Arts

NEW YORK - Though artist Faith Ringgold is perhaps best known for delighting American schoolchildren with her lusciously illustrated 1991 masterwork of a children’s book "Tar Beach," her first public commission was actually designed for another audience: female prisoners eating in the cafeteria of the Rikers Island prison in New York City. Now that incarcerated work, the 1971 "For the Women’s House," is being released after a tumultuous stretch for a show at the Neuberger Museum of Art, in Purchase, New York. Full Story »

LONDON - "Tonight, I’m announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended," President Obama declared last week. Seven years after the United States-led invasion of the country, the war is officially over. In the U.K., however, the debate over Britain's involvement in the conflict is as fractious as ever: the government’s "Iraq Inquiry" has been severely criticized, and former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s newly published autobiography, "A Journey," has triggered angry protests. Full Story »

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A Kennedy Center Honor, which the Kennedy Center’s website likens to a knighthood in Britain, is the ultimate reward for a person’s “lifetime contribution to American culture.” This year those contributions included outlaw country music, "Yesterday," uplifting car giveaways, and scintillatingly vibrant choreography. Full Story »

BAGHDAD - As a reminder that the looting of Iraq's heritage has hardly been restricted to the militant thieves who pillaged the Iraqi National Museum after the 2003 American invasion, the United States has repatriated a group of objects, some of which were apparently taken as war booty, and others that reflect the region's history of artifact smuggling. This step, by all accounts, is only a small one in what will have to be a concerted international effort to undo the work of all kinds of opportunistic raiders. Full Story »

NEW YORK - As Sotheby's and Christie's stake out their blue-chip consignment territory in advance of the fall market season, second-string boutique Phillips de Pury seems to be working a burgeoning, if unglamorous, niche: helping disgraced financiers sell off their ill-gotten art. After bringing in more than $24 million this spring by auctioning the collection of debt-ridden Internet entrepreneur Hasley Minor, Phillips is now angling for the corporate art collection of the defunct law firm of Marc Dreier, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for federal fraud after having attempted to sell $700 million bonus promissory notes to investors. According to the Wall Street Journal, a bankruptcy official has filed for court approval for a November 21 Phillips auction of the modern and contemporary works Dreier amassed before his 2008 arrest. The 81-piece collection includes works by Damien Hirst, Henri Matisse, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, and Willem de Kooning, as well as photographs of the Dreier family and of Audrey Hepburn playing that other fiscally inept individual Holly Golightly in "Breakfast at Tiffany’s." Full Story »

BRISBANE, Australia - With Fashion Week fast approaching, a grateful look to the golden age of couture, when clothing design approached the realm of art, seems to be merited. Thankfully, it is readily available at the Brisbane’s Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, which is hosting "Valentino, Retrospective: Past/Present/Future" until November 14. Developed by curator Pamela Golbin from the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the show highlights 100 ensembles, celebrating the past half-century of garb by the Italian fashion house. Full Story »

LONDON (Reuters) - Former British premier Tony Blair has been forced to postponed a party at the Tate Modern art gallery celebrating the launch of his autobiography because of threats from anti-war protesters, his office said on Wednesday. Full Story »

LONDON (Reuters) - Former premier Tony Blair has postponed a party at the Tate Modern art gallery celebrating the launch of his autobiography because of threats from protesters, his office said on Wednesday. Full Story »

INDIANAPOLIS - After almost a year of speculation, the Puerto Rico–based multimedia duo Allora & Calzadilla has been announced as the United States' representatives to the 2011 Venice Biennale, marking the first time that an artist pair or collective has been picked by the nation to fill the prestigious role. The selection was made by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which the U.S. State Department has entrusted to organize next year's pavilion; Lisa Freiman, the chair of the museum’s contemporary art department, has been tapped as the commissioner of the pavilion. She will also curate the presentation. Full Story »

DRESDEN - Dresden's Museum of Military History has existed in a variety of incarnations over the years, each mirroring the successive regime that shaped its image. Established in 1897 in a stately neoclassical building that once housed an arsenal, the museum became a celebration of German military might under the Nazis. Its location outside the historic center of Dresden allowed the building to survive the Allied bombing campaign at the end of World War II; thereafter it proudly displayed Communist tanks and submarines under East German rule. In 1989, Germany's Bundeswehr — or Federal Defense Force — was unsure how the museum would fit into the newly unified German state, deciding to simply shut it down. Full Story »

NEW YORK - Half a decade after it shuttered its exhibition space in Long Island City, the Museum for African Art announced on Friday that it would delay opening its new Upper East Side building by at least five more months as a result of construction delays. Slated to open in April 2011, the Robert A. M. Stern-designed museum will not be inaugurated until at least September 2011, according to he museum’s director, Elsie McCabe Thompson. Full Story »

LONDON - As if the action-packed fall art season wasn't sexy enough already, Jerry Hall — world-famous supermodel, actress, and the alleged subject matter of Mick Jagger’s hit love song, “Miss You”— will be selling her collection of contemporary art at Sotheby’s next month. The 14 artworks, which attest to Hall’s glamorous life amidst the avant-garde 1970s and 80s in New York, will be auctioned to coincide with London’s Frieze Art Fair. Full Story »

CAIRO - Egyptian authorities have been unable to recover the $50 million van Gogh that was stolen in broad daylight from Cairo's Mahmoud Khalil Museum last month, but they have certainly wasted no time in finding scapegoats for the embarrassing theft. Eleven people in the country's arts establishment, including a senior culture minister and the head of the museum, are now set to be tried in court on charges of negligence in protecting the painting. Full Story »

VATICAN CITY - It appears that the millions of sweat-stained tourists who invade Rome's landmarks every year are a nuisance to more than just the locals — they're even starting to disturb God. At least, that is, the depictions of God on the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, which showed signs of damage during a routine cleaning this summer. According to Vatican Museums director Antonio Paolucci, the harm has been caused by the 4.5 million people who visit the site each year. Full Story »

HONG KONG - Yesterday, ARTINFO ventured into the world of numismatics, discovering a strange and exciting land of niche collectibles. But today we are being even bolder, delving into what some might argue is an even narrower, more specific pursuit: timbrophily! Stamp collectors the world over received a jolt of excitement on Saturday when Hong Kong postage auction house Phila China brought the hammer down on a toasty timbrophilic lot at $1.3 million, a new record in the already-sizzling Chinese stamp market. Full Story »

LONDON - Damien Hirst has been accused of a lot of things in his day — from peeing in the sinks of posh Soho clubs in his early years to, of late, making "ugly, ugly, ugly" paintings — and one of the more persistent allegations has been that the bad-boy YBA is a little too quick to steal other artists' ideas. Now this complaint has been vociferously resurrected by Charles Thomson, co-founder of the Stuckist movement, who is accusing Hirst of plagiarizing at least 15 of his most famous works, including his medicine cabinets, spin paintings, diamond-encrusted skull, and pickled shark. Full Story »

SEATTLE - Though corporate America appears to have weathered the worst of the housing-market collapse, the nonprofit sector is continuing to suffer from the weak economy. The latest organization to face considerable danger is the Seattle Art Museum, which has filed a motion in county court asking for approval of a plan to borrow $10 million from its $96 million endowment in order to avoid having to default on a loan that financed its 2007 downtown expansion. Full Story »

NEW YORK - In a turn to a story that seems to have been tailor-made to relieve the late summer news doldrums, the courier who claimed to have lost a $1.35 million Corot painting while on a drunken bender at a New York hotel now appears to have been in the employ of a serial scam artist. The improbable imbroglio received its latest twist when it was revealed that Tom Doyle, the co-owner of the missing artwork, is really Thomas Doyle, a convicted crook who just got out of prison for, you guessed it, art theft, according to the New York Times. Full Story »