The Procuress: Fake or Mistake? Painting Featured in the Third Episode of BBC One’s Fake or Fortune

LONDON.- The Procuress, the painting featured in the third episode of BBC One’s Fake or Fortune, went on view to the public at The Courtauld Gallery, London, on Monday 4 July 2011, the day after the television programme was broadcast. In the late 1940s Geoffrey Webb, an officer responsible for the restitution of art seized by the Nazis in Germany and The Netherlands, was given a version of the 17th-century painter Dirck van Baburen’s The Procuress (the original painting, dated 1622, is [...]

Most Important Stolen Paintings in the Last Twenty Years Searched by Special Agents

MADRID.- Some of the most important works by recognized geniuses like Picasso, Matisse, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Van Goh, Cézanne and Sorolla were stolen years ago and the Spanish National Police, which tracks them, has released a video with images of the most wanted paintings. These works of art, some stolen more than 20 years ago could reach the black market “at an exorbitant price, ” according to specialist officers working in their search and that belong to the Heritage Brigade, of [...]

From Boston to Singapore – A New Director for the Asian Civilisations Museum

BOSTON, MA.- The National Heritage Board (NHB) of Singapore welcomes Dr Alan Chong as the new Director of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM), one of the five national museums of Singapore. The announcement concludes an intensive 12-month worldwide search since news of the retirement of Dr Kenson Kwok, the museum’s former Director, was announced in 2008. Currently the William and Lia Poorvu curator at the renowned Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Dr Alan Chong succeeds Dr Kenson Kwok who [...]

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Announces Public Phase of Campaign for the Gardner

BOSTON, MA.- The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, on May 1st, officially kicked off the public phase of its Campaign for the Gardner with a goal of raising the final $45 million in order to complete the total $180 million initiative. The Campaign for the Gardner will enrich the museum’s legacy by enabling current programming to continue while preserving the historic building and collection for future generations. The centerpiece of the Campaign, a new wing on the museum’s property [...]

Joan Jonas’s Reading Dante III at Yvon Lambert New York

NEW YORK, NY.- Yvon Lambert New York presents an installation by acclaimed American artist Joan Jonas. This show runs concurrently with an exhibition of new work by Mexican artist Stefan Brüggemann. Both exhibitions will be on view until May 8, 2010. This exhibition marks Jonas’s third at Yvon Lambert. Reading Dante III draws inspiration from Dante’s fourteenth-century Divine Comedy, a reoccurring topos of Jonas’s work since 2007. Each performance and installation becomes increasingly layered as the work transforms and develops. [...]

$5 Million Reward for Recovery Rembrandt’s “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee”

Boston, MA—When two men dressed as Boston police officers made off with 13 works of art valued at $500 million from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, it was an art theft of unusual and shocking scale. Now the Federal Bureau of Investigations has announced it will mount a similarly ambitious effort to retrieve the paintings, offering a $5 million reward for their recovery in a billboard campaign along Interstates 93 and 495 in Massachusetts. The signs, which are [...]

FBI Hopes DNA can Help Solve 1990 Gardner Museum Art Heist

BOSTON.- The FBI is hoping advances in DNA technology can help solve a 20-year-old Boston art heist. A spokeswoman for the FBI’s Boston office tells The Boston Globe the lead agent in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum case is resubmitting evidence taken from the scene for DNA analysis. Agent Geoffrey Kelly said he could not disclose what evidence would be reviewed, but experts familiar with the case said it would probably include duct tape used to bind two museum security [...]

Sculpture of the Italian Renaissance at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

BOSTON, MA.- In Italy during the Renaissance (around 1400 to 1600), an innovative form of sculpture was developed using fine clay that was shaped and modeled before being fired in a kiln. Called terracotta in Italian (meaning “baked earth”), this type of sculpture often has been overlooked by scholars in favor of the more commonly known Renaissance sculptures carved in marble or cast in bronze. “Modeling Devotion: Terracotta Sculpture of the Italian Renaissance”, a new scholarly exhibition at the Isabella [...]