Museums News
The Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto (CAMK) is exhibiting Dutch artist Theo Jansen’s ‘Strandbeests’ until the 12th September 2021. The experimental kinetic sculptures run on the sandy beaches of the Netherlands using windpower to move.
The exhibition brings together more than ten works, including a larger-than-life ‘Strandbeest’ with a total length of over 10 meters, which visitors will be able to experience as it moves.
Museums News
Frieze Sculpture returns to the Regent’s Park, London. It will be open from the 14th September until the 31st October 2021. It is free and open to all. This year's edition of Frieze Sculpture brings together works of international artists including Ibrahim El-Salahi, Isamu Noguchi, Solange Pessoa and Rose Wylie. This year’s selection of works addresses themes including architecture, geopolitical power structures and environmental concern. In addition, Serpentine Galleries will present Counterspace, marking the first time a public institution has participated in Frieze Sculpture.
Museums News
Art School of Fish
by John Atkinson
Museums News
A restored Vermeer painting reveals a hidden cupid artwork hanging in the background. Only 34 paintings by Dutch master Johannes Vermeer, art history’s foremost painter of Side Views of People Doing Things Near Windows, have been known to survive to the present day, so when one of them is restored, it’s a big deal. The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden shared the first image of the completed restoration of Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window — and you might notice a pretty big change on the wall behind the girl. The painting has been in the museum’s collection for more than 250 years and the hidden Cupid had been known about since an x-ray in 1979 and infrared reflectography in 2009. It had
Museums News is at Ιστορική οικία Λαζαρου Κουντουριωτη.
Museums News visited the 'Raiment of the soul' (Ένδυμα Ψυχής) exhibition organised by the Εθνικό Ιστορικό Μουσείο - National Historical Museum at the Lazaros Koundouriotis Historical Mansion on the island of Hydra.
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Celebrating the 200th anniversary of the declaration of the Greek Independence War, the exhibition features photographs of modern people wearing traditional Greek island costumes of the 18th and 19th century.
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Photographed by Vangelis Kyris and featuring embroidery on the photographs themselves by Anatoli Georgiev
Museums News
Museums News visited the sublime 'Greek Gift' exhibition at Deste Foundation’s Project Space at the old Slaughterhouse on the island of Hydra
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Featuring artworks by Maurizio Cattelan, David Shrigley, Jeff Koons, Marcel Duchamp and many more
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Coordinated by Massimiliano Gioni, 'The Greek Gift' brings together a series of new and existing works, alongside found objects and impromptu responses from a variety of artists who have maintained decades-long relationships with Dakis Joannou and the DESTE Foundation.
Museums News
The world's first action figure?
1,500-year-old ceramic Maya figurine with removable helmet, from El Perú-Waka', Petén, Guatemala.
It is one of 23 ceramic figurines, arranged by mourners in a circular configuration inside a royal tomb chamber.
Museums News
Banksy unveils a series of new artworks called 'A Great British Spraycation'. The anonymous Bristol-based graffiti artist posted the video and can be seen spraying a number of new artworks around seaside locations in Norfolk and Suffolk.
Passers by can also be seen commenting on the artworks in the video; one clip shows a woman describe one of his new pieces as “mindless vandalism”.
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Museum signage in a typical 21st century British museum. Bit fishy 🦈🤔.
🎼You say theft, I say donations.
Theft, donations, theft, donations.
Lets call the whole thing off.🎼
Museums News
A sculpture of King Arthur on the cliffs of Tintagel Castle. In his 'History of the Kings of Britain', 12th century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth named Tintagel Castle as the place where King Arthur was conceived, with the help of Merlin. At the same time, Cornish and Breton writers linked the love story of Tristan and Iseult with Tintagel. Completed in 2016, the 8-foot-tall (2.4 metre) bronze sculpture was commissioned by English Heritage as part of their recent Tintagel Castle visitor experience. It is the work of Welsh sculptor Rubin Eynon. The sculpture was given the title "Gallos", which is derived from the Cornish word for power.
Museums News
The United States has sent back more than 17,000 looted objects to Iraq. Hasan Nadhim, the Iraqi culture minister, said that the repatriation was “the largest in the history of Iraq.”
Among the objects repatriated to the country was a tablet from the epic of Gilgamesh that was owned by Hobby Lobby, an Oklahoma-based craft store chain. U.S. authorities had been seeking its forfeiture since 2020.
The New York Times reported that cylinder seals, clay tablets, and more arrived in wooden crates in Iraq this week. More than 5,000 of the items that were sent back reportedly came from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, which has previously faced claims that it owns tablets looted from Iraq in the 1990s.
Museums News
Italian art restorers used bacteria to clean Michelangelo masterpieces. Researchers deployed microbes to remove stains and grime from the marble sculptures in Le Cappelle Medicee (Florence’s Medici Chapels Museum). 🔬 Over the centuries, stains and dirt have accumulated on the statue-lined mausoleum in the Florentine San Lorenzo complex’s Medici Chapels, leaving its once-spotless sarcophagi the worse for wear. Luckily, a team of scientists, art conservators and historians has identified an unconventional tool for removing this grime from Michelangelo’s sculptures: bacteria. 🔬 As Jason Horowitz reports for the New York Times, researchers dedicated much of the past decade to cleaning the chapel—but a few obstinate spots remained. To finish the job, the team turned to several strains of bacteria, including Serratia ficaria SH7, Pseudomonas stutzeri CONC11
Museums News is at Allouche Benias Gallery.
Museums News visited the Allouche Benias Gallery, which is housed in a recently renovated neoclassical building in Athens, providing Greece's capital with a much needed contrmporary art shot in the arm.
Museums News
Fingerprint found on 500-year-old statue may belong to Michelangelo. A small wax statue may have brought us closer than ever to Michelangelo, after museum experts found what they believe to be the Renaissance master's fingerprint, or thumbprint, pressed into the material. Specialists at London's Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) discovered the mark on a dark red figurine, which was an initial sketch model for a larger unfinished marble sculpture. The 500-year-old waxwork, titled "A Slave," was part of Michelangelo's preparations for Pope Julius II's elaborate tomb in Rome. It depicts a young naked figure with its arm thrown across its face. According to a museum listing, the proposed statue was among over 40 life-size figures once being planned for the pope's final resting place. Michelangelo
Museums News
The Rosetta Stone – the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs – was discovered on this day in 1799. It is currently housed at the British Museum, but there have been calls to repatriate it back to Egypt, alongside other artefacts acquired from all over the world during Britain's colonial past.
Made in 196 BC, the Stone is inscribed with a decree written three times – in hieroglyphs, Demotic (the cursive Egyptian script used for daily purposes), and Ancient Greek (the language of the Ptolemaic Greek administration in Egypt). Scholars were able to use the Greek inscription to decipher the hieroglyphs.
Museums News
Otzi the Iceman's dagger with scabbard. It is 13 cm long and was carried by Otzi in 3,300 BC.
Otzi and his artifacts are on display at the Ötzi - the Iceman / South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. The iceman was nicknamed Otzi because he was found in the Otztal Alps of South Tyrol.
Museums News
The Museum of Bad Art's stated aim is "to celebrate the labor of artists whose work would be displayed and appreciated in no other forum".
According to Wikipedia, this has been their approach to exhibit thefts:
MoBA staff installed a fake video camera over a sign at their Dedham branch reading (in Comic Sans): "Warning. This gallery is protected by a fake security camera".
Despite this deterrent, in 2004 Rebecca Harris' 'Self Portrait as a Drainpipe' was removed from the wall and replaced with a ransom note demanding $10, although the thief neglected to include any contact information. Soon after its disappearance the painting was returned, with a $10 donation.
Museums News
Museo Guggenheim Bilbao is asking for €100,000 through crowdfunding to restore Jeff Koons’ puppy sculpture, because the flowers wither twice a year!
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The museum just launched its first crowdfunding campaign asking for public donations to repair the structure of the US artist’s 13-metre-tall west highland terrier.
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The puppy has been at the entrance of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao for 24 years. Its vibrant 38,000 plants, which include petunias, impatiens, marigolds and begonias, are replaced twice a year.
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Museums News
German museum repatriates Lakota chief’s shirt, citing ‘moral and ethical reasons’. The Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, said this week that it had repatriated the leather shirt of Chief Daniel Hollow Horn Bear (Mato He Oklogeca), of the Teton Lakota, to his great-grandson Chief Duane Hollow Horn Bear. Chief Daniel Hollow Horn Bear was a well-respected leader and politician who advocated for the rights of his people and was often a chief negotiator with the U.S. government. The Weltkulturen Museum came into possession of the shirt in 1908 through an exchange with the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In a press release, the museum cited “moral and ethical reasons” for the return. The deputy mayor of Culture and Science for the City
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Brooklyn Museum returns 1,305 artifacts to Costa Rica.
Railroad tycoon Minor Cooper Keith had brought the artifacts to the USA more than a hundred years ago; they were looted during the construction of his railway in Costa Rica.
Costa Rica archaeologists in awe as Brooklyn Museum returns 1,305 artifacts
An unfinished tombstone, a large ceramic vase painted with beeswax, human representations and ancient tools to process corn are artifacts of a collection of 1,305 pieces that have been returned to Costa Rica.
Museums News
Recovered Picasso Painting Falls to the Ground! 😮😲😵
After recovering two paintings by Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian that were stolen in broad daylight in 2012 from Athens' National Art Gallery, the Picasso slipped off the police's presentation stand and fell onto the ground in front of the press.
The painting, titled 'Head of a Woman', was presented as a gift from Pablo Picasso to the National Art Gallery in 1946 to honour the nation's four-year resistance against Nazi German occupation. It is inscribed on the back 'For the Greek people, a tribute from Picasso'.
Museums News
'Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me: David Bowie / Geoff MacCormack 1973-76' At Brighton Museums 18 May 2021 to 23 January 2022 'Rock 'n' Roll with Me' is an exhibition of unique photographs taken by David Bowie’s close friend and travelling companion Geoff MacCormack between 1973-76. From Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and the ground-breaking Diamond Dogs’ tour across the USA, Japan and the UK via Russia (on the Trans Siberian Express) to Bowie’s first major film The Man Who Fell to Earth, and the recording of Station to Station, this exhibition of intimate photographs, gives a glimpse of a close friendship, and life on the road with one of the greatest rock stars of all time. The exhibition includes recently rediscovered and never previously seen images
Museums News
More than 30 pre-Columbian artifacts have been handed over to Mexico’s embassy in Germany.
“Two German citizens approached our embassy in Berlin to express their interest in returning archaeological pieces that were in the possession of their families,” said Alejandro Celorio to DW news. Celario is the legal consultant to Mexico’s foreign minister.
According to a statement released by Mexico’s Culture Ministry, the items include a three-legged Maya vessel, an Olmec-style anthropomorphic mask carved from stone, and other bowls and figurines.
Museums News
The oldest known map: The Map of Nippur. This ancient clay tablet dates to the 14th-13th century BC. It shows a map of the countryside around the Mesopotamian city of Nippur, and its complex irrigation system. Nippur was located in the middle of the southern Mesopotamia floodplain, near the modern city of Diwaniyah, Iraq. The map cannot be viewed in its original location, as it is in the USA at Penn Museum. The map’s central section, identified in cuneiform writing as a “field of the palace,” suggests that the tablet served as a guide to estates belonging to the recently established Kassite Dynasty, which was based in the city of Babylon, around 70 miles northwest of Nippur. At this time, the region’s new Kassite rulers