The Art Detective Fakes, Frauds, and Finds and the Search for Lost Treasures

NEW YORK.- When Philip Mold began as a professional art dealer 22 years ago, the buying and selling of high-end artwork was confined to a small group of well-versed art historians who scoured the globe in search of masterpieces. But the timeless world of art has changed in the age of the Internet and technology. Once limited to examining 15 to 20 works per day, Mold and his staff can now judge the value of between 50 and 100 works [...]

Art collector buys £8,000 painting – and X-ray shows a £50,000 picture underneath

Torquay, United Kingdom.- A collector who bought a portrait by a celebrated British artist has uncovered a £50,000 masterpiece – after an X-ray revealed another picture hidden underneath. The art lover bought the original piece – a self-portrait by Robert Lenkiewicz depicting the artist in a nude pose with a female model – at auction for £8,500. But after advice from an expert the unnamed owner took the oil painting to Torbay Hospital in Torquay, Devon to have it X-rayed. [...]

Art and Design to Raise Funds for Literacy in London

LONDON.- PRATHAM is one of the world’s leading and most respected non-profit organisations. It is known for its enduring literacy movement in India and for achieving annual donations of more than 2 million pounds to help provide quality education to underprivileged children. With six international offices chaired by the movers and shakers of India’s financial world and several awards including the CNN IBN Indian of the Year in 2009, the charity has changed the lives of 34 million children in [...]

Visitors will Observe Conservators Investigating Monet’s “Water Lilies”

KANSAS CITY, MO.- Visitors to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art on June 24 and 25 and July 1 and 2 will be able to observe Museum conservation specialists as they perform various scientific examinations on Claude Monet’s Water Lilies. The examination is made possible with an award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of a $1 million challenge grant. The grant’s purpose is to establish an endowment to provide additional scientific expertise for research and conservation investigation on [...]

Italian Researchers Think they Have Found Caravaggio’s Bones

ROME (AP).- Italian researchers believe they have found the remains of Caravaggio, but 400 years later some of the mysteries surrounding the death of the artist may never be solved. After a year of digging and analyzing centuries-old bones, the researchers said Wednesday they have identified a set of bones they believe to be Caravaggio’s, though they admit they can never be 100 percent certain. They think Caravaggio may have died from sunstroke while weakened by syphilis and other ailments. [...]

Public Allowed to See Restoration of Dalí Painting at Museum in Rotterdam

ROTTERDAM.- Have you ever seen a famous painting being restored? This summer the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is letting everyone enjoy a process that is usually carried out behind closed doors. From mid-June the enormous painting Landscape with a Girl Skipping Rope by the world-famous Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí will undergo a miraculous restoration. You can follow the silent spectacle for two months in the Serra gallery. The painting and six other Dalís from the museum collection will then go [...]

“Hidden” Tintoretto Goes on Public Display for the First Time

DORSET.- A hidden painting by Jacopo Tintoretto, the last of the three great Venetian Renaissance painters, has gone on public display for the first time and can be seen at Kingston Lacy in Dorset. The painting has spent most of the last 30 years in storage but, following a major programme of cleaning and restoration, “Apollo (or Hymen) Crowning a Poet and Giving Him a Spouse” can be seen at last. The National Trust Needs Your Help However, as well [...]

Codices Guarded in France to be Digitalized

MEXICO CITY.- After several requests to the National Library of France, Mexican specialists obtained facsimile copies of 80 codices and manuscripts guarded at the European precinct, which will allow deepening in their research, interpretation and analysis, as well as making possible their publication in a DVD. This work is part of Amoxcalli Project, launched 6 years ago by the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) with collaboration of experts from the National Institute of Anthropology and [...]

Red List of Cultural Objects at Risk to be Announced Today

MEXICO CITY.- Given the patrimonial richness of Mexico and Central American nations, on Tuesday June 8th 2010 the International Council of Museums (ICOM) will announce the Red List of Cultural Objects at Risk in Central America and Mexico, elaborated by a group of experts from Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. The aim of the document to be presented at 10:30 in the Jaime Torres Bodet Auditorium, at the National Museum of Anthropology (MNA) is [...]

Europeana Publishes First White Paper: Knowledge = Information In Context

THE HAGUE.- Europeana is proud to announce its first White Paper: a look at the key role linked data will play in Europeana’s development and in helping Europe ’s citizens make connections between existing knowledge to achieve new cultural and scientific advances. Linked data gives machines the ability to make associations and put search terms into context. Without it, Europeana could be seen as a simple collection of digital objects. With linked data, the potential is far greater, as the [...]

Guggenheim Study Reveals Importance of Education in Development of Problem-Solving Skills and Creativity

NEW YORK, NY.- On June 3 and 4, “Thinking Like an Artist: Creativity and Problem Solving in the Classroom”, a conference for art and museum educators, administrators, and policy makers from across the nation, will convene in the Sackler Center for Arts Education at the Guggenheim Museum. During this conference, the Guggenheim will present key findings from The Art of Problem Solving, a four-year research initiative that evaluated the impact of its pioneering arts education program Learning Through Art (LTA) [...]

Florentine Codex, Great Intellectual Enterprise of 16th Century

MEXICO CITY.- Created under the orders of Bernardino de Sahagun by 20 tlacuilos or painters and 4 Indigenous masters, Florentine Codex is one of the greatest expressions of the Renascence in America. Bilingual and bicultural, this ancient encyclopedia was written in two columns, one in Nahuatl and the other in Spanish as a summary, and is integrated by 4,000 handwritten pages with 2,686 colored images; each book has a prologue where Sahagun places the work in its dimension and time. [...]

Advanced Technique, RTI, Used to Decipher Maya Glyphs

MEXICO CITY.- As part of most recent studies at Tonina Archaeological Zone, in Chiapas, a technique known as RTI (Reflection Transformation Imaging) is being applied for the first time in Mexico on Maya sculptures, with the aim of documenting the ancient monuments and having more details of inscriptions. Carlos Pallan Gayol, archaeologist at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), informed that the method has been applied on10 monuments. It allows manipulating light on a photographic sequence in an [...]

Bank of America Merrill Lynch Announces Unique Art Conservation Funding Programme

LONDON.- Bank of America Merrill Lynch today launched a major initiative to help conserve important works of art and cultural treasures. As part of the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Art Conservation Programme, The Bank of America Charitable Foundation, Inc. will provide grants to restore cherished art works to preserve their unique cultural value for future generations. Applications are welcome from non-profit museums and cultural institutions throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa. They will be assessed by a group [...]

Mosaic Art NOW 2010: Great Art, Inspiring Artists, Provocative Thinking

WAKEFIELD, MA.- Bill Buckingham, Nancie Mills Pipgras and Michael Welch, Editors of Mosaic Art NOW (MAN) have announced the release of the 2010 edition of the magazine. The 106-page, high quality, full color magazine is designed to promote the international understanding and appreciation of contemporary mosaics. The highlight of this year’s MAN is the Exhibition in Print, an international, juried exhibition curated by Scott Shields, PhD., Chief Curator of the Crocker Art Museum of Sacramento, California. Said Buckingham, “Our hope [...]