When someone attacked Michelangelo’s Pieta with a hammer in the 1970s, the sculpture was severely damaged. It was restored and put back on display at the Vatican. A few years later a paranoid schizophrenic slashed Rembrandt’s masterpiece ‘The Night Watch’ putting a gaping hole in the canvas with a bread knife, at the Rijksmuseum.
8 August 2019
The gallerist Karsten Schubert, who died last week has generously bequeathed his collection of Cezanne drawings and prints to the Nation. The works will be on long term loan to the Whitworth in an exhibition celebrating his extraordinary collection and life.
7 August 2019
Tate Modern was shut and declared a crime scene on Sunday after a six-year-old French boy was thrown five floors from the 10th-floor viewing platform. The child crashed onto the fifth-floor roof above the new member’s room and was airlifted to hospital by air ambulance where he is in critical condition.
4 August 2019
Rebecca Pow, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Arts, Tourism and Heritage in Boris Johnson’s government has made her first move since his election by putting into place a temporary export bar on The Dark Rigi, the Lake of Lucerne by JMW Turner. It is hoped that the work can be saved for the nation.
3 August 2019
A filing to the Supreme Court, in the U.S. State of Arizona, has alleged that the Sackler family “siphoned” billions from the family-owned company, Purdue Pharma to deplete it in order to avoid paying claims connected to the prescription opioid painkiller OxyContin.”
2 August 2019
La Biennale Paris, in partnership with La Patinoire Royale – Galerie Valérie Bach, will present “Transchromie”, a significant work by Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz Diez.
31 July 2019
The Franco-Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, born Caracas, 1923 has died in Paris where he lived and worked since 1960. Cruz-Diez was a major protagonist in the field of Kinetic and Optical art, a movement that encouraged “an awareness of the instability of reality.” His body of work established him as one of the critical twentieth-century thinkers in the realm of colour.
29 July 2019
The V&A has acquired a series of work exploring the design identity of Extinction Rebellion (XR) – a global activist group calling for urgent action on climate change through acts of non-violent civil disobedience and disruption.
28 July 2019
Marisa Merz (born 1931, Turin, Italy) the only woman artist closely associated with the Arte Povera movement has died age 93.
22 July 2019
A temporary export bar on a painting depicting the Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinksy by the English artist Glyn Philpot has been placed by Arts Minister Rebecca Pow, in a bid to keep it in the country.
22 July 2019
An elderly New York art collector has taken his Philadelphia attorney to court for cheating him out of millions.
21 July 2019
In 2017, SMC a Volkswagen dealership in Copenhagen shot a photo of a new Volkswagen Polo parked in front of an installation by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. The photograph was subsequently used to promote a new model of the Polo car on its website and inhouse magazine.
18 July 2019
Musée du Louvre has removed or taped over all references to the Sackler Family in response to protests from organisations including Nan Goldin’s PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now group.
17 July 2019
The directors of Tate have come out emphatically declaring a climate emergency. In a letter dated today, the organisation hopes to spread the word that our fragile planet has reached a breaking point.
17 July 2019
The V&A has had a terrific year with a London gate of over 4.2m visitors and the successful launch of their first outpost in Dundee.
16 July 2019
As already stated on this site, Leon Kossoff’s death on July 4 marked pretty much the end of an epoch. Of the for artists who led the so-called School of London – Bacon, Freud, Kossoff and Auerbach – only Auerbach now survives.
7 July 2019
The death of Leon Kossoff, who died on 4 July after a short illness is nearly the end of an era for the great wave of British painting known as the School of London.
6 July 2019
Hastings Contemporary, (the former Jerwood Gallery) launched as an independent gallery on Tuesday with three notable exhibitions, Roy Oxlade alongside works by his tutor David Bomberg, Contemporary Danish Artist Tal R, and new works by artist/illustrator Quentin Blake.
4 July 2019
The Art Fund’s Museum of the Year 2019 has been awarded to St Fagans National Museum of History, near Cardiff…. Read More
4 July 2019
Sculpture in the City, the annual public art programme set amongst well-known architectural landmarks, has launched, celebrating their ninth edition. Nineteen artworks make up this year’s outdoor sculpture park in the Square Mile, to include a new artwork by Jonathan Trayte to be unveiled in Autumn 2019.
1 July 2019
The noted writer and curator Paul Carey-Kent gives us his rolling ten recommended Contemporary and Modern art exhibitions for July 2019 in London now.
30 June 2019
I have always had ambiguous feelings about the annual Masterpiece London fine art and antiques fair, now under the umbrella of the Art Basel Group.
29 June 2019
To celebrate the 19th edition of the Turner Prize presented this year at Turner Contemporary, Margate is to host Margate… Read More
27 June 2019
The London Summer Art week which includes Contemporary auctions at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s, Masterpiece London the art fair recently acquired by Art Basel as well a Olympia and newcomer FairForSaatchi is well on the way.
27 June 2019
Sotheby’s London Evening Sale of Contemporary Art has realised £69,143,300/ $87,811,991/ €77,440,496 (est. £58-82.8 million/ $73.5-105 million / €64.7-92.4 million).
27 June 2019
The Serpentine launched their annual Pavilion this morning with a press view attended by the architect Junya Ishigami and the artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries Hans Ulrich Obrist.
20 June 2019
A long lost painting attributed by a French provincial auction house to Caravaggio, which languished in a chateau attic in… Read More
20 June 2019
Sink Without Trace presents works by seventeen artists on the subject of migrant deaths at sea. The exhibition held during… Read More
19 June 2019
Yana Peel, the Serpentine Galleries CEO has resigned from her role, after three years, following a concerted lobbying campaign against her husband’s recent investment in NSO, a surveillance technology company.
18 June 2019
Sotheby’s has been sold to the French/Israeli Media Tycoon Patrick Drahi for $3.7 Billion, taking the second largest Auction House in the world from public ownership to private.
18 June 2019
UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright has vowed to protect objects on loan from abroad in temporary exhibitions in UK museums from seizure by the UK courts.
17 June 2019
Art Basel closed the doors on the 2019 edition reporting buoyant sales to private collectors and public institutions by galleries across all market sector. The fair attracted buyers from over 80 countries and an overall attendance of 93,000.
16 June 2019
