Category: visual

“Automobile Speed + Light + Noise (around 1913), a painting by the Italian Futurist Giacomo Balla (1871-1958), is due to go back on display at the Kunsthaus Zurich in Switzerland in November following a six-month stint in the museum’s restoration studio” – whose process was, well, unorthodox.

“One of the hardest-hit areas is the country’s eastern coastal region, which is rich in archaeological treasures from sites such as the ancient Greek and Roman city of Cyrene. International and Libyan specialists say that ‘random digging’ here is proceeding unchecked.”

“Estimated to make between $12m-$18m, the untitled painting from 1948-49 was acquired from the artist by the painter Edward Dugmore, his student at the California School of Fine Arts, and also passed through the hands of the Texas collector Edward Kitchen, before entering an East Coast collection about 20 years ago.”

Marlene and Spencer Hays’s collection of roughly 600 works from late-19th- and early-20th-century France includes works by, among others, Matisse, Modigliani, Bonnard, and Degas.

“Over two years, [Nina] Katchadourian interviewed staff members across every department, ultimately realizing that they were united by their stance against this pervasive, invisible-until-it’s-not element.” Then she created a new audio guide: “Wall texts encourage visitors to listen in at a dozen locations throughout the museum, including a tough-to-Swiffer ledge overhanging four stories of the museum’s atrium.”

Mayor Gallery says that the authentication committee acted wrongly when it rejected 13 works submitted to it by the gallery’s clients. Neither Sotheby’s nor Christie’s will accept a work by Martin for auction or private sale unless it has been or will be included in the catalogue raisonné, the complaint says, so “a refusal by defendants to include an artwork [is] recognised in the worldwide marketplace as a conclusive statement that the artwork is a fake”, rendering it effectively “worthless”.

“When Russian and Syrian troops reclaimed the site, it became clear that practically everything in the museum had been broken. They destroyed everything systematically, room by room, sculpture by sculpture, using hammers and other heavy tools.”

“The piece, entitled ‘The Emperor Has No Balls,’ was initially estimated to sell for $10,000 with a portion of the proceeds going to the National Immigration Forum, one of the leading immigrant advocacy organizations in the country. But it was the most talked about piece in the auction, and the price tag more than doubled.”

“A video environment called ‘4th Floor To Mildness’ will invite visitors to take off their shoes and stretch out on secondhand beds that the New Museum has collected (and cleaned). The viewers will gaze toward the ceiling at two amoeba-shaped screens, on which will be projected watery footage that Ms. Rist, who lives and works in Zurich, filmed over the summer in a part of the Rhine that she knows by heart.”

“Without ever having spent a night there, the pope ordered the apostolic palace and gardens at Castel Gandolfo, about 15 miles from Rome, be turned into a museum.”