My new favorite Super Bowl tradition

Art bets!

Like last year, the Super Bowl contenders' home town museums have made a friendly wager over the outcome of the game. The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh has bet Renoir's Bathers with Crab that the Steelers will win Sunday. In return, The Milwaukee Art Museum has bet one of their star works, Caillebotte's Boating on the Yerres. As usual, my favorite part is the trash-talking going on between museum directors. I'll throw in my two-cents and say that being a Bears fan, I can't root for the Packers in good conscience, so go Steelers!

You can read more about the bets here.

Google Art Project launch

Just a quick heads-up: Google launched its brand-new Art Project today. In collaboration with some of the world's premier museums (including the Frick Collection, MoMA and the Uffizi Gallery, among several others), you can take a Google Street View-style walk around parts of each museum, and select from a list of works available to view individually at high-res and with pretty sweet zoom capabilities.

You can check out Google Art Project at www.googleartproject.com

Of course, it's not perfect. Each museum only chose certain galleries to include, so the selection of works included is fairly limited. Also, some of the works seen in the "Street View" of the museum interiors are blurred out due to copyright issues. Hopefully some of these issues can be resolved and the project expanded to include more galleries and more museums, but you can certainly enjoy a digital walk through Versailles while you wait!

Paris Museum of Modern Art Heist

Caught this story this morning: The Paris Museum of Modern Art was robbed last night by a single intruder, who removed 5 major works from their frames. He appears to have broken in by disabling the security system, cutting through a padlock and then entering through a broken window. The night guards apparently heard and saw nothing, because the man escaped with a million euros worth of stolen art:

-Le pigeon aux petits-pois, a Cubist oil painting by Pablo Picasso.

-La Pastorale, an oil painting by Henri Matisse.

-L'olivier pres de l'Estaque by Georges Braque.

-La femme a l'eventail by Amedeo Modigliani.

-Nature-mort aux chandeliers by Fernand Leger.

Experts say this may be one of the biggest art heists ever, given the combined value of the works and the prominence of the museum, one of the most well-attended art museums in Paris. However, the paintings are, as Pierre Cornette de Saint-Cyr (director of the Palais de Tokyo) observed, "un-sellable" because they are so high profile.

I'm particularly interested in the fact that the paintings were not cut from their frames, as in many art heists in which the thieves don't really understand the value of the works they're stealing. That the frames were carefully disassembled and the works removed without damage indicates that the heist was carried out by more art-savvy thieves. It will be interesting to see if (and where) these works turn up, though I hope they are returned to their rightful places on the walls of the Paris Museum of Modern Art.

UPDATE: Check out this article on The Economist, about the art black market, the problem of art crime, and the possible fates of the stolen works.

Death Becomes You

I apologize in advance for this slightly morbid post, but there are a couple of fantastic exhibits around New York with slightly morbid subject matter:

First up, the Discovery Times Square Exhibition Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs is on view right now. The show features artifacts from the tombs King Tut and several other 18th dynasty pharaohs. It will also feature mobs of tourists and a $27.50 entry fee, so you might want to check out:

Tutankhamun's Funeral, which is on view in the Met's Egyptian galleries until September. This show focuses largely on the objects and artifacts associated with mummification and Egyptian funeral ritual, as well as photographs and other materials from the Museum's excavation of the Valley of the Kings.

If you can't get enough Ancient Egypt, check out the Brooklyn Museum's Mummy Chamber, which includes tomb artifacts, an incredible Book of the Dead manuscript and a few actual mummies.

The Rubin Museum presents Remember that You Will Die: Death Across Cultures until early August. The exhibit showcases art works all revolving around the themes of death and the afterlife, and focuses specifically on the European Christian and Tibetan Buddhist religious traditions. The show explores the iconography of the skeleton, among other topics, and illustrates commonalities and differences between the two faiths as they approach death and dying.

The new show at the Museum of Arts and Design, Dead or Alive, features modern and contemporary art and design fashioned from organic, once-living things. Although many of the pieces are created from flora and fauna, several use decidedly creepier materials like bones and insects. (My personal favorite is Billie Grace Lynn's Mad Cow Motorcycle)


Image: Death and the Knight, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1538 (University of Kansas, Spencer Museum of Art 1994.013)

Medieval Bones

This isn't art related so much as it's just "cool medieval stuff," but hey, it's Friday!

Workers in Gloucester, England found the skeletons of two people laid side by side in the middle of digging up a road in the city . The County Council's archaeology service has determined that the skeletons, and the remains of a coffin found nearby, are medieval.

Originally thought to be Roman, the presence of the coffin remains indicates that the skeletons are probably medieval, possibly "from the time of St. Kyneburgh," said Paul Nichols of the Gloucester archaeology service. He said: "The site of St. Kyneburgh is recorded as being at the site of the south gate but there are no exact records to say where it is because it was demolished. We're now going to send the bones to a specialist for further investigation."

As an aside, St. Kyneburgh was a 7th century abbess (find out more about her life here) who founded the abbey in the village of Castor, near Peterborough.

Original article from the Gloucestershire County Council can be found here.

International Museum Day

Museums that are members of The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) have announced that they will collectively take part in International Museum Day this May 18, 2010. In honor of this day, organized annually by the International Council of Museums, many of the institutions will offer free or reduced admission, plus other special programs.

This year's theme for International Museum Day is "Museums for social harmony." You can find a list of participating museums, and a handy outline of which museums are offering what discounts here. The list is pretty extensive, and covers all types of museums large and small, so if you've got some free time on a Tuesday, check it out!

Speaking of Picasso...

Tatiana Khan, a Los Angeles art dealer, has plead guilty to federal charges alleging that she commissioned a fake Picasso and then sold it as an original.

Khan apparently paid an art restorer $1,000 to copy Picasso's 1902 pastel, Woman in the Blue Hat, then sold the piece for nearly 2 million dollars, claiming that it was an original. She will appear in federal court on felony charges of lying to the FBI and witness tampering. The maximum sentence for her crimes is 25 years in prison, though her plea agreement recommends only 21 months.

I wonder if the art restorer knew that she planned to sell the copy? What reputable art restorers take on copy work for their clients? Definitely an interesting case of art crime and intrigue.