Category: visual

“A gift of $200m to New York University (NYU) to fund a new Institute for the Study of the Ancient World has resulted in a resignation and in criticism from archaeologists because of the source of the donation.”

“The Greek government alleges items were originally removed from the country illegally, although it is not known when they were taken. The museum may now return some of the four disputed antiquities, following a meeting with Greek Culture Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis.”

“Once the issue is settled, [Getty Museum director Michael] Brand said, the two sides expect a “fruitful cooperation” that “could include long-term loans” of artworks. Greece is seeking the repatriation of a rare gold funerary wreath, a tombstone and a stone torso of a young woman, all acquired by the Getty in the 1990’s. It has also demanded a votive relief that J. Paul Getty, the museum’s founder, bought in 1955. Asked whether he felt pressure to cede some artifacts to shore up the Getty’s reputation, Mr. Brand responded with a terse “No.”

Michael Arad thought he had won big when his design for a memorial at the WTC site was chosen. But the memorial has been caught up in the mess that is the whole project. “The latest cost estimate issued this month—an impossible $972 million—has Mayor Michael Bloomberg demanding that the design be scaled back, while others suggest that it be scrapped altogether. The battle that is now breaking into full view has been raging behind the scenes since the moment Arad’s plan was picked. He has waged a personal war against the LMDC—to defend his design, he says, from the agency’s cronyism and shoddy management.”

“Step by patient step, one man is drawing ever closer to the real Da Vinci mystery: tracking down the master’s greatest painting, lost for four and a half centuries… For art historians, finding Leonardo’s lost Battle of Anghiari is in the same league as finding the Titanic or the still lost tomb of the Ancient Egyptian architect Imhotep — as big as you can get… And it is hidden, [Maurizio Seracini] believes, in a room at the heart of political power since the Middle Ages in Florence.”

“Tate Modern is Britain’s answer to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and to the Pompidou Centre in Paris. But while MoMA’s assets are being boosted by the gifts of wealthy Americans, carefully encouraged by US tax incentives, and the Pompidou enjoys buckets of state funding, Tate Modern is being left to wither and die.” So says Tate director Vicente Todoli, who claims that the UK government is content to let the his museum twist in the wind as institutions in other cities pass them by.

“At a time when Russians flush with oil money are making headlines spending millions on art, the forthcoming sale of a 100-year- old Fabergé clock is causing a stir in the Scandinavian auction world… The reason for the excitement is not because the clock is an outstanding piece of jewelry; most experts agree that the Fabergé workshops produced many objects of greater refinement. Rather, anticipation is linked to the clock’s almost mystical provenance and how it fits into Russia’s current boom.”

“Oxford scholars are preparing to post the notes, diaries, drawings and photographs from the 1922 excavation of the tomb of King Tutankhamun on the internet in an attempt to study it completely.”

An increasing number of painters, sculptors and other artists have recently been turning to film as a second medium, and many of the resulting films have been winning some high-profile prizes. “It is surely good that the art of film is developing in such a way as to be judged in arenas other than those in which Hollywood entertainment and the box office are the only criteria. And yet are these art-installation movies having the bar lowered for them? Aren’t they being judged by much less exacting standards than regular films?”

“Rather than impressing the governments of the Mediterranean lands to which it pays such elaborate tribute, the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Calif., has roused their anger. Saying that the villa’s galleries are full of antiquities that were illegally removed from their historical settings, Italy and Greece are demanding the return of dozens of objects.” Getty Museum director Michael Brand plans a stead hand: “It is a matter of not panicking and thinking the Getty Museum has a crisis, but of approaching it calmly and rationally and trying to work toward a solution.”