Category: visual

“Disputes over ownership of artworks are common, often protracted, and costly. A dealer may have sold a work he didn’t have the right to sell, or he may have failed to pay a consignor. Perhaps the seller of the artwork is an heir and, later, other heirs come forward to challenge his right to sell the piece. A new insurance product, art title insurance, is meant to protect both buyers and sellers against these kinds of problems.”

“Two committees of the Association of Art Museum Directors are looking into ethical issues surrounding the Denver Art Museum’s April purchase of an 1892 painting by famed American painter Thomas Eakins. To fund the acquisition, the museum struck an unorthodox deal with billionaire Denver collector Philip Anschutz. In return for a financial donation, he received 50 percent ownership in the painting as well as 50 percent ownership in a major work already in the institution’s collection.”

Signs point to London’s British Museum. “When Neil MacGregor moved from the National Gallery to Bloomsbury in 2002 the museum had a dusty image, was carrying a £5 million deficit and unhappy staff had gone on strike for the first time over proposed cuts. MacGregor had to make the redundancies, then set about restoring morale.”

An innovative Chicago exhibition is using superhero imagery to challenge American attitudes and policies on immigrants. “The approximately 100 paintings, photographs, sculptures, quilts and artifacts cover a range of immigrant experiences.”

A new exhibition at the Wolfsonian museum at Florida International University titled “Thoughts on Democracy” is featuring 60 artists’ contemporary responses to Norman Rockwell’s wartime “Four Freedoms” series. “What all of this suggests is not just a reinterpretation of Rockwell but a meditation on an American crisis of self-confidence: the sense that trust in American ideals is giving way to fear and uncertainty about how they are exploited.”

“Three drawings by Spain’s Francisco de Goya, presumed lost for 130 years, have fetched more than £4m at auction. The three sketches, drawn between 1812 and 1829, had not been seen since 1877.”

Prices have soared by a factor of 20 within two years. Galleries are packed with prospective buyers and the works are both modern and daring.

“One of the most sensational bequests of great paintings to the British people since the foundation of the national museums is now on public view at Tate Britain, London. Eighteen masterpieces – many of them barely, or never, seen in public over the past 50 years – have been left to the National Gallery and the Tate by Simon Sainsbury, great-grandson of the founder of J Sainsbury grocers.”

“The new 32,000-square-foot building includes 12,000 square feet of state-of-the-art workspace, scientific labs and storage facilities. There are also education and meeting spaces and two small exhibition galleries for Clark-organized focus shows. Michael Conforti, the Clark’s longtime director, hopes that the building will be more than a destination for art and architecture aficionados.”

“A long legal battle over an Art Deco table owned by Ronald O. Perelman is just now being settled and is awaiting the judge’s final disposition.” The dispute began when Perelman began to suspect that the table was a fake, and escalated when he refused to pay for more art objects sent to him by the dealer who supplied the table.