Category: visual

“The Afghanistan Museum in Exile, in Switzerland, is closing, and its collection will be sent back to Kabul as Unesco has determined that the situation in the Afghan capital is now safe enough. Items donated for safekeeping are therefore being packed, for their return.”

Italy’s culture minister says the Getty Museum unilaterally broke off talks over the return of antiquities. “It is our government’s duty to make it clear that all the world’s museums which exhibit ransacked Italian works must return them”.

“I want to repeat that we are deeply saddened that our talks with the Italian Ministry of Culture did not result in a mutually beneficial agreement regarding cultural cooperation and a joint agreement on the return of objects claimed by Italy from the Getty’s antiquities collection. During our meeting with Ministry officials on November 17, we offered substantial compromises, including the immediate transfer of full title to the Cult Statue of a Goddess, if the Italian government would join the Getty in conducting further research.”

As part of his entry in this year’s Turner Prize, artist Phil Collins held a “news conference” with stars of reality TV shows. “Cameras were trained on the media, who, in turn, had their cameras focused on the nine ‘victims’ of Supernanny, Wife Swap, Trisha et al. All felt they had been exploited in some way – manipulated by seemingly friendly producers who ruined their lives and spat them out in the TV production line.”

One of 15 artists participating in a London residency proposes to do “nothing” as her art. “With the increasing acceptance of the ways of contemporary art by a wider public, it is quite hard to elicit more than a rolling of eyes from a media and public, who look on artists as parents at their adolescent child who is desperate to separate.”

“Stealing great works of art is not entirely rational. One suspects that even career crooks steal great art because they read crime fiction and know it is the kind of thing that criminals do. At least when the culprits are professional criminals, a deal is generally done with the insurers and eventually the masterpiece returns. But sometimes the thieves are amateurs, their motives bizarre and the prognosis unpredictable.”

“An Ontario Court of Appeal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by 10 prominent Canadian businessmen that claimed a Superior Court justice was wrong to let an agent of Paris’s Musée Rodin gather evidence from 28 plaster sculptures, attributed to Auguste Rodin, that the businessmen own.”

The museum failed to make an agreement with the Italian government about returning art. Museum director Michael Brand “noted that the museum was willing to give back some of its most important pieces and had even offered to transfer full title to Italy of its signature figure of the goddess Aphrodite — as long as further research into its origins could be jointly investigated. The letter cites the source of the deadlock as the museum’s refusal to return a prized bronze statue of a young Greek athlete, which along with the Aphrodite are considered the Getty’s marquee pieces.”

“The museum’s move carries significant risks for the Getty. Unlike deals to return disputed art that Italy negotiated this year with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the ceding of art by the Getty carries no guarantee of loans from Italy or other reciprocal benefits.”

‘Greek authorities have recommended that felony criminal charges be filed against former J. Paul Getty Museum antiquities curator Marion True for her role in the acquisition of a 2,500-year-old gold funerary wreath considered one of the museum’s masterpieces.”