Category: visual

Several experts have contested claims that the James ossuary is a fake. “Several paleographic, geological and linguistic experts previously examined the box and saw nothing suspicious. ‘They all may be mistaken, I recognize that, and if it’s a forgery, I want the forger put in jail. But we’re not there yet by any means’.”

The Library of Congress has bought the “Waldseemuller world map of 1507, a cartographic treasure and the first known document to call a land mass America. The old and rare chart is also the first to depict two oceans instead of one. The price was $10 million.”

“Two years after the Taliban destroyed much of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage, attempts are being made to restore what is left.” But the task has been hampered because since “US-led forces evicted the Taliban from Afghanistan 18 months ago, the international community has done little to help the government of Hamid Karzai restore the museum or get back thousands of artefacts looted from Afghanistan over the previous decade.”

Most of the staff of Iraq’s National Museum are revolting against museum leadership. “More than 130 of the 185 staff of Iraq’s state board of antiquities office in Baghdad, which runs the museum, have signed a petition demanding the resignation of its directors. Staff said they believed that some of the thefts from the museum were an inside job. They also accused Dony George, the board’s head of research, of arming them and ordering them to fight US forces.”

A piece of public art in Sydney that some residents call “poo on sticks” has so infuriated protesters that a group of “art vigilantes has threatened to tear it down. “The group, which calls itself the Revolutionary Council for the Removal of Bad Art in Public Places, has set a three-month deadline for the offending sculpture to be whisked away. If the deadline is not met, it says, the work will be defaced or destroyed. ‘We have blowtorches, angle grinders and bolt cutters, and we will use them if necessary’.”

Scotland does have a representative at this year’s Venice Biennale. “Though the artists’ names are listed in the index, Scotland does not appear in the list of participating countries. Not all of these listed countries have a presence in the Giardini. There simply isn’t the room. So a good many late-coming nations have pavilions scattered throughout Venice. But officially, as we are not listed, we do not have a national presence, though the ground floor of the same palace, the Ca’ Gustinian-Lollin, is the official national pavilion of Singapore. The Welsh, who also have a presence this year, are treated the same way. They are there, but not there. The politics of this is obvious.”

Canada’s representative at this year’s Venice Biennale is a film directed and shot by a dog. “For all its carefree frolicking 35 cm above ground, Stanley’s [the dog] perspective and Jana Sterbak’s editing produce a profoundly affecting piece that is shown on six screens zig-zagging across the length of the Canadian pavilion. It conveys both the exuberance of a young pup’s discovery of the world, but also his nervous, toddler-like dependency on the people looking after him.

Four guards at New York’s Rikers Island prison have been chaged with stealing a Salvaore Dali painting. The four “staged a phony fire drill” to “steal a $250,000 Salvador Dali sketch from the jail’s lobby, then replaced the artwork with an unframed copy, prosecutors said Tuesday.”

Berlin’s Egyptian Museum placed a 3000-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti atop the modern nude torso created by German artists, who then videotaped it for their installation at the Venice Biennale. But Egyptians are protesting, saying the project demeans their culture. Museum officials defend the work, saying that “the 19-inch-high bust, with its elegantly arched brows and towering blue headdress, sat only briefly on the life-size body created by Hungarian artists Andras Galik and Balint Havas. The transfer on May 26 was done with care.”

Because of its lax laws, Switzerland is well-known as a “transit centre for stolen works of art”. But the Swiss Parliament has passed a new law to bring it into compliance with the UNESCO Convention against cultural goods trafficking. “Until now, Swiss law has treated cultural goods no differently to ordinary merchandise. With the new legislation, which has taken over ten years to be approved, the laundering of stolen artworks should also disappear.”