Category: visual

“Vets at the Penn Vet Working Dog Centre in Philadelphia are to train canines to sniff out illegally trafficked antiquities, in partnership with the city’s Penn Museum and the non-profit organisation Red Arch Cultural Heritage Law & Policy Research.”

“The salvaged glass – some dating back to the 13th century, including stars, flowers and sun rays, fierce little mythical animals and beautiful medieval faces – is being recycled into dazzling new windows being made for the abbey at the stained glass studio at Canterbury Cathedral, where some of the original medieval glass artists may have worked.”

The artist, Hugo Crosthwaite, wore a shirt that made him more approachable – more like a sign painter, less like an artist – and hoo boy, was he ever approached. His interactions with people changed the huge mural. “The mural, created in partnership with the California Historical Society, features a singular mix of images — rendered in the artist’s preferred black and white — inspired by Mexican pulp comics, 19th century French illustration, Southern California visual iconography and current political events. It also features elements drawn from the artist’s dialogues with the hundreds of people that stream through the space on a daily basis.”

The piece, by artist Carolina Falkholdt, had been commissioned, but it didn’t last long. “The painting appeared on the wall of a building on Broome Street, between Forsyth and Eldridge Streets, on Christmas Eve. By Wednesday afternoon, it was being painted over, and by Thursday it had completely disappeared.” (Read much more about the mural’s background and planned focus in this Hyperallergic piece.)

There’s still a little time, and even after the new year, there’s still a pretty big reward: “The stolen paintings are valued at more than $500 million, and the museum has long offered a reward for information that will lead authorities to recover all of the paintings in good condition. The reward was $5 million until May, when it was temporarily doubled. But that $10 million reward – and like Cinderella’s coach – reverts to a $5 million pumpkin on January 1.”

The artist John Wullbrandt and his partner had spent 15 years planning for fire at their California ranch near Carpinteria. When it came, they saved their house and their animals. But his studio? No. “It was burned into oblivion. Wullbrandt knew the studio and shipping containers had wood floors, but he was certain there was metal beneath them. That was not the case. The fire blew underneath and ignited everything inside, turning decades worth of paintings into ash.”

Every year the list of most powerful in the art world is read with interest. But who are the least powerful?

Texas attorney Anthony Buzbee probably thought his evening was going well when he brought 29-year-old blonde Lindy Lou Layman to his $14 million mansion. But she got overly inebriated, and when he tried to send her home in an Uber, she hurled two sculptures across the room, ripped three paintings – including two original Warhols – off the wall, and poured some as-yet-unidentified liquid on them.

In an extensive Q&A that also covers the history of the ancient Syrian city, its destruction by ISIS, the lack of an international or UN intervention to save it, and the trade in looted antiquities, Andreas Schmidt-Colinet, an archaeologist who worked at Palmyra for three decades, makes his case for what the West should and shouldn’t do at the site now that the shooting there is over.

These dreams range from the very-much-doable (Norman Foster extending Madison Square Park) to the interesting-but-unlikely (requiring the new super-tall apartment towers to provide public space) to the good-but-too-expensive (elevated bike lanes) to the insane (damming and draining the East River and using the riverbed as farmland) to why-aren’t-we-doing-this-already? (a “cultural Airbnb” offering vacant storefronts for temporary use as performance or art venues).