What Mona Lisa Sounded Like A Japanese acoustics expert says he's been able to recreate Mona Lisa's voice. "Dr Matsumi Suzuki, who generally uses his skills to help with criminal investigations, measured the face and hands of Leonardo da Vinci's famous 16th century portrait to estimate her height at 168cm and create a model of her skull. Once we have that, we can create a voice very similar to that of the person concerned." The Age (Melbourne) 06/01/06

Major Egyptian Tomb Revealed "Buried under 13 feet of rubble and stones just 16 feet away from King Tutankhamun's resting place, the chamber is believed to be the 63rd tomb found since the valley was first mapped in the 18th century. It is the first chamber discovered since the boy pharaoh was uncovered in 1922." Discovery 05/31/06

Thieves Stealing Statues For Scrap Two bronze statues worth £45,000 in total have become the latest artworks to be stolen by thieves believed to be taking sculptures for their scrap value in the UK. The Independent (UK) 05/31/06

The Enigmatic Moscow Art Market "The economic free-for-all after the collapse of the Soviet Union created a new class of wealthy entrepreneurs who have been buying Russian art and are already widening their collecting interests. All this should favour the Moscow fair, founded two years ago, but nothing in Russia is ever as simple as it seems." The Telegraph (UK) 05/30/06

Duchamp Tops Favorite Artist Survey The Art Newspaper polled UK art students on who their favorite artist is. The winner: Marcel Duchamp. "The French conceptualist who famously placed a urinal in a New York gallery in 1917 and declared “this is art”, has come top of our survey of students from 11 of the leading art schools in the UK." The Art Newspaper 05/30/06

Thieves Raid Ottawa Art Gallery An Ottawa gallery was stripped of all its art by thieves this weekend. "Thirty paintings, 10 sculptures and about 30 pieces of jewelry by emerging and established artists from the area were taken in the heist at the Blink Gallery on Sunday night or Monday morning. The robbers even took the labels for each piece." CBC 05/30/06

Discovery: Ancient Treasure Replaced By Fakes Officials have discovered that two artifacts from the treasure of 6th Century BC Lydian ruler, King Croesus, have been stolen from a museum in Turkey and replaced with fakes. BBC 05/30/06

Half-Dressed Boston Museum Gets A Rave Robert Campbell likes the way Boston's new Institute of Contemporary Art looks while it's still in construction. "I'm not saying the ICA looks better now than it will when it opens Sept. 17. But it looks and feels great, even -- maybe especially -- when enveloped by wind-driven rain and choppy seas." Boston Globe 05/30/06

Canadian Art Auction Beats The Estimates "Adding to the excitement yesterday were record-setting prices for works by Alex Colville, Jean-Paul Lemieux, Henrietta Mabel May, Jack Shadbolt and Robert Pilot. The total take well surpassed the pre-sale estimate of $3.3- to $4.5-million, another affirmation of current robustness of the Canadian resale art market." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/30/06

Miami's New Architecture Boom "Major developers across the country have long since realized, of course, that celebrity architecture sells. But its sudden rise here seems linked to a new level of design consciousness, an outgrowth of the now-entrenched fashion industry in South Beach and the booming success of Art Basel Miami Beach, an art fair held annually since 2000." The New York Times 05/30/06

Saatchi - The Empty Cube Online Charles Saatchi has opened an online gallery. "In creating a site that offers to exhibit exactly the kind of outsider who will have spent the last two decades years reviling Saatchi, the millionaire collector appears to have done something innovative, even generous. But it's only after, ooh, about ten minutes at Your Gallery that you see the emptiness of the exercise." The Guardian (UK) 05/27/06

A Constable Puzzle - The Sketch that Might Have Been For Something Else "The Opening of Waterloo Bridge was supposed to be reunited with its full-scale preliminary sketch as part of 'Constable: the Great Landscapes', opening at Tate Britain on Thursday. But shortly before the exhibition was due to open, technical experts discovered the sketch was more likely to be the beginnings of a separate work that was never finished." The Observer (UK) 05/28/06

Denver Contemporary Looks To Step Up The Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver is only 10 years old. But it is looking to break into the big leagues with a new $15 million building. "Perhaps most important, the museum hopes to gain the participation of top-level international artists it simply could not approach before because of the deficiencies of its facility and the institution's lack of stature." Denver Post 05/28/06

Rocky Business - The Movie Statue And The Museum The clunky statue of Rocky from the Sylvester Stallone movie franchise is coming back to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Critic Edward Sozanski thinks that's just fine. "Copenhagen has its little mermaid and New York has its library lions. So why can't the citizens of Philadelphia and their paying guests have their Rocky? As Michael Corleone observed, it's strictly business. The only thing wrong with Rocky Reborn is the intended placement." Philadelphia Inquirer 05/28/06

Beauty... In A Wind Farm "A look at contrasting aesthetic intuitions about wind farms reveals a paradigm shift in how we understand beauty. Our sense of the nature of beauty cannot be separated from our sense of the beauty of nature..." Design Observer 05/25/06

Israel Museum To Expand The Israel Museum is to get a $50 million renovation and expansion. "The museum buildings, which sit on a 20 acre site, have grown from 5,000 to 50,000 sq. m since the museum opened in 1965. Plans are being drawn up to reorganise, expand and update the various museum buildings and create new buildings to improve entry, services and circulation for the visitors, which vary between 500,000 and one million a year." The Art Newspaper 05/25/06

The Louvre From On High? What will Atlanta's High Museum deal with the Louvre to borrow artwork look like? Lee Rosenbaum asks the question: "How many of those loans will actually come from the Louvre's A-List? The High is paying top dollar for the cachet of the French museum's imprimatur." But the museum could be sending lesser works by well-known names. "The proof will be in the seeing. But the proliferation of high-rent shows, whereby major museums beef up their budgets at the expense of other museums, seems like the wrong kind of fundraising." CultureGrrl 05/25/06

Cooper-Hewitt Thinks More Modest "A year after exploring a $75 million expansion that would create three new floors underground, the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum has decided on a relatively modest $25 million renovation that involves little construction." The New York Times 05/25/06

The China Puzzle "For architects, China is the land of dreams. The construction statistics tantalize. The Chinese consume 54.7 percent of the concrete and 36.1 percent of the steel produced in the world, according to a 2004 report in Architectural Record. Hungry architects are drawn to China by the abundance of economic opportunities. But Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss firm that designed the stadium, doesn't need to drum up business. It has more work than it can handle." And yet, the promise of China is also the problem with China... New York Times Magazine 05/21/06

Biloxi And The New Urbanism "New Urbanism arose as a reaction to sprawl, the default American landscape of highways lined with strip malls and big-box stores and suburban subdivisions populated by a homogeneous and insulated middle class. The New Urbanists proposed higher-density, pedestrian-friendly communities: old-fashioned neighborhoods with schools and shops, parks and offices, single-family homes and low-income apartment buildings, all mixed together and connected by shady streets and wide sidewalks." But is that what Biloxi wants? New York Times Magazine 05/21/06

Architecture In The Breach "In recent years, it is architecture more than any other aspect of contemporary culture that has touched the rawest nerves. It was architecture that Saddam Hussein used to consolidate his grip on Iraq. And it was architecture that the Serbs and the Croats deployed in the first stages of their bloody battle over the division of the former Yugoslavia... Often quite wrongly, architecture is equated with political beliefs...
New York Times Magazine 05/21/06

Piano Takes New York "Unlike most other architectural stars, Renzo Piano has no signature style. Instead, his work is characterized by a genius for balance and context, an ability to establish inventive correspondences between his buildings and those that surround them. Until now, New York hasn’t had a building by Piano, but his expansion of the Morgan Library, which has just reopened as the Morgan Library & Museum, is the beachhead for what may become a significant presence in the city."
The New Yorker 05/22/06

Kinkade Houses To Come To Life Thomas Kinkade - the self-styles "painter of light" - is designing a series of homes in Idaho to look like housees in his paintings. "The California artist, beloved by middlebrow America but reviled by the art establishment, has signed a deal with developers in this resort city to help design five lake-view houses that are copies of homes in paintings such as 'Beyond Autumn Gate.' The houses will cost $4 million to $6 million."
Los Angeles Times 05/24/06

London Galleries Cash In On Contemporary "Britain's once sleepy contemporary art market has exploded. The problem is that its expansion coincides with a financial squeeze on the publicly funded institutions that have long dominated new art in Britain, and this could imperil the delicate balance of power between the public and private sectors." The Guardian (UK) 05/24/06

Big Changes In The Antiques Trade "A profound change has taken place in the antiques market. In the past only one or two openly acknowledged sales of dealers’ stock would be held each year, often with dire results. Dealers were reluctant to pay premiums at auction when they could buy from their colleagues in the trade." Now big auction sales are big successes. The Art Newspaper 05/19/06

Hirst's Giant Virgin Mary Goes Up In London A new 35-foot high statue by Damien Hirst was erected in London Tuesday. "The Virgin Mother has layers removed on one side to reveal the foetus and the woman's skull, muscles and tissue. The bronze statue, recalling Edgar Degas's Little Dancer, dominates the courtyard in front of the gallery, and is visible from Piccadilly where passers by stopped to look as a crane hoisted it into place on Monday." BBC 05/23/06

Two New Manhattan Towers Are A (Brilliant) Throwback "The condo market that helped propel the change has begun to cool in many American downtowns. But the shift in skyscraper architecture from commercial to residential has been so sharp and widespread that it's difficult not to think of Norman Foster and David Childs as an anachronistic pair: as, say, a couple of contemporary composers who have produced dueling string quartets or two television network executives deciding to launch competing half-hour, laugh-track sitcoms that also happen to be very well-made." Los Angeles Times 05/23/06

A Way To Sell Canadian Art Globally A Vancouver gallery has found a way to tap into a global market for art. This Thursday the gallery hosts "an estimated $6-million, biannual, on-line live auction of traditional and contemporary Canadian art, ranging in estimated price from $1,000 to $350,000. The auction that includes works by Emily Carr, Lawren Harris, Maurice Cullen, Jean-Paul Riopelle and E.J. Hughes will be held with gala glitz in a downtown Vancouver hotel ballroom. But it will also be broadcast simultaneously over the Internet, capturing a global audience with an increasing taste for Canadian art." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/24/06

The New Forgers "In a sobering development, forgers have been purchasing the works of minor European artists, altering them in a process known as "Russification," painting on the signature of major Russian artists, and selling them for many times their worth. Perhaps even more alarming is that they're fooling the most reputable auction houses in the world." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/24/06

The Tate's New Art Org Chart "The first major rehang of Tate Modern's collection formally opens today. The four suites of galleries housing the collection were until recently divided into unwieldy, catch-all themes - Landscape/Matter/Environment, Nude/Action/Body, Still Life/Real Life/Object, and History/Memory/Society. These have been replaced by Poetry and Dream, Material Gestures, Idea and Object, and States of Flux. All this is a tad snappier, but more than the labels needed to change. The new displays are a major improvement. At times, they are spectacular... But from today, who will notice these fine-tuned alignments, the worried-over niceties and accidental pleasures?" The Guardian (UK) 05/23/06

• Finally, We Can See The Big Picture The Tate's grand rehang amounts to an admission that it was a mistake, when the museum first opened in 2000, to abandon all reliance on chronology in organizing the collection. And interestingly, now that some semblance of linear time has been restored, Rachel Campbell-Johnston says that we can finally see how non-linear the art of the last 100 years has actually been. "The narrative of art history, [the re-hung collection] reminds you, is seldom a single linear progression. Modernism is not a single movement but a struggling protean force." The Times (UK) 05/23/06

Expected To Be A Huge Hit With 18-to-34-Year-Old Nerds A UK game show has obtained permission to film episodes in the British Museum, and producers say they hope to "conquer the Louvre, the Cairo museum, [and] the Smithsonian" next. "Each episode of the show is built around a period of history, starting with ancient Mesopotamia, and the series uses some of the museum's most famous artefacts, including the 2,700-year-old Flood Tablet, a cuneiform-inscribed clay tablet with an Assyrian version of the Old Testament story of Noah's ark." The Guardian (UK) 05/23/06

Outsourcing The Gift Shop Museum gift shops aren't what they once were, and the biggest change is one that you'll never see on the surface as you browse amid the trinkets and exhibit books: "the trend for institutions to hire outsiders, chain retailers, to run their gift shops... For museum stores, outsourcing is more than a tempest in a replica teapot. It's a threat to a gold mine." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/22/06

Mao On The Block A Chinese-American collector has announced plans to sell a well-known official portrait of Chinese leader Mao Zedong at auction in June, where it is expected to fetch at least $120,000. The pending sale has sparked a furor in Chinese internet chat rooms, with many observers saying that the portrait belongs in a national museum, not a private collection. The New York Times 05/22/06

An Architect Revered (If Not Well-Known) "Although Tadao Ando is not yet a household name in England (a public square in Manchester is his only UK project to date), in his own country, and indeed throughout the ranks of his profession, this former boxer is revered. His studio gives a clue as to why." The Telegraph (UK) 05/21/06

Could An L.A. Biennial Be On The Horizon? Officials in Los Angeles are having preliminary discussions about mounting a major biennial art show in the city. "[County] commissioners held a private 'informational' session earlier this month to consider the possibility of staging an international contemporary art exhibition on the L.A. waterfront at an estimated cost of $5 million." Los Angeles Times 05/21/06

That's Gonna Make For A Slim Profit Margin "Compared with the epic works that have made his name - the shark in formaldehyde, the bisected cow - Damien Hirst's work in progress is a small, delicate object: a life-size human skull. Not just any skull, mind, but one cast in platinum and encased entirely in diamonds - some 8,500 in all. It will be the most expensive work of art ever created, costing between £8m and £10m." The Observer (UK) 05/21/06

Parcel Post Just Isn't Going To Cut It Say you're a high roller in the world of art auctions, and you've just landed a Picasso or a Monet for the tidy sum of several million, plus commission. Now, how exactly are you planning to get the thing home? "You don't hear a lot about the fine-art moving business, because it generally shuns publicity and rarely advertises... Clients in this realm tend to treasure discretion as much as art, which, for anyone with a Rembrandt in the den, makes a lot of sense." Washington Post 05/20/06

Podcasting The Museum Experience "In the spring of 2005, when a professor and a group of students at Marymount Manhattan College made waves by creating their own, unauthorized MP3 audio tour for the Museum of Modern Art, few art institutions were even exploring the idea of podcasting as an alternative to official audio tours, created by companies like Acoustiguide and Antenna Audio. But in the short time since then, museum podcasts — both do-it-yourself versions and those created by museums themselves — have taken off, changing the look and feel of audio tours." The New York Times 05/19/06

Greek Or Roman? Buyers Learning To Distrust The Experts "In the world of art and antiquities, millions of dollars are at stake for museums and private buyers, depending on the date or ownership of an object. Disputes are increasingly common, and sometimes escalate." Bloomberg.com 05/18/06

Glassblower Countersues Chihuly Glass artist Dale Chihuly is suing a former member of his team, alleging the glassblower has been making Chihuly's designs in violation of Chihuly's copyright. Now the glasblower has countersued. "The countersuit alleges Chihuly is trying to claim 'a monopoly on any and all glass art that is curved, nested or uses certain kinds of colors. [Chihuly] cannot use copyright registrations to protect an idea or process that is so elementary that it would preclude any other glass artist from working or creating any glass art at all'." Seattle Times 05/19/06

Hockney Auction Could Set Record "Another art market world record is expected to be broken when one of David Hockney's most significant works comes to auction. Sotheby's yesterday announced it will sell The Splash, painted in 1966, with an estimate of£2.2m-£3m. That should easily beat the world record set for a Hockney last week when A Neat Lawn went for £1.9m in New York." The Guardian (UK) 05/19/06

National Gallery Admits Copyright Violation The National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC, has admitted copyright infringement and agreed to pay two Edouard Vuillard scholars $37,500 for publishing a catalogue that uses their research without authorisation or acknowledgement. The Art Newspaper 05/17/06

What Accounts For The Turner's New Conservatism? "The Tate has been unhappy about the tabloid hostility the prize encounters, not thinking that all publicity is good publicity, though it was vicious attacks that made the Turner an institution." Bloomberg 05/17/06

Barnes Hits Capital Target, Extends Campaign The Barnes Foundation has hit its $150 million fundraising target, and now has enough money to complete its controversial move to Center City Philadelphia. But the foundation isn't stopping there, announcing an extension of the campaign, and a new target of $200 million, to be raised from "national and international" donors. The extended campaign may be due in part to rising construction costs - the Barnes's proposed $100 million facility is likely to end up with cost overruns, and the museum wants to be prepared. Philadelphia Inquirer 05/17/06

Dia Loses Another Top Exec "Adding to doubts about his institution's direction, Leonard Riggio, the [New York-based] Dia Art Foundation's biggest benefactor, has decided to step down as chairman of its board... The decision comes as the institution is reeling from the loss of Michael Govan, its director for 12 years, who resigned in February to run the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. And six weeks ago, Dia lost its vice chairman, Ann Tenenbaum. She resigned after 12 years on the board, saying she was stretched too thin by family responsibilities and board commitments at other arts institutions." The New York Times 05/17/06

Where Prestige Takes A Back Seat To Local Pride They may not have million-dollar endowments or prestigious boards, but across the country, history is quietly accumulating in thousands of unheralded neighborhood museums. "A local museum is a community's autobiography, a way of saying: This is who we are, and this is how we got here. For researchers, the museums are invaluable archives, whether housed in multimillion-dollar, state-of-the art facilities or inside the stately rooms of storied mansions." Chicago Tribune 05/17/06

This Year: A Gentler Turner Prize The Turner Prize is famously provocative. Not this year. "None of the artists shortlisted this year were setting out to be controversial. 'They are trying to deal with the issues around them in the 21st century'." The Guardian (UK) 05/17/06

Book: Museum As Launderer Paul Werner has a particularly harsh take on the role of American museums. "The role of the American art museum is to launder the money of its trustees and sponsors, not, as you may think, by turning one asset ('cocaine,' for instance) into another asset (say, 'Rembrandts'), but by turning artworks into objects of authority and trust - objects that mediate and are mediated by the worth of money. The American art museum turns art into buzz the way its owners turn pork bellies into pork-belly futures." Philadelphia Inquirer 04/23/06

Major Gift To NYU Provokes Protests "A gift of $200m to New York University (NYU) to fund a new Institute for the Study of the Ancient World has resulted in a resignation and in criticism from archaeologists because of the source of the donation." The Art Newspaper 05/16/06

Getty Might Return Artifacts To Greece "The Greek government alleges items were originally removed from the country illegally, although it is not known when they were taken. The museum may now return some of the four disputed antiquities, following a meeting with Greek Culture Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis." BBC 05/16/06

• The Getty Speaks Greek "Once the issue is settled, [Getty Museum director Michael] Brand said, the two sides expect a "fruitful cooperation" that "could include long-term loans" of artworks. Greece is seeking the repatriation of a rare gold funerary wreath, a tombstone and a stone torso of a young woman, all acquired by the Getty in the 1990's. It has also demanded a votive relief that J. Paul Getty, the museum's founder, bought in 1955. Asked whether he felt pressure to cede some artifacts to shore up the Getty's reputation, Mr. Brand responded with a terse "No." The New York Times 05/17/06

Designers Picked For Harvard's Stopgap Museum "The Harvard University Art Museums will announce today the selection of a California firm to design the Allston-Brighton structure that will be a temporary home for thousands of artworks when Harvard's two primary art museums close in 2008." Boston Globe 05/16/06

Turner Shortlist Announced The shortlist for the always-controversial Turner Prize has been announced in the UK. Sculptor Rebecca Warren (known for using twigs and bits of fluff in her work,) photographer Phil Collins, mixed-media artist Mark Titchner, and painter Tomma Abts will vie for the £40,000 prize, which will be announced in December, following public viewings of the work of all four finalists. BBC 05/16/06

• See For Yourself... View a gallery of the work of the Turner finalists here. BBC 05/16/06

Peeling Open The New Orangerie As Paris's Musée de l'Orangerie prepared to reopen following a 6-year, $36 million renovation, one of the biggest questions was how the Claude Monet masterpieces mounted to the walls had survived the trauma of construction. (These eight paintings cannot be removed, and an elaborate system of alarmed and reinforced boxes had to be devised to protect them from the dust and vibration.) As it turned out, the Monets are fine, and the Orangerie itself, while looking very much the same on the outside, has undergone a radical transformation inside. The New York Times 05/16/06

Has DaVinci's Lost Masterpiece Been Located? "Step by patient step, one man is drawing ever closer to the real Da Vinci mystery: tracking down the master’s greatest painting, lost for four and a half centuries... For art historians, finding Leonardo’s lost Battle of Anghiari is in the same league as finding the Titanic or the still lost tomb of the Ancient Egyptian architect Imhotep — as big as you can get... And it is hidden, [Maurizio Seracini] believes, in a room at the heart of political power since the Middle Ages in Florence." The Times (UK) 05/16/06

Tate Modern's Director Throws Down The Gantlet "Tate Modern is Britain’s answer to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and to the Pompidou Centre in Paris. But while MoMA’s assets are being boosted by the gifts of wealthy Americans, carefully encouraged by US tax incentives, and the Pompidou enjoys buckets of state funding, Tate Modern is being left to wither and die." So says Tate director Vicente Todoli, who claims that the UK government is content to let the his museum twist in the wind as institutions in other cities pass them by. The Times (UK) 05/16/06

The Clock, The Oil Boom, And The Russian Art Binge "At a time when Russians flush with oil money are making headlines spending millions on art, the forthcoming sale of a 100-year- old Fabergé clock is causing a stir in the Scandinavian auction world... The reason for the excitement is not because the clock is an outstanding piece of jewelry; most experts agree that the Fabergé workshops produced many objects of greater refinement. Rather, anticipation is linked to the clock's almost mystical provenance and how it fits into Russia's current boom." International Herald Tribune 05/15/06

Is The Bar Lowered For Artists Who Make Films? An increasing number of painters, sculptors and other artists have recently been turning to film as a second medium, and many of the resulting films have been winning some high-profile prizes. "It is surely good that the art of film is developing in such a way as to be judged in arenas other than those in which Hollywood entertainment and the box office are the only criteria. And yet are these art-installation movies having the bar lowered for them? Aren't they being judged by much less exacting standards than regular films?" The Guardian (UK) 05/16/06

The Killing Of The WTC Memorial Michael Arad thought he had won big when his design for a memorial at the WTC site was chosen. But the memorial has been caught up in the mess that is the whole project. "The latest cost estimate issued this month—an impossible $972 million—has Mayor Michael Bloomberg demanding that the design be scaled back, while others suggest that it be scrapped altogether. The battle that is now breaking into full view has been raging behind the scenes since the moment Arad’s plan was picked. He has waged a personal war against the LMDC—to defend his design, he says, from the agency’s cronyism and shoddy management." New York Magazine 05/15/06

King Tut Goes Online "Oxford scholars are preparing to post the notes, diaries, drawings and photographs from the 1922 excavation of the tomb of King Tutankhamun on the internet in an attempt to study it completely." The Guardian (UK) 05/15/06

Getty: We're Not Panicking "Rather than impressing the governments of the Mediterranean lands to which it pays such elaborate tribute, the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Calif., has roused their anger. Saying that the villa's galleries are full of antiquities that were illegally removed from their historical settings, Italy and Greece are demanding the return of dozens of objects." Getty Museum director Michael Brand plans a stead hand: "It is a matter of not panicking and thinking the Getty Museum has a crisis, but of approaching it calmly and rationally and trying to work toward a solution." The New York Times 05/15/06

Morgan Library Gets Game "As the Morgan's longer name indicates, the library's $106 million transformation is intended to make it more appealing to museum-goers and cultural tourists in a city where the competition from such powerhouse institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art is all but overwhelming." Chicago Tribune 05/14/06

The Chicago Art Institute Code "Like most museums in the United States, the Art Institute of Chicago owns nothing by Leonardo, but that doesn't mean its permanent collection isn't studded with artworks that harbor secrets of their own. In some cases -- particularly in works from the Renaissance, the golden age of "coded" art -- the images originally were meant to be mysterious. To demonstrate their erudition, the artists packed their paintings with so many symbols, allegories and allusions that viewers were forced to resort to reference books in which the most popular emblems of the day were unpacked and explicated." Chicago Sun-Times 05/14/06

The Titain That Maybe Wasn't A Titain But Might Be A Titian Once Again... "Long known as the work of the great Italian Renaissance painter Titian, this somber, unsigned oil portrait of a middle-aged, 16th-century Italian duke was consigned to obscurity when an art critic questioned its authenticity nearly 70 years ago. But an art historian who has spent eight years researching the painting believes it is a Titian after all." Baltimore Sun (AP) 05/14/06

Buyers Drive Up Chinese Art Prices Speculators are driving up the prices of contemporary Chinese art. "Most analysts attribute the rise in prices to speculative buyers from mainland China, where an under-regulated, cash-based financial system encourages wealthy people to seek easily portable vehicles for their investments." The Art Newspaper 05/11/06

UK Museums Stop Collecting Many UK museums have stopped collecting art. Why? No money. "Of the institutions surveyed, 60% said they were unable to allocate money for purchasing new items last year. The Art Fund has called on the government to adopt a "more positive" approach to funding collections." BBC 05/13/06

Sorting Out What The Louvre Is "The Louvre is so immense — both in literal space and in image — that it can be hard to fathom that it has struggled to keep pace with the other great museums of the world — and of Paris — that have become hotspots for cultural tourism, bringing people back for more and different art experiences by repackaging and marketing their collections to make them more compelling." Los Angeles Times 05/14/06

Seoul Building Nam June Paik Museum "According to the government-run Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation, the museum will feature 67 of Paik's works, three of his personal belongings and a video archive of his 2,285 studies." Korea Times 05/09/06

Canadians Go To Court Over Rodins "The dispute is the latest in a nearly six-year battle over the authenticity of a group of plasters attributed to the French master Auguste Rodin and destined for the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ont. The Rodins, 52 plasters and several dozen bronzes in total, were to have served as leverage for the creation of an ambitious "international sculpture park dedicated to 20th- and 21st-century sculpture" in the small city 90 kilometres north of Toronto. That plan is now in ruins and the MacLaren is more than $4-million in debt." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/11/06

China Asks US To Ban Art Imports "In a request pending at the U. S. State Department, the Chinese government has asked the U.S. to ban imports of any Chinese artifact made before 1912. The proposed prohibition, which has come under fire from American art dealers and museum directors, would cover metal objects, ceramics, stoneware, paintings and calligraphy, textiles, ivory, and wooden or bamboo objects. The Chinese government says the sweeping ban is necessary because pillaging of archeological sites and smuggling of artifacts have become rampant in recent years, despite government efforts to stop them." Chicago Tribune 05/11/06

Civic Pride Saves Art Chicago Why did Chicago's Merchandise Mart step in at the last minute to rescue the ailing Art Chicago? "Art Chicago helped establish Chicago as a cultural mecca. We produce over 25 shows a year in Chicago. Anyone who produces a show here gets a black eye if that show goes down." Chicago Sun-Times 05/11/06

Irish Art Sales Surge Sales of Irish art have gone up along with the country's booming economy. "The rapid rise in prices has triggered demands for the government in Dublin to make more funds available to buy works for public galleries and prevent them being exported." The Guardian (UK) 05/12/06

Minimalists Soar And Records Set In Tuesday Auction The evening set records for 12 artists ranging from David Hockney and Damien Hirst to Richard Prince and Mike Kelley in a sale that totaled $143.1 million, in the middle of its estimate, $113.1 million to $160.2 million. The New York Times 05/10/06

Art Chicago Sale A Sign Of How The Mighty Have Fallen Art Chicago used to be the top art fair in the US. No more. "Now Art Chicago has been bought by the company which runs the Merchandise Mart, a vast wholesale showroom for furniture, apparel and other companies which also runs a plethora of trade shows." The Art Newspaper 05/08/06

Taking Outsider Art Worship Too Far A new art exhibition in London purports to show striking parallels between so-called "outsider art" often created by the mentally ill and some of the 20th century's greatest "insider" artists. A simple enough concept, but it has at least one critic furious: "A show of 'outsider' art... is well worth doing. Nor is it wrong to point out that, in the 20th century, mainstream artists have been fascinated by this kind of art. What is objectionable is to present the art of people with severe mental illness alongside the work of Francis Bacon, Joan Miró or Francis Picabia, and then to propose that there is no essential difference between the two, that both are simply different manifestations of modernity. This is post-modernist crap." The Telegraph (UK) 05/09/06

Why The Art Market Won't Crash Again (Maybe) There's no doubt about it: modern art is in a bull market, with major works being sold for huge sums seemingly every week. "At the moment, there is no evidence that the art market is about to repeat the crash of the early 1990s, which still scars the collective consciousness of everybody involved in it... One reason for optimism is that there is a much wider spread of buyers than there was in 1990." The Telegraph (UK) 05/09/06

Canada Sends Venice A Giant Sweater "SweaterLodge, Canada's official entry for the architecture portion of this year's Venice Biennale, is an enormous tent in the shape of a pullover made from 350 square metres of bright orange polar fleece. The multimedia exhibit is a big, bold, warm and witty commentary on urban culture. The biannual event, which will be celebrating its 10th anniversary this fall, is one of the most prestigious in the world of architecture. So why is our Canadian team receiving such a chilly reception from government funding agencies and potential corporate sponsors?" The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/09/06

Portrait Prize Finalists Announced The shortlist is out for the UK's National Portrait Gallery prize, which hands out £25,000 and a commission worth £4,000 to the creator of the best portrait of the year. Painters Angela Reilly of Scotland and Rafael Rodriguez of Mexico will go up against English photographer Andrew Tift, who has been on the shortlist four times. "This year has seen a record 1,113 entries, and 56 portraits will be displayed at the exhibition from June 15 to September 17. The winner will be announced on June 13." The Guardian (UK) 05/09/06

AGO Gets $2 Million Education Boost "A prominent Toronto businessman and his wife are giving $2-million to the Art Gallery of Ontario to endow the directorship of the gallery's education and public-programming division... The AGO was the first museum in Canada to establish an art department, and yesterday's announcement coincided with the 75th anniversary of its founding. More than 35,000 students come to the AGO in Toronto each year, while thousands of adults and families take education programs there." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/09/06

On The Trail Of The Art Smugglers "Greek detectives arrive in London today for talks with Scotland Yard as Athens steps up its efforts to combat the international trade in smuggled antiquities. After the recent discovery of priceless relics in an Aegean island home, they hope the meeting will not only shed light on the murky business but also illuminate London's role as a hub for traffickers." The Guardian (UK) 05/08/06

The Explorer, The Museum, and Another Controversy Over Ownership The Royal Alberta Museum is scrambling to raise $1 million to buy a historic collection of native Canadian artifacts gathered by explorer James Carnegie when they hit the auction block in New York this week. "The museum fears the pieces of Canadian history will be dispersed among private collectors and institutions as the items are sold individually. But the sale is also coming under fire from the Minneapolis, Minn.-based American Indian Movement, which for years has likened Sotheby's sale of native artifacts to Nazi theft of property from Jewish families during the Holocaust." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/08/06

South Africa Gets Back A Piece Of Its Art History In the dark days of South Africa's apartheid regime, poor black artists living in the township ghettos surrounding Johannesburg spent their lives creating work that no one asked for, and that the white minority ruling the country would never exhibit. But a few foreign collectors made a point of buying up what they could of the township art. "Now, in an unusual and well-orchestrated burst of generosity, these collectors are giving the art back to South Africa, helping to restore an important part of the country's historical record." The New York Times 05/08/06

The Great eBay Art Robbery "It was the scandal that rocked the internet. A seemingly worthless painting sold on eBay in early 2000 for $135,805 -- all because buyers believed it might be the work of the 20th-century abstract painter Richard Diebenkorn. It wasn't. Nor was the story behind the painting true... Before long the tangle of deceits that led to the historic sale began to unravel on the front pages of newspapers around the country." Now, one of the perpetrators of the hoax has written a book to lay out his side of the story. Wired 05/08/06

Getty Snags A New Rubens "The J. Paul Getty Museum, aiming to deepen its collection of works by Peter Paul Rubens in his prime, has made its first major acquisition since the January arrival of Michael Brand as director. The work, 'The Calydonian Boar Hunt,' was painted on an oak panel, 23 1/4 by 35 5/8 inches, apparently in 1611 or 1612... Museum officials, who said they bought the work in late April from a London dealer, declined to disclose the price. But a smaller Rubens oil sketch of the same subject — roughly 10-by-20 inches, again on a wood panel — sold for $5.4 million at Christie's London on Dec. 8." Los Angeles Times 05/08/06

Art School Not-So-Confidential So what's it really like in art school, and who, aside from art school students, cares? Trendy new films aside, are art school teachers really as flaky and married to ideology as they're always portrayed? Are students really so vicious and unfeeling as to barbecue their colleagues in open session? Not often, says Christopher Hutsel, though he has some stories of his own. But the main distinguishing features of an art school may be the segregation of the design students from the budding artists. And then, of course, there are the comic strippers. No one gets them. Toronto Star 05/07/06

Art That Needs A Construction Permit As installation art continues to get bigger and bigger, the tactical expertise required to erect it becomes ever more involved. "As art with high production values has become increasingly common, the role of the artist has evolved into something closer to that of a film director who supervises a large crew of specialists to realize his or her vision." The New York Times 05/07/06

Creative Solutions To Architectural Problems Philadelphia is a city filled with historic architecture constantly on the verge of obsolecence, and preserving it without stunting the city's growth has become quite a challenge. Case in point: the city's array of old, outdated neighborhood hospitals: too small to be functional in a modern "health system," yet of undeniable architectural import and aesthetic value. So what to do with the buildings? How about converting them to senior housing with federal money, thereby creating "the least antiseptic low-income housing project ever financed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development." Philadelphia Inquirer 05/05/06

A Whole Universe In Glass (With Chandeliers) The chandeliers at New York's Metropolitan Opera House are big and impressive. Unless, of course, you're speaking on a cosmic scale, in which case they're actually just little sparkly things. Compared to, say, the Big Bang, the chandeliers are pretty infinitesimally small, and one might wonder why one would compare the two at all. But that didn't stop artist Josiah McElheny from trying to represent both in a single glass sculpture. The New York Times 05/07/06

Rothko, With Rage Tate Modern has a new gallery devoted entirely to the work of Mark Rothko, and if there is a single element running through the room's contents, it is raw, blistering anger. "The set of colossal canvases housed in Tate Modern's Rothko Room originated, as every art-aware schoolboy knows, in a commission for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building on New York's Park Avenue," and the story behind the commission explains what exactly it was that made Rothko so angry. The Telegraph (UK) 05/06/06

And Try Not To Breathe On It, Either "The biggest exhibition in half a century about the father of British art, Hans Holbein, will not include one of his most famous works because it is too fragile to travel the two miles from the National Gallery to Tate Britain. The Ambassadors, dated 1533, is... painted on wooden panels, which have thinned over the years during conservation." The Guardian (UK) 05/06/06

Is Tate Modern Pointing The Way To The Future? As Tate Modern overhauls the way it presents its collection to the public, critics are beginning to assess the impact of the changes, not just on the Tate, but museums in general. "The wow factor is important to Tate Modern and key to its success, most obviously through the giant works that have held court in the gallery’s Turbine Hall. This is the challenge facing the gallery: to continue to attract all those casual visitors whose imagination has been captured by some of the contemporary shows on display, while also providing for more regular users of art galleries who rightly demand rigour and a certain level of scholarship on their visits." Financial Times (UK) 05/05/06

Spotlighting "Art Extraordinary" A unique art gallery devoted to so-called "outsider art" opens this week in Scotland. The gallery's founder, a former art therapist, says that she intends to showcase what she calls Art Extraordinary: "'visionary imagery inspired directly from the unconscious'. Many of those who produce it suffer from mental illness, but by no means all. Some are simply recluses, making art in private with no intention of showing it to anyone else." The gallery will be the first of its kind in the UK. The Scotsman (UK) 05/06/06

Berlin Goes For Glory It seems like we've been hearing forever about the imminent rise of Berlin as a global center of contemporary art, but the city has never really taken the final steps necessary to compete with heavyweights like New York, Paris, and London. But this year's Berlin Biennial may finally be serving notice that the scene is ready to be seen alongside the world's best. The New York Times 05/06/06

Tracking The Mystery Bidder Last Wednesday, a single bidder at an art auction at Sotheby's in New York spent a whopping $95.2 million for a Picasso portrait, and more than $102 million overall. This would be big news under any circumstances, but what really has the art world buzzing is the fact that no one seems to know who the buyer is, despite the fact that his photograph has been published worldwide. "Those who sat near him at the auction said that they were convinced that he sounded Russian. There were also clues to support that theory... Officially, Sotheby's is declining to comment, but its executives were obviously caught off guard the night of the auction." The New York Times 05/06/06

What Was That About Glass Houses? Last year, glassblower Robert Kaindl found himself on the business end of a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement against well-known glass artist Dale Chihuly. Rather than settle the suit, Kaindl is countersuing, and his complaint takes some potentially devastating shots at Chihuly's business practices, claiming that the artist is "not involved in conceiving, creating, designing or even signing a 'substantial number' of artworks that bear his name. Kaindl also maintains in his claim that Chihuly sometimes buys glasswork from other artists, removes their names and then puts his own trademarked name on it." Seattle Times 05/06/06

Greeks To Charge Curator True Over Antiquities Looting Greek police say they will charge former Getty curator marion True of illegal possession of 29 Greek artifacts found in her Greek villa earlier this spring. "This shouldn't come as a surprise. None of these items were registered with local archaeological authorities as the law requires." True says the antiquities were there when she bought the house. The New York Times 05/05/06

The Survey Says: American Museums Had A Good Year "The New York-based Association of Art Museum Directors said this week that 73 percent of the 129 museums responding to its survey reported steady or increased attendance in 2005. That compared with 70 percent seeing such results in 2004. The survey also found that 84 percent of respondents said their total revenue had increased or was the same as in the previous year, up from 79 percent in 2004." Boston Globe 05/05/06

Sweden Returns Totem Pole To Canada "The deal completes a 25-year campaign to return the artefact, known as the G’psgolox Totem after the chief who commissioned it, to a tribal site. The sculpted column was removed from Canadian territory in the 1920s by the then-Swedish consul, who had it chopped down and shipped to Stockholm." The Art Newspaper 05/04/06

DC's National Gallery Admits Plagiarism Of Catalogue "The National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC, has admitted copyright infringement and agreed to pay two Edouard Vuillard scholars $37,500 for publishing a catalogue that uses their research without authorisation or acknowledgement." The Art Newspaper 05/04/06

Police Find Truck With Stolen Art Police in Florida recover a truck full of art that had been missing for tqo weeks. the driver, Patrick McIntosh, 36, had "been missing since April 17, when he and his 24-foot Budget rental truck pulled out of Boca Raton with millions of dollars worth of art, including seven canvasses by the Abstract Expressionist painter Milton Avery. He had been hired by David Jones Fine Art Services to deliver the art from private dealers and collectors — and at least one museum — in Boca Raton to a series of homes and galleries in New York." The New York Times 05/04/06

Getty Meets With Greeks The Getty Museum will meet with Greek authorities to discuss antiquities the Greeks say were looted and are now in the Getty collection. "The visit by museum Director Michael Brand, announced Wednesday by the J. Paul Getty Trust, comes as Greek authorities step up a criminal investigation aimed at securing the return of four Getty objects, including a 2,500-year-old solid gold funerary crown considered to be one of the museum's antiquities masterpieces." Los Angeles Times 05/04/06

When A Masterwork Is Decertified (Where Do You Put It?) In 1985 the LA County Museum acquired a Van Dyck painting with great fanfare. But "these days, 'Andromeda' is all but invisible. Although it probably cost about $1 million, it hasn't been hung in a public area for several years, and the museum has never announced a reason. The answer is there, however, for those who dig into LACMA's online collection database: In July 1998, the museum decided it wasn't a Van Dyck after all." Los Angles Times 05/04/06

Spurned In Paris, Pinault Opens In Venice It's been only a year since Paris declined to build a new museum to house billionaire collector François Pinault's art collection. Now the collection's first show is in Venice. "In this astonishingly short span of time, the interior of the palace has been sensitively remodeled, again to a design by Tadao Ando. Alison Gingeras, a brilliant young curator on the staff of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, has put together a breathtaking array of works from Pinault's collection, a selection that ranges chronologically from Mark Rothko to Jeff Koons. The result is likely to upstage the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, a museum that has long dominated the field of modern art in Venice." New York Times Magazine 04/30/06

Does deYoung Museum Have A Papua New Guinea Problem? "There's recent news that a handful of sculptures at [San Francisco's] M.H. de Young Memorial Museum may be the 'national cultural property' of Papua New Guinea, and if so, probably were exported illegally. Whether or not that turns out to be true -- an official from the Port Morseby museum who was here last month thinks three of the pieces are on the list -- San Francisco museum officials say this issue shouldn't be compared to the controversial Met and Getty situations." San Francisco Chronicle 05/04/06

Picasso Sells For $95 Million A Picasso was sold for $95 million Wednesday night, the second-highest price ever paid for a painting. "The image of Maar, one of Picasso's mistresses, was sold on the second night of the important spring auctions. "Boy With a Pipe" (1905) holds the record price for a Picasso. That painting sold for $104.2 million in May 2004." The New York Times 05/04/06

Broad Foundation Buys 570 Beuys Works "The Broad Art Foundation has purchased 570 works by the late German artist Joseph Beuys, an influential thinker and socially conscious force in avant-garde 20th century art. The acquisition comprises a nearly complete collection of the artist's 'multiples' — groups of mostly three-dimensional works produced in more than one edition to make them widely available. These works are regarded as the essence of his production." Los Angeles Times 05/03/06

Afghanistan Antiquities In Peril Thirty years of war has decimated Afghanistan's cultural heritage. And reconstruction money has been spent on rebuilding the country's infrastructure rather than recovering or restoring damaged treasures... Philadelphia Inquirer 05/03/06

Rogers At The WTC Site Architect Richard Rogers will design one of the towers on the World Trade Center site. "Tower 3 is Lord Rogers's fourth major commission in New York. In addition to the Javits Center, which he is designing with FX Fowle, he is involved in a $200 million project to transform a two-mile stretch of the Lower Manhattan waterfront and a $1 billion expansion of Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, Queens." The New York Times 05/03/06

Matt Stokes Wins Beck's Futures Prize "Stokes' winning entry, Long After Tonight, is a seven-minute recording of a group of 'soulies' - members of the Northern Soul music phenomena in the Sixties and Seventies - collecting obscure North American soul music, and meeting in venues across the north of England. They are shown dancing hypnotically to a soundtrack as the camera occasionally cuts to ornate religious iconography in a Gothic revivalist church in Dundee." The Independent (UK) 05/03/06

Van Gogh Sells For $40 Million The painting sold at auction in New York Thursday night.. "L'Arlesienne, Madame Ginoux commanded the fourth highest price on record for a work by the renowned Dutch artist. The 1890 painting was one in a series of five created in homage to Van Gogh's friend, the artist Paul Gaugin." BBC 05/03/06

Rare Blake Watercolors Sold Nineteen rare watercolors by William Blake were auctioned Tuesday in New York. "The works, illustrations for "The Grave," a 1743 poem by the Scottish writer Robert Blair, were discovered five years ago by two British booksellers. At the time, experts heralded them as the most important Blake discovery in a century and said the illustrations should stay together. It appeared that the public agreed; some in the audience spoke of the breakup of the collection as a criminal procedure." The New York Times 05/03/06

Monet Waterlilies Get An Unveiling "After six years of renovation work delayed by archaeological mishaps, Claude Monet's giant Water Lilies are finally back on display at the Orangerie museum in Paris, in a space restored to match the French impressionist's vision of how his work should be hung." The Guardian (UK) 05/02/06

Egypt Makes A List Of Antiquities It Wants Back Egypt is making a list of antiquities it wants returned from other countries. The list of national icons "starts with the Nefertiti bust in Berlin and the Rosetta stone (ca. 200 b.c.) in the British Museum in London. Both of these objects left Egypt a long time ago, the Rosetta stone in the 1820s and the Nefertiti bust in 1912. From the Louvre, [secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities] Zahi Hawass wants the Dendera zodiac (50 b.c.), a map of the heavens that was sawed and blasted out of the ceiling of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera by the agent of a French collector in 1821." ARTnews 05/06

An Abu Dhabi Guggenheim? Guggenheim director Thomas Krens still has dreams of world empire. He's negotiating to open new Guggenheims "in Abu Dhabi and Moscow, ARTnewsletter has learned. According to an informed source, Abu Dhabi representatives have made a $2 million deposit to the foundation in connection with their discussions." ARTnews 05/06

Three Convicted In "Scream" Theft Sentences have been handed down in the trial of six men charged in the theft of Edvard Munch's "The Scream." "They faced various charges relating to the theft of the paintings on 22 August 2004 from the Munch Museum in Oslo. The three convicted men received prison sentences of between four to eight years for their role in the theft." BBC 05/02/06

• "Scream" Still Missing Despite convictions in "The Scream" theft, the iconic painting is still missing. "As long as the world-famous artworks remain missing, today will not be viewed as a conclusion by many here. The three convicted men provided the getaway car, drove it and planned the operation - meaning the two men who actually carried out the robbery are still free." BBC 05/02/06

Provenance And Scholarship Do A Dance The study of old artifacts is becoming problematic when it comes to looking at objects. "On one side are archaeologists and other experts who say that most objects without a clear record of ownership or site of origin were looted, and that the publication of such material aggrandizes collectors and encourages the illicit trade. On the other side are those who argue that ignoring such works may be even more damaging to scholarship than the destruction caused by looting." The New York Times 05/02/06

An "Anti-Meier Committee Forms In Rome To his admirers, architect Richard Meier has "the most consistent portfolio of any architect alive; to his detractors, the most repetitive. You can identify one of his buildings in an instant, yet they tend to go with everything. Currently, Meier finds himself at the centre of an almighty controversy. His new Ara Pacis Museum is the first significant structure to go up in Rome's historic centre since Mussolini's time, and as such it has attracted a great deal of attention, mostly negative." The Guardian (UK) 05/01/06

Time Warp - A Seattle Museum Takes A Giant Leap Charles and Emma Frye were Seattle collectors with reactionary Old World taste in painting. They left behind a flawed collection with a seriously large $92 million endowment, and now the institution's new handlers have jumped both feet into the 21st Century with advnturous shows. "What is the frye's core audience thinking? In a twinkling, rip van winkle became a wide-awake laboratory of contemporary experiment. Put another way, the frye time-traveled from a stuffy 19th century to a progressive 21st, without stopping, even to refuel, in the 20th." visual codec 05/06

Tate Modern Does A Rehang To Tell A Different Story "I don't envy the curators at Tate Modern, whose job it is to present art from 80 or 100 years ago next to the art of today. It's hard to juxtapose the very new with the overfamiliar - hard to set the violent originality of Léger alongside the tired formulae of Gary Hume or Fiona Rae. And yet that is what the museum does." The Guardian (UK) 05/01/06

Metal Detectors And Archaeologists Make Truce "While amateur users of metal detectors have made some of the most spectacular archaeological finds of recent years, many archaeologists have regarded them as little better than hobby looters. Now, after months of negotiation, the two sides are set to announce a code of conduct. The code, which will be launched at the British Museum today, has been agreed by all the main metal detector clubs, landowners, archaeologists, museums, archaeological societies and English Heritage." The Guardian (UK) 05/01/06