First Display of Art from the University of Iowa Museum to Open at the Figge Art Museum

Modern masterworks by celebrated artists including Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse will be featured in an upcoming University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA)-organized exhibition at the Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second St. in downtown Davenport, IA.

The exhibition, “A Legacy for Iowa: Pollock’s ‘Mural’ and Modern Masterworks from the University of Iowa Museum of Art,” opens Sunday, April 19 and runs through Sunday, August 2. The two museums will celebrate the opening from noon to 5 p.m. on April 19 with a reception at the Figge Art Museum. Tours of the exhibition will be available at 1:30, 2:30, and 3:30 p.m., and volunteers from both museums will be stationed in the galleries throughout the day to answer visitors’ questions.

54th Brussels Antiques & Fine Arts Fair

On January 23 Belgium’s oldest and the most important antiques fair «Brussels Antiques & Fine Arts Fair» (BRAFA 2009) will be opened. It will take place at the central Tour & Taxis site in Brussels.

130 Belgian and foreign exhibitors – the quantity of the participants remains permanent for many years – will be sharing the exhibition space in the heart of the capital.

Colombian museum opens the exposition of Chinese art

In 2007 the Colombian Museum of Arts received one of the largest private donations for all the history of its existence. The American collector Robert Turner donated the museum more than 100 works including over 70 unique exhibits of ancient China which became a basis of the collection of new gallery of eastern art. On December 19, the curators of the museum will present the best objects from Turner’s collection within the limits of the exhibition Eye to the East. Turner’s collection is special in covering of almost all the periods of the history of ancient China – from bronze and ceramics of neolith epoch till perfect works of “Golden Age” of Tan Dynasty (618–907). Many works date to the so-called transition periods – Han, Qing, Sun and Yuan. All of them are of excellent safety and with traditionally high artistic qualities. Among them is a unique terracotta sculpture of Maytrei – Buddha of a future world order dated to the 7th century. Works of such kind are very unique at the antiquarian market and can give an honour to the best museums of the world.

Europ’ART 2003 Opens in Lausanne

Europ’ART 2003 opens today and will be on view through May 4, 2003. With more than 20 different countries present, the program is indeed gathering a beautiful and wide range of exhibitions, which will enrich us all and satisfy the curiosity of buyers (526 items sold in 2002) and of the public. This year the Geneva institutions are given a place of honor at Europ’ART with the Ariana Museum (the Swiss ceramic and glass museum in Geneva), which will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of its reopening in 2003, and the Contemporary Applied Arts Centre.

Art crime no longer the safe option

The US Sentencing commission wants to introduce a “base offence level” for cultural heritage crimes nationwide

WASHINGTON DC. In 1984, the US Congress changed federal criminal sentencing to abolish parole, which created disparities in prison terms, and set out to substitute instead a uniform sentencing system to apply nationwide to the same criminal acts.

The new rules comprise the US Sentencing Guidelines, written by the US Sentencing Commission. But the guidelines are silent on federal crimes against archaeological sites, protected Native American resources, and major works of art in museums, leaving such sentencing “orphans” to be punished by default under the rules for theft and fraud, often less severely than cigarette and speeding offences. Now, the Sentencing Commission wants to remedy that.

Louise Bourgeois in the Hermitage

The work of Louise Bourgeois can be described as an encyclopaedia of modern art. In it one can detect traces of the influence of all the leading artistic tendencies of the 20th century – Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, Abstractionism and Conceptualism, but at the same time the artist’s sculpture, painting and graphic art is marked by an emphatically personal expression of her creative identity. All Louise Bourgeois’s works were created under the influence of her impressions of life, impressions that have their roots deep in the artist’s childhood. Bourgeois herself spoke figuratively of being “like a collector of spaces and memories”.

Schultz case could blight entire US trade in Egyptian artefacts

Lawyers have filed a motion attempting to quash a case that has the potential to blight the entire trade in Egyptian antiquities in the United States. The case, due to be heard in January, involves Frederick Schultz, a leading New York antiquities dealer, who has been indicted by the Justice Department on a count of conspiracy to possess conceal, store, barter, sell and dispose of Egyptian artefacts stolen from Egypt.

If convicted under obscure US case law, it would effectively mean that anyone wishing to deal in Egyptian antiquities would have to be able to show cast-iron provenances going back to before 1983 for any piece. That was the year that Egyptian law changed, making any such cultural find on Egyptian soil the automatic property of the state.