Fisk University and the Stieglitz Collection: The final ruling

We’ve had a couple of updates in the last six months, but this week the final decision was announced: The Tennessee Supreme Court denied the application of the Tennessee Attorney General to hear an appeal of the decision of the Court of Appeals to permit Fisk’s Alfred C. Stieglitz Art Collection to be shared with the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art located in Arkansas. This means the university can move ahead with working out the logistics of the deal, which includes the museum paying $30 million for a half interest of the Collection.

For previous posts, click here.

Live: Damien Hirst (more likely assistants) at work

Two years ago it was Marina Abramović at MoMA. Now you can watch another artist at work: Damien Hirst, who has set up a live feed on his website with two views into his studio.

The 30 million dollar punch

A visitor to the new Clyfford Still Museum in Denver defaced a painting worth $30-40 million.  It’s not clear what her motives were, but she punched, scratched, leaned on, and attempted to urinate on (!?) 1957-J-No. 2 , seen at left.  Okay, she was drunk.  In the middle of the afternoon.  In a museum??

Via the Los Angeles Times

USC engineer heads team to save Leonardo’s Last Supper

An engineering professor from the University of Southern California has lead a multinational group charged with saving Leonardo’s iconic fresco The Last Supper. One problem maintaining the fresco is the way it was painted: directly on a dry wall, which caused it to begin deteriorating almost immediately. Subsequent restorations haven’t helped the matter. However, the current team has been tackling the modern problem of both outdoor and indoor air pollution in Milan.

1500 years of Chinese painting comes to life

UC Berkeley announced a new online lecture series by Professor Emeritus James Cahill. The series, A Pure and Remote View: Visualizing Early Chinese Landscape Painting, consists of videotaped introductions with high resolution images and offers “the first comprehensive narrative and unparalleled view of one of the world’s longest and most continuous pictorial art traditions.” The project is sponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies and can be found, with accompanying lecture notes, here. The video files and lecture notes are to be viewed, downloaded, and used freely by anyone; see the IEAS website for further copyright information.

Ghent Altarpiece IRR images now available online

A first look at the IRR (infrared reflectography) analysis of the Ghent Altarpiece is now available.  The entire altarpiece has been photographed using the IRR technique as a way to study its underdrawings and to determine its different phases and contributors.  It was initiated as part of an urgent conservation treatment in 2010.

Twenty of the IRR high resolution images are available online for study and download; further phases of the project will be posted over the next year.

The project was mainly sponsored by the Getty Foundation, in collaboration with  the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK/IRPA).

Updated Feb. 29, 2012: There’s a new link for this project.

Cy Twombly dies at 83

American artist Cy Twombly, a long-standing figure in modern art, has died in Rome at age 83 after a battle with cancer. Twombly is known for creating paintings that combined elements of drawing and writing with gestural abstraction.

via LA Times

BBC hosts Your Paintings website

The BBC, in partnership with the Public Catalogue Foundation and public museums and collections, has launched the website Your Paintings, which “aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings, and where to see them for real.” The site is searchable by artist last name and subject matter. So far they’ve posted roughly 63,000 paintings and hope to complete the project by the end of 2012.

Update on Picasso trove, part 2: Charges are filed

We reported in December here and here that a dispute had developed over a collection of works by Pablo Picasso that had been discovered with the artist’s former electrician. The latest news is that seventy-one-year-old Pierre Le Guennec and his wife have been formally charged with stashing the 271 “stolen” Picasso artworks at their home.

via Agence France-Presse

A Michelangelo in Tonawanda, NY?

Whether or not a small easel painting  in Tonawanda, NY is  a Michelangelo preparatory painting for the Pietà is the basis for a very contentious discussion. Its current owner, Martin Kober, claims that it is the painting that Michelangelo gave to Vittoria Colonna, referenced in one of her letters.  His claim has been dismissed by nearly every museum or connoisseur he has approached.  However he now has the support of Italian conservator and Michelangelo scholar Antonio Forcellino.

The New York Times article  outlines the history and the controversy – be sure to read the readers’ comments to see how deeply opinions run on this!