Tag: 12.22.02

Christie’s Refuses To Aid In Recovery of Stolen Artwork

Do auction houses have an obligation to help owners of stolen art recover their property? The family of a Holocaust victim wants Christie’s to reveal the owner of a painting the auction house had planned to sell. “To Christie’s, the issue is not so clear-cut. Its lawyers say the auction house has done all it can to help, including contacting the collector and informing him that the painting’s ownership may be at issue.” But they won’t reveal the name.

Precious Argentine Library In Peril

Victoria Ocampo collected one of the finest collections of Latin American books. “Before her death in 1979, Ocampo donated her magnificent villa in San Isidro, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and its library to Unesco to create a literary and cultural center. But the project has remained a dead letter, the villa has deteriorated into serious disrepair, and as many as a thousand books may have disappeared. ” How to save them?

Inside The World’s Most Secret Museum

Russian TV has shown what it describes as the most secret museum in the country – a museum documenting the KGB and its predessor security organization. “According to the TV, there is only one poignant item to represent the tumultuous events of the 1930’s, in which thousands died at the hands of Stalin’s secret police. It is a list of chiefs of the Leningrad directorate and other security personnel executed between 1933-39: a total figure of 22,618.”

The Tate’s Cloak-And-Dagger Operation To Get Back Its Turners

Did the Tate pay a £3.5 million ransom to get back two of its greatest Turner paintings? It was a cloak-and-dagger operation. “A sizeable chunk of the cash they handed to the German authorities went to pay a chain of informers and middlemen for ‘information’ on the paintings, now worth around £50 million. But the Tate insists no ransom was paid nor were criminals rewarded, at least not directly by them or by the two former Metropolitan policemen they employed.”

Is Toronto Painting Another Rubens?

For 15 years, a Toronto businessman has enjoyed a painting he has hung in his livingroom. He “never had the canvas appraised. He just enjoyed admiring it as it hung in his Forest Hill living room. But last summer, after reading that billionaire Ken Thomson paid $117 million for Rubens’ Massacre Of The Innocents, the owner became interested in what an expert would say.” They say it might be another Rubens…

The Death Of Arena Rock

Those giant arena-size rock concerts – did they ever make sense? Now they seem like dinosaurs from another age. “One pictures thousands of minions working in warehouses on computer run sets, and one wonders why. The technology involved is both mind boggling and useless – unless some other use can be found for giant human gerbil-balls, in much the same manner that cell phones came of astronautry. Arena rock seems cheesy now even at its best, but one reason for the obsolescence is simply that it outpriced itself.”

Looking For Composers With Heart

“American composers have long maintained an impersonal veneer.” For much of the 20th Century they oozed technique – lots of grey matter spilled all over the pages of their scores. But “with compositional masks falling in recent years, there comes a crisis of style: What’s the musical language of the 21st-century heart?”