Category: visual

“Among the paintings that disappeared from a municipal art gallery in Catania, on Sicily, were a Rembrandt and a painting by the great Italian Baroque artist Guido Reni. But what is unusual about this particular alleged theft is that it took place 13 years ago – and has only just been discovered.”

Some “57,554 people visited the Detroit Institute of Arts during the 40 hours of its re-opening weekend Friday through Sunday.”

“From the outside, the freshening hasn’t added any distinction to what debuted in 1950 as the nation’s first mall — it was then open to the sky — and since has undergone several expansions and makeovers. Like most old malls, it’s an architectural mess, a chaotic collision of styles and look-at-me retail kitsch.”

As many as 15 art lovers have been injured at London’s Tate Modern since the opening of an installation which features a large crack in the floor.

British art scholar Nicholas Penny takes over as new director of the National Gallery in London. “Dr Penny, 58, a graduate of Cambridge University and the Courtauld, will return to the UK in the spring from the National Gallery of Art in Washington where he has worked for the past five years.”

“The museum’s blend of delicacy and industrial brawn recalls the early-twentieth-century infatuation with the aesthetics of manufacture.”

Modernist buildings from the 1950s and 60s are deteriorating and in need of restoration. “The ambition of the architects was ahead of the technology of the time. They cost pennies to build and millions to restore.”

“Actor and director Dennis Hopper will present this year’s Turner Prize at next week’s ceremony in Liverpool.”

Chritsie’s “took in HK$842 million ($108.3 million) on the first day of a five-day sale marathon, compared with a top estimate of HK$195.8 million, according to a draft release. A set of 14 abstract images by Cai Guo-qiang sold for HK$74.2 million, making him the auction world’s most expensive Chinese contemporary artist.”

“Since James Turrell bought the 400,000-year-old, two-mile-wide crater in 1979 and began moving tons of earth to carve out different kinds of viewing chambers and tunnels — making his art of light, sky and astronomical events instead of, say, paint and canvas — anticipation has been building.”