ARTINFO - Damien Hirst has been accused of a lot of things in his day ? from peeing in the sinks of posh Soho clubs in his early years to, of late, making "ugly, ugly, ugly" paintings ? and one of the more persistent allegations has been that the bad-boy YBA is a little too quick to steal other artists' ideas. Now this complaint has been vociferously resurrected by Charles Thomson, co-founder of the Stuckist movement, who is accusing Hirst of plagiarizing at least 15 of his most famous works, including his medicine cabinets, spin paintings, diamond-encrusted skull, and pickled shark.
[Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:33:32 GMT]
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ARTINFO - Though corporate America appears to have weathered the worst of the housing-market collapse, the nonprofit sector is continuing to suffer from the weak economy. The latest organization to face considerable danger is the Seattle Art Museum, which has filed a motion in county court asking for approval of a plan to borrow $10 million from its $96 million endowment in order to avoid having to default on a loan that financed its 2007 downtown expansion.
[Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:12:03 GMT]
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Reuters - Please be advised that Friday's London story saying composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's private art collection is to go on show this month is wrong. The exhibition has already taken place. The following story has been withdrawn.
[Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:56:14 GMT]
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ARTINFO - In a turn to a story that seems to have been tailor-made to relieve the late summer news doldrums, the courier who claimed to have lost a $1.35 million Corot painting while on a drunken bender at a New York hotel now appears to have been in the employ of a serial scam artist. The improbable imbroglio received its latest twist when it was revealed that Tom Doyle, the co-owner of the missing artwork, is really Thomas Doyle, a convicted crook who just got out of prison for, you guessed it, art theft, according to the New York Times.
[Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:27:39 GMT]
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ARTINFO - Vincent van Gogh spent much of his adult life alternately browbeating and charming his brother Theo into sending him money, since he was unable to generate much income selling his art. Theo unfailingly complied, but Vincent nevertheless lived a life of rather serious poverty. Thankfully, society treats the artist?s paintings a bit better than it did the artist who made them, as evidenced by the Van Gogh MuseumÂ’s announcement that, after six months of labor, his 1888 masterpiece, "The Bedroom," has been restored.
[Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:38:52 GMT]
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AFP - A rare exhibit of 74 bronze sculptures by French painter Edgar Degas opened Thursday at Sofia's National Art Gallery, the first ever in Bulgaria of the Impressionist artist's work.

[Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:37:43 GMT]
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AP - Vincent van Gogh must have been horrified when he returned from the hospital to his studio in Arles early in 1889 to find one of his favorite paintings damaged by moisture.
[Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:38:31 GMT]
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ARTINFO - A bill was approved by California lawmakers on Monday that allows for the extension of the amount of time during which citizens in that state can sue museums, galleries, and auction houses for the recovery of stolen works of art ? an important step in creating decisive legislation to deal with the myriad difficult-to-try, emotionally fraught cases concerning the restitution of Nazi-looted art.
[Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:57:08 GMT]
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ARTINFO - Looking to improve on its $6.7 million haul at its June auction of Modern and Contemporary Indian art, fledgling Mumbai?based auction house Saffronart has announced that it hopes to net $6.5?$8.7 million at its September edition of the auction. Set for September 8 and 9, the 90-lot sale includes work by 43 artists, including the big-name masters ? like S. H. Raza and N. S. Harsha ? that have proven to be the auction house?s bread and butter in recent sales.
[Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:20:40 GMT]
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ARTINFO - Zimbabwean painter Owen Maseko will go to trial later this month in his native country for exhibiting realistic depictions of massacres that took place three decades ago under the regime of Robert Mugabe, who served as prime minister at the time. The artworks ? some small, others wall-engulfing murals ? depict images of political events that, according to government authorities, are prohibited under current law.
[Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:31:03 GMT]
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ARTINFO - Here?s a story, sad but true, about a man who took a coy-looking female to a hotel, then got drunk and lost her. Unfortunately for this man, an art courier named James Carl Haggarty, his lady friend was highly two-dimensional. In fact, she was contained within a painting ? none other than "Portrait of a Girl," a 19th-century work by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot with an estimated value of $1.4 million, which Haggarty was taking to show to a potential buyer. In a lawsuit filed against Haggarty by Kristyn Trudgeon, the majority owner of the portrait, she states that Haggarty woke up to find that he "did not have the painting and could not recall its whereabouts, citing that he had too much to drink the previous evening." Whoops.
[Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:27:35 GMT]
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ARTINFO - Mexico City?s burgeoning art scene will welcome a new private museum in November, when billionaire collector Carlos Slim inaugurates a new branch of his Soumaya museum. The $750-million project ? that?s 50 percent more than SFMOMA plans to spend on its recently announced expansion, for those keeping track at home ? has been designed by Slim?s son-in-law Fernando Romero and is already under construction in western Mexico City, according to Reuters.
[Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:17:28 GMT]
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ARTINFO - The Coordination de la Défense de Versailles (CDV) doesn?t pull any punches when expressing its opposition to the upcoming exhibition of Japanese Pop artist Takashi Murakami at the Château of Versailles. Having been formed to press (unsuccessfully) for the cancellation of a Jeff Koons show in the palace in 2008, the organization now condemns what it calls "the veritable ?murder? of our heritage, our artistic identity, and our most sacred culture."
[Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:17:25 GMT]
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ARTINFO - With U.S President Barack Obama set to announce the end of his nation's combat operations in Iraq in a televised address this evening, the Middle Eastern country's long history of turmoil and its recent, slow progress toward peace will once again receive major media attention. However, if American-born, Italy-based curator Mary Angela Schroth gets her way, it will be on the international stage again in the near future for a much more positive reason. Along with a team of patrons, artists, and curators, she is working to create a national pavilion for the nation at the 54th Venice Biennale, which opens next June. It has not participated in the biannual event since 1976.
[Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:28:02 GMT]
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ARTINFO - It is a dangerous world out there. Just days after a van Gogh was stolen from a Cairo museum, a work by Renaissance master Titian that is housed in the Santa Maria della Salute basilica in Venice was almost accidentally destroyed. The culprit this time? Italian firefighters attempting to quell a blaze in a nearby seminary.
[Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:33:50 GMT]
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ARTINFO - Funding for the arts has been cut in many cities in recent years as a result of the troubled economy, but some Detroit Symphony Orchestra members say that they believe something else is at least partially responsible for the drastic pay cuts that have been proposed by the orchestra's administrators:  a history of mismanagement. Through their union, they have voted to authorize a strike.
[Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:47:29 GMT]
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ARTINFO - Though entrepreneur Rick Norsigian continues to argue that photographic negatives he purchased at a California garage sale are the work of famed American photographer Ansel Adams, the evidence supporting that stance is quickly unraveling. One of the experts that had authenticated the works, former Museum of Fine Arts, Boston curator Robert C. Moeller III, has recanted his previous assessment, telling the New York Times that at least some of the photographs were taken by another man, Earl Brooks. Norsigian has been working with a team of lawyers to sell prints of the negatives, which he says are worth $200 million.
[Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:20:22 GMT]
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ARTINFO - "With Glass, Under Glass, Without Glass," at Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, 185, Sainte-Catherine Ouest, Montreal, Canada, through October 3, macm.org
[Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:27:28 GMT]
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ARTINFO - Though U.K.-based Architect Zaha Hadid was born in Baghdad, she has never before received a commission to work there ? or anywhere in Iraq, for that matter. But that is no longer the case. Authorities at Baghdad's Central Bank have confirmed that the award-winning architect has been picked to design a new headquarters for the institution. Hadid?s new design will replace the bank?s previous home, a marble-clad concrete structure that was attacked by suicide bombers and gunmen on June 13, killing 14 people and injuring well over 50.
[Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:51:24 GMT]
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ARTINFO - Street art, teetering as it has been for the last decade between crime and high-end gallery cash crop, has taken another step toward establishing itself as a legal, rarefied art form. This past weekend saw the launch of the Urban Art Foundation, which styles itself as an ACLU for graffiti-related criminal charges, offering financial backing and legal representation for those arrested for tagging city streets. It also hopes to procure landmark status for some of New York?s finest covertly-made works and promote the art form in public schools.
[Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:30:13 GMT]
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