Fine Art News

• Watch the Future Generation Art Prize conference live
  Monday afternoon, readers of The Art Newspaper can watch a live stream from Kiev of the press conference launching the 2012 Future Generation Art Prize.

  Speakers include Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate, the artists Damien Hirst and…

Fine Art News

• Curator (British Art 1750 – 1830) Reference: TG0158 <br> Curator (British Art 1850 – 1915) Reference: TG0159
  The aim of Tate Britain is to increase public awareness, understanding and enjoyment of British art from the 16th century to the present day, and of international modern and contemporary art. Tate supports this ambition by facilitating extraordinary…
• Baryshnikov tiptoes into photographer’s shoes
  Mikhail Baryshnikov, the ballet dancer-turned-actor, is adding another noun to his artistic resume—photographer. In February, the Gary Nader Art Centre in Miami will host the multi-talented Russian’s first solo show of dance photography, “Dance This…

Fine Art News

• Auction on the Dark Side
  Stars Wars fans and art lovers unite! On 7 February an auction sponsored by halloweencostumes.com will offer a selection of replica Darth Vader helmets-turned-art….

Fine Art News

• Earliest copy of Mona Lisa found in Prado
  A copy of the Mona Lisa has been discovered in the Prado which was painted in Leonardo’s studio—created side by side with the original that now hangs in the Louvre. This sensational find will transform our understanding of the world’s most…
• The National Gallery’s blockbuster exhibition could mark a turning point for Leonardo scholars
  Leonardo-mania officially ends at 10pm on Sunday 5 February—at least as far as London is concerned. That is when the National Gallery’s “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” will close its doors. Gone will be the early-morning queues…

Fine Art News

• The King in Germany
  The citizens of Düsseldorf are all shook up over the King… of rock and roll. The German city is now home to the Elvis Presley Ausstellung, an institution that honours the man who famously sang about his…
• Italian football club sponsors Old Masters show
  A major Italian football club has taken the unusual step of sponsoring an exhibition at a remote Italian museum.

  Novara Calcio, a premier league team based in Piedmont, is backing the “Treasures of the Prince” show at the Forte di Bard, a…

• Icom drops Turkish committee
  The International Council of Museums (Icom) has ditched its Turkish committee, which is backed by the country’s ministry of culture. Julien Anfruns, the director general of Icom, which is backed by Unesco, says that the accredited Turkish arm,…
• Director, Scottish National Portrait Gallery
  This an exciting opportunity to lead a major cultural institution of world class standing with the potential to develop the Gallery in new and exciting ways locally, nationally and internationally.

  Following the retirement of James…

• India Art Fair looks poised to join the big league
  Enthusiasm was high at the opening the fourth India Art Fair—formerly the India Art Summit—which launched in Delhi on 25 January (until 29 January). Along with its new name, it had a new location in a huge exhibition ground in South Delhi and a far…

Fine Art News

• Contemporary art show in Saudi Arabia could herald a new movement
  jeddah. Usually it is the job of an art historian to pinpoint when an art movement begins. But last month, on the west coast of Saudi Arabia, the overwhelming feeling among visitors to a ground-breaking exhibition of Saudi contemporary art was that…
• Wearing’s "grim and worthy" NPG portrait of Chakrabarti
  The National Portrait Gallery in London has commissioned Gillian Wearing to take a photograph of human rights campaigner Shami Chakrabarti (right), director of Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties). What may come as a surprise is the…

Fine Art News

• Camilla’s mad about “modern British” art
  The Duchess of Cornwall told our correspondent yesterday that her favourite art is “modern British”, that is 20th century. She was visiting Swindon, to mark the publication of the Public Catalogue Foundation’s latest volume, on Gloucestershire and…
• Homophobic attack in New Delhi gallery
  A homophobic attack on a gay artist earlier this month at a gallery in New Delhi has prompted fears that extremist Hindu groups are waging a new campaign against radical art and artists in India. The assault took place during an exhibition of…
• Swiss museum settles Malevich claim
  A settlement has found common ground between a Swiss museum and claimants to art, allowing some of the art to remain on public display. In an agreement announced on 20 January, the Kunstmuseum Basel transferred a work in gouache by Kazimir Malevich…
• Shedding light on an obscure pre-Raphaelite
  The restoration of a series of panels by Francis Ashton Jackson (1868-1946) at an English chapel for retired clergy is likely to boost the reputation of this obscure painter associated with the pre-Raphaelite movement. While the paintings were…
• Progress on the Uffizi expansion, at last
  After a delay of more than five years, progress is finally being made on the project to extend the Uffizi galleries, housed within the Vasarian building complex. Eight new rooms dedicated to French, Dutch, Flemish and Spanish artists from the 16th,…
• Hermitage director turns down seat in Russian parliament
  Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, has turned down a seat in the State Duma, or lower house of parliament, representing Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party.

  Piotrovsky was listed at number two in a…

• Spanish savings bank’s art collection “transferred” to Alicante museum
  A few days before the sale of the Spanish Mediterranean Savings Bank (widely known as CAM) to the Sabadell Bank in early December, the savings bank signed a leaseback agreement with the city of Alicante to transfer its art collection to the Alicante…

Fine Art News

• The price of budget travel: a day in Athens
  Removing pre-arranged seats from a flight unleashes the basest, darkest instincts of humankind. So to fly Easyjet, “Europe’s leading airline”, is not just to travel cheaply but also to be a voluntary participant in a psychological experiment akin to…
• Portugal celebrates its history—on a budget
  For the opening weekend (21-22 January) celebrating the Portuguese city of Guimarães’s term as the 2012 European Capital of Culture (with Maribor in Slovenia), the organisers set a suitable tone for a country currently struggling under economic woes…
• Denmark’s Right Royal Painter
  Here’s a sentence you don’t see very often: “The Queen will be present during this part of the press opening and will answer questions from the press.” The information comes courtesy of a statement from the Arken Museum of Modern Art in Denmark…
• Americana week pulls in uneven results
  The blitz of sales and fairs of Americana week in New York (16-22 January) scored some mixed results. The auctions were marked by heavy phone and online bidding with early antiques prized by collectors.

  Christie’s 586-lot sales (19, 20 and 23…

Fine Art News

• Racing through Rome while others cross the finish line
  Rome. City of Genius. Home to Bernini, Borromini, Michelangelo and Caravaggio. Centre of the High Renaissance and then the Baroque. And now, thanks to the dynamic duo of Damien Hirst and Larry Gagosian, host to 18 paintings of spots in varying…

Fine Art News

• Saatchi Gallery likes its online numbers
  The Saatchi Gallery cheekily sent out a press release on Thursday that proclaims the gallery as Britain’s Most “Liked” Museum. It earned the title through a bit of creative accounting from the firm Museum Analytics, which published figures tracking…
• Geneva and Rome: running the gamut from Swiss watches to Italian strikes
  My journey today has been planned with military precision. There is no room for manoeuvre; no margin of error. I rely on French trains and Swiss efficiency to complete my task and make it from Paris to the Gagosian Gallery in Geneva and then to Rome…
• Balkans targeted in hunt for stolen art
  When two paintings by Picasso, stolen from a Swiss gallery in Pfäffikon, turned up in Belgrade last October, the Serbian police refused to provide any information on the chain of events leading to their recovery. But The Art Newspaper has learned…