On 11 November 2014 Sotheby’s New York will present "In Pursuit of Beauty: The Myron Kunin Collection of African Art" in a single owner sale of approximately 190 lots, estimated to fetch $20-30 million. Assembled by Myron Kunin, whose Regis Corporation incorporates over 10,000 salons worldwide including brands from Supercuts to Vidal Sassoon and Jean-Louis David, the collection is considered to be among the finest private groups of non-western art in the world. The outstanding highlight of the sale will be The Senufo Female Statue (Deble), Ivory Coast, one of the most iconic and widely-published works of African Art (Estimate upon request). The pre-sale exhibition opens in New York on 8 November with highlights being shown in Paris from 9-22 September.

Heinrich Schweizer, Head of Sotheby’s African and Oceanic Art Department, recalls: “Myron Kunin was one of the most passionate, knowledgeable, and uncompromising collectors I have ever met. He had the rare ability to identify the very best artworks, irrespective of culture or time-period, and then the courage and unwavering commitment to do whatever it took to acquire them. The result was a world-class collection that stands as one of the finest ever assembled in the field of African Art.”

Gustav Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer II, one of two formal portraits that the artist made of Adele Bloch-Bauer, an important patron of the artist, is on view at The Museum of Modern Art as a special long-term loan from a private collection.

Adele Bloch-Bauer was the wife of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy industrialist in Vienna, where Klimt lived and worked. Completed in 1912, the composition emphasizes Bloch-Bauer’s social station within Vienna’s cultural elite. Her towering figure, in opulent dress, is set against a jewel-toned backdrop of nearly abstract patterned blocks that suggest a richly decorated domestic interior.

A Claude Monet landscape has been discovered in a suitcase that belonged to late art hoarder Cornelius Gurlitt.

The case, which was left at a hospital where the German had been staying, was handed over to the administrators of his estate.

They are tasked with finding out if the newly uncovered artwork was stolen by the Nazis during World War Two.

Gurlitt, who died in May aged 81, had a stash of 1,280 works of art hidden in his Munich apartment.

The New York Times has a thorough rundown of a very messy battle over the estate of the late reclusive photographer Vivian Maier, whose talent only came to light after her death in 2009, aged 83, and “nearly penniless and with no family.” Maier spent most of her life working as a nanny for wealthy Chicago families, quietly pursuing her passion for photography out of the public eye and producing poignant, documentary scenes of everyday life in Chicago, New York, and other American cities.

Since 2007, John Maloof, a former Chicago real estate agent who purchased tens of thousands of negatives for under $400, has been actively promoting and overseeing her work through commercial galleries (most notably with the prestigious Howard Greenberg Gallery), exhibitions, books, and a recent documentary that he helped direct, Finding Vivian Maier.

Frank Gehry, the American architect known for his expressive, sculptural buildings, has revised the design for a memorial honoring President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Gehry’s original concept for the memorial, which will be located near the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was rejected by the National Capital Planning Commission back in April.

Representatives for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission presented the design to the Planning Commission on September 4, and were met with largely positive responses.

On October 20, 1984, the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain opened its doors in Jouy-en-Josas, offering visitors a pioneering, visionary approach to exhibition-making and engaging artists with its radical, free-spirited attitude to art. Thirty years later, its track record is impressive: over 100 exhibitions have been hosted on its premises and more than 800 artworks have been commissioned – which have since entered the Foundation’s collection and testify to its unique views on patronage. In honor of the occasion, over a period of almost one year, artists will occupy and animate the space with creations that represent all that the Fondation Cartier stands for: creation and discovery, openness to multiple disciplines, progressive voices and ideas.

In the dead of night, a 95-year-old Picasso went under the knife.

“Anything goes wrong, just stop what you’re doing,” the lead technician, Tom Zoufaly, commanded. “I don’t want to hear any screaming, yelling.”

The scene of the operation was the Four Seasons restaurant on Park Avenue, home since 1959 to “Le Tricorne,” a 19-by-20-foot stage curtain painted by Pablo Picasso. The curtain had been caught in a dispute between the New York Landmarks Conservancy, which owns the piece, and Aby J. Rosen, the owner of the landmark Seagram Building, where it resided. Mr. Rosen wanted it taken away.

Two stunning caryatid statues have been unearthed holding up the entrance to the biggest ancient tomb ever found in Greece, archaeologists said.

The two female figures in long-sleeved tunics were found standing guard at the opening to the mysterious Alexander The Great-era tomb near Amphipolis in the Macedonia region of northern Greece.

"The left arm of one and the right arm of the other are raised in a symbolic gesture to refuse entry to the tomb," a statement from the culture ministry said Saturday.

Maine’s Portland Museum of Art (PMA) spent $2.3 million on a .57-acre plot of land surrounding Winslow Homer’s former studio on Prouts Neck in Scarborough to preserve the view the legendary painter had of the Atlantic Ocean. The U-shaped parcel of land, which surrounds the studio on either side, beginning at the small road that leads to it, runs down to Cliff Walk, a publicly owned waterfront space. According to the Portland Press Herald, it had belonged to Doris Homer, who died in 2009. She was the widow of the artist’s nephew.

The PMA restored Homer’s studio and has been conducting public tours of it since 2012.

One of the most famous portraits of George Washington will soon get a high-tech examination and face-lift of sorts with its first major conservation treatment in decades.

The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery has begun planning the conservation and digital analysis of the full-length "Lansdowne" portrait of the first president that was painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1796, museum officials told The Associated Press. The 8-foot-by-5-foot picture is considered the definitive portrait of Washington as president after earlier images in military uniform.

The Detroit Institute of Arts will house Claude Monet's Waterlily Pond, Green Harmony for three months starting Oct. 1. The painting is on loan from Paris' Musée d'Orsay  It will be the only work on display in the gallery next to the Rivera court.

The painting is just one of hundreds that Monet painted of his French flower garden and pond.

One of the last great Turner masterpieces remaining in private hands will be the highlight of Sotheby’s London Evening sale of Old Master on 3rd December 2014. Painted in 1835 by Britain’s most celebrated artist, Rome, from Mount Aventine is among Turner’s most subtle and atmospheric depictions of the Italian city, a subject that captivated Turner for over twenty years. The large-scale oil painting is further distinguished by its exceptional state of preservation, as well as a prestigious and unbroken provenance, having changed hands for the only time in 1878, when it was acquired by the 5th Earl of Rosebery, later Prime Minister of Great Britain. The picture has remained in the Rosebery collection ever since and will be offered for sale with an estimate of £15-20 million.

Discussing the forthcoming sale, Alex Bell, Joint International Head and Co-Chairman of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings Department said: “There are fewer than ten major Turners in private hands known today and this work must rank as one of the very finest.

On September 9, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will debut its renovated David H. Koch Plaza. The four-block-long plaza, which stretches across the museum’s landmark Fifth Avenue façade, took two years to renovate. The $65 million-project was helmed by OLIN, a Los Angeles- and Philadelphia-based landscape architecture, urban design, and planning firm. David H. Koch, a Museum Trustee, funded the entire project.

The revamped plaza will include new paving, energy-efficient lighting, tree-shaded allées, and seating areas for visitors.

The U.S. has returned nine stolen 18th-century paintings by Mexican artist Miguel Cabrera to the government of Peru.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara says the works were stolen from a church in Lima in 2008. He says they were smuggled out of Peru to be trafficked on the international art market.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s have long dominated the auction market for fine art. Now Phillips, the world’s third biggest auctioneer of international contemporary works, is about to open a new flagship salesroom here that it hopes could help challenge that duopoly.

The company, with auction rooms in New York and London, plus offices in eight other cities, has moved its European headquarters from Victoria, near one of London’s main railroad stations, to a 73,000-square-foot building at 30 Berkeley Square, in the heart of the wealthy Mayfair district

The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art marks its 20th anniversary this year, but the celebration is bittersweet.

R. Crosby Kemper, the banker and civic leader who put the museum in motion with co-founder Bebe Kemper, died eight months ago, raising questions in the arts community about the museum’s future. Is there funding — and a commitment from his children — for the museum to continue?

“We have no thought of closing,” said Mary Kemper Wolf, an accomplished filmmaker who is the daughter of Crosby and Bebe Kemper (now a trustee emeritus).

The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, celebrates the homecoming of one of its most famous and frequently borrowed art works, the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s “Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird” (1940). The painting will be on display through March 31, 2015.

Since 1990 the painting has been featured in exhibitions in more than 25 museums in the United States and in countries such as Australia, Canada, France, Spain and Italy.

The painting was most recently on view at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome. The work travels next to The New York Botanical Garden for the exhibition “Frida Kahlo’s Garden,” running from May 16 to Nov. 1, 2015, in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library’s Rondina and LoFaro Gallery.

A chance to own an assortment of museum-worthy pieces made by Louis Comfort Tiffany is coming up at Doyle New York’s Belle Epoque auction on September 23.

Deaccessioned from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the pieces comprise examples of Tiffany favrile glass vases in a variety of shapes and patterns (est. range $500-6,000). The highlights of the sale, however, are a bronze and lead favrile glass Dragonfly lamp designed by Clara Driscoll, circa 1906-1913 (est. $50,000-70,000), and a gold painted bronze and leaded favrile glass Dogwood lamp (est. $20,000-30,000).

In accordance with a 10-year partnership with the city of Arras and the Nord Pas de Calais region, the Château of Versailles is to loan some of its artwork and artifacts to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Arras, Art Daily has reported.

Initiated by the regional council, the partnership aims to disperse Versailles’ vast cultural heritage for public display in other parts of France.