The MET's collection contains over 1000 objects linked to alleged looters

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!

Masterpieces from Milan museum brighten up hospital

Doctors at the Humanitas hospital in Ronzano with Francesco Hayez’s The Kiss
Courtesy- Art Newspaper

Many visit museums searching for solace and enrichment. But the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan attempts to expand its therapeutic reach by taking some of its iconic masterpieces into a local research hospital Details from works at Brera by artists from Francesco Hayez to Raphael have been blown up in high-definition and pasted onto walls in the corridors and waiting rooms of the Humanitas hospital in Ronzano, in the metropolitan area of Milan. The project’s organisers claim the partnership will improve the well-being of patients. The Pinacoteca di Brera boasts one of the world’s finest collections of Italian painting, with a special emphasis on Venetian and Lombard artists. For the “Brera in Humanitas” project, curators have selected details from 15 of the museum’s works and expanded them to a ratio of 1:36. The walls of one corridor display the faces of Hayez’s lovers from The Kiss (1859), while a waiting room in the radiology department has been decorated with the arched gallery encircling the temple of Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin (1504). Read more on The Art Newspaper.

The MET’s collection contains over 1000 objects linked to alleged looters

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
Courtesy- Art Newspaper

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has more than 1,000 objects in its collection that have ties to people allegedly involved in crimes related to the antiquities trade, according to a new report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), sparking heightened scrutiny of the largest and most-visited museum in the US. At least 1,109 pieces in the Met’s collection were previously owned by individuals who have been indicted or convicted of crimes including looting and trafficking, the ICIJ and nonprofit Finance Uncovered found in a review of the Met’s antiquities collection. Of those objects, fewer than half have records available that detail how they left their countries of origin. And of the more than 250 antiquities at the Met with links to Nepal and Kashmir — two places that have been especially badly impacted by looting — only three are listed with records that explain how the objects left the areas they originated in, according to the ICIJ and Finance Uncovered. Details on The Art Newspaper.

Hong Kong heiress sues gallery over alleged £500,000 Banksy fraud

Show Me The Monet (2005) sold for at Sotheby’s London in 2020.
Details- MenaFn

An heiress to a billion-dollar Hong Kong beverage company has sued one of the city’s top art dealers over claims the gallery never delivered on her purchase of a well-known painting by British artist Banksy. The lawsuit’s filing coincides with the opening of this year’s edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong, the city’s largest art fair. Karen Lo, whose grandfather Lo Kwee-Seong became a billionaire after founding soy milk giant Vitasoy in 1940, filed a lawsuit this week claiming that she never received a Banksy painting she purchased from Pearl Lam, whose eponymous gallery is one of the major art world players in Hong Kong. According to the complaint, Lo paid Lam £500,000 under the belief the gallerist had purchased on her behalf Banksy’s Show Me The Monet (2005), a parody of Impressionist Claude Monet’s series of paintings of the garden at his home in Giverny featuring orange traffic cones, a discarded shopping cart and other garbage in a pond. The painting sold for £7.6m with fees at Sotheby’s London in 2020 to an Asian collector. At the time it was Banksy’s second most-valuable work to sell at auction. Details on MenaFn.