A piece in The Guardian this week charts the challenges of moving the collection of the V&A Musueum, from the heaps of paperwork to the difficulties in handling older items, to the odd bombshell. “I got a text last week saying we’ve found a bombshell,” says Ruby Hodgson, the collections move team manager. “My immediate thought was: ‘Oh God, are there explosives still in it?’” (more…)

The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra has closed its doors due to poor air quality caused by the bushfires that have devastated the country. “Due to an increase in smoke in the Canberra area the National Gallery of Australia will be closed today,” a statement reads. “Closing our doors allows us to mitigate any risk to the public, staff and works of art on display.”  (more…)

The last major auction of assets belonging to Johnson Publishing Co., a sale of the company’s impressive art collection, including a series of works by Carrie Mae Weems, will take place later this month. “The collection represents the stature and history of Johnson Publishing,” said Nigel Freeman, director of the African-American Fine Art department at Swann Auction Galleries in New York. “And it’s never been seen before by the public.” (more…)

A piece in Arts Professional this week notes a distinct drop-off in direct funding to artists, as it studies the impact of lottery funds on the art world and the artists benefitting from its program. (more…)

Art News has a piece on modern art works that entered the public domain this year, among them Joan Miró’s Head of a Catalan Peasan, Madonna with Begonia by Emil Nolde, and Portrait of the Art Dealer Johanna Ey by Otto Dix. (more…)

Russian collectors Igor and Olga Toporovsky, have been arrested on suspicion of fraud and money laundering. “The Toporovskys were arrested early last month by the Belgian federal police after a criminal complaint deposited 18 months ago by our clients. Both are held in custody; the criminal court prolonged their arrest for one month on Friday 20 December,” says lawyer Geert Lenssens. (more…)

Researchers think they have uncovered the story behind the strange orb in Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, noting that the object would be a hollow glass ball. “Our experiments show that an optically accurate rendering qualitatively matching that of the painting is indeed possible using materials, light sources, and scientific knowledge available to Leonardo da Vinci circa 1500,” the report reads. (more…)

Officials at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice want to build flood-proof perspex barriers for the walls of the Cathedral, warning that the structure cannot take another damaging flood like the one last year in the city. A statement from the Prosecutoria states it hopes the plan “will have the support of everyone—Venetians, Italians and the whole world—to whom the great cultural and spiritual heritage of St Mark’s basilica belongs.” (more…)

Collectors Sandy and Louis Grotta are featured in NYT’s ‘Show Us Your Wall’ section, spotlighting their collection of furniture and sculpture. “When the pieces all have the same vocabulary, you can move something from room to room, and as long the scale’s right, it’ll work,” Mr. Grotta says of showing his works in his home. “And things tell you if they don’t belong. We’ve given a lot of thought to having a foreground, middle ground and background, too. If we had Mount Fuji outside, then we’d be perfect.” (more…)

A young man, Shakeel Ryan Massey, has been arrested for allegedly ripping a £20 million Pablo Picasso, Bust of a Woman this past week at the Tate Modern. (more…)

Art News has a piece on the late Donald Marron, a passionate art collector who spent his life befriending artists. “I’m not a scholar,” he once said. “I can’t explain art. It was the power of the composition, and the feeling that you were seeing something that hadn’t existed before.” (more…)

The LA Times has a piece on Assembly Bill 1482, a new law that may provide relief for artists seeking to protect rents at spaces like the Santa Fe Artist Colony.  “The city deemed us eligible for 1482 at the old rent, and they told the owner that,” says Sylvia Tidwell, the head of the Santa Fe Art Colony Tenants Assn. “The tenants need to be prepared for a fight.” (more…)

Yinka Shonibare is planning an artist residency at two sites in Nigeria, split between Lagos and Ijebu in Ogun state.  “Unfortunately, there aren’t many opportunities for artists to develop spaces in Africa,” he says. “Artists want to share ideas and have galleries and studios. But if that’s not provided, it’s left to the artists to fill that gap and take that [responsibility] upon themselves.” (more…)

A piece in Art News charts the last ten years in the art market, and how the landscape has shifted towards a broadened collector base and more distributed competition for works.  (more…)

Three modernist works, including Barbara Hepworth’s Orpheus I have been gifted to the British Nation, The Guardian reports.  “We are thrilled that Wakefield’s art collection will receive this generous philanthropic gift.” says Simon Wallis, the director of the Hepworth Wakefield. “These are three major works of art that will find a perfect home for wide public appreciation and benefit at the Hepworth Wakefield.” (more…)

A piece in the NYT this week compiles a selection of “our favorite arts photographs” for 2019, looking at a range of documentary and art photos. (more…)

A piece in Frieze this week asks if the art world can kick its addiction to air travel as the climate crisis intensifies.  “We are all implicated in making travel aspirational, for accepting the idea that living ‘between’ places is more  cosmopolitan, more creative, than settling in just one and staying there,” writes critic Kyle Chayka. “We keep choosing to leave every few weeks, constantly advertising for subletters on Facebook, melting the Arctic ice, because movement is so pleasurable.” (more…)

The restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral has entered a new stage, in which the scaffolding structure on the roof of the building, fused by intense heat, must be removed.  The process will involve a delicate stabilizing process before the scaffolding can be removed. (more…)

William Kentridge returns to the Metrpolitan Opera this season, opening a production of Wozzeck which features his stage designs. “It’s a radical opera, also, in the sense that it feels, as you say, connected to colonialism,” he says. “It takes the private, rather than the prince or the doctor or the captain, as the central figure. Its perspective is very much from the periphery.” (more…)

Performance artist Ulay will open an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, one of the first new shows under new director Rein Wolfs.  “Ulay, also during his collaborative years with Marina Abramović, has been a prominent figure in performance and body art since the nineteen seventies,” says Wolfs. “He used his identity and body as his medium.” (more…)

A piece in The Daily Beast this week outlines how former Parks Commissioner Robert Moses upended the status quo at The Met.  “The arrogance and conceit of those people were phenomenal,” he once said. “They really felt they were the lords of creation and that nobody had the right even to question what they did.” (more…)

As Kehinde Wiley‘s Rumors of War heads to a permanent installation in Virginia, the artist speaks to New Yorker on his vision and process.  “I recall trying to re-create some Velázquez paintings in which men were on horseback,” he says. “I actually hired Hollywood horses, so they could deal with the flashes.  It turns out, the artists were lying. No man-to-horse is that ratio.” (more…)

The value of guaranteed works in contemporary evening art auctions dropped 18% to $1.08 billion in 2019, according to a recent report from ArtTactic.  “It look like the guarantors in the West are increasingly getting jittery going into the new year,” the report reads. (more…)

The Smithsonian looks back at its recent efforts to evaluate how museums can better relate to the communities it supports and reflects. “Involvement is what is wanted and involvement can only be created if it is the community’s museum,” says former secretary S. Dillon Ripley. “It must be on the spot, participated in by the people who live there. Otherwise, the project will end up nothing more than a museum equivalent of a visiting book mobile.” (more…)