Liberty Island, home of the Statue of Liberty, will reopen to visitors Thursday for the first time since Sept. 11, although the statue itself will remain off-limits, as federal officials develop a new security plan for the monument.
more: http://www.bergen.com/news/statuebk200112183.htm
Painting Attributed to Goya Stolen From Italy Show
TURIN, Italy (Reuters) - A painting attributed to Spanish master Francisco de Goya and insured for more than $500,000 was stolen in Italy's northern city of Turin, police said on Monday. The thief nabbed the painting of Count Ugolino, one of Italian history's darkest characters, on Sunday afternoon during a tour of a temporary exhibition at the Torino-Esposizione site and slipped away without being spotted by security guards. The oil painting, about the size of a sheet of letter paper, portrays Ugolino, known as the ``cannibal count,'' and two boys. It is called ``Count Ugolino della Gherardesca.'' In Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy, Ugolino and his sons and grandsons were starved to death in 1289 in a tower in Pisa. When his offspring died, the famished count ate their flesh. Police said that security at the exhibition of private works was limited. Still, they said it would be difficult to resell the picture since its theft will be widely reported. The painting was bought as an anonymous picture by a private collector for just $250 two years ago, but it has since been attributed to Goya by experts. The owner had insured it for $500,000 while he awaited final recognition by the official Italian art critics' circle.
Lost Kennedy Photos Spark Industry Reflection
By Christopher Noble
BOSTON (Reuters) - Jacques Lowe, whose intimate, understated images of the Kennedy family helped create and sustain the myth of Camelot, was among the most careful of photographers. He stored his precious negatives in a fireproof bank vault and closely monitored their use. When a publication or museum wanted prints, he personally took the negatives to the lab for printing. When the job was done, he retrieved them himself. Even so, on Sept. 11 his entire archive of Kennedy photographs, some 40,000 negatives valued at more than $2 million and held in the J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. vault at 5 World Trade Center, was lost in the destruction of the attacks on the United States. ``It was an extraordinary document and it's a horrible loss,'' said Peter Galassi, chief curator for photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. ``It really makes me sad.'' The destruction of the negatives, which ranks among the worst losses to photographic history in recent memory, has sparked reflection in the industry as it undergoes a tectonic shift to digital formats from film and paper. The loss also underscores the dilemma faced by archivists who must find the right balance to protect artists' work while ensuring that it is as available to the public as is practical. Lowe, who died in May at age 71, believed he had found the right balance, said his daughter Thomasina. ``He was being more prudent than most. He really believed they were as safe as they could ever be,'' she said. ``He chose to have them there because he was six blocks away from them and he felt psychologically (as if) they were under his bed.''
UNDERSTATED IMAGES, PIVOTAL MOMENTS
Lowe recorded many of the pivotal moments in the private and public lives of America's most famous political family. The images are familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in U.S. politics, photography or the Kennedys. They include John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline eating breakfast in a diner in 1959, Bobby Kennedy casting a baleful eye over Lyndon Johnson as his older brother offers Johnson the vice presidency, Jack and Bobby conferring urgently during the Bay of Pigs crisis. Lowe first photographed the Kennedy family in the mid-1950s and was later invited to cover John F. Kennedy's run for the presidency. Along the way Lowe became friendly with the family, establishing particularly close ties with Bobby, his daughter said. After John Kennedy won the White House, Lowe was offered the job of official photographer, but he turned it down, preferring the freedom of his less-defined position. He was given a unique level of access to the White House and continued to photograph the family after the assassination. It was Bobby Kennedy's 1968 assassination that led Lowe to shutter his studio and move to Europe. After 1968 he only rarely photographed the family, Thomasina said. Susan Kismaric, a photography curator at the Museum of Modern Art who recently mounted a show that included some of Lowe's work, said the photographer's access showed a candid side of a presidential family not generally available today. ``It provided insight into the off moments of being a politician. It's the sort of picture that is very, very difficult to find now that everything is so set up,'' she said. Other such moments captured by Lowe include the future president and his wife disembarking from a plane at a deserted airfield and Bobby lost in thought as he walks along the side of a highway framed by a stunning western mountainscape. Nathan Benn, director of the prestigious cooperative Magnum Photos Inc., said Lowe's style and the Kennedy mystique were a good fit. ``He had an understated style that allowed the subject matter to be the center of attention,'' Benn said.
ALL IN ONE PLACE
That the disaster wiped out the work of a photographer known to take good care of his originals has not gone unnoticed in an industry where until recently the artistic and historic value of the work was still a subject of debate. To the outsider, it may seem unusual that work of such obvious value could be left in one place under the control of just one person. But industry insiders say the practice is not at all unusual. ``Overall photographers probably do keep their negatives in one place,'' said Benn. ``Most photographers I know have them on their premises.'' Benn said Lowe's precautions were more than adequate and quite out of the ordinary in an industry populated by disorganized loners who travel for extended periods and have little time to organize their work. ``It's only because of the unthinkable that this has happened,'' Benn said. Benn said Magnum has launched an initiative to digitize the most valuable work of its photographers. Other steps are underway, too. Belleview, Washington-based picture agency Corbis, whose library of about 17 million images is among the world's largest, has moved most of its collection to a salt mine for safe keeping after digitizing about 200,000 of its most used images.
NO INSURANCE
The loss is a harsh blow to Lowe's five children, who relied on the photographs for an emotional link to their father's aesthetic and also for financial support. ``It's so terrible it's impossible to really think about it sometimes,'' said Thomasina Lowe. The negatives were not insured and there are no copies. From now on existing prints, which were made of only about 300 to 400 of the photographs, are all that will be left. ``The only thing that softens the blow is that I understand there are a lot of prints around,'' said Magnum's Benn. ``But the prints are only the tip of the iceberg of what was photographed.'' Thomasina Lowe said in the aftermath of Sept. 11, J.P. Morgan Chase indicated the negatives might be recovered, but then was informed the search was being abandoned. Now J.P. Morgan Chase has reversed course again, and promised in early December to again sift through the rubble looking for the negatives and the contents of other safe deposit boxes. Lowe, who said she may join an existing lawsuit against the bank to ensure they do all they can to recover the images, said rescue officials located a few safes, to no avail. ``They were able to open a couple of safes and what they found was just ash,'' she said. ``It must have been like an oven in there.''
British college refuses to return spears taken by Captain Cook
A request by a south Sydney Aboriginal tribe to obtain spears collected by Captain James Cook on his first voyage to Australia has been denied by Britain's Trinity College. The Gweagal people and Sutherland Shire Council want to repatriate the spears which are currently held in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University.
The Gweagal tribe's Shane Williams says the spears were used by his ancestors to resist the first landing of Captain Cook in Botany Bay and they should be returned to Australia. "Those spears represent Aboriginal resistance on that day and also they're the oldest artifacts to be taken from Australia so they're very, very unique and very important to our heritage of our area," he said. http://www.abc.net.au/news/indigenous/ab-16dec2001-1.htm
By Arieh O'Sullivan
Antiquities Authority agents recently nabbed a ring of undersea divers on suspicion of having stolen dozens of artifacts from the Mediterranean Sea near Caesarea, officials revealed today. Members of the ring admitted to sifting through sands off the ancient Roman-era port of Caesarea. They said they found buildings, valuable amphoras, coins, and capitals. The group, made up of certified scuba divers from one of the kibbutzim in the area, had been acting for an extended period of time, Antiquities Authority officials said. According to the officials, the underwater thieves caused irreperable damage to many buildings built in Roman and Byzantine times, which were later covered by the sea. www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/12/16/LatestNews/LatestNews.40041.html The Art Newspaper.com http://www.theartnewspaper.com
This week's top stories:
BACON ESTATE ALLEGES ARTIST WAS BLACKMAILED BY MARLBOROUGH
LONDON. The Francis Bacon Estate’s legal claim against Marlborough Fine Art has taken a new twist, with allegations of blackmail. Bacon is said to have decided to leave Marlborough to move to the Pace gallery (now Pace Wildenstein), but changed his mind after being warned that he might then have problems with the UK tax authorities and in getting access to money paid through Liechtenstein into his Swiss bank accounts. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=8451
NO GO FOR CRASHED SPY PLANE AS ART
HONG KONG. Huang Yongping, born in Xiamen, China, but now a French citizen, is no stranger to censorship. So when he proposed a life-size replica of the US Orion spy plane (the one which crash-landed on Hainan Island last year) for this year’s “Exposition de sculpture contemporain de Shenzhen”, a Sino-French collaboration, he probably anticipated trouble. But the censor this time came not from Zhongnanhai, hub of an avowedly repressive state, but from quai d’Orsay, diplomatic bullhorn of liberté, fraternité, egalité. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=8450
CITY HALL CUTS BUDGET FOR CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS BY 15%
NEW YORK. As tourists stay away from New York City, the 35 cultural institutions that receive funds from the city government are vying for a pot of money that has been reduced by 15% and they are facing the prospect of further cuts as firms consider leaving the city. Economists predict that even if tourists return in previous numbers and revenues associated with them rises, the city will face multi-billion dollar deficits in the next few years. At time of going to press, mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg had not appointed a Commissioner of Cultural Affairs. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=8434
ALTERNATIVE ART FAIR HOPES TO COOPERATE WITH ARTBASEL NEXT YEAR
MIAMI. ArtBasel director Sam Keller, interviewed poolside at South Beach's Albion Hotel, says his mid-winter week in Miami was "a very successful dry run". With the fair's US debut—originally slated for 13 to 16 December—postponed, Mr Keller is really here as cultural ambassador and reassuring presence. Friendly and looming large, not unlike the 50-foot flamingo-pink inflatable monolith he erected in town which bears the inscription: "Art Basel loves Miami Beach". http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=8433
WHY SOTHEBY’S AND CHRISTIE’S FACE NO CHARGES IN THE UK
NEW YORK. It appears that A. Alfred Taubman will bear the brunt of punishment for an ill- fated auction house conspiracy that leaves his partner in crime free of prosecution in the UK. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=8432
THE TURNER PRIZE: AS EXCITING AS HEARING OLD JOKES RETOLD