The auction house has acquired Orion Analytical and is folding the firm into its newly-created scientific research department. James Martin, the firm’s founder (and now a Sotheby’s exec), has helped the FBI in a number of art fraud cases, not least the Knoedler Gallary debacle.
Category: visual
Looted Antiquities From Palmyra And Yemen Seized In Geneva
The artifacts, which range between roughly 1,800 and 2,400 years old, were stored at the Geneva Free Port in 2009-10, before the current Arab civil wars and the rise of ISIS.
All About The Flash: Why Museum Buildings Are Upscaling
“The old world of museums as quiet, cavernous halls displaying collections of objects for those willing to make the trek is having to adapt. While perhaps branding was once sniffed at in cultural institutions as the dark arts of commercial witchery, today it is a key part of the show. In an age of flashy soundbites and stories told dramatically, most commonly on a digital platform, museums recognise the need to stretch well beyond their physical boundaries.”
The Museum Industrial Complex Is Thriving (But Did The Art Get Lost?)
“By the numbers, museums have become thriving enterprises, competing and ballooning into what we might call a museum industrial complex. Today there are 3,500 art museums in the United States, more than half of them founded after 1970, and 17,000 museums of all types in total, including science museums, children’s museums, and historical houses. Attendance at art museums is booming, rising from 22 million a year in 1962 to over 100 million in 2000. At the same time, and hand in hand with these numbers, billions of dollars have been spent on projects that have largely focused on expanding the social-service offerings at these institutions—restaurants, auditoriums, educational divisions, event spaces—rather than additional rooms for collections. At the present rate, the museum of the future will virtually be a museum without objects, as new non-collection spaces dwarf exhibition halls with the promise that no direct contact with the past will disturb your meal. As London’s Victoria and Albert Museum once advertised, the museum of the future will finally be a café with ‘art on the side’.”
The Dominican Priest Who Busted Thieves Holding A Caravaggio For Ransom
“After weeks went by and no money changed hands, [Father] Zerafa got a parcel in the post containing a slice of the Caravaggio canvas. They intended to slice off strips until they were paid or the painting was destroyed.”
Helen Marten Wins 2016 Turner Prize
Just two weeks after the sculptor won the first-ever Hepworth Prize, she’s won Britain’s most famous art honor. And, as with her Hepworth, Marten says she’ll share the Turner money.
Public Museums Are Teaming Up With Private Philanthropists Creating New Challenges For Museums
Individuals owning parts of art work and museums owning the rest. “It is one of a growing number of creative partnerships — forms of philanthropy that go beyond straightforward gifts and bequests — that are blurring the line between public and private art, providing new opportunities and new challenges for public institutions.”
Do These Photos Show A Glimpse Of Gauguin In Tahiti?
Maybe. “If these two photographs are actually of Paul Gauguin, then they tell us a great deal about his state of mind and his social entourage during the summer of that year.”
What Art Will Make A Comeback In The 21st Century?
Painting, of course. Jonathan Jones says: “Maybe, after years of being told by po-faced curators that we ‘should’ revere video art and various live interactive post-artistic phenomena, we just wanna have fun.”
Why Isn’t Britain’s Turner Art Prize Engaging With Britain’s Political Scene?
There’s a lot going wrong in today’s Britain (let’s not even speak of Brexit): “Drastic cuts to public funding have led to the demolition of social housing, and to the closure of public libraries, galleries and museums. … The arts and humanities are disappearing as educational options: most recently the preparatory step of A‑level art history was placed under threat.”