stalin museum in Gori, Georgia, says he had to flee to the capital of Tbilisi in his car loaded with precious items from the museum during the Russian bombing of the country.”

Entrance to all exhibitions is now free because of a change in licensing rules, which had previously forced them to charge up to a £3 fee.

“Although the campaign to buy the two Titians – part of the Duke’s renowned Bridgewater collection which has been in his family for 220 years – was only announced this week, secret negotiations have been ongoing between the Duke and the National Galleries of Scotland and the National Gallery in London for a year.”

“Greek ‘pagans’ held a ceremony on the site of the Acropolis for the first time in 2,000 years to demonstrate against the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. They invoked Athena, goddess of wisdom, to protect the sculptures taken from the temples to the new museum.”

They were a gift from China. “When Florence gifted a bronze reproduction of Michelangelo’s David to Ningbo to help boost trade ties, the Chinese city reciprocated. The trouble was, it did so by donating two enormous and decidedly unprepossessing stone sculptures for which the Florentine authorities have struggled to find a suitable home.”

“An American dealer who in 1998 bought — and later sold — a mixed-media portrait of a young woman that some art and scientific experts now attribute to Leonardo da Vinci has come forward to say that she does not think it is by that Renaissance master.”

“St Mark’s Square in Venice is at risk of turning from drawing room into advertising showroom, as officials move closer to hanging giant electronic advertising screens from the piazza’s elegant palaces to pay for restoration work. If plans go ahead, the five screens, each measuring 250 square metres, will be suspended in front of drapes hung on scaffolding along the square’s facades to hide restoration work that could last more than six years.”