Getty and London’s National Portrait gallery to acquire Joshua Reynolds painting at $61.9 M.

A SUMMARY OF THE MOST EXCITING ART NEWS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE

While we focus on Indian art, we can’t obviously function in a vacuum. It’s a small world and everything is connected, especially on the web. So, let’s train our spotlight across the world map to see what’s going on — from art trends to socio-political issues to everything that affects the great aesthetic global consciousness. Or, let’s just travel the world and have some fun!

Manhattan DA’s Office Returns 11th Century Antiquity to Cambodia

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is currently in the news for indicting former President Donald Trump, but it also continues to repatriates looted and stolen antiquities. On March 31, the office of Alvin L. Bragg Jr. announced the repatriation of the Khmer Lintel, an 11th century structural element that was looted fromCambodiaduring the 1990s and smuggled into Thailand. The Khmer lintel formed the support for a temple door and featured carvings of celestial deities dancing together, known asapsaras in Hindu and Buddhist cultures. According to the DA’s office, after the lintel arrived in Bangkok, it was sold by a local dealer to an American collector and remained in a private collection in Manhattan until its seizure last October. Details on Art News.

Picasso’s portrait taken down at Munich museum over ownership dispute

A museum in Munich has taken down a Picasso portrait after a recent intervention from the German culture minister over its disputed ownership. “I expressly call on the Bavarian state government to finally clear the way for the Bavarian State Painting Collections to agree to an appeal to the Advisory Commission,” Culture Minister Claudia Roth told the Bavarian publicationSüddeutsche Zeitung. “This is really overdue now,” she said, hinting at passing a new restitution law. The Limbach Commission, a government-established body that handles restitutions, has attempted to intervene in the dispute over the 1903 portraitMadame Soler by Pablo Picasso, which has been on display at the Pinakothek der Moderne for almost six decades. But the Bavarian State Painting Collections has not agreed to any mediation so far. Read more on The Times.

Getty and London’s National Portrait gallery to acquire Joshua Reynolds painting at $61.9 M.

In a highly unusual move, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the National Portrait Gallery in London will jointly buy Joshua Reynolds’s “Portrait of Mai (Omai),” considered the earliest portrait of a person of color in British art history. In a deal announced on Friday, the painting will be sold for 50 million pounds, or about $62 million. The two museums will each pay half the cost. The work, which was painted around 1776 and depicts an 18th-century Polynesian man standing barefoot and wearing flowing white robes, “will travel periodically” between Britain and the United States, according to a news release announcing the deal. Details on Art News.