Arts

LONDON - Model Jerry Hall plans to auction some of her art collection next month, including a famous portrait by Lucian Freud that shows her nude when she was eight months pregnant, Sotheby's said Monday. Full Story »

VENICE, Italy (AFP) - British artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien says his art film "Better Life" offers an allegory of the 2004 tragedy in which 23 Chinese cockle pickers drowned at Morecambe Bay, northern England. Full Story »

LONDON - Damien Hirst has been accused of a lot of things in his day — from peeing in the sinks of posh Soho clubs in his early years to, of late, making "ugly, ugly, ugly" paintings — and one of the more persistent allegations has been that the bad-boy YBA is a little too quick to steal other artists' ideas. Now this complaint has been vociferously resurrected by Charles Thomson, co-founder of the Stuckist movement, who is accusing Hirst of plagiarizing at least 15 of his most famous works, including his medicine cabinets, spin paintings, diamond-encrusted skull, and pickled shark. Full Story »

SEATTLE - Though corporate America appears to have weathered the worst of the housing-market collapse, the nonprofit sector is continuing to suffer from the weak economy. The latest organization to face considerable danger is the Seattle Art Museum, which has filed a motion in county court asking for approval of a plan to borrow $10 million from its $96 million endowment in order to avoid having to default on a loan that financed its 2007 downtown expansion. Full Story »

Please be advised that Friday's London story saying composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's private art collection is to go on show this month is wrong. The exhibition has already taken place. The following story has been withdrawn. Full Story »

NEW YORK - In a turn to a story that seems to have been tailor-made to relieve the late summer news doldrums, the courier who claimed to have lost a $1.35 million Corot painting while on a drunken bender at a New York hotel now appears to have been in the employ of a serial scam artist. The improbable imbroglio received its latest twist when it was revealed that Tom Doyle, the co-owner of the missing artwork, is really Thomas Doyle, a convicted crook who just got out of prison for, you guessed it, art theft, according to the New York Times. Full Story »

AMSTERDAM - Vincent van Gogh spent much of his adult life alternately browbeating and charming his brother Theo into sending him money, since he was unable to generate much income selling his art. Theo unfailingly complied, but Vincent nevertheless lived a life of rather serious poverty. Thankfully, society treats the artist’s paintings a bit better than it did the artist who made them, as evidenced by the Van Gogh Museum’s announcement that, after six months of labor, his 1888 masterpiece, "The Bedroom," has been restored. Full Story »

SOFIA (AFP) - A rare exhibit of 74 bronze sculptures by French painter Edgar Degas opened Thursday at Sofia's National Art Gallery, the first ever in Bulgaria of the Impressionist artist's work. Full Story »

AMSTERDAM - Vincent van Gogh must have been horrified when he returned from the hospital to his studio in Arles early in 1889 to find one of his favorite paintings damaged by moisture. Full Story »

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A bill was approved by California lawmakers on Monday that allows for the extension of the amount of time during which citizens in that state can sue museums, galleries, and auction houses for the recovery of stolen works of art — an important step in creating decisive legislation to deal with the myriad difficult-to-try, emotionally fraught cases concerning the restitution of Nazi-looted art. Full Story »

MUMBAI, India - Looking to improve on its $6.7 million haul at its June auction of Modern and Contemporary Indian art, fledgling Mumbai–based auction house Saffronart has announced that it hopes to net $6.5–$8.7 million at its September edition of the auction. Set for September 8 and 9, the 90-lot sale includes work by 43 artists, including the big-name masters — like S. H. Raza and N. S. Harsha — that have proven to be the auction house’s bread and butter in recent sales. Full Story »

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwean painter Owen Maseko will go to trial later this month in his native country for exhibiting realistic depictions of massacres that took place three decades ago under the regime of Robert Mugabe, who served as prime minister at the time. The artworks — some small, others wall-engulfing murals — depict images of political events that, according to government authorities, are prohibited under current law. Full Story »

NEW YORK - Here’s a story, sad but true, about a man who took a coy-looking female to a hotel, then got drunk and lost her. Unfortunately for this man, an art courier named James Carl Haggarty, his lady friend was highly two-dimensional. In fact, she was contained within a painting — none other than "Portrait of a Girl," a 19th-century work by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot with an estimated value of $1.4 million, which Haggarty was taking to show to a potential buyer. In a lawsuit filed against Haggarty by Kristyn Trudgeon, the majority owner of the portrait, she states that Haggarty woke up to find that he "did not have the painting and could not recall its whereabouts, citing that he had too much to drink the previous evening." Whoops. Full Story »

MEXICO CITY - Mexico City’s burgeoning art scene will welcome a new private museum in November, when billionaire collector Carlos Slim inaugurates a new branch of his Soumaya museum. The $750-million project — that’s 50 percent more than SFMOMA plans to spend on its recently announced expansion, for those keeping track at home — has been designed by Slim’s son-in-law Fernando Romero and is already under construction in western Mexico City, according to Reuters. Full Story »

VERSAILLES, France - The Coordination de la Défense de Versailles (CDV) doesn’t pull any punches when expressing its opposition to the upcoming exhibition of Japanese Pop artist Takashi Murakami at the Château of Versailles. Having been formed to press (unsuccessfully) for the cancellation of a Jeff Koons show in the palace in 2008, the organization now condemns what it calls "the veritable ‘murder’ of our heritage, our artistic identity, and our most sacred culture." Full Story »

VENICE - With U.S President Barack Obama set to announce the end of his nation's combat operations in Iraq in a televised address this evening, the Middle Eastern country's long history of turmoil and its recent, slow progress toward peace will once again receive major media attention. However, if American-born, Italy-based curator Mary Angela Schroth gets her way, it will be on the international stage again in the near future for a much more positive reason. Along with a team of patrons, artists, and curators, she is working to create a national pavilion for the nation at the 54th Venice Biennale, which opens next June. It has not participated in the biannual event since 1976. Full Story »

VENICE - It is a dangerous world out there. Just days after a van Gogh was stolen from a Cairo museum, a work by Renaissance master Titian that is housed in the Santa Maria della Salute basilica in Venice was almost accidentally destroyed. The culprit this time? Italian firefighters attempting to quell a blaze in a nearby seminary. Full Story »

DETROIT - Funding for the arts has been cut in many cities in recent years as a result of the troubled economy, but some Detroit Symphony Orchestra members say that they believe something else is at least partially responsible for the drastic pay cuts that have been proposed by the orchestra's administrators:  a history of mismanagement. Through their union, they have voted to authorize a strike. Full Story »