Category: visual

Swiss police have seized paintings belonging to the Pushkin Museum. “The 25 paintings – part of a collection on loan to an exhibit in Martigny – were seized on behalf of a local firm which claims Russia owes it money. The Pierre Gianadda Foundation display, which included works by Manet, Renoir, Picasso and Matisse, was said to have been insured for $1bn (£597m). The company, Noga, said it was owed money for food deliveries in the 1990s.”

“Behind this shift, museum directors, curators and lawyers say, are broad changes in the way source countries are pursuing and enforcing cultural property claims – and the public’s perception of those claims. Caught in the cross hairs, museums face pressure to clean up their act and embrace rigorous standards for future acquisitions – and to return prized works acquired in past decades. ‘In the eyes of the public, there is a sense that the museum is a greedy hoarder of ill-gotten goods, in opposition to the legitimate claims of the powerless’.”

Ex-Getty curator Marion True appears in Rome for the start of her trial for trafficking in stolen antiquities. “True, together with art dealer Robert Hecht, denies two separate charges involving 35 artefacts bought between 1986 and the late 1990s. They include bronze Etruscan pieces, frescoes, and painted Greek Vessels. The Getty museum has stood by Ms True’s work. She left the court after the hearing without comment.”

The FBI has released a list of its most wanted stolen art. “Heading the list were 7,000 to 10,000 Iraqi antiquities stolen from the Iraq National Museum and archaeological sites after the US invasion in 2003. A handful of cylindrical seals believed to be more than 4,500 years old have been recovered, but 5,000 remained missing. It also included the biggest art heist in history – the 1990 theft of an estimated $US300 million ($A409.72 million) in paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.”

The Australian aboriginal art market has been rocketing up in recent years. But lately some of the higher-profile offerings haven’t been making their pre-auction estimates…

A new survey of rural buildings in England says that “at least a tenth of all old buildings urgently need repairs, and thousands of listed buildings and structures are classified as in severe disrepair, many on the point of collapse. One survey suggests that within 20 years all the timber-framed farm buildings in Hertfordshire will either have collapsed, or been converted – a pattern which the authors suspect is mirrored across the country.”

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts breaks ground on a $500 million expansion. “The building project, designed by British architecture firm Foster and Partners of London, will expand the size of the museum by 149,000 square feet, or roughly two-and-a-half football fields. New galleries, a central covered glass-and-steel courtyard with a cafe and a new wing dedicated to art of the Americas highlight the expansion project.”

New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission has not acted on helping to decide the fate of 2 Columbus Circle. “Once considered the most powerful agency of its kind, the commission has lost the confidence of many mainstream preservationists by repeatedly refusing to hold a public hearing on the building’s fate. At the urging of those preservation advocates, a city councilman, Bill Perkins, has introduced a bill that could force the commission to hold public hearings on potential landmarks. The implication is that the commission cannot always be trusted to protect the public interest.”

A British TV show holding a contest to find the 100 best public sculptures has decided nothing in Scotland is good enough to be considered. “The programme makers told Scotland on Sunday that when they looked for the nation’s 100 best public sculptures they decided that, compared with England, Scotland had failed to invest in public sculpture, especially in the 20th century. The humiliating snub has sparked outrage in Scotland, with experts north of the Border accusing Artsworld of ‘geographical snobbery’ and ‘cultural ignorance’.”

It’s been a year since the new Museum of Modern Art opened. Jerry Saltz has come to an unhappy conclusion about the place. “The more I go to the new MOMA—and I’ve been there over 50 times since it reopened a year ago this week—the more I think this crown jewel is becoming a beautiful tomb. At MOMA the unruly juice of art history, the chaos, contradiction, radicality, and rebellion, are being bleached out. Instead, we’re getting the taming of modernism—modernism as elevator music.”