It has been announced that over the course of this year, Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has seized 27 antiquities from the Metropolitan Museum of Art which collectively are valued at more than $13 million.
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AI-generated artwork controversially wins award at US State Fair
Game designer Jason Allen won first place at the Colorado State Fair art competition with a work he made using an artificial intelligence image generator. Allen’s controversial victory has sparked fury online, as human artists yet again fear for the future of their profession. “We’re watching the death of artistry unfold before our eyes,” despaired one Twitter user in reaction to the announcement.
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Students discover lost Vorticist masterpiece under painting by her contemporary
A masterpiece by pioneering Vorticist artist Helen Saunders (1885-1963) has been discovered hidden underneath a work by fellow Vorticist member Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957). Despite her success as one of the first British artists to pursue Abstraction, Saunders’ work had fallen into obscurity and nearly all her paintings lost.
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Christie’s to sell Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s $1 billion collection
Christie’s have announced that they will sell 150 masterpieces from the estate of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died at the age of 65 in 2018. The anticipated sale is set to be one of the highest valued single-owner sales ever to come to auction.
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A “jewel” in the University of Michigan Library’s collection – a Galileo manuscript – proved to be a fake
Last week, the University of Michigan released a surprising statement, saying that one of the highlights of their collection is, in fact, a fake. They have realised that a single manuscript leaf, which entered their collection in 1938 and has been presumed, since then, to be an authentic work by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), was likely made in the early twentieth century by the infamous and prolific fraudster Tobia Nicotra.
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Brazilian police recover £140 million in artwork stolen during bizarre psychic con
Police in Brazil have arrested a gang of con artists on suspicion of scamming a member’s mother out of more than 709 million reais (£140 million) in art, cash, and jewellery. A phony clairvoyant was allegedly even employed to convince the alleged victim that her art collection was cursed.
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New legislation for artworks with Nazi-looted provenance in New York institutions
New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced last week that she had signed new legislation introduced by Senator Anna Kaplan and Assemblywoman Nily Rozic to ensure younger generations have a greater awareness of the events of the Holocaust. One element of this legislation specifies that museums in New York must “prominently” display a placard on some other type of signage indicating when a work of art was stolen by the Nazis.
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Horniman Museum repatriates over 70 Benin artefacts to Nigeria
London’s Horniman Museum and Gardens will transfer the ownership of 72 objects to the Nigerian government, including its collection of Benin bronzes. The Horniman, which won museum of the year in July, is the first government-funded institution to return artefacts looted by British forces from Benin City.
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Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah al-Thani accuses London art dealer of selling fakes
Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah al-Thani is suing one of London’s most established art dealers, John Eskenazi. Sheikh Al-Thani believes that Eskenazi has sold him seven fakes, for which the Sheikh paid £4.2 million in 2014 and 2015.
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Long-lost residence of Genghis Khan’s grandson possibly found by archaeologists
Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of an 800-year-old palace that may be the lost residence of Hulagu Khan (ca. 1217-1265), the grandson of Genghis Khan (1162-1227). The once magnificent palace in the Çaldıran district of eastern Turkey’s Van province could be the first known architectural remains dating to the Ilkhanate ruling.
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