COURTESY SOTHEBY’S
Modern Forgery
In 2011 Sotheby’s in New York brokered the $10 million private sale of a supposedly undiscovered masterwork by Frans Hals titled Portrait of a Man. Earlier this month, the auction house declared that the painting was actually a work of “modern forgery” (and reimbursed the buyer). [The New York Times]
Goings-on at the British Museum
Jonathan Jones’s high praise of “South Africa: The Art of a Nation” currently on at the British Museum: “Something grabs this exhibition, shakes it, and fills it with rage. History infects it. Far from being a benign celebration of South Africa’s arts, it is a story of human struggle and sacrifice.” [The Guardian]
How the now-restored Townley Venus had its thumb knocked off at the British Museum by some caterers during a corporate event. [The Art Newspaper]
Art in New York
“Taxidermy: Art, Science & Immortality” is an exhibition currently on at the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn, where viewers can behold Walter Potter’s famed Kittens’ Wedding. [The Creators Project]
A profile of the New York artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, a pioneer of the “radical practice of Maintenance Art” for which she is now enjoying a survey at Queens Museum. [Village Voice]
Smithsonian
David M. Rubenstein, cofounder of the Carlyle Group—a Washington D.C. based investment firm—has been elected chairman of the Smithsonian Institution board. [Washington Post via ArtForum]
Rubenstein’s first assignment? Work out where to fit the next museum on Washington’s fast-diminishing Mall. [Washingtonian]
Bonus
The proliferation of naked Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton sculptures is, at least according to this author, a sign that most Americans are “funnier, more spontaneously inventive and less vitriolic than the leaders it is being offered in this election.” [Bloomberg]
A look at the dying art form of Japanese candy sculpture. [BoingBoing]
Watch this video of a cross-continental Rube Goldberg machine. [Common Ground]