John Myatt, the famous forger who spent years behind bars for his fraudulent versions of works by Monet and other artists, is interviewed this week in The Independent, and comments on the state of fraud investigations in the current art landscape.  “The art industry has been nodding through paintings with extremely dubious histories,” he says. “It’s been colluding with galleries and auction houses for 50 to 60 years and I know the Police Art & Antiques Unit even went to one museum with evidence of fraud and they weren’t interested – they said they were happy that the contagion [of fakes] had now been removed from their archives.” (more…)

The Guardian reports on Gallery A, a little known and just recently refurbished exhibition space located inside London’s National Gallery, where a number of masterworks not normally shown in the main rooms are kept for public viewing.  The new exhibition spaces in Gallery A have been drastically reworked, allowing visitors a more relaxed, expansive viewing atmosphere. (more…)

The thieves behind last year’s audacious heist of works from the Kunsthal Rotterdam have been sentenced to six years in prison for their thefts, which included works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin, and which held a total value of over $24 million.  The 2012 theft has yet to see the paintings recovered, and officials say that some of the works have been destroyed. (more…)