Category: visual

“Against popular conception there is no such thing as a cliché or full-time art thief. There are only thieves who have stolen art and sometimes more than once. Sometimes organized crime syndicates will hire thieves who are low on the totem pole to steal art.”

Susan Lubowsky Talbott has taken over the troubled Hartford institution. “Certainly, the Wadsworth, as well as Hartford, faces a unique set of challenges. From the aging physical plant to the limited parking and nagging pessimism about the city itself, Talbott will face significant obstacles.”

“Why do people steal art at all? Art theft is a labor-intensive, high-risk business. Works of art are hard to store and even harder to get rid of. High-profile thefts, such as those that have occurred in the past two weeks, attract extensive publicity — making the pictures widely recognizable and therefore too ‘hot’ to be easily fenced.”

“When the Museum of Modern Art hired Kathy Halbreich, the respected director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, to be its associate director, art-world insiders wondered if MoMA was seeking a successor to Glenn D. Lowry, its longtime director. But on Tuesday afternoon the Modern’s board approved a new five-year contract with Mr. Lowry.”

Nicolai Ouroussoff isn’t a fan of Renzo Piano’s new Broad Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. “It had been viewed as a way of cleaning up what many saw as a muddle of mismatched buildings… [But] as a monument to the civic aspirations of Los Angeles, Mr. Piano’s design is remarkably uninspired.”

London’s transport authority has refused to display a poster featuring the 16th century “Venus” by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, saying it is overtly sexual.

A German museum has discovered that a painting long believed to be by French impressionist Claude Monet is a forgery, officials said Thursday.

“Little art was created specifically for the museum or gallery, at least until recently, and the museum is not necessarily the best place to appreciate it. If the museum experience becomes one in which the visitor is regularly concerned with negotiating a way through the crowds and avoiding noise, the status of the museum as a vehicle for displaying art becomes highly questionable.”

Art fairs in “Basel, Miami and London continue to grow while some smaller fairs are shrinking. Art Cologne said yesterday it is scrapping a sister event on the Spanish island of Majorca. The fair’s main event in Cologne drew just 60,000 visitors in April last year, 10,000 fewer than in 2006.”

“The timing of the two robberies gives the impression that security measures at Swiss museums are bad, but it’s not the case at all. Very little can be done when somebody holds a gun next to your head.”