A nanoscale study of paint chips from works by Pablo Picasso has strengthened historians’ claims that he may have been one of the first master painters to shift over from traditional oil paints to house paints.  Researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory and Art Institute of Chicago discovered levels of zinc oxide and iron in Picasso’s work that matched the levels of 1930’s household paint brand Ripolin.  “We have opened the nanoworld to culture heritage.” Says researcher Volker Rose . (more…)

The Art Institute of Chicago is selling about $100 million of taxable and tax-exempt bonds to meet pension obligations, refinancing its debt and re-examining its capital structure. The Museum, under Morgan Stanley, will issue about $61 million of tax-exempt debt as $40 million of taxable bonds, which will mature from 2013 to 2040. The funds will be used “without limitation” to finance “accelerating funding to the Institute’s unfunded pension-benefit obligations”, said the museum. (more…)

Luc Tuymans The Secretary of State , 2005 on display at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. All images via SFMOMA unless otherwise noted

Currently on view at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a very significant retrospective of the work of Luc Tuymans,  a renowned artist from Antwerp, Belgium.  This comprehensive retrospective is the first American show of such scale for the artist. The traveling exhibition opened in September 2009 at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, then on January 3, 2010 it traveled to SF MoMA. The show will then travel to Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. The exhibition features seventy five paintings produced since 1975 to the present. The retrospective is co-curated by Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (and former SFMOMA Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture), and Helen Molesworth, Maisie K. and James R. Houghton Curator of Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museum (and former chief curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts).

CCTV, 2009

More text, images and related links after the jump….

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