World Art News at IrishArt.com
Snippets of interest to lovers of Art - Irish Art or otherwise - sometimes the ridiculous, the obscure, the unusual or just art stuff you might have missed. Updated every day... If you have something for our Blog, email us at md@irishart.com
A London hotel is offering art fans a chance to emulate Impressionist Claude Monet in the room where he painted his classic art studies of the Thames skyline. For $5,000, a couple can stay two nights in the Savoy Hotel room where Monet painted 70 canvases. For that price, they also get an easel, paints and the advice of an art teacher, who will also take them to London's National Art Gallery to see the Monet paintings there and point out what to look for.
Polish education inspectors have banned a CD with a painting by Hieronymus Bosch reproduced on its cover from being distributed in schools, saying the picture, entitled Hell, could harm young people. "There are pornographic scenes in the Bosch picture that can damage people. I couldn't give this to young people," said a school inspector in the northern town of Bydgoszcz. Inspectors in at least four other regions have also stopped distribution of the CD bearing Bosch's famous picture. The education ministry had planned to present students who performed best in Polish high-school leaving exams with a CD by rock group rock Normalsi. On the cover is Bosch's painting, showing nude figures being tortured with musical instruments. Bosch, who lived from 1450 to 1516, was a Dutch religious painter who used images of demons and semi-human creatures to depict sin and moral failings.
The trial of six suspects in the 2004 heist of Edvard Munch's still-missing art masterpieces 'The Scream' and 'Madonna' ended on Tuesday with the prosecution seeking $114-million (€94-million) in damages and prison sentences of up to 11 years. The prosecution sought the damages to compensate the loss to the city of Oslo, which owned the paintings, as well as sentences of between three and 11 years in prison for the suspects. The longest sentence was sought for Bjoern Hoen, who is accused of masterminding the robbery. On August 22, 2004, two armed and hooded thieves burst into the Munch Art Museum in Oslo and threatened a member of staff with a gun while stunned tourists looked on.
The Detroit Institute of Arts and the Toledo Museum are in court to settle ownership issues surrounding a van Gogh and a Gauguin. "At stake is whether the art will remain in the museums' collections or whether the museums must return the works of art to the heirs or pay restitution. The paintings are worth an estimated $10 million to $15 million apiece in today's art market, based on art auction records."The restitution of Nazi-looted art is a hot-button issue. The numbers are elusive, but 600,000 art works appear to have been seized by the Nazis with 10,000 to 100,000 still missing, according to one scholar's congressional testimony. Attention has increased in the last decade as museums and governments became more sensitized, sometimes reluctantly.
A collection of paintings by Gustav Klimt, stolen by the Nazis in 1938, has been restored to its heir in California after an eight-year legal battle. The five works, together worth £170m, now belong to 90-year-old Maria Altmann, who fled the Nazis following the annexation of Austria. Altmann has lent the paintings to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for a temporary exhibition. She hopes that the exhibition, which opens on April 4, will attract a buyer. "It didn't have to come to this," she said. "Seven years ago I wrote the Austrians a wonderful letter, saying that I would see to it the portraits would not leave Austria, and they never even bothered to answer me. Well, I guess they're sorry now."
