Ottawa

Brian Jungen's socially conscious Court and how it got to the National Gallery...Brian Jungen’s Court, which has just been installed in the contemporary galleries, was donated to the National Gallery of Canada by Vancouver businessman and art collector Bob Rennie. The Rennie Collection, housed in the Wing Sang building in Vancouver’s Chinatown, is one of the largest and most important collections of contemporary art in Canada.  National Gallery of Canada blog, December 16, 2012

Los Angeles

Hollywood To Depict Art Historians As War Heroes George Clooney will direct and co-star in "The Monuments Men, a look at the art historians who landed at Normandy to rescue art looted by Adolf Hitler." Los Angeles Times, January 8, 2012

Culver City, California

Where Outlandish Meets Landish  The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, Calif., is a wunderkammer of the real and the should-be-real.  New York Times, January 10, 2012

Bentonville, Arkansas

Fisk Univ.-Crystal Bridges Art Deal In Jeopardy Again "An appeals court upheld Fisk University's right to sell a $30 million share in its famed Stieglitz art collection to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. But Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper, who opposes the collection leaving Tennessee, has a Jan. 28 deadline to challenge that ruling." The Tennessean (Nashville) January 7, 2012

London

London exhibit of Canadian art closes on a high note More than 41,000 visited Dulwich Picture Gallery to see paintings by Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven.  Globe and Mail, January 10, 2011

Exactly How DID Damien Hirst Get To Be A Big Deal? Jerry Saltz: "Damien Hirst is the Elvis of the English art world, its ayatollah, deliverer, and big-thinking entrepreneurial potty-mouthed prophet and front man. Hirst synthesizes punk, Pop Art, Jeff Koons, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Bacon, and Catholicism." New York Magazine, January 8, 2012

Jeff Wall in conversation with David Campany – full audio The One Work title Jeff Wall: Picture for Women was launched at this event; Wall discussed this and several other works in detail with the book's author.  Afterall Online Journal, December 11, 2012

Rome

Ruckus In Rome Over Restoration Of Colosseum "The current $33 million (25 million euro) restoration plans ... are being sponsored by Diego della Valle, of luxury Italian brand Tod's, in exchange for advertising rights." The Restorers Association of Italy says the project "run[s] the risk of causing irreparable damage to the monument" by using general contractors rather than specialists. CNN, January 6, 2012

Bosnia

Bosnia's National Museum Gets Temporary Emergency Funding The government of the Bosnia-Croat federation has provided €25,000 to cover the museum's unpaid utility bills, though an agreement with the Bosnian Serb republic to fund national cultural institutions over the long term remains elusive. AP, January 9, 2012

Next On Bosnia's Endangered List: National Library "Staff and visitors at the National and University Library began putting on extra layers on Friday, as the heating was switched off after the library failed to pay its bills. The library, in central Sarajevo, is facing the same fate as Bosnia's History Museum and Art Gallery, recently closed because they could not pay for basic operating costs." Balkan Insight, January 6, 2012

Athens

Picasso painting stolen from Greek National Gallery  Thieves broke in through balcony window.  Globe and Mail, January 10, 2011

Picasso, Mondrian Stolen From National Gallery Of Greece "Thieves have snatched a trio of valuable artworks from Greece's National Art Gallery in Athens, staging a devious pre-dawn heist and making off with paintings by Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian." CBC, January 10, 2012

Helsinki

Another Step Toward a Guggenheim in Helsinki  The results are in from a yearlong feasibility study commissioned by the City of Helsinki and undertaken by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to examine the possibility of building a new Guggenheim Museum in Finland.  New York Times, January 10, 2012

Ballarat, Australia

Australian art gallery suspects patriotic painting may be a fake  An Australian art gallery that holds a prized painting central to that country’s history — a work created, surprisingly, by a Canadian artist — is reviewing the artifact’s authenticity after a high-profile claim that it could be a forgery.  Ottawa Citizen, January 10, 2012

International

Whimsy Is Hot (But Why?) "Whimsy. Like iPads and overly bookish spectacles and bacteria, it is everywhere. It is difficult to pinpoint the moment when whimsy escaped from the birthday parties of six-year-old girls and into the business of serious art." The Age (Melbourne) January 8, 2012