Category: visual

The 24-foot-long, rectangular 2005 Haulmark trailer disappeared Nov. 20 from an industrial park near Nordhoff Street and Alabama Avenue … [LAPD] art investigators said the trailer and roughly $250,000 in precious cargo, including art works by Matisse, Chagall, Miró, Haring and Neiman, were stolen. (Wait – all that was worth only $250,000?)

“Ai, China’s most prominent contemporary artist, went on social media to decry Denmark’s ‘shameless’ bill that among other things allows authorities to confiscate valuables from migrants and delays family reunifications for refugees for up to three years. The artist announced that as a direct result of the bill he will pull his exhibitions from ARoS Aarhus Art Museum and the Copenhagen gallery Faurschou Foundation.”

Many started tweeting nude statues in protest; some called it an insult to the nation’s honor; one argued that the Iranians should strip statues if Italy’s prime minister visits; another called it “Italy’s shambolic appeasement of Islamism.” But perhaps it was just good manners? President Rouhani said as much, and thanked his hosts.

“For example, if a jury decides that a doctor must pay millions in damages because he left a surgical instrument inside a patient, other doctors are going to make sure they don’t do the same. Similarly, the jury in the Knoedler trial should signal what is expected from the different parties in art transactions: which red flags should alert galleries to fraud and what investigations should they undertake to safeguard against it?”

“It used to be that university art museums partnered with the French department, and that was considered interdisciplinary. That’s old hat. Now we are looking for new frontiers.”

“King Tut hasn’t been around for a few thousand years, but his power remains: after a botched repair job of the famed pharaoh’s beard left scratches on his burial mask, Egyptian prosecutors have ordered eight museum workers to a disciplinary court for ‘gross negligence.'”

“The director of the Knoedler & Company gallery in Manhattan, which sold dozens of fakes as the work of modern masters, was not duplicitous, but duped by paintings so expertly forged that they also escaped detection by several prominent art experts, a lawyer for the director, Ann Freedman, told jurors in court on Tuesday.”

“The Museum of Modern Art has decided to forgo the retractable glass wall. And it no longer plans to install a floor that moves up and down nor a new entrance to its sculpture garden. Responding to criticism, the museum and its architecture firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, have dropped the splashiest elements of the expansion plan they disclosed two years ago.”

Two of the designers involved in creating the popular park talk about what the elevated railroad was like before they started working on it, what made their proposal for the project successful, and what they do when a client asks for “another High Line.”

“The private institution will be called the Museum MACAN, for Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, an Indonesian term for archipelago. It is being built and financed by the Indonesian businessman and collector Haryanto Adikoesoemo.”