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Collector Refuses To Give Up Stolen Madonna
A 16th century Renaissance Madonna and Child painting

Collector Refuses To Give Up Stolen Madonna

A Renaissance-era Madonna & Child painting stolen from an Italian museum fifty years ago has recently been rediscovered in Britain. But the owner will not let it go. Antonio Solario was a sixteenth-century northern Italian painter. While moderately successful in … More…

Supreme Court Rules On Nazi-Looted Pissarro
An impressionist street scene of the Rue Saint Honoré in Paris

Supreme Court Rules On Nazi-Looted Pissarro

The Supreme Court has, in just a few sentences, ruled in favor of a Holocaust survivor’s descendants in their efforts to regain their stolen Pissarro painting. Over a year ago, I wrote about how a court in California ruled against … More…

Bonhams Skinner American Art
A pencil drawing of an island from a bird's-eye view.

Bonhams Skinner American Art

On Wednesday, March 12th, Bonham’s Skinner hosted one of their American art sales, primarily featuring paintings and sculptures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among the lots available were works by Thomas Hart Benton and Milton Avery. However, the auction … More…

Christie’s London Impressionist & Modern Art
A landscape painting by Alfred Sisley showing a riverside town in France.

Christie’s London Impressionist & Modern Art

I thought the Art of the Surreal sale would be the big triumph at Christie’s last week. However, it seems like they ended up with a better week than anticipated, given the success of their Impressionist and Modern Art Day … More…

Christie’s London Art Of The Surreal
A painting of a small figure on top of a large floating orb seen through a window.

Christie’s London Art Of The Surreal

Every year, around the beginning of March, Christie’s hosts an Art of the Surreal sale at its London location. For as long as I’ve been covering these auctions, they have always been some of the greatest successes Christie’s experiences for … More…

AI Art: The New NFTs?
An abstract work of digital art showing red, black, and blue cloud-like shapes and textures.

AI Art: The New NFTs?

Trends come and go in the art world, and it can be somewhat difficult to predict which ones will stay around and which will fizzle out. Because of that, I’ve found it useful to have skepticism as my first initial … More…

Rijksmuseum Unveils Rare Vanitas Still-Life
A 17th century still life painting with flowers, a skull, a book, a jewelry box, and a stone tablet.

Rijksmuseum Unveils Rare Vanitas Still-Life

Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum has recently unveiled one of its latest acquisitions: a masterpiece by one of the most important female painters of the Dutch Golden Age, Maria van Oosterwijck. On Tuesday, March 4th, the Rijksmuseum put Vanitas Still Life by Maria … More…

Stolen Brueghel Recovered
A red brick building in Poland

Stolen Brueghel Recovered

A painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, one of Poland’s most wanted stolen paintings, has been recovered in the Netherlands after nearly fifty years. Arthur Brand, a specialist in stolen art (who I have mentioned before in relation to a … More…

Sotheby’s New York Contemporary Curated
An abstract painting of mainly green and blue, with touches or red and orange.

Sotheby’s New York Contemporary Curated

On Wednesday, February 26th, Christie’s and Sotheby’s began three straight days of twentieth-century and contemporary art. While things have been going well thus far, the Contemporary Curated sale at Sotheby’s York Avenue location in New York was the one auction … More…

Elizabeth Street Garden Clings On With A New Lawsuit
A small public park and sculpture garden

Elizabeth Street Garden Clings On With A New Lawsuit

The nonprofit organization that maintains the Elizabeth Street Garden in Manhattan has filed a lawsuit against New York City to prevent its land from being used for an apartment building. The continuing story of the Elizabeth Street Garden has been … More…

British Museum Makeover
The exterior facade of the British Museum in London.

British Museum Makeover

Part of the British Museum will be completely redesigned, with the museum administration choosing architect Lina Ghotmeh’s designs this weekend. The building that houses the British Museum dates back to the early to mid-nineteenth century. It was designed by Sir … More…

Lost Claudel Sculpture Sold In Paris For €3.1 Million
A bronze statue of a nude man being led away from a young woman by an older woman.

Lost Claudel Sculpture Sold In Paris For €3.1 Million

A bronze sculpture by Camille Claudel thought to have been lost for over a century sold in Paris for €3.1 million. Recently, I feel like the art world has been reanalyzing the work of great female artists, especially those who, … More…

Cleveland Museum Agrees To Repatriate
A headless ancient Roman bronze statue of a man in a toga formerly held by the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Cleveland Museum Agrees To Repatriate

The Cleveland Museum of Art is sending a Roman bronze statue back to Turkey after finally acknowledging the work was likely looted. In September 2023, I first wrote about how the Cleveland Museum of Art became the target of the … More…

Institutions Lean Into AI, Despite Artists’ Objections
A hologram of a human brain

Institutions Lean Into AI, Despite Artists’ Objections

The Getty Museum has acquired its very first AI-generated photograph for its collection. This comes despite both ethical and legal concerns about the production and curation of AI-generated works of art. Cristian en el Amor de Calle is an AI-generated … More…

Friedrich’s Soul Of Nature At The Met
A painting of a man with his back to the viewer climbing a rock looking out over a fog-covered landscape.

Friedrich’s Soul Of Nature At The Met

On Saturday, February 8th, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York opened a new exhibition focusing on the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. Despite Friedrich’s importance and widespread popularity, the exhibition, entitled The Soul of Nature, is the … More…

Sotheby’s NY Master Works On Paper
A drawing of ships on the water, while an overturned rowboat lays on the beach.

Sotheby’s NY Master Works On Paper

The results of Classic Week at the New York auction houses have been somewhat mixed. While the main Old Master and nineteenth-century paintings sales at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s were somewhat disappointing, the same cannot be said for the Sotheby’s … More…