Guggenheim Museum Publications Receive Excellence Awards

NEW YORK, NY.- The first-ever in-depth exploration of the process behind one of the greatest modern buildings in America, The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum has won First Prize in the Book category in the 2009 American Association of Museums (AAM) Publications Design Competition. Designed by Abbott Miller and Susan Brzozowski, of the design firm Pentagram, the book examines the history, design, and construction of Wright’s masterwork, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The annual [...]

Italian Researchers Say They May Have Found Caravaggio Bones

ROME.- Italian researchers said Friday that they may be close to identifying the remains of Caravaggio, the great Italian painter whose death 400 years ago is shrouded in mystery. The researchers have dug up and studied bones found in a Tuscan town where Caravaggio died in 1610. According to results of carbon dating and other analyses released Friday, one set of bones is compatible with Caravaggio’s remains. The bones belonged to a man who died in the same period as [...]

Dali in the Third Dimension: New Publication Excites the Artworld

BALERNA.- Welcome to the world of Salvador Dali, in three dimensions! ‘Dali in the Third Dimension is a newly published study of three dimensional artworks by Salvador Dali. This impressive hardback book, 334 pages long, contains over 250 beautiful colour photographs detailing more than 150 artworks. The reader is invited to admire this exciting collection of sculpture and to discover the history behind their creation. From the delicate shimmering beauty of the surrealist glass Daum sculpture, to majestic awe inspiring [...]

Painting in Storage at Italian Ducal Palace May Be Raphael’s

ROME.- A finely painted portrait of a demurely looking woman nestled in an exceptionally ornate frame that was kept in an Italian ducal palace storeroom appears to be a Raphael original and not a copy as long thought, an art official in central Italy said Friday. However, experts on the Renaissance giant quickly cautioned that art historians would have to closely study it before any conclusions can be made. Mario Scalini, state superintendent for art in Modena and nearby towns, [...]

Skate’s LLC Introduces Three New Art Collector Resources

NEW YORK, NY.- Skate’s LLC, the world’s leading art investment research firm, has introduced three new resources to assist art market collectors in improving the economics and reducing the risks of their art trades. These new tools—Skate’s Artwork Background Report, Art Asset Pricing Service and the Platinum premium membership — further establish Skate’s role as a full-service provider of independent art market data and research for investors. Artwork Background Reports provide Skate’s clients with a quick vetting solution for both [...]

Boston’s MFA Uses Dassault’s 3D Tech to Study Pyramids

BOSTON, MA.- Dassault Systèmes, a world leader in 3D software solutions and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), one of the world’s most important encyclopedic art museums, today announced that they will join forces in a strategic innovation partnership to bring the power of industrial and experiential 3D to the domain of archaeology. The Giza Archives Project is a digital initiative, housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It is [...]

MOCA Publishes a New Book about Contemporary Art for Young Audiences

LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), announces the publication of a new children’s book about contemporary art, titled ‘Breaking the Rules: What is Contemporary Art?’. Written by award winning author Susan Rubin, the 64-page hardcover book is the first to make the museum’s world-renowned permanent collection accessible to young audiences (ages 8–12). It provides an introduction to the work of 25 contemporary artists represented in the museum’s collection, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alighiero Boetti, Chris Burden, [...]

Italian Group of Researchers Hopes to Find Caravaggio’s Bones

PORTO ERCOLE.- Mystery swirls around the death of the great Italian painter Caravaggio, who died at age 39 after a dissipated life of street brawls, brothels, and boozing. Now, as art lovers mark the 400th anniversary of the artist’s death in this beach town on the Tuscan coast, researchers are digging for answers. Descending into a dark crypt one recent day, researcher Antonio Moretti took his shovel to a waist-high pile of centuries-old skulls and bones, the mass grave that [...]

Coincidences at the End of 18th and 19th Centuries Analyzed

MEXICO CITY.- Historians, anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists from different Mexican academic institutions gathered at the seminar “Fin de siglos: ¿fin de ciclos?” (“End of Centuries: End of Cycles?”), coinciding that by the end of the last centuries (18th, 19th and 20th) several historical aspects have repeated in a cyclic way; these aspects were analyzed with the objective of defining the present historical moment, to determine if we are “entering another end of cycle”. Specialists compared facts considered characteristic of [...]

City Organizations Partner with AGO and No.9 to Bring Contemporary Art to Inner-City Students

TORONTO.- The Art Gallery of Ontario and No. 9: Contemporary Art and the Environment are partnering with the Toronto District School Board, the Toronto Public Library, and the World Wildlife Fund to bring contemporary art and environmental education to 10,000 inner city elementary students across the GTA. In collaboration with internationally-recognized Canadian artist IAIN BAXTER&, the IAIN BAXTER& ECOARTVAN hits the streets of Toronto from April 1 through May 31, and will visit 25 of the TDSB’s Model Schools for [...]

Cornell University Study Super-Sizes the “Last Supper”

NEW YORK (REUTERS).- We’ve been overeating our way through ever-larger portions over the past 1,000 years, a U.S. study revealed after studying more than 50 paintings of the Biblical Last Supper. The study, by a Cornell University professor and his brother who is a Presbyterian minister and a religious studies professor, showed that the sizes of the portions and plates in the artworks, which were painted over the past millennium, have gradually grown by between 23 and 69 percent. This [...]

Caravaggio Investigation to Show Definitive Results in May

MILAN.- Italian anthropologists expect to have a definite result in their investigation into Baroque artist Caravaggio’s death in May, hopefully unveiling a centuries old mystery. Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage has been working since last year to find out what caused the painter’s death in 1610 and the whereabouts of his corpse. Working with different experts from different universities, the group has now pinned down nine sets of bones that could prove a match to Michelangelo Merisi, known as [...]

Students and Gallery Reveal True Identity of Elizabethan Portrait

LONDON.- A sixteenth-century portrait of a young man, that belongs to the National Portrait Gallery, has been identified as Sir Robert Dudley, the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite courtier, the Earl of Leicester. The discovery coincides with the publication of a book in which the author Tracy Chevalier penned her own short story imagining the sitter’s identity. The discovery was made by Bristol University students who were working under the supervision of the National Portrait Gallery on a [...]

Prize Awarded to Glasses that Enable Paralysed Artists to Draw

LONDON.- The EyeWriter has today, Friday 12 March 2010, been chosen as the winner of the first FutureEverything Award, a £10,000 prize set up by FutureEverything to celebrate the creative imagination that will shape our future. The EyeWriter is a pair of low-cost eye-tracking glasses that allow artists and graffiti writers with paralysis to draw using only their eyes. Inspired by Tony Quan, a graffiti writer, social activist and publisher who was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (AML) in 2003, [...]

Restoration of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece “The Bedroom” can be Followed Via Blog

AMSTERDAM.- March 11 marks the beginning of a comprehensive campaign on Vincent van Gogh’s painting “The Bedroom” (1888). Art lovers can follow the process of restoring this popular painting step by step via a special blog. Among others the museum’s head of restoration Ella Hendriks will give online updates on the progress of the restoration week by week. “It’s the first time we’ve rendered each step of a restoration accessible to the public in this way” says Axel Rüger, director [...]