Category: visual

A longread with photos about the conservators and craftsmen preserving traditional gypsum glass work at the Muslim holy site

At the annual art-crime symposium held in November at New York University, participants agreed that the culprit was the market’s notorious secrecy. But discussions revealed deep divisions about what should be done. Insurers, auction houses, dealers and other players each have their own interests to protect in a market where, as one participant remarked, the “level of greed… is so great”.

Anna Furman: “An appealing remix of rococo excesses, Flemish portraiture and Latin American funerary symbols.”

And not only for the oversexed Instagram feed. “Jerry Saltz is the anti-critic critic, making critic-art out of the whole cloth of himself. Saltz is human Xanax; always ‘on’, he’s forever cheerful, an antidote to life’s chores and routines, maybe shying from his family history of despondency. I can’t remember ever seeing him grumpy or imagine him out of character.”

“From stolen Italian masterpieces ending up on the walls of a provincial South Island gallery, to a steady supply of fake Dick Frizzells being sold online,” New Zealand has more than its fair share of forgeries and fraudsters.

Their effort to use that link in a Facebook ad — which would make it possible for people who don’t follow the museum to see it — was thwarted by Facebook robots that determined that the story, headlined “Bronze Dildos and Jade Butt Plugs Show Life and Death in Ancient China,” was unfit for the platform. Facebook ads, read a notice the museum received, “can’t promote sexual or adult products or services.”

A thief nicknamed “Spider-Man” because of his ability to scale walls is on trial for taking a Picasso, a Matisse, a Modigliani, a Braque and a Léger from the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2010. The paintings have never been recovered, and one of the fellow defendants – the fence – tearfully told the court that, afraid of being caught, he broke all the stretchers and threw the canvases in the garbage. (Nobody believes him.)

“Support your local galleries simply by going. Many galleries secretly terrified of closing now. Trump’s chaos has brought sales to a standstill.”

Inga Saffron tells the long, sad story, and the happy ending, of the Rittenhouse Hotel, the tower with the pleated façade on Rittenhouse Square.