A few developments that need no comment:

• The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, can rest easy: A jury has rejected the attempt by Alfred C. Glassell Jr.’s daughter to break his will, which left half of his fortune to the MFA.
• Cindy Sherman won the Jewish Museum’s Man Ray Award, and the JM also restored some opening hours it had cut.
• The New York Sun, which I wrote about here last spring, is rising again.
• ArtPrize set the dates for next year’s contest.
• The Art Loss Register is seeking help in locating the owner of a group of stolen civil war era books, including:

Nehemiah Adams, South-Side View of Slavery (1855)
Albert Barnes, The Church and Slavery (1857)
Silas Casey, Infantry Tactics (1862)
Dean Dudley, Officers of our Union Army and Navy (1862)
William J. Hardee, Rifle and Infantry Tactics (1863)
Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South (1860)
Frederick Law Olmstead, The Cotton Kingdom, 2 vol. (1861)
James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown (1860)
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 2 vol. (1862)

Contact Detective Michael McFadden of the NYPD at michael.mcfadden@nypd.org or the Art Loss Register at stolen@alrny.com.

 

Several days back, I began a post about art theft by saying that it boggles the mind in general. I just learned something even more startling — the identity of the most stolen work of art in recorded history.

The subject came up in a talk given last week (which I just learned about) at Yale University by art historian Noah Charney (right). Last spring, he taught a course there called “Art Crime,” according to the Yale Daily News, and on Nov. 12, he gave a lecture entitled “Stealing the Mystic Lamb: A True Story of the World’s Most Frequently Stolen Masterpiece.”

In a different article, published on Oct. 26, Charney told The New Criminologist:

It was involved in 13 crimes over its 600-year lifespan, including seven separate thefts, culminating in its theft to be the centerpiece of Hitler’s planned Supermuseum during the Second World War. It was an incredible, unlikely rescue, thanks to a team of Monuments Men, a fortuitous toothache, and the courage of an Austrian double-agent.  Sounds like a film preview, but it’s all true.

Can you guess what the work is? Think before you continue reading…

[Read more…] about What Is The Most Stolen Art Work? Try To Guess

Among the many reasons I wish I were in Italy right now is Art and Illusions: Masterpieces of Trompe-l’oeil From Antiquity To The Present, which is on view at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence until Jan. 24. (It started last month.) The poster picture (left) is a pretty good indication of why — doesn’t Pere Borrell Del Caso’s Escaping Criticism make you smile?

The show is reminiscent of the National Gallery of Art’s Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe-l’Oeil Painting, which was on view in late 2002 and early 2003, and didn’t travel.

But the Palazzo Strozzi’s is larger: 200 works (vs. 116 at the NGA), including — the website describes it — “sculpture, intarsia, scagliola, pietre dure, porcelain, etc. Examples exhibited include faux armoirs, half-open, with books inside, wood intarsia of small Renaissance studios, scagliola tabletops and stones portraying seemingly prehensile objects, soup tureens and table furnishings in the shape of vegetables, anatomical and botanical wax models.”

The exhibit also gives Europeans their first look at works by American artists specializing in trompe-l’Å“il — such as Peto, Kaye, Harnett and Haberle.

Bet Otis Kaye’s D’-jia-vu? (The Stock Market), at right, is a hit, as it usually is here when the market is causing pain. It was painted in 1937.

The show in Florence has ten sections, with titles like “Still Life or Trompe-l’Oeil?” “Paperwork” and “Figures Caught Between Real And Illusory Space.” Each is explained and illustrated on the website here.

The exhibit also has a scientific side.

[Read more…] about Prepare To Be Amused: A Sustained Look At Trompe-l’Oeil

Robert M. Edsel’s second book about World War II looting, The Monuments Men, came out in September, and as someone who in years past has written much about the subject myself (here, here, and here, to name a few), I wanted to see what Edsel has to say. 

Yesterday, as I was about to start reading, I decided to look first at other coverage of the book so far. I found something more interesting than reviews.

Just last week, the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art (Edsel’s non-profit), announced that it had “found” another member of the famed art recovery squad — one of its few women, Mary Regan Quessenberry, now living in Boston.

Edsel has been on a mission on this subject for years, which he has said dates to his reading of Lynn H. Nicholas’s The Rape of Europa in the late ’90s. He went on to co-produce the documentary of the book, and to publish Rescuing da Vinci (ouch on that locution!), an illustrated book about the wartime looting and post-war aftermath.

Then he established the Monuments Men Foundation to preserve the legacy of the “group of 345 or so men and women from thirteen nations who comprised the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section during World War II.”

On the website, you can find a roster of their names — the foundation is trying to trace them, and compile biographies, photos, and other information about each one. For many, it has only a name.

Ms. Quessenberry, who is 94, was discovered when her niece saw Edsel being interviewed on the BBC.

[Read more…] about Monuments Men Foundation “Finds” A Monuments Woman

While everyone’s been getting worked up about the exhibition of art, curated by Jeff Koons, from Dakis Joannou’s collection at the New Museum, something that looks far worse is going on at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Starting today, it’s showing Dreams Come True: Art of the Classic Fairy Tales from The Walt Disney Studio.

The timing couldn’t be better — for Disney. According to NOMA, the show

also will include artwork from the upcoming Walt Disney Animation Studios musical, The Princess and The Frog, an animated comedy from the creators of The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, set in New Orleans and due for release at Christmas 2009.

The movie opens nationwide on Dec. 11. Makes you wonder who the biggest beneficiary of this exhibit is, doesn’t it?

Wait, it gets worse. According to The Times-Picayune, “Lella Smith, the creative director of Disney’s Animation Research Library…selected the art for the exhibit…”

And that was because? NOMA has no curators? (I see several listed on the website.)

Ms. Smith also wrote the catalogue. Disney animation may be a legitimate exhibit. E. John Bullard, the museum’s director, defended it to the T-P this way:

Do people still look down their noses at pop culture?…We’re going back and discovering what turned people onto art in the first place. … There can’t be anyone in America who has not seen a Disney movie, as a child, a parent or a grandparent.

But that’s the wrong question. One right is, why didn’t the museum exercise its curatorial judgment and its right to select what is in the exhibit? And other, is this the right time for the show, given the movie tie-in? And a third, did Disney contribute to the cost of the exhibit? And a fourth, whose idea was the exhibit?

This is starting to be a trend, a very bad one.  

BTW, I’ve chosen to illustrate this post with a picture of NOMA, not a “princess” cell, because why give Disney more free publicity? Turns out that choice was an easy one anyway: Disney has a always been a fierce defender of its copyright, and the picture on NOMA’s website for the exhibit is emblazoned with a large  © Disney Enterprises, Inc. that spoils the view anyway.

Photo: Courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art