Category: visual

“Call it stock art: A group of New York artists are crafting what may be the most beautiful and speculative shares on the market. Entrepreneur Carol Braddock plans to sell the documents as art objects to fund Webbittown, a commerce-cum-community Web site. Over the past few months Braddock has assembled a roster of artists that reads like a who’s who of the downtown New York art scene. So far, the stocks have been embellished with everything from simple sketches to elaborate collages.” – The Standard

The list of stolen art work is constantly growing. Estimates worldwide of art theft run from $2 billion to $6 billion annually. “And the possibility of getting your prized possession back is slim to none. Recent UNESCO statistics show that only five to 10 per cent of stolen cultural goods are ever recovered.” – CBC

Thieves have stolen three of Sweden’s most prized paintings – by Rembrandt and Renoir. “An armed gang entered the museum on Stockholm’s waterfront just before it closed on Friday. One of them, brandishing a submachine-gun in the museum lobby, threatened staff and visitors, while another two, also armed, ran upstairs and snatched the small paintings, valued by police at about £25 million.” – Scotland on Sunday

“The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, was signed by President George Bush in November 1990 after years of discussion among scientists, museum curators and Indian groups. It seeks to reconcile two profoundly different value systems, one based on the primacy of reason and science and the other revolving around spiritual and religious values. In the decade since the law was passed, it has had a profound effect on museums and the philosophy on which they are based.” – New York Times

For its current exhibition on guitars, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts has been advertising in non-traditional places – like bars and the sides of buses. “We’re seeing a lot of college students who, for the most part, don’t come to the museum that often. We really have seen an expanded audience, a lot of people who say that other than a fifth-grade field trip, this is their first time here.” – Boston Herald

Archaeologists have finished restoring a temple in Yemen that they say belonged to the Queen of Sheba. “According to scholars, the temple was built in the 10th Century BC at the time of Balqis, the Queen of Sheba, and access was restricted to the kingdom’s elite.” The structure is so impressive, excavators say it could become one of the world’s great tourist attractions. – BBC

In an important step in the repatriation of artwork stolen during World War II, the US Justice Department has released a list of 2,000 artworks seized by the Nazis. “The quality of many of the paintings on the list is extraordinarily high, because most of the items were stolen for Adolf Hitler and his Air Minister Hermann Goering, and they demanded masterpieces.” – CNN

“Martin Fabiani, a Paris dealer who was arrested and fined by the Allies after the Second World War for dealing in ‘enemy property’ and art plundered by the Nazis, supplied Canada’s National Gallery with several notable paintings, among them works by Pierre Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas. Dealers, such as Mr. Fabiani, took advantage of cut-rate prices on art looted from Jews in Nazi-occupied countries. During the chaos that ensued when France was occupied by the Nazis, dealers like Mr. Fabiani were able to sidestep legal formalities in order to make quick sales.” – National Post (Canada)

Prague was named this year’s European City of Culture. But with so many state collections in the city closed or in flux, one has to ask how seriously the city is taking the designation. – The Art Newspaper