Category: visual

“New York philanthropist and art collector Shelby White agreed to return two antiquities from her private collection to Greece. Greece, following Italy’s lead, has been negotiating with museums and collectors to retrieve artifacts it says were illegally excavated and smuggled abroad.”

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago on Thursday named an architect and urban designer as its next president, a choice reflecting the broadened scope of its disciplines.

Workers are taking down scaffolding that has covered the Frank Lloyd Wright building for three years as the exterior was repaired.

“The Tees Valley Giants, unveiled today, are the work of Turner prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor and one of the world’s leading structural engineers, Cecil Balmond. The pieces will be placed, over the next ten years, in Middlesbrough, Stockton, Redcar, Hartlepool and Darlington.”

Persepolis, “once the capital of the Persian empire, and the massive mud-brick Bam citadel are among the nine listed World Heritage Sites in Iran. Yet leading archaeologists are urging colleagues to refuse any military requests to draw up a list of Iranian sites that should be exempted from air strikes.”

“The final frontier protecting contemporary art galleries from the relentless encroachment of the auction houses has been emphatically breached with the announcement that Damien Hirst is creating an exhibition of new works for display and sale at the London headquarters of Sotheby’s.”

“After years of discussions, the museum has now decided how it will present the marbles. The originals are being displayed alongside plaster casts of the pieces removed from Greece, most of which are in the British Museum in London. An earlier plan was to place gauze curtains in front of the casts, to make it obvious they are not originals. The museum has now opted for a simpler solution.”

“A stone club from British Columbia dating to possibly 1800 BC could be leaving the country by the end of the year if a Canadian institution doesn’t buy it… The Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board agreed to a six-month delay on the export of the rare sculptured club to who is presumed to be an American buyer.”

The Smithsonian has opened a new exhibit detailing the story of a crystal skull of supposedly Aztec origin, sent anonymously to a nonexistent museum in 1992, then eventually determined to be a fake. The Smithsonian isn’t exactly invoking the name “Indiana Jones” as part of the publicity, but hey – capitalizing on a movie to sell museum admissions is nothing new, right?

“Artist Frans Hals’ painting, Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen, has exceeded its estimated price and sold for £7m ($13.8m) at a Sotheby’s auction in London… JMW Turner’s Pope on the Thames at Twickenham sold for £5.4m ($10.7)- the fourth highest price for a work by the artist ever achieved at auction.”