Egypt plans to set up a security control room to monitor all museums after the theft of a $55 million Vincent van Gogh painting in Cairo, Zahi Hawass, head of the country’s antiquities agency said today.

Culture Minister Faruq Hosni also has formed a committee to review security measures after the theft at the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum, Hawass said in an e-mailed statement.

The committee “aims to review all current measures used to secure works of art, as well as what is needed” to improve security, said Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council for Antiquities. The panel will work with the National Security Agency to train museum personnel, he said.

Continue reading — Egypt to Improve Museum Security After Van Gogh Theft

‘I’m working harder than ever’ … self-portrait of David Bailey with his sculpture Dead Andy. Photograph: David Bailey

Quite recently, David Bailey decided to make a sculpture of his old friend Andy Warhol. In his studio on Dartmoor, he took a tin can, filled it with beans and then took some more beans to sculpt into the semblance of Warhol’s head. The idea was that the head would seem to spew from the tin, and the resultant sculpture was to be called Dead Andy. Bailey capped the bean head with a blue-rinsed approximation of Warhol’s hairdo and covered the lot in plaster. Then, like a Nigella of sculpture, he left it to set.

Continue reading — David Bailey: out of his skulls

Manuel Acevedo’s “WTC: Tropism,” one of the artist’s concepts for ground zero, on view at the Bronx River Art Center.

For nearly 25 years, the Bronx River Art Center has been organizing exhibitions, art classes and public school programs out of a funky, century-old building in a battered neighborhood called West Farms. Beginning in September, the building will undergo an overhaul, leaving the center to float for two years in temporary locations.

Its current gallery show, “Manuel Acevedo: Keys of Light,” is well suited to this in-between state. An ultra-spare survey of a decade’s worth of work by an artist approaching midcareer, it makes for an apt farewell to an old space and an auspicious look ahead. And its subject is both practical and visionary: how, through luminosity, architecture can be transformed.

Continue reading — Ephemeral Magic Mirrors the Life of a Bronx Center

Larry Salander, whose clients included John McEnroe and Robert De Niro

Lawrence Salander, 61, was given the maximum sentence of six to 18 years and ordered to pay more than $114 million (£71 million) in restitution.

In what prosecutors said was one of New York’s biggest ever art frauds, he admitted in March to an array of schemes, ranging from selling shares of the same work of art to multiple owners to selling artwork and pocketing the proceeds.

Continue reading — New York art dealer jailed for $120 million investment fraud

British artist Antony Gormley poses for photographs with one of his sculptures as part of the ‘Horizon Field’ project in Lech-Oberlech, Austria, 30 July 2010.

On Saturday 31 July, the hundredth figure by leading British sculptor, Antony Gormley was lowered into place by helicopter to launch the artist’s unique installation, Horizon Field, in the mountains of Vorarlberg in Austria, presented in association with the Kunsthaus Bregenz.

Horizon Field features 100 life-size cast iron figures installed over an area of 150 square kilometres. It is the first art project of its kind in the mountains and the largest landscape intervention in Austria to date. The works will remain in the Alps for two years during which time they will be exposed to the elements, to different lighting conditions, and to the changing seasons, thus enabling constantly new perceptions and impressions.

Continue reading — 100 Life-Size Cast Iron Figures by Antony Gormley Installed in the Austrian Alps

Art superintendent Rossella Vodret illustrates some detail of the painting at the center of the latest Caravaggio mystery, after the Vatican newspaper first suggested and then denied that the canvas was the work of the Italian master, in Rome, Italy, Tuesday, July 27, 2010. The “Martyrdom of St. Lawrence” would now be examined to ascertain its attribution, but Vodret and other Caravaggio scholars attending the unveiling agreed the painting did not look like a Caravaggio, but rather like the work of his followers. They said the quality did not hold up to Caravaggio’s standards.

Art officials on Tuesday unveiled the painting at the center of the latest Caravaggio mystery, after the Vatican newspaper first suggested and then denied that the canvas was the work of the Italian master.

The “Martyrdom of St. Lawrence” will now be subjected to X-rays and other analyses to ascertain its attribution. But art officials and scholars attending the unveiling agreed the painting did not look like a Caravaggio — but rather like the work of one or more of his followers.

“It’s a very interesting painting but I believe we can rule out — at least for now — that it’s a Caravaggio,” said art superintendent Rossella Vodret. “The quality of the painting doesn’t hold up.”

Continue reading — Art Officials Unveil “Martyrdom of St. Lawrence” Which is at Center of Caravaggio Mystery

Henry Moore’s Large Divided Oval: Butterfly in Berlin

Henry Moore’s heaviest bronze sculpture, Large Divided Oval: Butterfly, has been restored in Berlin. Weighing nearly nine tons, it was his final major work, completed just before he died in 1986. Butterfly stands in the middle of a circular basin, outside the entrance to Berlin’s House of World Cultures, a centre for non-European arts.

Continue reading — Henry Moore’s largest bronze restored in Berlin