Category: visual

“Although jolted by the daring daylight theft of Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’ from an Oslo museum, New York museum and gallery officials said they had no plans to increase security or change their procedures in response to the theft.”

“In the eyes of a typical art thief, the most dazzling of paintings is simply a multi-million dollar bill hanging on a poorly guarded wall.” How to spend it is often a detail that comes later.

“A day after the brazen daylight robbery of ‘The Scream’ and a second Expressionist masterpiece by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, museum officials begged the robbers on Monday to show greater care for the treasures than they did while wrenching them free from the wall and smashing their frames.”

“When James Bond villain Dr No displayed Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington in his lair, he launched the myth of masterpieces being ‘stolen to order’ for criminal masterminds.” But in reality, “there are limited possibilities for a thief with a famous stolen painting on his hands.”

When philanthropist Eli Broad gave the LA County Museum of Art $50 million for its building project, he also won the right to pick the project’s architect. “Relations between museums and donors get especially dicey during building campaigns, when dreams of grandeur call for creative fundraising and arm-twisting. But in a philanthropic culture that prides itself on snagging big money without ceding control, the L.A. museum’s plan is a special case. The effort to transform LACMA’s melange of buildings into an elegant unity strikes a precarious balance of power with the major donor.”

A Web designer has made her collection of 15,000 banner ad samples publicly available on her Web site. So what makes a good banner ad? (Is there such a thing?)

“In 2001, David Hockney … published his theory that great artists including Jan van Eyck and Caravaggio used lenses and simple cameras to ‘trace’ images onto canvas. But at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) in Cambridge on Thursday, a group of leading computer experts will show that a central image that he used to prove his theory shows clear signs of human error.”

“Hotel art, once the mainstay of washed-out reproduced masterpieces and the butt of bad jokes, has recently acquired a bold new lease on life. Forget the Frette linens, celebrity chefs and Aveda bath products. To stay on top of the game, luxury high-end chains and boutique hotels must now provide their guests with cultural stimulation too, which is why a growing number of hoteliers in Canada and around the world are investing in serious modern-art collections to spice up their designer lobbies.”

Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” was not insured, says the Munch Museum, after the painting was stolen over the weekend. “The theft has highlighted gaps in the insurance of major works around the world, with a large number not covered against being stolen, according to some of the UK’s leading art insurers. Many galleries and collectors cannot afford to pay for protection or do not think they will need it.”

The director of the Munch Museum in Norway is defending the museum’s security measures after Munch’s “The Scream” was stolen. He said “a silent alarm went off and police arrived in minutes. ‘We think of security problems all the time and work with security’.”