Category: visual

“The building, to be known as the Nobelhuset, will be sited on Stockholm’s Blasieholmen, next to the Swedish National Museum, in the centre of the city. The design is a spare, glass block, its façades defined by slender brass mullions that give it a glistening, golden sheen intended to look particularly striking in the northern light.”

For decades, archaeologist Monica Hanna says, average Egyptians “believed the heritage belonged to the state, to tourists, not to the people.” As a result, she said, youth are easily persuaded by their elders to help plunder cemeteries and religious sites in a fashion that recalls the thievery in Dickens’ “Oliver Twist.”

“A group of major Detroit creditors said four investors have made tentative billion-dollar bids for the Detroit Institute of Arts – or key portions of its collection – in a move aimed at undercutting the city’s competing proposal to give the museum to a nonprofit in exchange for $816 million in outside funding that would help reduce pension cuts.”

“Cleaners at the city’s Grand Hyatt hotel are suspected to have dumped a painting that had just sold for more than HK$28 million with rubbish that was then taken to a landfill.”

Wait, didn’t they just add that Santiago Calatrava building with the wings? Actually, that was 13 years ago. Not only will this new addition add 8,000 square feet of exhibition space, the price tag is, as these things go, relatively modest.

“The Corcoran, The National Gallery of Art and George Washington University were hoping to make the details of the takeover public this week, but it turns out breaking up an institution as old and diverse as the Corcoran is taking more time than they expected.”

“Many galleries are signing artists and not doing enough to promote their work.” And in today’s hyper-charged art market, there are many alternative ways of promoting your own art such as working with a manager or hiring your own staff to take on the roles traditionally performed by galleries.

Jerry Saltz: “I was stunned by this work at the time. I still am. Try to conceive of Abraham Lincoln taking up painting after his presidency. Then imagine him choosing to render himself naked in a bathtub, and you’ll see how creepy-interesting Bush’s bathtub paintings are.”

Officials had “seized some 1,400 items, including 1,280 artworks, from Cornelius Gurlitt’s apartment in 2012 while investigating a tax case. Gurlitt’s lawyers appealed the seizure, arguing that the art wasn’t relevant as evidence for prosecutors’ suspicions of import tax evasion. He also said that seizing the entire collection was disproportionate.”

Omaha’s Joslyn Art Museum has had the work for 72 years, but had concluded by 1987 that it was by a Rembrandt student – until a leading scholar authenticated it this year.