Ugly non-Americans

Here's something to dish up with your Freedom Fries:

Bad news for American writers hoping for a Nobel Prize next week: the top member of the award jury believes the United States is too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.

The comments were not quite as concisely insulting as the lead suggests, but they were quite as dismissive and arrogant in a more expansive and detailed manner. Full article here.

Stolen Riace bronzes?

The riddle of an alleged theft from Italy's famed Riace bronzes has resurfaced 35 years after they were lifted from the Calabrian seabed.

A photo of the 1972 find has reignited speculation that the two figures were stripped of a shield and possibly other objects - and even a companion who has never been seen.

Not seen by the public, that is. Full article here.

Mies' Farnsworth House flooded

This happened a couple of weeks back, but the restoration work is going to take a good long time:

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's famous modern masterpiece, the Farnsworth House, fell prey to Mother Nature Sunday, September 14, as flood waters rose almost two feet over the top deck, entering the house. Built within the flood plain of the Fox River in Plano, Illinois, the house stands on columns five feet above ground which proved not high enough as record breaking rain amounts brought the river more than 14 feet above its normal level. More than eight inches of rain fell in two days as Tropical Storm Lowell passed through Saturday, immediately followed by the remnants of Hurricane Ike Saturday night and Sunday. Fox River waters rose quickly and by Sunday morning, September 14, they had breached the interior of the house by over a foot.

Full details at the house museum's website, www.farnsworthhouse.org.

This art crime didn't pay

With top-rank artworks, thieves often find out that it's not easy to turn them into cash. The only crooks who seem to turn a consistent profit are those who go for a quick ransom payment -- but I suspect that the only ones who manage to pull it off are those who have some experience in the field. Amateurs, beware:

A retired Massachusetts lawyer who tried to sell seven stolen pictures worth $30m, which a client had left with him shortly before being shot dead, will be sentenced in November. In August, a federal jury in Boston found Robert Mardirosian guilty of knowingly possessing stolen goods that had crossed a United States boundary. The 1978 theft from collector Michael Bakwin was the largest home burglary in Massachusetts history. Mardirosian, 72, now faces a maximum sentence of ten years in prison plus three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine. The stolen works included Cézanne's painting Bouilloire et Fruits, 1888-1890.

Full article here.

6th-century icons to be shown in London

Two of the world's oldest icons are to go on show in "Byzantium", which opens at the Royal Academy on 25 October. Both probably date from the 6th century. Although painted in Constantinople for St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, they are coming on loan from the Ukraine.

The icons are Virgin and Child and Christ with Saints Sergios and Bacchos. It was originally planned to display the image of the two saints at the Getty Museum's major exhibition of Sinai icons in 2006 and it is reproduced in their catalogue. However, the loan never went ahead since there were concerns that the monks of St Catherine's would be offended if the Ukrainian works hung in the same gallery with their own icons. This was because the icons now in Kiev had been removed from Sinai in questionable circumstances.

Full story in the Art Newspaper.

It's good to see that public attention is belatedly being drawn to works such as these, whose importance and rarity cannot be overstated -- both as extremely early examples of Christian image-making, and as successors to a long and almost entirely effaced tradition of pagan icon painting.

Mr Bean goes to the museum

Are museums really always the safest homes for works of art?

Britain's art collections are taking a beating. Visitors to some of the nation's finest galleries and museums wreak havoc by walking into, leaning against, tripping over and even vomiting over valuable works, official records show.

The casualty list includes a chipped Anish Kapoor sculpture, a dented Barnett Newman painting, a vomit-stained Carl Andre piece and an installation at the Victoria & Albert Museum that was brought crashing to the ground when a security guard tripped over a barrier in the dark. In another incident, a huge 19th-century plaster cast was damaged by corporate clients clambering over it.

Read the rest in the Guardian.

This certainly is consistent with what I know of American museums, where all sorts of mishaps occur with no public fanfare. Still, I was surprised to hear about this attack:

At the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, a 16th-century painting by the Florentine artist, Agnolo Bronzino, An Allegory with Venus and Cupid, was dented in 2003 after being punched by a man.

I'd not heard about this before -- and this is about as prominent a painting as one could imagine (details here and here). While I'm not entirely comfortable about such incidents being hushed up -- especially if it affects decisions regarding the appropriate balance of public access and security in museums -- I can also see that one doesn't want to contribute to a rash of copycat crimes.

This article is also a useful reminder that every time an artwork is moved, there is an element of risk -- a lesson too often ignored in the enthusiasm for traveling exhibitions:

In January this year the painting Marcia by Domenico Beccafumi split in two as it was removed from the wall at the National Gallery.

This was reported back in May by the Art Newspaper, a story that was promptly picked up on by the NY Times.