Category: visual

Arturo Rucci is accused of stealing three canvases from Scully’s storage space, combining them into a triptych, and consigning them to an auction house as a single work.

“The Attorney General’s Office filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to bolster – or perhaps salvage – its effort to halt art sales by the Berkshire Museum. The office acted after participating in a two-hour hearing … that appeared to leave that quest on life support, as plaintiffs’ attorneys struggled to convince the judge their clients held necessary legal standing to challenge the museum’s planned sale.”

“When [Penelope] Curtis arrived in 2015, the museum’s design had barely changed since it opened in 1969. … [One of her main projects is] to open up Gulbenkian’s ‘rather rigidly divided’ collection and shine a spotlight on its Islamic holdings.”

“After 17 years of soap opera-like drama – including villains, family squabbles and money problems – the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial has reached its happily-ever-after stage. … Ushering any construction project through Washington’s bureaucracy is never quick or easy, but the Eisenhower Memorial journey suffered multiple setbacks, most focused on architect Frank Gehry’s modern design, unveiled in 2010.”

“Nicknamed ‘The Plank’, De Rijke Marsh Morgan’s stark wooden wonder [in the English Channel town of Hastings] – using timber reclaimed from previous fires – was praised for changing ‘the idea of what architecture is’.”

“After narrowly averting bankruptcy, documenta’s troubles continue. Last week, the far-right [Alternativ für Deutschland] faction of Kassel’s city council brought a lawsuit against the quinquennial for alleged misappropriation of funds and other offenses.”

The fraud is relatively simple. Criminals hack into an art dealer’s email account and monitor incoming and outgoing correspondence. When the gallery sends a PDF invoice to a client via email following a sale, the conversation is hijacked. Posing as the gallery, hackers send a duplicate, fraudulent invoice from the same gallery email address, with an accompanying message instructing the client to disregard the first invoice and instead wire payment to the account listed in the fraudulent document.

“Delays in the construction of the Norman Foster-designed Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi means that an agreement with British Museum – which was to help curate exhibitions and lend the new institution around 500 valuable artifacts – is unlikely to be realized.”

“Just two days before a scheduled hearing on a suit brought by the three sons of Norman Rockwell …, the attorney general’s office has submitted a legal filing stating that it ‘has significant questions and concerns’ about the museum’s planned sell-off of 40 paintings on November 13 at Sotheby’s in New York. The filing calls on the court to grant a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction so that the office has more time to study the case and formulate a final position.”

“After two years and a transformative $12 million overhaul – capped by a nerve-wracking visit from Hurricane Irma – Miami’s Bass Museum re-opened to the public this weekend with a roomier layout, new galleries, and immersive installations by contemporary art stars Ugo Rondinone and Pascale Marthine Tayou.”