In Memoriam

Image from Arts & Culture: 104

Walter de Maria died yesterday at the age of 77.  Although de Maria was not a household name, he had a huge influence on the Earthworks movement. Check out his piece, “Lightning Fields” (above), and maybe you’ll see why he is one of my favorites.

In other art law related-ish news:

In a statement made last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital, with supervising and profiting from insider trading.  Cohen is one of the world’s biggest art collectors (he bought the Damien Hirst shark tank. yeah, that guy.) and a trustee at MOCA Los Angeles.

House Republicans seeking to cut NEA and NEH funding by half.  This is definitely the right avenue by which to address our fiscal woes (FRUSTRATED SARCASM).

Meanwhile, over in Europe, a five year global art project called Metabody was given 1.9 million by the EU Culture Program.  The project is set to launch this month.

Apparently, Christie’s sent employees to assess the DIA collection at some point over the past two months. Here come the vultures.  Although there are no clear plans for the museum, everyone has an opinion.  Some believe that selling the collection would hurt the art market.  While others are more supportive, framing the issue as saving the art versus people’s pensions.  While I, surprisingly, tend to agree with the latter.  I do take issue with the city having the ability to sell donated the pieces in the first place. I can’t imagine donors would have gifted their pieces if they had anticipated that they might be auctioned off in order to save Detroit from mismanagement.

The head of security for the V&A museum expressed fear for their Chinese collection, pointing to other recent thefts of Asian art.

The National History Museum’s science laboratory in Bucharest has submitted an initial report stating the ashes discovered in a suspected art thief’s home contained fragments of oil paintings.  This could indicate that the suspect burned a Picasso (see last post) he allegedly stole among other pieces, including two Monet works.

In other plunderous affairs, some ill-informed thieves stole 10 paintings and two drawings from the Van Buuren Museum in Brussels.  One of the drawings was a Van Gogh scholars have fingered as a potential fake.