The British Library has digitized its full collection of Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks, allowing any viewer to browse the Renaissance master’s personal manuscripts and illustrations.  Covering many years of work, the notebooks include plans, sketches, shopping lists and schematics for unfinished projects and architectural innovations.  The self-taught artist and scientist had been a prolific note-maker during his lifetime, but never took pains to publish these works in a widely readable format.   (more…)

The National Museum of China has opened a new exhibition, featuring a large collection of works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  Earth, Sea and Sky: Nature in Western Art is the first large-scale collaboration between the two major arts institutions, and pulls from the American museum’s vast collection.  “Never before has an exhibition of this scope and theme, drawn entirely from the Met’s holdings, traveled to China.” Says Met director Thomas Campbell. (more…)

German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer’s 1515 woodcut “The Rhinoceros” has sold at Christie’s in New York City for $866,500, setting a new record for the artist’s works.  Originally estimated at $100,000 to $150,000, the price of the piece quickly exceeded its estimate.  While some highly valued works, including Knight, Death and The Devil failed to attract bidders, Dürer’s record price for a single work was broken three consecutive times over the one-hour auction.   (more…)

While fine arts auctions in New York State generate total sales of $8 billion annually, many dealers and market analysts are calling foul on auction practices intended to drive up the price of works with little to no supervision of the market.  “The art world feels like the private equity market of the ’80s and the hedge funds of the ’90s,” says James R. Hedges IV, a New York collector and financier. “It’s got practically no oversight or regulation.”

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The Dutch Restitutions Committee has rejected the claim of two Jewish art dealers for all but one of 189 works in the country’s national collection.  The committee did return one work, Ferdinand Bol’s Man With High Cap, but was unable to find enough evidence to return any of the other contested works.  “Ownership of most of the works has not proved very probable,” the Dutch Restitutions Committee said in its recommendation, published late yesterday on its website. “During the occupation, the Katz brothers often acted as middlemen and intermediaries for German buyers.”  (more…)

A federal judge has decided in favor of sculptor Robert Indiana in a case that claimed the artist had renounced work he had previously authenticated.  Dealer Joao Tovar, who brought the suit, had purchased a series of works attributed to Indiana, and was about to sell them at auction when the artist stepped in to renounce the works as his.  The court ruled that the works were in fact created by Indiana’s longtime associate, John Gilbert. (more…)

Dealer Christopher D’Amelio, formerly of Paula Cooper Gallery and his own space in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, has announced that he will be closing his gallery to join the expanding gallery network of David Zwirner.  Mr. D’Amelio will be positioned at the gallery’s 20th Street space in New York City.  “Chris brings a lot of experience and knowledge, especially when it comes to Minimalism.” Said Zwirner in an interview with the New York Times. (more…)

Chris Martin, Untitled (2012), via The Journal Gallery, New York

The Journal Gallery has organized a summer group show whose impact exceeds the expectations of such a reference. Home Again, Again features nine distinctive contemporary works which, crowded together in the tiny Williamsburg space, form another, unique whole. In a lovingly critical homage to art after 1950 – from the Greenbergian picture plane to the strigency of minimalism – the works on view here are flat, angular, and imposing. Yet, their initial starkness is deliberately thwarted by their use of material and content, offering a lively contemporary perspective on the legacy of postwar American art. (more…)