Vatican returns shrunken 'warrior' head to Ecuador

Pope Francis (R) exchanges gifts with the President of Ecuador Lenin Moreno (C) and his wife Rocio Gonzalez Navas during a private audience on December 16, 2017 in Vatican. Andreas SOLARO / POOL / AFP.

VATICAN CITY (AFP).- The Vatican museum has returned a shrunken head to Ecuador, relinquishing the wizened cranium of an Amazon warrior nearly 100 years after it was taken by a missionary. The grisly body part -- which belonged to the Shuar indigenous people -- was handed over during Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno's visit to Pope Francis on Saturday after months of negotiations, the Vatican said.

It is very rare for a historical artifact to be returned by the Vatican museums, which boast one of the largest collections of art and archaeology in the world.

The fist-sized capitulum, which never went on show, is believed to have been a war trophy for the Shuar, who mummified and kept the heads of their warrior enemies, as well as their heroes. The Shuar are still one of the most important ethnic groups in the Amazon region. In recent years they have hit the headlines for attempting to resist government-authorised large-scale mining on land they claim as their own.

They used to be best known in the West for their shrunken heads -- called "tsantsa". Removing the skull, boiling the flesh then sowing up the eyes, nose and mouth is believed to have trapped avenging souls inside, or stored the wisdom of their elders. The head, brought to the Vatican by a missionary in 1925, will be given to the Pumapungo ethnographic museum in Cuenca.

© Agence France-Presse http://artdaily.com/news/101052/Vatican-returns-shrunken--warrior--head-to-Ecuador#.WjrFA1WnGUk

A $5 Million Art Fraud

A suit filed in Quebec Superior Court claims that Phi Centre's former president defrauded it—and its founder Phoebe Greenberg—of some $5 million
November 23, 2017 BY Leah Sandals

The Centre Phi on rue St-Pierre in Montreal. Photo: Jeangagnon via Wikimedia Commons.

Since its founding in 2012, the Phi Centre in Montreal has done a lot of great things: hosted a talk by Michel Gondry, organized virtual reality programming in partnership with the New York Times, and snagged the exhibition “Bjork Digital,” just to name a few. Yet there has also been upset behind the scenes. And this fall, that trouble has come to the surface in a suit filed in Quebec Superior Court.

As reported by La Presse and the Montreal Gazette, the legal suit claims that Phi Centre’s former president Penny Mancuso defrauded the institution—and its founder Phoebe Greenberg—of some $5 million. It’s a sum quite remarkable for fraud allegations in Canadian art circles.

Greenberg, who started out as an actor and is heir to a family fortune, might be best known for founding the DHC/ART Foundation, which is a few steps from the Phi Centre and recently celebrated its 10th anniversary of bringing leading contemporary art to the city. Highlights of the DHC’s past decade including a landmark North American show by Brits Jake and Dinos Chapman, the first Canadian survey of Ryoji Ikeda, and a solo show of American Jenny Holzer. (The Phi Centre, founded more as “a multidisciplinary arts and culture organization…at the intersection of art, film, music, design and technology” has, along with Greenberg, declined further comment on the court filing.)

Penny Mancuso, for her part, also spent parts of her early career in acting, with roles in the films Affliction (1997), Mambo Italiano (2003) and Oceans of Hope (2001). At Phi Centre, one of her responsibilities was representing its Phi Films arm during projects like Canada at Cannes. Phi Films’ notable productions melding art and cinema include Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s The Forbidden Room (2015) and Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s 20,000 Days on Earth (2014), both of which showed at Sundance.

According to the Gazette, Greenberg covered the majority of the costs of opening and operating the [Phi Centre] venue. Mancuso was paid $409,000 per year, according to the claim cited by La Presse, on top of which Greenberg gave her an extra $200,000 per year to purchase clothing and beauty products, and paid for Mancuso’s children’s enrolment in private schools.

Last year, Phi Centre financial director Michel Bérubé noticed irregularities while going through the books. Of particular concern was $500,000 Mancuso had spent on clothing over the previous 13 months using Phi Centre credit cards. Mancuso was let go in April, with Greenberg initially agreeing to pay her three years of salary as compensation, beginning with an initial payment of $407,000. That all changed when it was discovered Mancuso had diverted $5.2 million from the Phi Centre between 2014 and 2017, via credit card payments to herself or her husband, Bayard Whittall, and his company, Two Monster Exotics. Greenberg is seeking repayment of the $407,000 already paid to Mancuso as part of her departure package, plus the $5.2 million taken from the Phi Centre.

Mancuso’s LinkedIn profile, which still mentions her past position at Phi, describes her as “currently exploring opportunities.” The Facebook page for her husband Bayard Whittall’s business Two Monsters Exotics, which specializes in captive breeding of boas, is no longer available, and calls to its Miami phone number have gone unanswered.

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Puma accused of defacing Indian heritage for shoe commercial

Puma in a statement said it was unaware that the building had heritage value, and has promised to restore the facades to their original condition.

NEW DELHI (AFP).- Global sportswear giant Puma was accused Tuesday of irreversibly damaging 17th-century architecture in Delhi's historic quarter as part of an advertising stunt to promote a new line of shoes. The facades of several buildings in Old Delhi have been spraypainted with large colourful murals for the shoe campaign that Puma said "captures the grit of Indian streets" on its website. But the stunt -- dubbed "Suede Gully" after the shoe material and the Hindi word for street -- had infuriated conservationists who accused Puma of defacing the centuries-old quarter built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan.

"It's a heritage area. You can't just go and paint what you like," Swapna Liddle from the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage told AFP. "Permanent damage has been done to the carved sandstone, limestone plaster and Lahori bricks. "Those who made and approved this advertisement, those who stood by while this was done, are all responsible for this insensitive treatment."

Puma in a statement said it was unaware that the building had heritage value, and has promised to restore the facades to their original condition. "The owner wasn’t aware that his property is protected as a heritage property and hence we were not made aware," a spokesperson said on Tuesday.

In an advertising video for the Puma campaign, Indian rappers and hip-hop dancers perform at graffiti-covered locations including trains in the financial capital Mumbai.

Rules to protect Delhi's neglected heritage sites from destruction are widely ignored, conservationists say. Laws specifically forbidding advertising on historic buildings is rarely enforced by Delhi's cash-strapped authorities, who struggle to uphold measures designed to conserve the city's crumbling icons.

The owner of one Delhi building spraypainted for the Puma campaign had defended the decision as his only to make. "This is a private property and the graffiti is making the area look more beautiful. The area is looking better now, it is more lively," Arun Khandelwal told the Indian Express.

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Thief steals Botero statue from France's most guarded street

A thief strolled out of a Paris gallery with the £500,000 bronze statue 'Maternity' (pictured) under his arm

PARIS (AFP).- French police are hunting a daring art thief who stole a bronze statue worth nearly half a million euros from a gallery within yards of the presidential palace in Paris. The thief simply walked into the gallery and helped himself to the statue of a mother and child by the Colombian artist Fernando Botero. He then coolly walked unchallenged down one of the most closely guarded streets in France, home to the British and Japanese embassies as well as French President Emmanuel Macron's official residence, the Elysee palace.

Security around the Elysee has been heightened as a part of France's state of emergency after the country was hit by a series of terror attacks over last two years. The gallery is also almost opposite the interior ministry, which is in charge of security and the police.

According security camera footage, the bearded thief caressed the 10-kilo (22-pound) statue of typically fleshy Botero figures, then looked around him before taking the statue from its plinth and discreetly making an exit. No alarms were set off. Staff at the Bartoux gallery only realised it was gone when the gallery closed on Saturday evening, police said.

Botero, 85, is Latin America's best known living artist, and is renowned for his slightly surreal and often comic fat figures, which have made his paintings hugely popular across the globe.

The stolen sculpture, which is worth at least 425,000 euros ($491,000), is one of eight made by the artist, all of different sizes. Botero, who divides his time between Paris and Italy, could not be contacted. "It's really a nightmare, we hope to get it back" staff at the gallery told French media.

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The tricky process of returning Nazi-looted art

A visitor reads informations during a preview of the exhibition "Gurlitt: Status Report, Nazi Art Theft and its Consequences" ("Bestandsaufnahme Gurlitt") on November 1, 2017 at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, western Germany, where the exhibition runs from November 3, 2017 to March 11, 2018. A spectacular art collection hoarded by Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of Nazi-era dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, will be shown for the first time since World War II in parallel exhibitions in Switzerland and Germany. The works in the two exhibitions, in Bern and the German city of Bonn, are just a fraction of the more than 1,500 pieces discovered in 2012 in the possession of Cornelius Gurlitt. PATRIK STOLLARZ / AFP. by Robin Gremmel

PARIS (AFP).- The Nazis stole thousands of artworks from Jewish families during World War II and the restitution of these pieces has been a slow process involving legal battles, complex searches and some stunning finds. Ahead of a court ruling on the return of a painting by impressionist master Camille Pissarro this week, here is some background.

The art plundered by the Nazi regime was intended to be resold, given to senior officials or displayed in the Fuehrermuseum (Leader's Museum) that Adolf Hitler planned for his hometown of Linz but was never built. Just before the end of the war, the United States dispatched to Europe teams of experts -- museum directors, curators and educators -- to find, protect and rescue cultural treasures. Known as the Monuments Men, they were honoured in a 2014 George Clooney film of the same name. These work and restitution programmes enabled the return of most of the looted works to their owners soon after the end of the war. But out of 650,000 stolen pieces, about 100,000 had not been returned by 2009, according to figures released at the Holocaust Era Assets Conference in the Czech Republic that year.

Secret records Works seized by the Nazis in France were stored at the Jeu de Paume site in Paris, originally tennis courts, ahead of their shipment to Germany. Thanks to the secret notes of Rose Valland, an art historian there, about 45,000 were recovered and three-quarters of these returned, according to a report to the French Senate in 2013. Of the remaining "orphaned" pieces, some were sold and more than 2,000 were accorded the special status of "MNR", standing for "Musees Nationaux Recuperation" (Recuperation - National Museums) meaning they are provisionally entrusted to museums. The works were exhibited from 1950 to 1954, but then, "for 40 years, nothing happened", said the 2000 Matteoli report on the looting of French Jews. The report noted "the total abandon of all searches for the owners of these works".

New impetus Inertia settled over the restitution drive in the context of the Cold War and the complexities of various cases. The process was revived in the 1990s after the declassification of thousands of archives and the publication on the internet of databases such as The Art Loss Register. In December 1998, 44 countries signed the Washington Declaration that committed them to stepping up efforts to return stolen pieces to their prewar owners or heirs. This led to the creation of special commissions and new laws, including the US Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 that lengthened the time limit for lodging a restitution claim.

The Klimt affair In one of the biggest cases involving art stolen by the Nazis, five masterpieces by Gustav Klimt were caught up in a bitter legal battle between a descendant of the Jewish family from which they were taken and Austria's Belvedere Museum. They included two stunning portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer, completed with gold leaf. The Vienna museum argued that Bloch-Bauer herself had left it the works. But American heiress Maria Altmann disputed the claim, saying the pieces belonged to her uncle, Adele's husband. Altmann won her battle in 2006 and the pieces were returned. The story was adapted by British filmmaker Simon Curtis into "Woman in Gold" (2015). Austria estimates it has returned about 10,000 works from public collections after passing a restitution law in 1998.

A spectacular find In 2011 a raid on a rubbish-strewn flat in Munich as part of a tax investigation uncovered hundreds of priceless paintings, including works by Picasso and Matisse, that had been stolen by the Nazis. The flat belonged to Cornelius Gurlitt, an octogenarian whose father was one of four art dealers charged by the Nazis with selling the art.

An additional 239 works were found at a house he owned in Salzburg, Austria. Gurlitt passed away in 2014 and left his collection to the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, Switzerland. But many of the pieces have been subject to legal challenges across Germany.

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Spain court orders pyschic to pay for Dali exhumation

Spanish national Pilar Abel Martinez, 61, who claimed to be Salvador Dali's daughter, speaks during an interview in Barcelona, on June 26, 2017. LLUIS GENE / AFP.

MADRID.- A Spanish court has dismissed a paternity lawsuit brought by a psychic who claimed to be Salvador Dali's illegitimate daughter and ordered her to pay for the exhumation of the surrealist painter's remains. DNA tests prove that Salvador Dali, who died in 1989 aged 84, was not the biological father of Pilar Abel, a 61-year-old who claims her mother had a covert relationship with the artist, according to a Madrid court ruling dated October 13 published on Monday.

The court also ordered Pilar to pay for the exhumation of Dali's remains in July without specifying how much the operation cost. The arduous task involved removing a slab weighing more than a tonne that covered his tomb at the Dali Theatre-museum in Figueras where the eccentric artist was born in 1904. Forensics experts then removed DNA samples from Dali's skin, fingernails and two long bones.

Contacted by AFP, the Dali Foundation, which promotes the artist's legacy, said it still had not evaluated the total cost of the exhumation. The foundation had blasted a court ruling ordering the exhumation as "unusual and unjustified". Abel can appeal the court's dismissal of the paternity lawsuit. If she had been confirmed as Dali's only child, she would have been entitled to 25 percent of the huge fortune and heritage of one of the most celebrated and prolific painters of the 20th century, according to her lawyer Enrique Blanquez.

Dali, known for his elongated figures and wilting clocks, left his estate, which includes properties and hundreds of paintings, to the Spanish state.

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Exiled Russian artist torches central bank branch in Paris

This file photo taken on January 16, 2017 shows Russian artist Piotr Pavlenski (R) and his wife Oksana Chaliguina posing in Paris. Pyotr Pavlensky, who had has fled Russia for France after being questioned by Russian authorities on allegations of committing a sex crime, and his wife were granted political asylum in France on May 4, 2017. MARTIN BUREAU / AFP.

PARIS (AFP).- Controversial Russian performance artist Piotr Pavlensky, who was granted asylum in France in May, was taken into custody early Monday after setting fire to the outside of a Banque de France branch in central Paris, police said. Firefighters arrived the scene at around 4:00 am (0200 GMT) to put out two fires outside of the building in Bastille square, a spokesman said, adding that the incident was of "criminal origin".

Photos on social media show the 33-year-old dressed in black, standing in front of the shuttered front door flanked by fires burning outside two windows. Pavlensky, a recipient of the Vaclav Havel award for creative dissent, was taken into custody along with his partner Oksana Shalygina for causing "damage by fire", police said. Pavlensky once memorably nailed his scrotum to Red Square to denounce state power. In November 2015, he doused the doors of the FSB -- the successor to the Cold War-era KGB, or secret police -- in petrol and set them on fire.

On Monday, a Banque de France spokesman told AFP the bank's entrance was damaged but the security systems were not affected. "The building is still secure," although the Bastille branch will remain closed until further notice, he added.

Pavlensky gained a reputation for challenging Russian restrictions on political freedoms in radical, often painful performances that have won international acclaim. While best known for his 2013 Red Square performance entitled "Fixation", he also sewed his lips together to protest against the jailing of members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot. He has also wrapped himself in barbed wire and chopped off part of his ear.

After the FSB stunt, Pavlensky was handed a fine of 500,000 rubles ($8,700, 7,400 euros) and released after being found guilty of damaging a cultural site. Pavlensky spent a month last year in a notorious psychiatric hospital undergoing state-ordered tests of his sanity that found him sound of mind.

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Nazi-looted Pissarro painting at centre of legal tussle

Camille La Cueillette des pois, 1887. Gouache, 53,3 x 64,4 cm. Bruce et Robbi Toll – Archives du musée Camille-Pissarro, Pontoise / droits réservés. by Juliette Montesse

PARIS (AFP).- A painting by impressionist master Camille Pissarro that was seized from its French Jewish owner during World War II is at the centre of a court battle beginning Tuesday in Paris after surfacing at an exhibition. "La Cueillette des Pois" (Picking Peas), a gouache from 1887, emerged earlier this year on display at the French capital's Marmottan Museum, more than 70 years after being snatched from art collector Simon Bauer in Nazi-occupied France.

A court will on Tuesday begin examining who are the rightful owners -- Bauer's descendants or an American couple who say they had no idea as to its wartime fate when they bought it at auction in 1995. Bauer, a self-made businessman, was among the thousands of French Jews who were rounded up for deportation in 1944. He narrowly escaped being sent to the Nazi death camps due to a train drivers’ strike. "La Cueillette des Pois" was one of 93 works that were confiscated from him before he was sent to the Drancy internment camp near Paris and sold on by an art dealer.

On his release in 1944, he immediately began looking for his paintings but had only managed to recover a fraction of the works by his death in 1947. His family then took up the hunt, but lost all trace of the Pissarro for half a century before it turned up at the Marmottan, on loan from its current owners for a major retrospective of the artist's work. Bauer's grandson Jean-Jacques Bauer, 87, immediately filed a legal claim to prevent the painting leaving France while beginning a process to try wrest it back from Bruce Toll and his wife Robbi.

In May, a court granted his request to have it impounded in France pending a ruling on its on ownership. 'Free the painting' The Tolls, patrons of Washington and Tel Aviv Holocaust museums who bought the work at Christie's auction house in New York, say they did so in good faith, unaware it was wartime loot. "It is not Mr Toll, who bought this painting at public auction in 1995, who should pay for the crimes of Vichy," the couple's lawyer Ron Soffer told AFP, referring to France's puppet regime under the Nazis. Bauer's descendants will attempt to show that legal precedence is on their side.

They have noted that since 1945 French courts have routinely annulled the sales of other works that were part of Bauer's collection and ordered they be returned to his family. They are pinning their hopes on the application of an April 1945 law which renders void transactions of looted works. The Tolls will attempt to show that the 1945 law does not apply in this case and contest the competence of the court to decide the matter.

If the court does not have jurisdiction in the affair it will have to "free the painting", Soffer said. He added that the outcome would potentially be of "great importance" in the art world as it highlighted "a risk of legal insecurity regarding works which are lent to exhibitions in France.". The Bauers' lawyer Cedric Fischer would not comment on the case ahead of the hearing.

© Agence France-Presse
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Renoir stolen in brazen theft ahead of Paris auction

A painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, "Portrait of a Young Girl with Blond Hair", was stolen Saturday from an auction house in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. Photo: PAUL J. RICHARDS. AFP.

NANTERRE (AFP).- A small painting by French impressionist Auguste Renoir was stolen from an auctioneer in a Paris suburb on Saturday, the day before it was due to be sold, police said. "Portrait d'une jeune fille blonde" (Portrait of a Young Girl with Blond Hair), estimated at 25,000-30,000 euros ($30,000-$35,000), was taken from an auction house in the western suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where it was on display prior to the sale.

The thief apparently just took the oil painting off the wall and escaped unnoticed, a police official said. The highlight of the sale, the canvas is listed in the auctioneers' catalogue as measuring 14 centimetres by 12.2 centimetres (5.5 inches by 4.5 inches), with the initials "A.R." in its top left-hand corner. Police hope video surveillance footage will provide a lead.

© Agence France-Presse
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Artist to face trial for 'flashing' at Louvre

She was arrested in January 2016 for indecent exposure after lying down naked in the Orsay Museum in front of Edouard Manet's similarly nude painting of the prostitute Olympia.

PARIS (AFP).- A woman performance artist who exposes herself in museums is to be prosecuted for exhibitionism after baring her genitals in front of the Mona Lisa in Paris, her lawyer said Thursday. Deborah de Robertis spread her bare legs before Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece on Sunday in the Louvre museum, shouting "Mona Lisa, my pussy, my copyright" as several dozen tourists looked on.

"The goal was not to exhibit my genitals," the 33-year-old told AFP, "but to copy a famous photograph by Valie Export" -- an Austrian performance artist known for her sexually provocative acts during the 1970s. "My message is to question the place of women artists in the history of art. That's why it's necessary to do my performances in museums," said Robertis, who has dual French and Luxembourg nationality.

Robertis was in custody for two days before appearing before a judge, who ordered her to face trial on October 18 on charges of sexual exhibitionism and assault -- for biting a museum guard's jacket during her arrest. "The legal approach to this affair is scandalous," Robertis's lawyer Marie Dose said. "It's not exhibitionism if there is no wish to assault someone sexually, which is completely contrary to the work of this performance artist."

Robertis went on trial in February but was acquitted when a judge determined that similar acts at the Decorative Arts Museum and the Museum of European Photography in Paris were artistic performances. Robertis performed a similar stunt before the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in April.

She was arrested in January 2016 for indecent exposure after lying down naked in the Orsay Museum in front of Edouard Manet's similarly nude painting of the prostitute Olympia. In May 2014 she exposed herself in front of Gustave Courbet's "The Origin of the World" painting, also at the Orsay, to mimic the close-up of a woman's genitals. The painting caused a sensation when it went on view in 1866.

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400 Viking objects stolen in Norway museum heist

Thieves were able to enter the museum on the seventh floor via scaffolding on the building's facade. Photo: Kari K. Årrestad. © University Museum.

OSLO (AFP).- Some 400 Viking objects were stolen from a Norwegian museum at some time over the weekend of August 11-13, the museum's director said Sunday, describing the loss as "immeasurable".

"If the stolen objects are not returned, this is by far the most terrible event in the 200 years of Norwegian museum history," the director of the University Museum of Bergen in southwestern Norway, Henrik von Achen, told AFP. The items, most of them small metal objects like jewelry, "do not have monetary value attached to them" and the value of the metal itself "is also quite small," he said. "Yet the great and immeasurable loss is connected to the cultural history value of the items, which exceeds the monetary value many times over," he added.

Thieves were able to enter the museum on the seventh floor via scaffolding on the building's facade. The stolen objects had been temporarily placed there ahead of a planned transfer to a more secure location on August 14. "The (security) measures were not sufficient, we should have had additional security elements in place," he acknowledged.

Norwegian police are investigating the case together with their international counterparts. Meanwhile, the museum was surveying all of the stolen objects and posting photos of them on social media sites so "that the items become well-known and hence more difficult to sell and easier to spot," von Achen said.

© Agence France-Presse http://artdaily.com/news/98214/400-Viking-objects-stolen-in-Norway-museum-heist#.WZs9ET6GNhE

Spanish police recover 3 stolen Francis Bacon paintings

The five paintings are estimated to be worth more than 25 million euros ($29 million).

MADRID (AFP).- Spanish police have recovered three of five paintings by British artist Francis Bacon that were stolen from a Madrid apartment in 2015, they said Thursday. "I can confirm that three paintings have been recovered," a police spokeswoman said. She said she could not give more details because of the ongoing investigation to find the remaining two artworks.

The five paintings are estimated to be worth more than 25 million euros ($29 million). They were stolen from the home of a friend of Bacon in central Madrid in July 2015 while he was away in London. The thieves also made off with a safe that contained a collection of coins and jewels. Spanish police have so far arrested 10 suspects linked to the theft.

In May 2016, with the help of a British firm that searches for stolen art, they arrested one of the suspected perpetrators, as well as five accomplices that allegedly helped hide the paintings. A Barcelona resident had sent the firm pictures of a Bacon painting to see if it appeared on the company's list of stolen artworks. Police analysed the photos and found clues that led them to another suspect who they believed carried out the robbery. This suspect then led police to an art dealer and his son who are suspected of hiding the stolen paintings. Police did not provide details on the stolen paintings but daily newspaper El Pais said they depicted the owner of the artworks, Bacon's friend.

The thieves tried to sell the paintings on two occasions, the newspaper added. Police recovered one painting several months ago and the other two just a few days ago, according to the newspaper. Bacon often visited Madrid, where he spent time studying old masters paintings in the Prado Museum, and died in the city in 1992, aged 82.

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New York charges three over $400K Damien Hirst forgery ring

He figures regularly on lists of Britain's wealthiest people, thanks partly to a 2008 auction at Sotheby's that saw him cut out gallery middlemen to sell 223 new pieces for 111 million pounds ($141 million at current exchange rates).

NEW YORK (AFP).- New York prosecutors unveiled charges Monday against three men accused of manufacturing and selling $400,000 in fake Damien Hirst prints to dozens of art buyers around the world. Vincent Lopreto, 52, appeared in court on Monday, 15 days after being released from prison for previously selling knock-off Hirst works online, prosecutors said.

Famed for his stuffed sharks, the 52-year-old Hirst has amassed a fortune as the most commercially successful member of the Young British Artist movement that dominated the British art scene in the 1990s.

Manhattan's district attorney Cyrus Vance also announced grand larceny and scheme to defraud charges against Arizona's Paul Motta, 50 and Marco Saverino, 34. The defendants faked paperwork to deceive buyers into believing the prints were genuine, stealing $400,000 from victims in New York and as far afield as Britain, Canada, Germany, South Africa, South Korea and Taiwan, prosecutors said.

Two sales were made to an undercover investigator posing as a buyer. Authorities confiscated tools allegedly used to create the forgeries from Lopreto's apartment in New Orleans, Louisiana, said Vance's office.

Hirst won the Turner Prize in 1995 and went on to attract a huge following that went well beyond the rarefied confines of conceptual art. He figures regularly on lists of Britain's wealthiest people, thanks partly to a 2008 auction at Sotheby's that saw him cut out gallery middlemen to sell 223 new pieces for 111 million pounds ($141 million at current exchange rates). Lopreto pleaded guilty in January 2014 to selling forged Hirst prints online.

© Agence France-Presse

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Bangladesh reinstalls controversial statue after outcry

A statue denounced by religious hardliners as "un-Islamic" is pictured on the grounds of the Supreme Court in Dhaka after it was reinstalled on May 28, 2017. Bangladesh on May 28 reinstalled a controversial statue deemed un-Islamic by religious hardliners on the grounds of the Supreme Court, just days after its removal had sparked angry protests by secular groups. AFP.

DHAKA (AFP).- Bangladesh on Sunday reinstalled a controversial statue deemed un-Islamic by religious hardliners on the grounds of the Supreme Court, just days after its removal had sparked angry protests by secular groups. The sculpture of a blindfolded, sari-clad woman holding scales had been in place for less than six months when authorities removed it early Friday under pressure from hardliners, who said it was based on the Greek goddess of justice.

Its removal from the front plaza of Bangladesh's top court triggered violent clashes between police and secular groups, who saw the move as further evidence of creeping Islamisation in the officially secular country. But the sculpture's creator Mrinal Haque, who had accused authorities of bowing to hardline groups, said he was asked to reinstall the statue at a different location on the court grounds.

"We have just placed the sculpture in front of the Annex Building of the Supreme Court," Haque told AFP on Sunday. "I wasn't given any clarification but was only ordered to relocate it," he said, adding the new location was at the back of the court where hardly anyone could see it. Opponents of the statue -- who have been demanding for months that it be destroyed and replaced with a Koran -- gathered outside the courthouse Sunday to protest against its return.

Several were arrested by police, Islamist groups said, drawing hundreds of protesters to Dhaka's main mosque to demand their release. "Police arrested nine of our peaceful activists. If they are not released immediately, we will call for a stronger countrywide movement," said Hasibul Islam, spokesman for the student-based Islamist party Islami Shasantantra Chhatra Andolan. The government risked "falling into danger" by trying to balance the interests of Islamist and secularist groups, he added. Islamist groupsheld months of mass protests demanding the statue be removed.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who leads the secular Awami League party, initially kept her distance from the affair. But she broke her silence last month to describe the statue as "ridiculous" after inviting top Islamist leaders to her residence. Analysts say Hasina's stand was intended to woo Islamists and conservative rural voters, before a general election expected next year. Bangladesh has seen increasing tensions between hardliners and secularists in recent years, with a number of atheist bloggers, religious minorities and foreigners murdered by extremists.

© Agence France-Presse

http://artdaily.com/news/96282/Bangladesh-reinstalls-controversial-statue-after-outcry#.WSxd3-vyuUk

United States returns stolen artifacts to Italy

A Greek bronze Herakles holding the horn of Achelous, dating to the 3rd or 4th century B.C., and valued at $12,500.

NEW YORK (AFP).- The United States on Thursday returned to Italy stolen artifacts worth at least $90,000, dating back as far as the 8th century BC but looted and trafficked overseas, officials said.

The items include a Sardinian bronze ox and Sardinian bronze warrior from the 8th century BC, a Greek bronze Heracles from the 3rd or 4th century BC and a 4th-century BC drinking cup depicting two goats butting heads. There was also a wine jug decorated with rams and panthers dated 650 BC, a 340 BC oil flask depicting a man holding a plate of fruit and a similar flask decorated with a man holding a lyre, dating back to 430 BC.

Six of the items were seized from a Manhattan gallery in April as part of an ongoing investigation into international antiquities trafficking. The seventh object was seized from a different gallery in another part of Midtown Manhattan, US officials said. The antiquities were stolen in the 1990s from burial sites and places of archaeological significance in Italy before they were smuggled overseas, one official said.

New York, America's cultural and financial capital, is a major hub in the international art market, packed with galleries and auction houses. "Art galleries, auction houses, academic institutions and collectors must be vigilant about recognizing and identifying signs of theft and trafficking," Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance said.

Italy's consul general in New York, Francesco Genuardi, welcomed the return of what he called "seven marvelous and valuable objects." The returned artifacts will go on display in museums.

© Agence France-Presse

http://artdaily.com/news/96213/United-States-returns-stolen-artifacts-to-Italy#.WSuMySMrJL8

Junk sale diamond ring bought for £10 worth a fortune

A member of Sotheby's staff poses holding a 26.27 carat, cushion-shaped, white diamond, for sale at Sotheby's auction house in London on May 22, 2017. The large diamond is expected to fetch around 350,000 GBP (405,000 euro; 456,000 USD) at auction 30 years after its owner paid 10 GBP for it at a car boot sale, thinking it was a costume jewel. Justin TALLIS / AFP.

LONDON (AFP).- A diamond ring bought for next to nothing in a London junk sale is expected to fetch up to £350,000 ($455,000, 405,000 euros), Sotheby's auction house said Monday. The owner bought the 26-carat, white diamond ring for £10 in the 1980s and wore it while doing shopping and chores, thinking it was costume jewellery, Sotheby's said. "The owner would wear it out shopping, wear it day-to-day. It's a good-looking ring," said Jessica Wyndham, head of Sotheby's London jewellery department. "No one had any idea it had any intrinsic value at all. "The majority of us can't even begin to dream of owning a diamond that large."

The diamond is thought to have been cut in the 19th century, when the style was to cut to conserve the weight rather than to make it as sparkly as possible, hence its relatively dull brilliance. "It could trick people into thinking it's not a genuine stone," said Wyndham. She said the owner, who does not want to be named, brought the ring in after a jeweller told them it could be worth something. She said the owner was "incredibly excited. Anyone would be in this position: it's a life-changing amount of money. "This is a one-off windfall, an amazing find."

The ring will be auctioned on June 7 and is expected to fetch between £250,000 and £350,000. Sotheby's said the owner came forward in the past few months seeking a valuation. "Much to the owner's surprise, the ring turned out to be a genuine cushion-shaped diamond weighing 26.27 carats with an attractive colour grade of I and impressive clarity grade of VVS2," the auctioneers said. The clarity grade "Very, very slightly included 2" is the fourth-highest out of 11, while a colour grading of I means it is near colourless, on the scale from D to Z.

© Agence France-Presse
http://artdaily.com/news/96134/Junk-sale-diamond-ring-bought-for--pound-10-worth-a-fortune#.WSSx4uvyuUk

Nicosia convention targets trade in 'blood antiquities'

(L to R) Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjorn Jagland, Cyprus' Minister of Foreign Affairs Ioannis Kasoulides and Czech Foreign Lubomir Zaoralek attend a joint press conference in the Cypriot capital Nicosia on May 19, 2017. Iakovos Hatzistavrou / AFP.

NICOSIA (AFP).- Six countries on Friday signed a Council of Europe convention which criminalises the illegal trade in "blood antiquities" that can be used to finance terrorism, officials said. The initiative, which was launched at a CoE ministerial meeting in Nicosia, comes after jihadists in war-torn Syria and Iraq have looted and sold ancient artefacts to fund their rule.

"Today, the international community takes a crucial leap forward in the protection of our cultural heritage, especially in the efforts to combat the trade in blood antiquities by trans-national organised crime and terrorist networks," said Cypriot Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides. He said it was the only international treaty that deals specifically with the criminalisation of the illicit trafficking of cultural property. The Nicosia Convention outlaws unlawful excavation, the importation and exportation of stolen antiquities, and their illegal acquisition.

It comes as signatories are "concerned that terrorist groups are involved in the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage and use the illicit trade of cultural property as a source of financing", its text reads. Since taking over large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, the Islamic State jihadist group has destroyed and looted archeological sites in both countries to sell valued artefacts on the black market.

These include the UNESCO world heritage site of Palmyra in Syria and the Assyrian site of Nimrud in Iraq. Kasoulides said IS and other extremist organisations had raised an estimated $150 million from the trafficking of stolen heritage. The convention also promotes international cooperation aimed at enhancing international legal frameworks against cultural trafficking. "I would also like to thank Armenia, Greece, Portugal, San Marino and Mexico for signing the convention today" along with Cyprus, said Kasoulides. "I call on states to sign and ratify the Nicosia Convention as soon as possible; we have a collective responsibility to protect our cultural heritage and the heritage of mankind."

The convention will come into force after its ratification by national parliaments. A key clause of the convention puts the burden of proof on buyers to demonstrate that a purchased item was not illicitly acquired. Ministers at the Nicosia meeting also adopted guidelines to improve support and compensation to the victims of "terrorist attacks". "The threat of terrorist attacks in Europe remains acute, but victims are not always getting the care and attention they need," CoE Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland said in a statement. "Governments need to do more to make sure that victims of terrorism are not forgotten and to help them benefit from assistance and compensation."

© Agence France-Presse

http://artdaily.com/news/96058/Nicosia-convention-targets-trade-in--blood-antiquities-

Provenance exhibition shows challenges of tracing the path of ownership of artwork

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Christ After the Flagellation, ca. 1670. Oil on canvas. Gift of Ellnora D. Krannert 1960-4-1.

CHAMPAIGN, ILL.- Nancy Karrels relishes solving the mysteries behind the paintings and objects we see in art museums. Karrels – a doctoral student in art history at the University of Illinois who also has two law degrees – investigates the backgrounds and histories of objects to trace their path from creator through each owner. She has created an exhibition for Krannert Art Museum on provenance research and her efforts to document the history of ownership of several of the museum’s works. “Provenance: A Forensic History of Art” opened May 13 and runs through June 2018.

Provenance, or the history of ownership of a historical object or work of art, is important to museums and private collectors, both to authenticate the object and to ensure that ownership is legal and the object was not looted. The practice has drawn more attention in the last couple of decades as artwork stolen by the Nazis before and during World War II has been identified and returned to its owners or their heirs. U.S. museums, including Krannert Art Museum, voluntarily put information online on the Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal about any works that lack an unbroken provenance for the Nazi era. The database helps people searching for stolen art.

“Most are not looted artworks. There are almost 30,000 objects on the list,” said Maureen Warren, Krannert Art Museum’s curator of European and American art, who worked with Karrels on the provenance exhibition. Of the thousands of works in Krannert’s collection, 24 are listed on the database. That doesn’t necessarily mean there are problems with the ownership of the items, but that there is a gap in the paper trail of ownership that requires closer scrutiny. “It’s our ethical obligation to conduct this research,” Warren said. “All of our curators make it part of their regular practice, with both new acquisitions and our existing collection. We will not acquire something that is questionable with regard to export laws and other regulations. We have declined to accept gifts that could be suspect in that regard. That doesn’t mean we won’t take things that have gaps (in documentation), but we consider the appropriate legal framework and try to err on the side of caution.”

Karrels has been looking at artwork in the museum’s foundational collection of European paintings that was created after 1932 and traded before 1946 – items that might have changed hands during the time period when the Nazis were stealing artwork. She looked at 28 paintings and established an unbroken line of ownership for four paintings, and she is close to doing so for a fifth. “Often you know where something was, but there’s a lack of evidence to prove it. You strive to build an airtight case,” she said. The exhibition shows the methods provenance researchers use to trace the history of a painting. First, there is physical evidence in the form of stamps or labels on the back of paintings – an export stamp or a label from a museum, auction house or exhibition. A researcher can then study catalogs for museums or auction houses, customs receipts, ship manifestos, wills and other documents for more information about the artwork.

The work at the center of the exhibition is a painting by Moretto da Brescia titled “Portrait of an Unidentified Man.” Visitors will be able to see the Austrian export stamp on the back of the painting. The stamp was used between 1934 and 1938, including a five-month period during which the Nazis occupied the country and were looting artwork. Karrels has been working with the Austrian office of cultural exports, trying to locate the export document, but so far has been unable to match a file to the painting. The exhibition also includes a Flemish painting attributed to the Master of the Saint Ursula Legend. Paperwork associated with the painting has the names of several women, and they are similar enough that Karrels initially thought it might be successive generations of women from the same family. After searching genealogical records and the society pages of a New York newspaper, Karrels discovered the names referred to one woman who changed her name several times through marriage. That painting now has an unbroken provenance during the Nazi era and has been removed from the Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal database.

Similar issues can arise when a painting is thought to be the creation of one artist but is later attributed to a different artist, or when the title or description of the painting changes over the years. The dimensions of a painting can even change. Collectors sometimes cut down a work of art to make it fit better on a wall or because they don’t like a portion of the composition, Warren said. “I’m fascinated by how provenance research brings together scholarship and detective work,” Karrels said. “There’s also a certain amount of creativity. Where can I find the sources of information I need? And finally, there is a great deal to be said for the network of scholars that collaborate across disciplines and geographic boundaries with the mutual objectives of reconstructing provenances in museum collections and fulfilling ethical obligations. “One thing I especially wanted to convey with this exhibition is the ambiguity inherent in provenance research. Most of the time, as hard as we try, we cannot resolve issues of provenance because vital documents don’t exist or aren’t accessible,” Karrels said. “This whole subject is much more nuanced than how it’s represented in the press and in film. I think our exhibition gives viewers a greater understanding of the complexities and uncertainties in provenance research, and why those exist."

http://artdaily.com/news/96050/Provenance-exhibition-shows-challenges-of-tracing-the-path-of-ownership-of-artwork

Art community remains divided over Caravaggio found in French attic

French art expert Stephane Pinta shows a radiography of the painting entitled "Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes", presented as being painted by Italian artist Caravaggio (1571-1610), while experts are still to determine its authenticity. The painting was found out in an attic of a house near Toulouse, southwestern France. PATRICK KOVARIK / AFP.

by Antoine Froidefond

PARIS.- An original Caravaggio or a master fake? This is the question that continues to befuddle art historians and experts about a painting discovered in a French attic three years ago. The 400-year-old canvas -- depicting the beheading of an Assyrian general, Holofernes, by Judith from the biblical Book of Judith -- was found in 2014 when the owners of a house near the southwestern city of Toulouse were investigating a leak in the ceiling. Discovered in remarkably good condition, the work was painted between 1600 and 1610, specialists believe, and could be worth as much as 120 million euros ($132 million). But whether the spectacular large-format canvas is the long-lost masterpiece by Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio or the work of Louis Finson, a Flemish painter and disciple of Caravaggio who died in 1617, has the art community divided.

Art historian Giovanni Agosti even resigned in protest over the issue when Milan's Brera Art Gallery, where he was a board member, decided last year to put the painting on display alongside authenticated works by the Renaissance master. The disputed painting hung next to the authenticated copy of the same scene by Finson from around 1607. The museum hedged its bets by including an asterisk on its caption attributing the work to Caravaggio but referring viewers to notes on its history in the exhibition catalogue, but that wasn't good enough for Agosti. Eminent French art expert Eric Turquin -- who has the backing of Caravaggio specialist Nicola Spinosa and has been entrusted with the painting -- believes however that the tableau is the true work of Caravaggio. It perfectly captures "the energy that radiates from the artwork and the expression on Judith's face," he said.

Biggest such discovery? Turquin, who has kept the painting tucked away in a vault at his offices, pointed to the artist's rendering of the fabrics -- the drapes in the background, the red knot near the left corner. The very creamy texture of the painting is typical of Caravaggio's pictorial style, he said. Turquin also highlighted the painter's brush strokes -- he did not draw or outline his images in advance -- noting the detailed depiction of Holofernes's short nails which he said is characteristic of Caravaggio's skill. Regardless of its authenticity, France slapped an export ban on the canvas last April after experts from the Louvre museum in Paris spent three weeks studying it. The ban is in place until November 2018. If France then wants to keep the painting out of the hands of collectors, the government will have to shell out the suggested going rate of 120 million euros. The painting should stay on French soil "as a very important Caravaggian landmark, the history and attribution of which are still to be fully investigated," the culture minister said at the time. If the painting -- which measures 144 cm by 175 cm (57 inches by 69 inches) -- is ever confirmed as an original, it would count as the biggest such discovery since another Caravaggio was discovered in Dublin in the early 1990s.

'Painted together' Caravaggio may have painted the gruesome scene, which also features a haggard old lady with goiters -- an abnormal enlargement of the thyroid gland -- in Naples while he was on the run from a murder charge in Rome. His first version of Judith -- where the positions of Judith, in white, and the old lady are reversed -- was painted there around 1598 and now hangs in the National Gallery of Ancient Art in the Italian capital. A note addressed to the Duke of Mantua a few months after Caravaggio left Naples for Malta mentioned a painting of Judith and Holofernes, with an asking price of 300 ducats, a considerable sum at the time, which could lend further weight to the French painting's authenticity. The note also cited another Caravaggio painting, "The Madonna of the Rosary," now hanging in Vienna's Museum of Fine Arts. But Caravaggio's second Judith composition has been missing since 1617, the last time a reference to it was made.

A scientific study conducted in Milan, where Caravaggio scholars gathered for a day-long conference in February, showed that the French Judith and the authentic Finson were painted using the same techniques, with the same fabrics on canvas and exhibited the same subtle changes to the original idea, visible by x-ray. These features "can be explained only if the works were painted together, side by side in the same studio" by two different painters, said a summary of the study. The report concluded that the French Judith was indeed an original, not a fake, but the burning question still remains -- was it painted by Caravaggio?

© Agence France-Presse

http://artdaily.com/news/96060/Art-community-remains-divided-over-Caravaggio-found-in-French-attic

Pissarro painting seized in WW II turns up in exhibition at the Marmottan Museum

Camille La Cueillette des pois, 1887. Gouache, 53,3 x 64,4 cm. Bruce et Robbi Toll – Archives du musée Camille-Pissarro, Pontoise / droits réservés.

PARIS (AFP).- A painting by impressionist master Camille Pissarro seized from a Jewish collector in France in WWII has turned up in an exhibition in Paris, where relatives are seeking its return from a US couple who have loaned it. "La cueillette des pois" ("Pea Harvest") painted with gouache by Pissarro in 1887, has been found on display at the Marmottan Museum in the French capital. Simon Bauer was among Jews rounded up in the Drancy internment camp outside Paris in 1944, but he escaped being deported to the Nazi death camps because of a train drivers' strike.

A year earlier his art collection, including the Pissarro, had been confiscated and sold by an art dealer designated by officials from France's war-time Vichy regime. On being released in September 1944, Bauer immediately began looking for his paintings, but he had only recovered a small part of his collection of 93 canvases by the time he died in 1947. His relatives have continued the search, and his grandson Jean-Jacques Bauer, now 87, recently learned that "Pea Harvest" was on display at the Marmottan as part of a Pissarro retrospective.

The painting is on loan from a US couple named Toll who bought it at Christie's in New York in 1995. Bauer's descendants had lost the trail of the canvas for half a century.

In 1965 they heard about an under-the-counter sale involving it and another painting, but the American dealer who had just bought them got away when a judge ordered their release. The paintings were then sold again at Sotheby's in London in 1966. On Friday Bauer asked a top Paris court to order that the painting not be allowed to move, pending further action to determine its ownership. In the meantime, "this picture must remain in France," said his lawyer, Cedric Fischer, whose great-grandfather advised Simon Bauer. Faced with this "complicated historical, factual and legal situation ... the French judge must be able to rule calmly, without haste," he added.

The US couple have opposed the request to block movement of the painting. The court has said it will rule on May 30. The Marmottan has agreed to keep the canvas until the end of the Pissarro retrospective on July 2, said the museum's lawyer Eric Andrieu.

© Agence France-Presse http://artdaily.com/news/95746/Pissarro-painting-seized-in-WW-II-turns-up-in-exhibition-at-the-Marmottan-Museum-#.WQ_PtCMrJL8

Naked man in a box who crashed the Met gala is arrested

The Russian performance artist targets high-profile art events in his Foundling series
by HELEN STOILAS | 2 May 2017

A still from a video by Lavoisier Clemente showing Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich at the 2017 Met gala

A naked Russian performance artist had himself encased in a transparent plastic box and dropped on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum last night while celebrities arrived on the red carpet for the Costume Institute’s annual gala. He was arrested by polices and is facing charges of public lewdness, obstructing governmental administration, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct, according to the New York Daily News.

In a video posted on his Facebook profile, Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich is shown being bolted into the clear case, lifted out of the backseat of an SVU and left at the entrance to the museum fundraiser, while a pack of well-dressed but utterly bemused guests look on. Guards quickly covered the box with a white sheet and dragged it away, while firefighters later arrived to cut Pavlov-Andreevich out of the container. The piece was the fifth in a series of performances called Foundling, which the artist has previously realised at high-profile art events, including during the Venice Biennale at the Palazzo Cini, the opening of Garage Museum of Contemporary Art’s new building in Moscow, a Christie’s Vanity Fair party in London and the São Paulo Bienal opening dinner. Some of those performances also resulted in arrests.

According to friends posting on the artist’s Facebook page, Pavlov-Andreevich is still awaiting a court hearing to see what he will be charged with. “If anyone cares about the box’s fate, it’s under arrest as well,” the post reads. “After all, it took part in all five performances and has quite travelled around the world.”

Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich at MET GALA 2017 / video by Lavoisier Clemente from fyodor pavlov-andreevich on Vimeo.

http://theartnewspaper.com/news/news/naked-man-in-a-box-who-crashed-the-met-gala-is-arrested/

Hitler's Aphrodite 'gift' back on display in Austria

The bronze work by the Nazi sculptor Wilhelm Wandschneider was brought to Linz in 1942 as a "personal gift" from Hitler. Photo: NORDICO Stadtmuseum.

VIENNA (AFP).- The Austrian city of Linz, where Adolf Hitler spent several years as a teenager, will once again display an Aphrodite sculpture offered by the Fuehrer after keeping it in storage for years. The bronze work by the Nazi sculptor Wilhelm Wandschneider was brought to Linz in 1942 as a "personal gift" from Hitler, who wanted to make the city the "cultural capital" of the Third Reich.

For 65 years it stood in the rotunda of a park overlooking the city, where the German dictator lived between 10 and 18 years old. But it was quickly removed in 2008 after a group of art students revealed its unsavoury origins.

Linz's Nordico museum, which had stored the work, will now add it to its collections, Doris Lang-Mayerhofer, who heads the city's culture and tourism committee, said Tuesday. A detailed explanation will accompany the Aphrodite, she said, adding that the city wanted to make an "active effort at remembrance" rather than "dismantle history".

Lang-Mayerhofer, a conversative OVP lawmaker, said the decision garnered unanimous support of parties represented on the city council, as well as the backing of the federal chancellery. The Greens backed the museum option since it would keep the statue from becoming a beacon for neo-Nazi pilgrimages, while the far-right FPO said it would protect the work from "political vandalism". Despite Linz's relative insignificance for Nazi Germany, Hitler named it one of his "Fuehrer cities" alongside Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Nuremburg. Linz had organised in 2008 an exposition delving into this cumbersome heritage.

© Agence France-Presse http://artdaily.com/news/95656/Hitler-s-Aphrodite--gift--back-on-display-in-Austria#.WQtt-fnyuUk

1.5 million euro painting 'forgotten' in Paris taxi is returned

Lucio Fontana photographed by Lothar Wolleh. Photo: Wikipedia.org.

PARIS (AFP).- A painting worth 1.5 million euros ($1.64 million) that a Paris art dealer left in a taxi's boot has been handed over by the cab's driver, the police said Tuesday. The dealer, who was not identified by the police, had filed a complaint for theft after he "forgot" about the work after hailing the cab to meet a collector last Thursday. Unable to locate the taxi, he filed his complaint Saturday. "The taxi has been found, he brought back the painting," a police source said.

The artwork is by Argentina-born Italian sculptor and painter Lucio Fontana (1899 - 1968), entitled "Concetto spaziale" (Spatial concept), with an estimated value of 1.5 million euros, police said. The work is one of a series of abstracts Fontana made featuring the piercing of the canvas to create an actual dimension of space and using light. He became known for founding the spacialist movement, according to the Tate museum website.

© Agence France-Presse http://artdaily.com/news/95634/1-5-million-euro-painting--forgotten--in-Paris-taxi-is-returned#.WQpHU9xxmUk

British treasure found in piano

On Thursday, authorities qualified the hoard as a treasure, a status usually reserved for coins that are at least 300 years old.

LONDON (AFP).- A British school and a piano tuner are to share the reward after hundreds of gold and silver coins from the Victorian era were found under the keys of a piano. The hoard of 913 sovereigns and half sovereigns --dating from 1847 to 1915 -- was found before Christmas in Shropshire, central England, and might be the largest of the kind in Britain.

On Thursday, authorities qualified the hoard as a treasure, a status usually reserved for coins that are at least 300 years old. The sovereigns were discovered after the Bishops Castle Community College called in a piano technician to retune an upright piano that had just been donated to the school.

Martin Rickhouse, 61, finding the keys a bit stiff, removed them to find the coins carefully stitched into seven cloth-wrapped parcels and a single leather drawstring purse. "I'd never come across anything like this is my whole life," he said, describing his discovery as "gob-smacking".

The British Museum, tasked with valuing the treasure, wrote in a blog post that the stash appears to have been collected over several decades and tucked away in the piano in the late 1920s. They believe it might have been in response to the Great Depression or to the events leading up to World War II. "We are not sure of the value but I would expect it to be hundreds of thousands of pounds," Peter Reavill, the British Museum’s finds liaison officer for Shropshire said. Some newspapers have estimated the hoard could be worth between £300,000 ($384,000, 359,000 euros) and £500,000.

Authorities have since tried to find who the real owners of the treasure were, and over 40 claimants came forward but their claims proved unsatisfactory. According to Britain's Treasure Act: "The Treasure Valuation Committee will decide how much the treasure is worth and how much will go to anyone entitled to a share of the find."

The couple who donated the piano to the school and who had owned it for more than 30 years will not receive any reward.

© Agence France-Presse http://artdaily.com/news/95371/British-treasure-found-in-piano#.WPzm8SMrJL8

Hidden Treasure - a gold hoard found in a piano:

Nazi loot returned to Poland

A ceremony was held by the Polish Ministry today to mark the return of ‘Rough sea with ships’ by Simon de Vlieger.

LONDON.- An important work by Simon de Vlieger, stolen by the Nazis, is returned to Poland after being identified and located by the Art Loss Register A ceremony was held by the Polish Ministry today to mark the return of ‘Rough sea with ships’ by Simon de Vlieger. The work was stolen during the Warsaw uprising by the head of the Polish propaganda department, Wilhelm Ohlenbusch, and taken to Oldenburg near Hamburg.

After the war, Vlieger's picture was considered a war loss and published in 1953 in an English catalogue, Paintings Removed from Poland by the German Occupation Authorities During the Years 1939-1945. The work was also recorded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in a database of cultural property lost during World War II. The work was also recorded in the Interpol database of stolen works of art and published in 2000 in the book War Losses. The fate of the work remained unknown until May 2016, when the Art Loss Register sent a request for information to the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for a lot that was going up for sale at a German auction house. Based on the documentation provided by the ministry, the object was withdrawn from the auction.

The identity of the work was confirmed when it was compared with pre-war photographs and during non-invasive conservation studies of the canvas. After half a year negotiations with the current owner, the Polish Ministry and the ALR have managed to come to an amicable settlement of the matter and bring about the return of the work to Poland.

http://artdaily.com/news/95369/Nazi-loot-returned-to-Poland#.WPzlxyMrJL8

Bull versus the girl: iconic NY statues at loggerheads

The "Fearless Girl" statue stands facing the "Charging Bull" as tourists take pictures in New York on April 12, 2017. A battle is heating up between two iconic New York statues, the legendary "Charging Bull" and new kid on the block "Fearless Girl," with gender equality, artistic integrity and copyright issues at stake. The Italian-American artist who created "Charging Bull," which has stood south of Wall Street for nearly 30 years, alleged Wednesday that "Fearless Girl" breached his copyright, distorted his artistic message and should be moved elsewhere. The work of US artist Kristen Visbal, the bronze "Fearless Girl" was installed last month, standing defiant, hands on hips and chin jutting out, directly challenging the bull. Jewel SAMAD / AFP.

NEW YORK (AFP).- A battle is heating up between two iconic New York statues, the legendary "Charging Bull" and new kid on the block "Fearless Girl," with gender equality, artistic integrity and copyright issues at stake. The Italian-American artist who created "Charging Bull," which has stood south of Wall Street for nearly 30 years, alleged Wednesday that "Fearless Girl" breached his copyright, distorted his artistic message and should be moved elsewhere. "It's really bad," a frail Arturo Di Modica, 76, told reporters, his voice thick with emotion and barely audible. "She's there attacking the bull," he added.

The Italian-born sculptor installed his bronze in December 1989, as a celebration of the can-do spirit in America to counter the 1987 Wall Street market crash. But for a month it has been overshadowed, at least in part by the bronze "Fearless Girl" crafted by US artist Kristen Visbal and installed in March, hands on hips and chin jutting out, directly challenging the bull. Erected initially for a week and commissioned by a Boston-based investment company to create awareness of the need for greater gender diversity on company boards, the Girl statue became an overnight sensation. It is now considered a defiant symbol of women's rights -- considered by some under threat by President Donald Trump, the Republican property tycoon who won election in November despite the emergence of a video showing him bragging about groping women.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a vehement Trump critic, has since announced the bronze girl statue will remain in place until at least March next year. But Di Modica's lawyers say it has transformed the bull "into a negative force and a threat" and turned his career triumph into a derivative work without permission. "Very simply we request respectfully that the 'Fearless Girl' statue be removed," said lawyer Norman Siegel, calling for damages to be awarded for the "violation" of his client's statutory rights.

"Fearless Girl," he suggested, could be relocated outside any number of New York firms with poor records on gender equality, or indeed in any other US city. "None of us here today are in any way not proponents of gender equality but there are issues of copyright and trademark," he said. Siegel urged the New York mayor and those who commissioned the Girl to come together to find an amicable solution, warning that without talks he would face "the hard decision" of whether to litigate. But the mayor appears ill disposed toward a compromise.

"Men who don't like women taking up space are exactly why we need the Fearless Girl," he tweeted Wednesday.

The firm that commissioned the statue said it was "grateful" to those "who have responded so enthusiastically" to its message of "the power and potential of having more women in leadership." But Di Modica's lawyers said the firm was using public property for free commercial advertising and questioned whether the city should have granted the permit. The sculptor himself initially dropped the "Charging Bull" outside the New York Stock Exchange without permission. It was later granted a permit and relocated.

© Agence France-Presse http://artdaily.com/news/95152/Bull-versus-the-girl--iconic-NY-statues-at-loggerheads#.WPAiSCMrJL8

Polish government wins battle over WWII museum

This file photo taken on January 29, 2017 shows the Museum of Second World War in Gdansk, Poland. Poland's rightwing government on Wednesday, April 5, 2017, said it would push ahead with controversial plans to merge the country's new World War II museum with another planned one, a move critics insist is purely political. Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP.

WARSAW (AFP).- Poland's rightwing government said Wednesday that it would push ahead with plans to merge the country's new World War II museum with another one that is in the works, a move that critics denounce as purely political. The announcement came on the heels of a ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court on Wednesday allowing the government-proposed merger, which had previously been blocked by a lower court. The move is widely seen as a way to remove the museum's director, Pawel Machcewicz, a longtime friend and ally of EU President Donald Tusk. Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, is the arch-rival of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland's rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) party. Costing 104 million euros ($111 million), the Museum of the Second World War officially opened its doors to the public in the Baltic port city of Gdansk last month.

Conceived by Tusk while he was premier, the facility offers a sweeping panorama of the war that focuses in particular on civilians who made up the majority of its victims. But the PiS government claims that the museum underplays Poland's own harrowing wartime fate, and drew up plans to fuse it with another museum planned in Gdansk, changing its management in the process. "Two museums focused on similar themes operating in the same city would not be justified from an economic and organisational standpoint," Poland's culture ministry said in a statement Wednesday. "The merger of both institutions will go ahead immediately." Machcewicz told reporters Wednesday that the court's decision allows the museum he runs to be "wiped from the registry", and means his contract, which runs through to 2019, can be cancelled.

"In my opinion, this was the main reason for merging the museums," said Machcewicz, who has spent the past eight years bringing the new facility to life. Critics accuse the populist PiS government of using its "good change" policy to install loyalists as directors in several key state-controlled enterprises and public institutions, like television and radio broadcasters, as well as pushing through personnel changes that undermine the independence of the Constitutional Court. The moves set off a series of mass protests and an unprecedented threat of EU sanctions over Warsaw's rule-of-law violations.

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Complete set of Goya's La Tauromaquia discovered in Ducal Library in France sells for £512,750

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, La Tauromaquia, the complete set of 33 etchings, 1816. Esstimate: £300,000 - 500,000. Sold for: £512,750 ($637,400). Photo: Sotheby's.

LONDON.- A complete set of Goya’s ‘La Tauromaquia’ led Sotheby’s sale of Prints & Multiples in London on 4 April 2017. Four determined bidders drove the final sale price to £512,750 ($637,400 / €598,840), in excess of the pre-sale estimate (£300,000-500,000). The thirty-three prints celebrating the Spanish master’s unique understanding of the art of bullfighting are virtually flawless examples of the first and only contemporary edition that was printed for Goya from large copperplates etched and aquatinted by him in 1815-1816. The set was recently found in a French ducal library when heirs of the original owner – a French ambassador at the court of Madrid during the early 18th century – were inspecting the family property, and pulled a large nondescript volume from the back of a library shelf. An initial inspection of the 19th-century ledger revealed ninety brightly coloured lithographs showing uniformed French military personnel. A glance beyond the two blank pages that followed – in what appeared to be a ‘scrapbook’ volume of prints – revealed the discovery: another series of prints, monochrome, warm, dark umber ink on freshly textured, handmade paper, immediately recognisable as masterpieces by the hand of Goya.

Séverine Nackers, Head of Prints, Sotheby’s Europe, said: “To find a complete set of Goya’s bullfighting prints with such historically significant provenance is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. The unique opportunity this sale represented was not lost on the four collectors whose determination took the bidding to an exceptional level.” The sale also included 15 prints from the collection of Lord & Lady Attenborough featuring works by Picasso, Chagall, Cézanne, Matisse, Braque, Rouault, Toulouse-Lautrec and David Hockney, which sold for a combined total of £526,875. Since Sotheby’s first offered works from the Attenborough collection in 2009, every single lot has found a buyer, from Modern British and Impressionist & Modern art, to Picasso ceramics. This group of prints represented the final tranche of property from the collection of Lord & Lady Attenborough to come to auction across a series of sales in 2016 and 2017. Yesterday’s auction brought an overall total of £3,271,500 ($4,066,802) against a pre-sale estimate of £2.3-3.5 million, with 83% of the lots sold.

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This bust is criminally horrifying: "Wrinkles aside Ronaldo liked my work - bust sculptor"

A bust representing Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo is presented during a ceremony. FRANCISCO LEONG / AFP.

LISBON (AFP).- The man behind the grinning and now-infamous bronze bust of Cristiano Ronaldo said Thursday the Real Madrid superstar liked the sculpture -- but did ask him to remove the wrinkles. Emanuel Santos defended his work following less-than-flattering reviews on social media after the bust was unveiled on Wednesday at Madeira's international airport, as it was renamed in honour of Ronaldo, the Portuguese island's most famous son. But aside from the hair, which looked suitably similar, social media ridiculed the bust as nothing like Ronaldo and even called it horrifying.

Sculptor Santos, a former job centre employee, went on the offensive, saying he had received no negative feedback -- and notably almost none from the man himself. "I had the chance to talk to Cristiano Ronaldo to find out what he thought and he told me he liked it," the Madeira-born Santos, 40, told Portuguese radio station Renascenca. But Santos did admit that the image-conscious Portuguese talisman had asked him to make some subtle changes before the big unveiling. "Cristiano only asked me to change some prominent wrinkles which made him appear older, to remove them so as to make it look smoother and happier," said Santos.

Santos said he had to work from photographs, rendering his task that much harder.

"Making a likeness of a public person is a challenge, especially if they are not on hand to take measurements," he added. "Every work is subject to critics, you can't please the Greeks and the Trojans, a sculpture is a sculpture, a photocopy is a photocopy." Ronaldo, five thousand fans and Portugal's prime minister and the president were all in attendance at the airport of Madeira, where Ronaldo was born, as it was renamed. As well as the airport and bust Ronaldo already has a museum and bronze statue in his honour in his birth town of Funchal.

Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo stands past a bust presented during a ceremony where Madeira's airport in Funchal is to be renamed after Cristiano Ronaldo, on Madeira island, on March 29, 2017. Madeira airport, the birthplace of Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, was renamed today in honor of the quadruple Ballon d'or and captain of the Portuguese team sacred European champion last summer. FRANCISCO LEONG / AFP.

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