Category: visual

Last year, Fisk University was trying to sell off some of its art because its finances were so bad. Now the school wants to keep the art, and says that financial hardship has passed…

After several unsuccessful attempts to sell part of its Alfred Stieglitz Collection of modern art, Fisk University is now fighting in Davidson County Chancery Court to maintain possession of this famed collection of 101 artworks, donated to the school by painter Georgia O’Keeffe in 1949.

“Our galleries and museums have been turned into playgrounds, with activity sheets and treasure trails, interactive video games and coloured signs that tell you about the exhibits in a few simple sentences, but nothing that an educated adult would not already know.”

“In an ongoing quest to bolster its art collections, the J. Paul Getty Museum has strengthened its holdings of European sculpture and illuminated manuscripts with two major acquisitions. ‘The Vexed Man,’ an 18th century alabaster bust by Austrian artist Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, will go on view at the museum later this spring. ‘Vita Christi,’ an English Romanesque illumination, will debut in… an exhibition opening May 6.”

“In a remarkable feat of cooperation between France and Israel, requiring intensive negotiations and the passage of a law by the Israeli Parliament, the Israel Museum has opened an exhibition of important art looted by the Nazis from France and then returned after the war… Running parallel to the show of French-held art is a companion exhibition: looted art, with no known owners, held in custody by the Israel Museum itself.”

“The starting lap of LACMA’s new contemporary facility was wrong-footed by the focus on Mr. Broad — not just because of the contretemps over his intentions, but also because of the slight to the museum’s own curators.”

The oldest known oil painting, dating from 650 A.D., has been found in caves in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley, according to a team of Japanese, European and U.S. scientists.

Police in Rome have recovered dozens of looted artifacts, including a fresco believed to have been stripped from an ancient Roman villa.

“Treasure hunters in Germany claim they have found hidden gold in an underground cavern that they are almost certain contains the Amber Room treasure, believed by some to have been stashed away by the Nazis in a secret mission in the dying days of World War II.”

Britain’s national museums are hungry for income. And that means blockbusters. But the museums have little space for temporary exhibitions. So there’s a crisis of space that…