Karijn Kakebeeke Named Winner of the 2009 BMW Paris Photo Prize

PARIS.- Karijn Kakebeeke was named winner of the 2009 BMW – Paris Photo Prize for contemporary photography at the opening of Paris Photo, receiving the 12 000 Euros (US $ 15, 000) Prize. Karijn Kakabeeke, represented by The Empty Quarter Gallery from Dubai, is the sixth winner of this major international award. Born in 1974, the Dutch photographer is pursuing her continuing interest in social issues through her photojournalistic, essayistic images. In this context, she captures pictures that stand as [...]

Sotheby’s Hopes “Zero Art” Sale will Raise Plenty of Cash

LONDON.- Sotheby’s is hoping its February sale of 49 works from the so-called “Zero Art” movement will raise plenty of cash, and confidence is high after a recent New York contemporary auction that eclipsed expectations. The works from the private collection of Gerhard and Anna Lenz are expected to fetch more than 12 million pounds ($20.2 million) and will form part of the auctioneer’s London contemporary art sale in 2010. Jan Schoonhoven, “Relief R 69-1″, 104 x 104 cm. Executed [...]

Do Antiquities Really Belong To Their Country Of Origin?

Zahi Hawass regards the Rosetta Stone, like so much else, as stolen property languishing in exile. “We own that stone,” he told Al Jazeera, speaking as the secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. The British Museum does not agree — at least not yet. But never underestimate Dr. Hawass when it comes to this sort of custody dispute. He has prevailed so often in getting pieces returned to what he calls their “motherland” that museum curators are scrambling [...]

UC Berkeley Modifying Museum Building Project; Alternate Plan Due Early Next Year

BERKELEY, CA.- The University of California, Berkeley’s plans for a new Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) are being modified due to lingering economic uncertainty, museum and university officials announced today. Several intriguing concepts for a new BAM/PFA home are under review and a detailed plan is expected to be unveiled early next year, said Lawrence Rinder, the director of BAM/PFA, which is one of the largest university art museums in the United States in both size and [...]

High Names Michael Rooks New Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

ATLANTA, GA.- Michael E. Shapiro, Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr. Director of the High Museum of Art, announced today that the High has appointed Michael Rooks as the new Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Rooks will officially join the High in January 2010. Rooks has held curator positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Contemporary Museum Honolulu, and at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Most recently, Rooks served as Chief Curator and Director of [...]

Nine Dusseldorf Museums and Galleries Prepare for Dusseldorf’s Second Quadriennale

DUSSELDORF.- Art enthusiasts from Germany and abroad are looking forward to the second Quadriennale, which will open on September 10, 2010 and ends in January 2011. Nine Duesseldorf museums and galleries are preparing high quality exhibitions with considerable grants from the regional capital without which the ambitious exhibition plans would not be possible. Despite the general financial crisis, the city is supporting the Quadriennale with additional funds of approx. five million Euros. “With this Festival of Arts, the city with [...]

China calls for return of art treasures from abroad

BEIJING  – China has ratcheted up pressure for imperial treasures to be repatriated, condemning overseas auctions of its relics and demanding they come home. China is particularly eager to get back a series of bronze animal heads looted in 1860 by British and French soldiers when they burned down the Qing emperors’ summer palace in Beijing. China’s drive to recover the heads has alarmed Western museums and auction houses, who are also sparring with Greece and other nations over the [...]

‘Turner to Czanne’ is a hit at Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse

In 1908, two straight-laced Welsh sisters became the world’s unlikeliest avant-garde art collectors. Gwendoline and Margaret Davies were strict Calvinists, teetotalers and spinsters. They also had a passion for sumptuous Impressionist paintings — and the means to gratify it. Granddaughters of a railway magnate, each received the modern equivalent of $195 million at age 25. For 12 years, they hunted down seductive canvases by Monet, Renoir, Czanne and others. The astonishing results of their shared obsession have arrived at Syracuse’s [...]

How the Mona Lisa Lost Her Eyebrows

Pascal Cotte said Leonardo built the painting up in layers, the last being a special glaze whose optical properties increased the illusion of a three-dimensional face. Above the glaze Leonardo painted details such as the eyebrows. Cotte said: “That could explain why the eyebrows have disappeared – they have faded because of chemical reactions or they have been cleaned off.” He has uncovered a host of secrets about the Mona Lisa using a 240 megapixel camera. It can measure light [...]

Edvard Munch artwork stolen in Norway

OSLO — Thieves stole a valuable artwork by Edvard Munch from an Oslo art dealer in the latest of a string of art heists targeting work by the famous Norwegian expressionist, police said Friday. One or more thieves stole “Historien” — or “History” — from Nyborgs Kunst in downtown Oslo after smashing one of the dealership’s windows with a rock, police spokeswoman Unni Groendal said. The hand-colored lithograph, printed in 1914, is worth “in the millions” of kroner (hundreds of [...]

Nasher Museum of Art at Duke Presents “Big Shots: Andy Warhol Polaroids”

DURHAM, NC.- “Big Shots: Andy Warhol Polaroids,” an exhibition of rare photographs, many depicting celebrities, will open at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke on Thursday, Nov. 12. The exhibition includes about 250 Polaroids and 75 silver gelatin black-and-white prints taken by Warhol from 1970 to 1987. The exhibition includes Warhol’s Polaroids of such famous subjects as artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, writer Truman Capote, skater Dorothy Hamill, fashion icon Bianca Jagger, artist Grace Jones, golfer Jack Nicklaus and musician Rick [...]

Penelope Curtis named new Tate Britain director

Penelope Curtis, curator of the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, has been appointed the new director of Tate Britain. Dr Curtis, 48, a specialist in sculpture and 20th-century British art, will succeed Stephen Deuchar, who has held the role for 11 years and is leaving to become director of the Art Fund. Dr Curtis will take up her appointment at Tate Britain next April. Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate galleries, said Dr Curtis had made an “outstanding contribution” [...]

Ex Real Madrid President, Lorenzo Sanz, Arrested Over Art Exports

The ex President of Real Madrid, the businessman Lorenzo Sanz, has been arrested for trying to take works of art out of Spain illegally. Reports indicate he gave a statement to the police in a central Madrid police station at Retiro on Wednesday night, and was allowed to go home afterwards, but with charges outstanding. His arrest by the patrimonial department of the National Police is in connection with the movement of art to Italy. The ex President of Real [...]

Picasso Artworks at New Delhi by Fundación Mapfre

NEW DELHI.- Today, Fundación Mapfre and the Cervantes Institute have opened the exhibition ‘Vollard Suite’ by Pablo Picasso. It will be on show in the exhibitions halls at the aforementioned centre until January 24, 2010. The exhibition includes 100 prints created by Picasso between 13th September 1930 and March 1937, commissioned by the art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard. This set of engravings appeared in 1939 in two formats: one large (760 mm x 500 mm) on vellum paper signed [...]

Top works fail at Christie’s contemporary auction

NEW YORK— Apart from two pricey casualties, Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary week opener brought an impressive $74,154,500, with 39 of the 46 lots selling for a crisp buy-in rate of fifteen percent by lot and eighteen percent by value. Twenty-one of the 39 lots that sold made over one million dollars. The results compared to the pre-sale estimate of $61,450,000 to $88 million, which had been reduced thanks to the 11th-hour withdrawal of Andy Warhol’s rare-to-market, back cover lot, Most [...]