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.

A Profusion of Picasso

If you like Picasso and live in New York, you are very lucky. Everyone seems to be putting on a Picasso show lately, the Met and MoMA dipping into their permanent collections to do so.

Currently on are two shows devoted exclusively to Picasso's prints. The Marlborough Gallery is showing Celebrating the Muse: Women in Picasso’s Prints From 1905-1968, featuring a parade of Picasso's wives and mistresses. The exhibition runs until May 1st at the gallery's location on 57th St. here in New York.

The Museum of Modern Art presents Picasso: Themes and Variations, an exhibit featuring works from the museum's permanent prints collection. The MoMA show has a wider scope, and presents prints dealing with many of Picasso's most famous themes. Check out the New York Times review of these shows here.

Later this month, the Met gets in on the Picasso action when it opens Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which presents everything by Picasso in the museums permanent collection, including everything from paintings to ceramics. This exhibition marks the first time all of these objects have been seen together; the Met's large number of Picasso holdings helps to illustrate his prolific artistic career while also providing an expansive look at his thematic interests, evolving techniques, and what the Met calls his "multi-sided genius."

Putting up Picasso shows seems like a no-brainer, especially for these museums that have access to huge numbers of Picasso works in their permanent collection. A marquee name and relatively straightforward content now at the beginning of summer (and the tourist season in New York) should make for extremely well-attended shows. Get your Picasso fix while you can!

Update: Holland Cotter of the New York Times calls the Met's Picasso collection "stodgy and almost bizarrely lopsided," mostly due to the Met's reluctance to acquire new art. Check out his review here.

Fine Art meets....Football?

Seems as if friendly Superbowl wagers have moved beyond friends, family and co-workers and created a rivalry between city museums as well!

The New Orleans Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art have each wagered a piece from their permanent collection--albeit temporarily. If the New Orleans Saints win, Indianapolis has agreed to send The Fifth Plague of Egypt, a landscape by J.M.W. Turner, for three months.

If the Indianapolis Colts crush the Saints (I have to stand by my fellow Midwesterners!), the NOMA will send Ideal View of Tivoli by Claude Lorrain.



The choice of the work to be wagered was the subject of some friendly trash-talking between the two museums' directors. It seems that when John Bullard, the director of NOMA offered a portrait by Auguste Renoir, IMA director Max Anderson called it "sentimental blancmange" by a "China painter," referring to Renoir's job painting fine china. Bullard retorted that NOMA didn't have any "farm scenes or portraits of football players" to send to the IMA.


At least if the Colts lose, the IMA still gets to send a "plague," of sorts, to New Orleans.

Art Accidents

I'm sure everyone has heard about this already, but someone fell into a Picasso at the Met last week. This incident seems to have captured everyone's attention, though we can rest assured that the Met's conservation department will be able to fix the 6-inch tear without a problem. It's even expected to be back up in time for the Picasso show (one of many, many Picasso shows opening this year).

The Times posted a related article this morning that details other horrifying and cringe-worthy art-related accidents. I'm especially interested in the MoMA spokeswoman's comments that "incidents happen" but that there are "no incidents we can discuss in the press." Cryptic.

New Exhibition: Demons and Devotion

I'm sure you all have your calendars marked already for the opening on Friday, January 22nd of Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves at the Morgan Library. This Dutch masterpiece, circa 1440, and its iconic Hell-mouth (which I've been seeing a lot lately) miniature is long overdue for an exhibition.

The Morgan's show will display the pages, which were cut out of the original manuscript in the 1850s, glued back together and sold as two separate books to two separate collectors, unbound. At the end of the exhibition in May, the Morgan's conservation staff will decide how to rebind the pages in a looser fashion for preservation and storage. The show will display 93 of the 157 illuminations, though a facsimile version will be available to view as well. (You can get your own, for the low low price of $15,000.) You can check out a digital facsimile for free on the Morgan's website, here.

The show will also include a selection of 18 additional manuscripts from Flanders, all contemporary to the Catherine of Cleves Hours. For a peek at some of the stylistic points the exhibition will cover, click here.

As usual, the Morgan has a series of lectures and gallery talks associated with the exhibit, all of which look extremely interesting. I'm hoping to catch "The Hours of Catherine of Cleves: What Makes a Dutch Masterpiece," a lecture by Dr. James Marrow on February 24th. A complete calendar of lectures and gallery talks can be found here .

So you think you can write a thesis?

Having just finished my own master's thesis, I'd like to share some of my tips for having a smooth and successful graduate thesis-writing experience. The word "thesis" strikes fear and apprehension into the hearts of even the most confident graduate students. The prospect of such a long and important research paper is daunting, but should be approached as you would any research paper. Take the process one step at a time, leave yourself plenty of time to complete the work, and don't stress yourself out!



Artifice's Thesis-Writing Tips:

1. Pick a topic. One way to go about this is to use a research paper you've already written for another class as a jump-off point. Otherwise, it's OK to start with a broad topic. Don't be afraid to work on something that you really want to, even if you haven't done any previous research. The more interesting you find your topic to begin with, the less of a chore your thesis will be several months into it. As you begin to read and research, you will get ideas for how you might be able to specify the topic, where the material is lacking, and how you might be able to approach the topic differently.

2. Start researching early. Even if you don't end up using the material in the final copy, it never hurts to have a background in related material. That way you can be extra-confident about making your point. Getting an early start also helps you to pace yourself and really learn about whatever it is you're researching.

3. Use the resources available to you wisely. Your university or college's library has a treasure trove of online research options you probably didn't know even existed. Take advantage of any research workshops your librarian might offer, chances are that even if you think you're an internet-search pro, you'll discover something you never even thought to look for. Ditto for any public libraries. Don't be afraid to ask the librarians for help, most of them are happy to point you in the right direction or give you an idea for a different research direction.

4. Read footnotes and bibliography religiously. Any book you pick up that has anything remotely related to your topic will also have an extensive bibliography that will help broaden or specify your search. Some of the best and most interesting nuggets are buried in footnotes (I actually discovered the manuscript that ended up being my thesis topic at the end of a half-page footnote!).

Don't ignore these effortless research opportunities, there's a whole list of interesting books just waiting for you to look at! This also helps you to build a comprehensive idea of "previous scholarship" on your topic, which will be a central portion of your thesis.

5. Get citation software. Get it, use it, love it. I use EndNote, and I've heard that RefWorks is also a great option. These were both available as free downloads from my college's library website, so make sure to see if your school has a similar offer before spending the dough. As you're researching, enter every book/article/website you look at, no exceptions. Not only will you build an impressive library of citations, but your library is then searchable by author, title, keyword, etc.

EndNote has a cite-while-you-write feature that makes moving the data into a word document really easy, and has a multitude of formatting options based on your citation preferences.

6. Cite early, cite often. My trick for taking notes is to put page numbers down right then and there. I've never had to go searching for a citation 4 months after the fact, and having page numbers available without the book handy (common for closed-stack libraries) made citations much easier.

When you start writing, start citing (just a little rhyming thesis-writing maxim). Even if you over-cite or end up cutting out or moving things around, if the citation is already there, cleaning them up is a breeze.

7. Start writing. Everyone works in a different order, but in a thesis-situation, an all-nighter, a pot of coffee, and frantic last-minute research won't cut it. I found that beginning to write as soon as I had an idea of what I wanted to say made the overall task much less daunting.

I first created a long outline of what I wanted to cover, and a rough idea of how I wanted to break up the information. Then I just started writing. From there, the more I wrote, the more the information sort of divided itself and logical breaks for chapters/sections were revealed. Don't worry about length, specific organization, or perfectly polished grammar to begin with, you will edit (over and over and over again) for these types of issues.

8. Communicate with your adviser. You should have a clear idea of what your adviser expects of you over the course of the thesis. Do they want to see your draft in pieces, or all at once? Will you set specific dates for when certain chapters should be finished? These are some issues that should be worked out with your adviser in the early stages of thesis-writing, so that both of you know exactly what to expect along the way.

9. Edit. edit. edit. Once you have a draft that you're happy with, it helps to enlist the help of your fellow grad students for editing. Not only will you get feedback from them regarding clarity and flow, but the more new sets of eyes as you can get on your grammar and sentence structure (we all have weird little writing quirks that we can't pick out and fix for ourselves!), the better.

I'd also recommend your college or university's writing center. Normally staffed by extremely helpful English grad students, even if you're convinced you're the greatest and most compelling writer to ever write a thesis, they can help you polish and clarify.

10. Be prepared for and open to criticism. Take your adviser's and editors' comments and suggestions seriously. Be prepared to go back to the library and re-research some areas of your thesis, or do some new research to supplement and clarify your main points.

If someone says they don't understand something you wrote, don't take it personally, it may just need to be reworded. No first draft (or even second, third or fourth) is perfect! Outside criticism and editing is what will make your thesis the best it can be in the end.

11. Don't forget the little things. Pay attention to instructions from your department or adviser regarding formatting, any images, type of paper, number of copies to be submitted, etc. It sounds mundane and obvious, but making sure that these little details are correct will eliminate possible headaches and make the process of submitting your final copy much smoother.

12. Be informed and submit confidently. Be aware of official deadlines and any final paperwork that should accompany the thesis. This might include an official approval form signed by your adviser or the department, a binding fee, or anything else your department requests. Make sure that you understand these requirements and have them prepared in advance.

Congratulations, you've just written a thesis!

The Lost World of Old Europe

The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, a relatively new department at New York University, has a really fascinating exhibition up at the moment of artifacts recovered from the Danube Valley. This "Old Europe" civilization of about 4,000 BC flourished before Egyptians even figured out what a pyramid was, but hasn't been given nearly any scholarly attention so far. This was actually the first time I'd ever even heard of such a civilization.

I haven't been to see the exhibition yet, but the ISAW has a brilliant online exhibition page that serves as a great introduction. It begins with some "burning questions" about the role of women and the practice of destroying their own homes while also introducing a few of the artifacts. There's also a preview of the exhibition catalog, as well as an object checklist that lists everything in the show. I'm particularly interested in the female clay figurines and the animal statuettes. More thoughts to come once I get in to see the show. If you've already been, what did you think?

The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley 5000-3500 BC runs through April 25th. Details and opening hours can be found here.