From “Civilized Guilt,” a recreation of Ernesto Neto’s “Leviathan Thot” currently showing at Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes.

Timed to coincide with this year’s Estuaire, Musée des Beaux-Arts is currently hosting a giant work by Ernesto Neto.  “A Culpa civilizada (Civilized Guilt)” is a re-working of his well-known installation piece “Léviathan Thot,” originally shown in 2006 at the Panthéon in Paris during the Autumn Festival.  The installation will be housed in the patio space of the museum, and is curated by Blandine Chavanne and Alice Fleury, director and contemporary art coordinator of the gallery, respectively.  It will close on September 21.

Related links:
Ville de Nantes : Ernesto Neto
Ernesto Neto [artnet]

Ville de Nantes has video of “Civilized Guilt.”

More images and story after the jump…

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State prosecutor, Jacques Dallest, displays stolen paintings via ReutersUK

A Frenchman living in Florida has been charged with conspiring to sell four masterpieces, stolen from the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Nice, France back in August 2007. The Frenchman, Bernard Jean Ternus, was caught trying to sell four paintings, by Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Pieter Breugel, to undercover FBI agents. The four recovered paintings were Falaises près de Dieppe by Claude Monet, Allée de peupliers de Moret by Alfred Sisley, and Pieter Breugel’s Allégorie de l’eau and Allégorie de la terre.

French Man Living in Florida Indicted for Conspiring to sell stolen works [Artdaily]
Frenchman in Florida charged in Monet, Sisley Art Heist [CBC]
U.S. charges Frenchman over stolen Monet, other art [ReutersUK]
Frenchman Charged With Plotting to Sell Stolen Monet Painting [Bloomberg]
French Citizen charged in brazen Art Theft [CalgaryHerald]
Art thieves aren’t just in it for the Monet [Guardian]

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Via Estuaire 2007

Once a center of naval activity, the newest and certainly most eye-catching bateau on France’s Loire estuary is armored with a shell of mirrors, reflecting the riverbank’s factories, natural marshes… and resident gigantic floating plastic duck? Florentijn Hofman’s “Canard du Bain”, a titanic incarnation of every child’s favorite yellow bath time friend is absurdly placed within a dingy, industrial habitat. A cartoon-like beacon, the river-bound sculpture injects a certain lightheartedness into the milieu. If it were not so innocent looking, its size would suggest that it could wipe out a nearby cluster of sailboats in a single gulp. (more…)