Category: visual

Some artifacts stolen from Iraq’s National Museum earlier this year have been recovered in London. “The men were arrested in connection with allegations of handling stolen goods – one of them was said to be a 76-year-old man. He is believed to be a British passport holder of Iranian descent. A stone sculpture found there, but stolen before the war, is thought by detectives to be worth between three and five million pounds. The frieze, showing sacred winged animals was taken from the ruins of a palace in the ancient city of Nimrud.”

Plans to send Iraq’s greatest art treasure to the US for a tour are being considered in Baghdad. “Sending the Nimrud gold to the US, whose armed forces are now occupying Iraq, would undoubtedly disturb many Iraqis. Parallels are being drawn with the controversial US decision to show Germany’s greatest paintings in America in 1948, although the circumstances are different.”

The art market is roaring back. Last week “both Sotheby’s and Christie’s had very little difficulty finding buyers for their top lots. The two evening sales totalled $242 million, doubling the $125 million made for the same sessions last May. Adding in the Part II sessions, a total of $283 million was spent on Modern and Impressionist art between 4 and 6 November.”

The Guggenheim had to close its large gallery in Las Vegas. But the museum is importing its most ambitious show yet to its smaller remaining gallery in the bottom of the Venetian Hotel. “Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, said he’s committed to Las Vegas. He said the museum would take a new strategy by reaching out to the community in an educational capacity. He has no intention of abandoning the Hermitage, which he claimed was the best small exhibition space in the world.”

The Saatchi Gallery in London is in the middle of a feud with its landlord. After a sculpture was damaged by a vandal last week, the gallery is now moving some of its art out of the gallery. But the fight has gotten nasty…

A man has attempted to slash a priceless Renaissance painting – Bronzino’s Allegory With Venus And Cupid – at London’s National Gallery in front of horrified museum visitors. He was caught before the painting could be damaged.

“The ‘comedy terrorist’ Aaron Barschak faces a possible jail sentence, after being convicted last week by Oxford magistrates of criminally damaging works in the Chapman brothers’ summer exhibition The Rape of Creativity. What makes the case unusual is that some of the artworks concerned, now part of the Chapmans’ Turner prize show, have themselves given rise to accusations of vandalism: they include an edition of 80 rare original impressions of Goya’s The Disasters of War, on which faces of clowns and puppies have been drawn.”

“In the auction world, all it takes is three determined people with big egos and bank accounts to match. That’s why a 1917 Klimt landscape sold for $29.1 million last night at Sotheby’s sale of Impressionist and modern art. The price surprised even the auction house experts. The painting, which depicts a house and its flowering gardens in a rich tapestry of colors, wasn’t the only bright spot of the evening. The best works fetched high prices, but some of the rest went unsold without so much as a nibble.”

A five-year restoration of Michelangelo’s “Moses” in Rome has been unveiled. “Restorers in the Italian capital have been quietly working away on the majestic sculpture of a seated Moses since 1998, careful to steer clear of a heated debate over the best way to clean the sculptor’s monumental David nude in Florence.”

Henry Moore’s 15-foot bronze sculpture, Three Piece Reclining Figure: Draped, sold at auction for $6.2 million this week, the highest price ever paid for a work by a British sculptor. “The previous best for a work by Moore, regarded as one of the UK’s top sculptors, was $4.1m , in 1999. Collectors also paid record prices for works by French painter Fernand Leger Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. Tuesday’s auction of impressionist and modern art [at Christie’s in New York] sold pieces worth a total of $117m.”