Startup Revives Extinct Masterpieces, Including Van Gogh Lost in Bombing Raid
In further news: Berlin museums return artworks looted by the Nazis; Russian minister warns of ‘provocations’ at Venice Architecture Biennale
In further news: Berlin museums return artworks looted by the Nazis; Russian minister warns of ‘provocations’ at Venice Architecture Biennale
Italian startup Factum Arte is reviving lost artworld masterpieces for a new television series. The Sky TV series, Mystery of the Lost Paintings, which began airing this week, details the recreation of several 20th century masterpieces, including a Monet lost in a fire at MoMA in 1958, and a Van Gogh destroyed in a US air raid in Japan in 1945. Factum Arte has worked from various sources including archival photographs of the works and damaged canvases to scan and produce facsimiles.
Several Berlin state museums have returned nine artworks and ancient artifacts looted by the Nazis from the collection of the Jewish-German newspaper publisher Rudolf Mosse. Mosse’s heirs worked with German cultural institutions towards the restitution of the pieces. The works include a Roman child sarcophagus, a lioness sculpture by August Gaul and the marble sculpture Susanna (1869-72) by artist Reinhold Begas. They are the first results to be presented in a larger restitution project engaging German museums, which is tracing over 1,000 artworks believed to have been stolen from Mosse by the Nazis. ‘The project does not aim to cast blame,’ a spokesperson for the heirs said, ‘we are committed to returning property to their rightful heirs, as well as being sensitive to the inevitable awkwardness involved in this process.’
New money-laundering regulations voted in by the European Parliament will have important ramifications for the art market. Dealers will have to verify the identity of clients buying pieces over EUR€10,000, and covers all payment types, the Art Newspaper reports. The International Confederation of Art and Antique Dealer Associations say that the regulations are ‘an unacceptable burden on the art market business’. Meanwhile, art dealers in the US are facing the prospect of new government regulation, in a push for greater market transparency.
Russian deputy culture minister Vladimir Aristarkhov has warned of ‘provocations’ regarding Russia’s participation at the Venice Architecture Biennale, which runs from 26 May to 25 November. ‘As the Venice Biennale is one of the biggest and most important venues in the sphere of international cultural exchange, we must be vigilant,’ Aristarkhov said, claiming that other countries ‘will stop at nothing – any provocation, so long as it is anti-Russian.’
Wolfgang Tillmans is partnering with English National Opera on a new production of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, timed to mark a century since the close of the First World War. Tillmans is teaming up with ENO artistic director Daniel Kramer to work on the production design. ‘Having a German artist’s point of view focused the early discussion around the themes of nationalism,’ Kramer said.
New York’s New Museum is heading to London for a pop-up show at the Strand, to time with Frieze Week in October in the UK capital. Artistic director Massimiliano Gioni is organizing the show with the Vinyl Factory, at arts space The Store X, titled ‘Strange Days: Memories of the Future’. Gioni said that the exhibition will be a ‘compendium’ of artworks the New Museum has hosted over the last decade.
Natasha Hoare has been appointed curator at the Goldsmiths Center for Contemporary Art – it launches in London this September with a solo exhibition by Mika Rottenberg. Architecture collective Assemble, Turner Prize winners in 2015, were chosen to develop the new gallery spaces. Hoare has been a curator at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, since 2014.
In prizes and funding news: Charlotte Amelia Pow’s video self-portrait How To Be Autistic has won the inaugural Spectrum Art Prize, which champions artists on the autistic spectrum, and comes with a GBP£10,000 cash award and curatorial support; a fund has been set up to support the work of the arts commissioning agency Artangel – artists including Jeremy Deller, Antony Gormley, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Wolfgang Tillmans and Rachel Whiteread have given works towards the new fund; ceramicist Jennifer Lee has been awarded this year’s Loewe Craft Prize, and was presented with the EUR€50,000 prize at a ceremony at London’s Design Museum; and collectors Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman are teaming up with Suzanne Deal Booth and Contemporary Austin to launch a new USD$800,000 artist prize.
In gallery news: David Zwirner now represents the Joan Mitchell Foundation, with an exhibition planned for next year in the gallery’s New York space – ‘The gallery is proud to be entrusted to help with the extraordinary legacy of Joan Mitchell, one of the most important and original American painters to emerge in the second half of the twentieth century’, Zwirner commented; Lehmann Maupin have announced representation of the Estate of Heidi Bucher – ‘Her exploration of spaces – often designated as feminine, particularly domestic environments and objects – is very much in line with Lehmann Maupin’s programming and closely ties into the work of artists such as Do Ho Suh and Liza Lou,’ director Anna Stothart said; New York’s James Cohan Gallery represents Matthew Ritchie; LA’s Kayne Griffin Corcoran now represents painter Mary Obering (her work is on show at their booth at Frieze New York); London’s White Cube have opened an office on New York’s Upper East Side; and Mexico City gallery kurimanzutto also opened a space in New York’s Upper East Side yesterday, inaugurated with new work by Abraham Cruzvillegas.
New York now has a freeport for art storage: the art-storage company Arcis has opened a USD$50 million warehouse in Harlem – not only is it designed to museum storage standards, and boasts high-tech security systems, but it also bears Foreign-Trade Zone status, the US version of a free-trade zone.
And finally, Frieze New York opens to the public today. You can read our senior US editor Andrew Durbin on his highlights of the shows in the city; as well as coverage of Hank Willis Thomas’s flag installation at the fair, Kapwani Kiwanga speaking to curator Adrienne Edwards on her Artist Award project, and find out this year’s winners of the Stand Prize and Focus Prize.
