Art Critique
Is the art world’s #MeToo reckoning coming?
A group of Pennsylvania art institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, are struggling to contain a scandal which might have lingering ramifications for the global art world. The drama […]
Art in the time of coronavirus
Amid growing panic over the rapid spread of the coronavirus, some of Italy’s most famous museums are shuttering their doors. From Turin to Venice, seven northern regions have been directed […]
Saudi Arabia’s artistic whitewash part of a well-trodden tradition among autocrats
The latest iteration of the site-specific art installation festival Desert X is currently underway in Al Ula, Saudi Arabia – but not without controversy. Normally associated with the barren wastelands […]
The emperor has no clothes: the scams and swindles driving up art prices
For many, the headline-making stunt Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan pulled at Art Basel Miami this year—Cattelan duct taped a banana to a blank white wall, called it “Comedian”, and sold […]
Gulbenkian case highlights authorities’ failure to pursue art fraud
International art fraud is once again under the spotlight with the news that London Metropolitan Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Angela Gulbenkian, a former high-society art […]
Why should the art world be concerned about the prevalence of export bans?
Five years after he dramatically attempted to smuggle a rare Pablo Picasso painting out of Spain, Jaime Botín— the ex-president of Spanish financial institution Bankinter—has been sentenced to three years […]
The Long Game: how Wolfgang Beltracchi conned the art world
Former art forger John Myatt—who in the 1980s forged hundreds of “masterworks” and fenced them to institutions as venerable as London’s Tate Gallery—recently told reporters that in his opinion, pulling […]
