“Early in the morning on Sunday, 28 August, the German artist Anselm Kiefer’s 35,000sq. m studio and warehouse space in Croissy-Beaubourg, about 25km west of Paris, was burgled and robbed … The thieves are suspected of cutting through wire cages and making off with a ten-tonne lead sculpture of stacks of books – valued at €1.3m – and 12 tonnes of raw marble, worth around €1m.”
Category: visual
That Smudge On Munch’s ‘The Scream’ Is Not Bird Poop, Say Scientists
“Munch painted four versions of the artwork during the 1890s, but an 1893 iteration which resides in the Norwegian National Museum has long had a white smudge of unknown origin near the screaming subject’s shoulder. … After years of speculation, scientists from the University of Antwerp in Belgium have finally solved [the] mystery.”
Bass Museum In Miami Postpones Reopening To Next Year
“Because of construction delays, the Bass contemporary art museum in Miami will reopen in the spring of 2017 rather than on Dec. 1 … In the meantime, the Bass will continue its programming in offsite locations.”
Report: New Whitney Museum Is Racking Up Enormous Water Bills
“The Meatpacking art mecca that only opened in May 2015 has managed to generate a titanic water bill and is already behind on payments. The bill, including interest, had grown to $208,964 as of Sunday. According to city records, no payment has been made in the past 12 months.”
Bronx Museum Names Replacement Board Members After Board Leaders Quit In Protest
“Following the abrupt resignation last week of its top trustees, the Bronx Museum of the Arts on Wednesday announced two interim appointments — Joseph Mizzi as interim chairman and Joan Krevlin as a vice chairwoman. (Marilyn Greene continues to serve as the other vice chairwoman.)”
Italy Fought Hard To Keep Venice Off UNESCO’s Heritage In Danger List, Despite Actual, Serious Danger To Venice
“UNESCO’s World Heritage Site Committee meeting in Istanbul this July voted not to put Venice on its list of World Heritage in Danger sites, but instead to postpone the decision until the 2017 meeting. This was despite the highly critical conclusions of UNESCO’s own recent State of Conservation report on Venice.”
Met Museum And Tate Join New Online Video Portal For Museums
This week Sotheby’s launched the online “Museum Network,” which will host video tours and other content from such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate galleries, the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, and the National Palace Museum in Taiwan.
Data Show That MFA’s Might Not Be Worth The Cost
“There is hope for those who hate school: Despite the widespread perception that contemporary art is dominated by an MFA mafia, nearly half of the figures on our list of 500 successful early-career artists either did not have an MFA, or didn’t study art academically at all.”
The Extraordinary Detail Of Rembrandt’s Etchings
“In this video from Christie’s, we see contemporary printmaker Alexander Massouras analyze the diversity of Rembrandt’s lines and how they create different textures in the same work of art – something Rembrandt was a master at. We also get to see the etching process firsthand.”
An Enormous New Museum Near The Great Pyramids
“The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), a gateway to the history of the pharaohs under construction outside Cairo, is attempting to do the impossible: hold its own next to the pyramids of Giza. Egypt’s ministry of antiquities hopes the gargantuan complex, designed by architects Heneghan Peng, will be built by the end of 2016, paving the way for a 2017 ‘partial opening’.”