Category: visual

While some are celebrating the imminent move of the famed Barnes Collection to Philadelphia, Hilton Kramer writes that the deal is a dark one with big implications. “The enemies of the late Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951) are about to achieve their fondest desire: the ‘legal theft,’ as it has been dubbed, of Dr. Barnes’ great collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings.”

Looking to permanently identify that piece of art you’re fond of? New marking systems bring technology to bear. “One is the microchip, which can be embedded in the piece, but the company also makes a synthetically-produced DNA, which can be a powder, liquid or glue. This can be applied directly or during conservation, for instance as a small area of varnish on a painting. It can also be incorporated into microdots.”

Russian and German leaders are meeting to discuss the fate of a Rubens painting looted in World War II. “The painting, Tarquin and Lucretia, is believed to have been stolen from Germany by a Soviet officer in 1945. It has resurfaced after being offered for sale by a Moscow estate agent.”

A fan of JMW Turner gives £13,000 to the Victoria & Albert Museum to repair two of the artist’s paintings after reading in the paper that they were disintegrating.

In 2000, artist David Phillips created his biggest work – a park installation for a big insurance company in Boston. Two years later, the company wanted to add some trees and sidewalks, but Phillips protested that the plan would change his work. Now the artist and the company are in court. Phillips wants to prevent the company from changing anything; the company wants to remove the work altogether…

The British Museum has slammed the door on any hopes of Greece getting back the Parthenon Marbles. The museum says that “it was the museum’s duty to preserve the universality of the marbles, and to protect them from being appropriated as a nationalistic political symbol. But with half of the marbles still in Greece, and with a museum being built to house them at the foot of the Acropolis, campaigners for their return said that they found the British Museum’s attitude insulting”.

Restoration of Christopher Wren’s flawed but historic St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, is controversial, even after years of debate. “What a circus! This is a seriously misconceived restoration, technically insane, with reckless levels of chemicals, and a historical fraud. We’ve come to learn that the bigger the restoration, the more ambitious the project, the greater the funding, the more out of control these things get.”

A prison worker at New York’s Riker’s Island has admitted his role in stealing a Salvatore Dali sketch earlier this year. “Last week, a former assistant deputy warden admitted his role in the March 1 robbery at the Rikers Island jail and implicated his co-workers in the role-reversing rip-off. The plot’s alleged mastermind and the two other members of the ‘Dali gang’ are all due in court this month.”

“When the first Florence Biennale was held, more than 40 years ago, it was a trailblazer for the international art market, attracting scores of foreign dealers, 120,000 paying visitors and another 40,000 invited guests. But in the decades that followed, it lost ground to rivals as the Paris Biennale established a reputation for chic glitz and the small Dutch town of Maastricht attracted the world’s most important dealers, collectors and curators to its art fair.” Italy’s draconian art export laws are so tough, they have played havoc with the biennale.

A new survey indicates that the average Briton knows about as much about great works of art as the average American, which is to say, not much. Nearly 10% of the UK identified Monet’s famous Water Lilies as having been painted by the Australian Rolf Harris, and fully half of respondants couldn’t say who painted the Mona Lisa. Presumably, they all knew who won the latest edition of Big Brother, however.