Art Links

-The Met recently acquired Jacopo Bassano's last known work, "The Baptism of Christ," for their Renaissance collection, as well as a 16th century bronze oil lamp by sculptor Andrea Riccio.

-The only museum not firing people, but hiring them is the up and coming Hammer Museum, notable for its work on contemporary art, which gained a few new upper level curators recently.

-A harrowing tale of art theft, identity change, and "collecting" came to light after several stolen works were recovered a Las Vegas home. Tip: if you're going to steal art from galleries, it's probably not a good idea to then hang them up in your house.

New Exhibition: The Pre-Raphaelites

The Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Sweden will open the first ever major show on the Pre-Raphaelites, a group of 19th century English artists. The show features over 200 works, opened February 26th, and is on view until May 24th, if you find yourself in Stockholm.

The Pre-Raphaelites sought to revive a style of art prior to Raphael, drawing much of their inspiration from medieval and Renaissance art, their style characterized by intense emotion, historical scenes, stylization of beauty and the body, and sense of decoration.

I've always thought that the Pre-Raphaelites were widely not taken seriously by art historians and museums, their work largely relegated to dorm room posters, so it's interesting to see a major exhibition on them. Any opinions here?

More bad recession-related museum news

Following the Philadelphia Museum and the Met's staff cut news, several other museums are following suit:

-The Walters Art Museum announced today that it will cut staff, freeze pay, cancel an exhibition partnered with the Musee d'Orsay next year, and reduce the number of major exhibitions per year from 3 to 2.

-The High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia will fire 7 percent of its staff, institute a hiring freeze, and cut salaries for existing employees, including the Director and director-level positions.

The Walters and the High are certainly the newest entries in an ever-growing list. A summary of the cuts that have been made across the board at small and large museums alike across the country was published in the Art Newspaper last month.

Vindication for Wannabe Arcaeologists Everywhere

As I've mentioned, I wanted to be an archaeologist for a long time as a child, which naturally means I spent a lot of time in my backyard digging, hoping I'd find a dinosaur or something.

Vindication for me and other child-archaeologists came today when a cache of Stone Age tools, estimated to be about 13,000 years old, were discovered in a suburban Colorado backyard. The tools are cutting implements (with enough blood residue on them to identify the animals they killed) that were buried by the hunters.

The only let-down of this story is that it wasn't the homeowner's 7 year old kid that found them, but a landscaper hired to dig a fishpond.

Art Links

-Following yesterday's news that the Met might be cutting staff, the Philadelphia Museum of Art announced today that a mixture of 30 positions (some currently filled, others vacant that will now not be filled) will be cut. No curators are being let go (though they will take a pay cut)...yet.

-An Art Deco armchair by Eileen Gray became the became the most expensive piece of 20th century furniture ever at the Yves Saint Laurent sale, the top bid at 21.9 million euro.

-A little fun, because I think fashion is art, and the fashion was fantastic at the Academy Awards on Sunday night. Here are a couple of slide shows with the highlights. I would kill for SJP's Dior gown.

Art Links

-A new show at the Guggenheim, The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989, deals with American artists' dialogue with Asian aesthetics. The show is on now through April 19th.

-The YSL sale at Christie's this week performed up to expectations, and just might be the thing to save the art world from the scary, scary recession.

-An interesting new exhibition about Nazi propaganda, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, is opening at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The review of the show in the New York Times is a great introduction to the show, which will be on view through 2011.

-Not even the Met is impervious to the recession, announcing today the closure of 15 of its satellite shops. The Met will also institute a hiring freeze and start looking into the possibility of a "head-count reduction."

-An interesting look into the financial side of the art world in this article about Art Capital, in today's NYT.

-Iraq's refurbished National Museum re-opens with a fresh coat of paint, though with many of its treasures still lost to the looting that occurred with 2003's American invasion.

New Leonardo portrait discovered?

A new alleged self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci has been recently discovered by medieval historian Nicola Barbatelli in the archives of a wealthy southern Italian family at Acerenza.

The oil portrait, which would be only the second known self-portrait by da Vinci (the other being a red chalk drawing at the Biblioteca Reale in Turin), was originally though to be a portrait of Galileo. Barbatelli thinks that there are some later additions and some repainting in the work and that "it's date and provenance still have to be established with certainty," but the work will still be exhibited at a show about da Vinci later this month.

I have to say, I'm very skeptical about this. Barbatelli seems to base most of his "discovery" (of an already known painting, I might add) on extremely subjective criteria, saying that "the posture, the sytle and technique were reminiscent of the portrait of Leonardo in the Uffizi." While stylistic analysis is in many cases a necessary evil in determining an attribution, significant futher tests and expertise is needed here. Renaissance artists were skilled copyists, and simply "reminiscent" won't cut it when trying to prove this was actually by da Vinci's own hand. Barbatelli's jump to attribute this painting to such an iconic artist as da Vinci, considering the rarity of self-portraits by the artist, seems like quite a jump.

It will be interesting to see what reaction this gets from art historians and da Vinci experts, and if this yields a closer stylistic analysis, more specific dating, and some concrete evidence of da Vinci's connections to southern Italy. I'll keep my eyes peeled for future developments.