Gov. J.B. Pritzker fired the director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in September after a state watchdog found he violated procedures by lending an “irreplaceable and priceless” handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address to an upstart museum affiliated with conservative pundit Glenn Beck, according to a report released Friday.
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“The large number of arrests and objects seized hints at the massive scale and global reach of the international trade in illicit artifacts,” says Tess Davis, executive director of the Antiquities Coalition, an American nonprofit dedicated to fighting cultural theft.
Yes, scofflaw diplomats have been a problem for ages (ask any New Yorker who’s been clipped, or worse, by a UN delegate’s car), but over the past few years, artworks have been disappearing from certain embassies in Cairo, DC, Moscow, and other capitals. Some appear to have vanished without trace, and others have turned up […]
Investigators find paintings and rare books missing from private museum belonging to banker Alexei Ananyev accused of alleged financial crimes
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“The lawsuit [filed in Miami-Dade County] concerns a group of works that Miami dealer Inigo Philbrick and his gallery are allegedly withholding from Fine Art Partners (FAP), a Germany-based financial services company specialized in the art market.
On Sunday afternoon, a man walked into the Dennis Rae Fine Art Gallery, walked up to Dalí’s 1966 hand-colored etching Burning Giraffe, picked it right off the easel, and walked out the open door while the staffer on duty had his back turned.
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“In court filings, John H. McFadden — scion of one of the founding families behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art — denied claims that he stole a bronze cast of one of … Brancusi’s most famous works from Stuart Pivar, a prolific Manhattan art buyer and onetime friend of Andy Warhol.
But where are the other parts of the Wall of Scribes? And how did someone (or someones, or a syndicate, who knows?) steal the bronze sculpture in 1969? – Los Angeles Times
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The story just got better – Papillon meets The Goldfinch meets The Great Train Robbery. But it had also gone cold. “I thought: oh, I’ve missed it.” – The Guardian
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“There has at last been an arrest in a high-profile string of suspected Old Master forgeries uncovered in 2016. An Italian painter, Lino Frongia, 61, was taken into custody in northern Italy earlier this week, while an arrest warrant has been issued for French art dealer and collector Giulano Ruffini, who sold the works in […]