Category: visual

Italian police are heating up their cases against museums that may have stolen art. “The Getty case is just a slice of an illicit global trade in antiquities that stretches from the Egyptian desert to Chinese tombs to Peruvian monuments, and pulls in some of the most- respected names in art and academia. At least 52 items the Getty has acquired or handled were looted or came from smugglers, according to charges against Hecht, Medici and True that were contained in Italian court documents obtained by Bloomberg News. Eight such pieces are in the Metropolitan, 22 are in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and one each are in the Princeton University Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art, the documents say.”

That’s the charge of Italian authorities, who are said to have proof. “The claim, contained in court documents connected with the cases against a pair of art dealers and a former Getty curator with links to Boston, could put pressure on the MFA and a host of other museums to consider returning objects to Italy, according to antiquities experts who have been critical of the way museums acquire artifacts. Prosecutors list 22 MFA objects, including a 2,500-year-old Greek vase currently on display in a museum gallery.”

London’s National Gallery is considering expanding its collecting activities into the 20th Century. “At present its remit runs until 1900, following a 1996 agreement with Tate. Under the terms of the deal, the NG transferred 14 post-1900 pictures to Tate on long-term loan, with Tate lending 51 pre-1900 European works to Trafalgar Square.”

Sixty years after Allied bombs destroyed it, the Dresden cathedral has reopened after a $215 million restoration. “For 47 years, Dresden residents had known the Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, as a 43-foot-high mound of rubble flanked by two jagged walls. That was all that remained after British and U.S. planes strafed the city with firebombs on the night of Feb. 13-14, 1945.”

Museums – their acquisition budgets getting smaller – have been cultivating young collectors by offering special services. “The most important thing these groups offer: insider access, invaluable in the insular and clubby art world. Want behind-the-scenes access to museum collections and staff? Members of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Apollo Circle attend exclusive curator-led workshops on topics like developing a ‘collector’s eye’ or the importance of art conservation. A few blocks down, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Whitney Contemporaries meet regularly with curators, trustees and director Adam Weinberg…”

Questions are mounting about the Tate’s purchase for £600,000 of Chris Ofili’s The Upper Room. The artist’s dealer had urged the purchase because Ofili was getting married and needed cash. Some critics are also charging conflict-of-interest on the part of some of the board members who approved the purchase.

The New York Public Library has been selling off some of its art treasures to bolster its budget. What’s wrong with that, asks Lee Rosenbaum? “The library’s art disposals were marred by undue haste and inadequate oversight by its trustees and the New York State Attorney General’s office. By selling the public’s patrimony to buttress the budget, rather than contributing or raising the money themselves as should have been their first priority, the library’s board and administration took the easy way out.”

Is Damien Hirst the most powerful figure in the art world? ArtReview magazine’s widely respected list of the Power 100 says he is, but what does such power mean in a highly fragmented age? And more importantly, does the dramatic shift between last year’s list and this year’s edition mean that the art world now moves so quickly that power can no longer be measured as it once was? Maybe, but for the moment, ArtReview’s list still serves as an important harbinger of what’s to come in art over the next year.

Can exposure to art slow the advance of Alzheimer’s Disease, or at least make its effects more bearable? The answer seems to be yes, but no one really understands why. “Art therapy, both appreciating art and making it, has been used for decades as a nonmedical way to help a wide variety of people – abused children, prisoners and cancer and Alzheimer’s patients. But much of this work has taken place in nursing homes and hospitals. Now museums like [New York’s] Modern and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, are trying to bring it into their galleries, using their collections as powerful ways to engage minds damaged by dementia.”

“A ceramic vase by Pablo Picasso sold for 33,600 pounds ($59,600) at a London auction of more than 100 Picasso ceramic works, Sotheby’s auction house said today. At 75.5 centimetres, the painted and glazen earthenware vase entitled ‘Tripode’ is one of the artist’s largest ceramic pieces, and was the most coveted item [in] yesterday’s auction.”