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.

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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.

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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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Graffiti vandals damage Kentridge Rome frieze

In this file photo South African artist William Kentridge poses at the piazza del Campidoglio on April 12, 2016 in Rome. Kentridge was in Rome for the promotion of his mural “Triumphs and Laments”, a 550 meter-long fresco drawn by erasing the biological patina on the travertine embankment walls that line the Tiber river. ALBERTO PIZZOLI / AFP.

ROME (AFP).- A giant frieze depicting the history of Rome on the walls lining the River Tiber has been damaged by graffiti writers, to the dismay of its creator, William Kentridge. The South African artist said he was at a loss to understand why Rome authorities had not removed graffiti as soon it appeared along the bottom of the 550-metre (1,800-feet)-long mural he created out of the dirt caking an embankment of the famous river.

The work, an idiosyncratic take on the Eternal City's defining moments, was inaugurated in April 2016 and has proved a popular free attraction for visitors to the Italian capital. But its visual impact has been compromised by the appearance of a steadily-growing amount of graffiti in the spaces between some of the images - most of them 'tags', the personalised signatures of the writer.

"Some graffiti artists do great work. I'm less interested in those who simply leave their initials on the wall," Kentridge told Italian daily La Repubblica. "I know there are many people in Rome to whom this work is dear... out of respect for them, I hope the city authorities will clean up the graffiti," he said. The message appeared to have been heard. Deputy mayor Luca Bergamo on Friday ordered a team from the city's refuse department to start erasing the graffiti, denouncing the authors of it as "stupid."

Entitled "Triumphs and Laments", Kentridge's 10-metre (33-feet) tall mural was created by washing the dirt off the wall around the images in a technique known as reverse stencilling. The artist expects it to gradually disappear as pollution and weeds combine to return the cleaned bits of wall to their previous state, a process that he had envisaged taking four to five years. The frieze provides a non-chronological depiction of Rome's history from pre-historic times up to the Dolce Vita era of the 1960s and the contemporary migrant crisis - which is referenced in a depiction of a Roman slave galley.

In an interview with AFP last year, Kentridge described it as a meditation on the flawed nature of memory with both heroic and shameful episodes from the city's history on show. The mural is located on the right bank of the Tiber in the Trastevere district of Rome, close to St Peter's basilica and across the water from the historic centre of the Italian capital.

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Chubb returns stolen Norman Rockwell painting 40 years after theft

Norman Rockwell’s Boy Asleep with Hoe, also known as Taking a Break or Lazybones, was featured on the September 6, 1919 edition of the Saturday Evening Post. Photo: Courtesy of Chubb.

PHILADELPHIA, PA.- More than 40 years after the theft of Norman Rockwell's Boy Asleep with Hoe – also known as Lazy Bones or Taking a Break – the painting has been returned to the family of its original owners following a ceremony with Chubb and the FBI in Philadelphia. Stolen from the Grant family's Cherry Hill, New Jersey, home in 1976, the family submitted a claim to Chubb, their insurance provider at the time. Upon claim payment, Chubb acquired the painting's title.

"The theft of Boy Asleep with Hoe remained one of the art world's greatest mysteries for over four decades. In partnership with the FBI, we're pleased to return it to the Grant family," said Fran O'Brien, Senior Vice President, Chubb Group, Division President, North America Personal Risk Services. According to recent news stories, the value of the recovered painting is estimated to be between $600,000 to $1,000,000, which is significantly more than its value at the time of the theft.

"Recovered art is often valued at a greater amount than a similar piece, given its unique provenance. While many often assume a piece is out of harm's way upon recovery, its newfound high-profile status and value can invite new exposures," added Ms. O'Brien. "Existing insurance coverage based on an outdated appraisal, for example, may not provide sufficient protection moving forward. Fine art customers can turn to Chubb for deep expertise, keen marketplace insight and underwriting knowledge to properly protect their most valued possessions."

The Grant family returned the claims payment to Chubb in exchange for the painting. Chubb will donate the funds to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Stockbridge was Rockwell's home for more than 25 years, where he created some of his most iconic work. "We so greatly appreciate the generous donation to the Museum by Chubb," notes Norman Rockwell Museum Director/CEO Laurie Norton Moffatt.

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Art 'blue helmets' rescue Italy's treasures from rubble

A volunteer part of the UN task force "Blue Helmets for Culture" looks at a Madona with child painting in the seriously damaged church of San Francesco in the village of Visso on March 27, 2017, central Italy. The central villages of Visso and Ussita where hit by a strong earthquake on October 27, 2017 forcing the population to flee their homes and leaving empty villages now strictly protected by police road blocks. This UN boby tasked with the protections of the world's cultural patrimony (Unesco) and working with a mixed composition of specialized personnel including approximately 30 civilian experts (historians, scholars, restorers) and 30 officers from Italy's art crime squad, the Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale, is now working to recover Art from the damaged and abandoned villages of central Italy frequently hit by quakes in the last year. FILIPPO MONTEFORTE / AFP

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