Art Movements
This week in art news: A wax house is melting in London, Egyptian activist Sanaa Seif was sentenced to three years in prison, and da Vinci's "Portrait of a Man in red chalk" (c.1512) is to go on public display in Turin.
Art Movements is a weekly collection of news, developments, and stirrings in the art world.
Sanaa Seif, an Egyptian political activist who worked on the Oscar-nominated documentary The Square (2013), was sentenced to three years in prison by a court in Cairo. Seif was arrested for demonstrating against new anti-protest laws. Seif’s brother, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for violating the protest law last June. Hyperallergic’s interview with The Square‘s director and producer, Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, can be found here.
The U.K. amended its copyright rules to free up the use of so-called “orphan [art]works.” Under a new licensing scheme, museums, publishers, and filmmakers, will be allowed to use artworks whose copyright owners can’t be traced, provided that they have demonstrated a “diligent” search for the rights holders.
Artist Alex Chinneck has created a two-storey wax house in London. Entitled “A pound of flesh for 50p,” the work, which consists of 8000 wax bricks, will be definitively melted down on November 18 (image at top of post).
Artist and writer Katsuhiko Akasegawa, better known by his pseudonym Genpei Akasegawa, passed away. Closely involved with the neo-Dada movement, Akasegawa is best known for printing fake banknotes which served as invitations to a solo exhibition, a stint which landed the artist in prison for several months.
Art historian Mina Gregori has claimed to have identified a painting by Caravaggio. The painting, which depicts Mary Magdalene in ecstasy, is accompanied by a note referring to Cardinal Scipione Borghese of Rome, a patron of the artist.
Sotheby’s is being sued over claims that it misattributed a painting purported to have been painted by Caravaggio. Bill Thwaythes sold the painting in 2006, an apparent copy attributed to a follower of the artist, for £42,000. The painting’s new owner has since claimed that the painting is by the Italian master.
The inaugural Cultural Heritage Rescue Prize has been awarded to Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s director general of antiquities and museums.
A plan for a new Munch museum was approved by Oslo’s city council.
A Texas museum is to be named after British rock star Phil Collins. The $100 million center will display the musician’s collection of artifacts from the Battle of the Alamo (1836).
Leonardo da Vinci’s “Portrait of a Man in red chalk” (c. 1512), believed by some to be the only known self portrait by the artist, is to go on public display in Turin. The famed drawing was smuggled to Rome during WWII in order to protect it from the Nazis.
John Constable’s “Willy Lott’s House from the Stour” (c. 1816-18) is to go on display at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The painting was donated to the nation as part of the U.K’s Acceptance in Lieu scheme in order to settle a £1,012,200 inheritance tax bill.
Eli and Edythe Broad’s new contemporary art museum, currently under construction in downtown Los Angeles, is slated to open next Fall. The collectors recently acquired Jordan Wolfson’s “Female Figure” (2014), the artist’s best known animatronic work.
A report by the New York Times has compared how two Egon Schiele lots are being presented and sold by Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Both works were owned by Fritz Grünbaum, a Viennese cabaret performer murdered by the Nazis. Christie’s will provide compensation to Grünbaum’s heirs whereas Sotheby’s will not.
The Badische Landesmuseum in Germany identified seven Nazi looted artworks within its collection.
The first exhibition under Melissa Chiu at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will feature the work of Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat.
Fred Ritchin was appointed the dean of the International Center of Photography’s school.
Steinway & Sons’ New York showroom is relocating from 57th street to 43rd Street. The company’s 57th Street location was designed by Warren and Wetmore, the architectural firm behind Grand Central Terminal.
Monday marks the anniversary of the first animal to orbit the earth. On November 3, 1957, Laika the Soviet space dog died of heat exhaustion a few hours into her flight, a fact that was kept secret by the Soviet Union for decades. Hyperallergic’s Allison Meier recently reviewed a new publication by Fuel entitled Soviet Space Dogs (2014), which includes propaganda images of the USSR’s furry cosmonauts.
