Kiev biennial forced to look for a new home
24 March
The second edition of Art Arsenale, Kiev’s contemporary art biennial, will no longer be held at the Mystetskyi Arsenal. The centre, which has been organising projects to aid wounded Ukrainian fighters, withdrew its support due to political instability in the region. The curators Georg Schöllhammer and Hedwig Saxenhuber say they will carry on with plans for the exhibition despite the lack of venue.
Looted El Greco returned to rightful heirs
24 March
Portrait of a Gentleman (1570), a painting by El Greco that was seized by the Gestapo in Vienna in 1944, has been returned to the heirs of its original owner, Julius Priester. The work had been traded around the world since 1944, residing in private collections in New York, London and Stockholm. It was on consignment with a New York dealer last summer when the Commission for Looted Art in Europe stepped in to make a claim on behalf of the UK-based heirs.
Turkish president refuses to pay damages to artist
30 March
The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans to appeal a civil court ruling that says he must pay the artist Mehmet Aksoy €3,600 in damages after making disparaging comments about one of the artist’s works. In 2011, Erdogan, who was then the prime minister, called Monument to Humanity a “monstrosity”. The local council subsequently dismantled the sculpture. A government spokesman declined to comment.
Tate Britain director on the move after five years
31 March
Penelope Curtis will be trading London for Lisbon when she leaves her post as the director of Tate Britain to become the first international director of the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Portugal. During her five-year tenure, Curtis oversaw a £45m renovation and a chronological rehang of Tate Britain’s permanent collection. She also oversaw a controversial staff restructuring. She is due to take up her new position in the autumn.
Leading art libraries to put collections online
1 April
Fourteen art libraries plan to make 31.5 million images of paintings, drawings and sculptures available online. The International Digital Photo Archive Consortium allows researchers to access images that would otherwise only be accessible in person. Participating institutions include the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris and Rome’s Bibliotheca Hertziana.
Artists’ studios in former News International HQ
8 April
The arts education organisation Bow Arts is turning the former London home of Rupert Murdoch’s publishing company News International into a complex of 90 artists’ studios scheduled to open in June. The property development group St George Plc bought the 15-acre site in 2012 and donated the building to Bow Arts. Arts Council England is supporting the project. A Kickstarter campaign is also raising money for the initiative.
Smuggled antiquities pulled from sale
13 April
Christie’s pulled four antiquities from its 15 April auction after being informed that they were listed in the archives of the convicted art smugglers Giacomo Medici and Gianfranco Becchina. The pieces withdrawn from sale included a black-figure Attic amphora (540BC-520BC) that carried an estimate of £50,000 to £70,000. The situation has raised the recurring question of why the archives are not released to auction houses and other traders.
Yves Bouvier steps down from governing freeport
14 April
The Swiss businessman Yves Bouvier is expected to step down from a governance role at Luxembourg’s Le Freeport following allegations of art fraud and complicity in money laundering. Bouvier, the majority investor in the Singapore and Luxembourg freeports, was arrested in February. He has denied any wrongdoing.
$130m Giacometti could break auction record
14 April
Christie’s predicts that two works of art due to be auctioned this month will fetch astronomical prices. The sculpture Pointing Man (L’homme au doigt) (1947), by Alberto Giacometti, is estimated to sell for close to $130m, which would make it the most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction. In the same sale on 11 May, it is offering the painting Les Femmes d’Alger (Version “O”) (1955), by Pablo Picasso, which is expected to fetch as much as $140m.
Largest looted artefacts haul in US history
14 April
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office recently made public the largest antiquities haul in US history. The seizure consisted of 2,622 stolen artefacts, worth an estimated $107.6m, linked to the Indian art dealer Subhash Kapoor. Kapoor, who is awaiting trial in India, operated the now-defunct New York gallery Art of the Past and sold artefacts to more than a dozen museums. Authorities have accused him of smuggling stolen antiquities into the US and storing them in Manhattan and Queens.
Documenta wants to show Gurlitt’s hoard
15 April
Adam Szymczyk, the director of Documenta 14, wants to present all the works hoarded by the late Cornelius Gurlitt at the international exhibition, to be held in Kassel and Athens in 2017. The idea has been resisted by Germany’s minister of culture and the board of the Kunstmuseum Bern, to which Gurlitt left the collection.
Second World War items removed from sale
16 April
Hundreds of personal effects owned by interned Japanese-Americans during the Second World War were removed from a sale at the Rago auction house in New Jersey after protests from prisoners’ families. The objects were offered by an unknown consignor.
