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Mona Lisa Mystery Solved
Mona Lisa Mystery Solved
Jan 15, 2008 9:50 AM CST

Mona Lisa Mystery Solved

Note from Leonardo contemporary clears up mystery

(Newser) - The true identity of Mona Lisa has puzzled art historians for centuries. A wealthy merchant's wife called Lisa was the obvious candidate, but speculation persisted that the woman with the come-hither smile was Leonardo da Vinci's mother, his lover, or even Leonardo himself. Now German experts say they've solved the...

Russian Art Approved for UK Display
Russian Art Approved for UK Display
Jan 10, 2008 1:40 PM CST

Russian Art Approved for UK Display

Moscow allows paintings to travel after diplomatic spat, fears of seizure

(Newser) - The Royal Academy in London will scramble to open a major exhibition of Russian-owned art after Russian officials finally granted permission to send the works to the UK, the Times of London reports. The show faced cancellation over Russian concerns that the works would be subject to seizure, a dispute...

Long-Serving Met Director Set to Retire

Philippe de Montebello transformed New York's most popular attraction

(Newser) - Philippe de Montebello, the longest-serving director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will retire by year's end, Bloomberg reports. Since he took over in 1977, the museum has nearly doubled its exhibition space, including popular Greek and Roman antiquities galleries that opened in April; at 4.6 million visitors a...

Contemporary Art Scores for Auction Houses

Sales swelled 36% in 2007; some fear houses too invested in the new

(Newser) - Contemporary art has been very good to Sotheby’s, fueling a 46% boost in sales for the world’s second-largest auctioneer this year over last, Bloomberg says. A crop of new collectors from the US, Russia and Asia brought new records for artists like Francis Bacon and Jeff Koons, for...

Art Market Sails Over Turmoil
Art Market Sails Over Turmoil
Dec 26, 2007 6:01 AM CST

Art Market Sails Over Turmoil

Weak dollar, overseas buyers help keep prices high

(Newser) - US financial markets were in chaos this year, but the art market certainly wasn't. The expanding ranks of the super-rich, the weak dollar, and emerging connoisseurs from Russia, China, India, and the Middle East kept auction houses in fine form, the AP reports, with postwar and contemporary works—including a...

Bangladesh in Frenzied Search for Stolen Art

Priceless artifacts go missing before flight to Paris

(Newser) - Bangladesh has mounted a massive hunt for two priceless artifacts that went missing yesterday at the Dhaka airport, Reuters reports. The statues of the Hindu god Vishnu, sculpted 1,500 years ago, were on their way to an exhibition at a Paris museum. Bangladeshi authorities have detained 12 suspects and...

Thieves Nab a Picasso in Museum Heist

Work by Portinari also missing after quick strike in Brazil

(Newser) - Thieves broke into Latin America's foremost museum early yesterday and stole two paintings in a 3-minute heist. They made off with a Picasso portrait and a work by Brazilian painter Candido Portinari from Brazil's São Paulo Museum of Art, the AP reports. The thieves skipped several major works and...

Dissed in New York, Painting Thrives in LA

For LA Times critic, the medium's doing fine, thank you

(Newser) - Is American painting dead? For the art critic of the Los Angeles Times, it's a question only a New Yorker could ask. In LA painting has been the dominant medium for more than half a century, as a new exhibition, Birth of the Cool, makes clear. From pioneers like Ed...

Russia Cancels UK Painting Exhibition
Russia Cancels UK Painting Exhibition
Dec 19, 2007 10:53 AM CST

Russia Cancels UK Painting Exhibition

Art reversal is latest salvo in worsening diplomatic tit-for-tat

(Newser) - A major exhibition of Russian-owned art in London was canceled today, the Guardian reports, the latest casualty of cooled relations in the wake of the Alexander Litvinenko affair. More than 100 paintings were to go on exhibition Jan. 26 at London's Royal Academy, but Russian agencies are now refusing the...

Metropolitan Museum Scores Arbus Archive

Priceless gift includes thousands of negatives, annotated prints

(Newser) - Two years after New York's Metropolitan Museum mounted a landmark Diane Arbus retrospective, the photographer's daughters have donated her complete archives to the museum, reports the New York Times. The gift includes 7,500 rolls of film, hundreds of early photographs, and print sleeves Arbus annotated by hand before she...

Anonymous Painting Is by Caravaggio
Anonymous Painting Is by Caravaggio
Dec 12, 2007 12:37 PM CST

Anonymous Painting Is by Caravaggio

'Copy' of Card Sharps turns out to be earlier version worth $100M

(Newser) - A British art historian who bought a misattributed painting at auction last year has demonstrated it is the work of Caravaggio. The Telegraph reports that Sotheby's sold what it thought was a copy of The Card Sharps, one of Caravaggio's most famous works that currently hangs at the Kimbell Museum...

Gauguin Sculpture a Fake
Gauguin Sculpture a Fake
Dec 12, 2007 12:03 PM CST

Gauguin Sculpture a Fake

'The Faun' outed as impostor after decade in Chicago art museum

(Newser) - After a decade on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, a ceramic figure allegedly sculpted by Paul Gauguin was revealed yesterday to be a fake. The museum discovered 'The Faun,' a half-man, half-goat figure, to be the work not of the 19th century French artist, but of a...

Michelangelo Sketch Turns Up at Vatican

Long-lost drawing is detailed plan for St. Peter's Basilica

(Newser) - A red chalk drawing, possibly Michelangelo's last before his death at 88, has been found in a Vatican archive after nearly 500 years. The sketch is a plan for the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, which Michelangelo was put in charge of in 1546, the BBC reports. A researcher "...

Lion Sculpture Fetches Record Price at Auction

3¼-inch Guennol Lioness goes for $57M, nearly double last mark

(Newser) - A limestone sculpture of a lioness standing at only 3¼ inches sold at auction in New York yesterday for $57 million, smashing the record price for a sculpture, the BBC reports. The Guennol Lioness, believed to have been carved 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and Iran), topped...

In Miami, High Prices Make Buyers Hesitate

Art Basel opens to huge crowds, but some sense a slowdown

(Newser) - Art Basel Miami Beach opens to the public today, but yesterday's VIP preview saw the now-traditional mad dash of collectors to snatch up works. Many people attending the preview were complaining about high prices, the Miami Herald reports—not least at those galleries that are pricing work in euros. Despite...

Antiwar Work Wins Britain's Top Art Prize

Mark Wallinger receives award for Iraq war protest replica

(Newser) - The Turner Prize, Britain's highest award for contemporary art, has gone to Mark Wallinger for his painstaking recreation of a dismantled "peace camp" protesting the Iraq war. Wallinger brought hundreds of antiwar placards and photographs into the classical galleries of Tate Britain in a work that the judges called...

2 Downtowns, 1 New Museum
2 Downtowns, 1 New Museum
Dec 1, 2007 10:22 AM CST

2 Downtowns, 1 New Museum

Japanese architects win raves for new New York building

(Newser) - New York's New Museum, the scrappy showcase for contemporary art founded in a SoHo loft 30 years ago, reopens this weekend in a building Nicolai Ouroussoff describes as "a series of mismatched galleries precariously stacked one atop the other." For the New York Times' architectural critic, the building,...

Rockwell Santa Painting Sells for $2.17M

Prices for magazine cover originals may be heading north

(Newser) - Straddling the line between art, illustration, and extravagant Christmas gift, Norman Rockwell's "Extra Good Boys and Girls" raked in $2.17 million at a Christie's auction this week. The painting, originally a 1939 Saturday Evening Post cover, didn't hit the $2.5 million to $3.5 million estimate, but...

Ouch! In London, Art Hurts
Ouch! In London, Art Hurts
Nov 27, 2007 12:50 PM CST

Ouch! In London, Art Hurts

Installation at Tate Modern causes at least 15 injuries to unsuspecting visitors

(Newser) - A high-profile installation at the Tate Modern has won critical praise and drawn crowds, but Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth 2007 has also caused trouble, the London Times reports. Some 15 people were injured in a month while viewing the work, a crack in the floor of the gallery large enough to...

Trashed Painting Fetches $1M
Trashed Painting Fetches $1M
Nov 21, 2007 8:00 AM CST

Trashed Painting Fetches $1M

Canvas found in garbage sells for seven figures at Sotheby's

(Newser) - A painting by the Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo rescued from the trash sold at Sotheby's last night for over $1 million, the BBC reports. A New York woman spotted the 1970 work in a pile of garbage awaiting pick-up on the curb in her upper West Side neighborhood. She took...

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