On Friday, February 21, 2014, nine art collectors filed a lawsuit against the Keith Haring Foundation after it publicly stated that roughly 80 works owned by the collectors were fakes. The collectors said that the defendant's statement harmed the value of their paintings, costing them at least $40 million. According to the lawsuit filed in Manhattan district court, the foundation refused to fully evaluate the works before writing them off as fakes.

In March 2013, the foundation filed a trademark and copyright infringement lawsuit that alleged that the works in the exhibition “Haring Miami” were fakes. The show’s promoters agreed to remove the works from the exhibit, leaving the collectors unable to sell them. The collectors said that the foundation is hoping to keep the number of authenticated Haring works low in order to increase the value of previously certified works in their possession.

Haring, an American artist and social activist, often raised political questions about HIV/AIDS and gay identity through his work. Through his activism, Haring helped the mainstream understand the AIDS crisis as a human rights issue rather than an affliction faced by a specific community.

On March 1, 2014, “An American Odyssey: The Warner Collection of American Painting” will open at the Frick Art Museum at the Frick Art & Historical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The exhibition features 50 paintings from the collection of Alabama businessman and philanthropist, Jack Warner. Warner, who is the former CEO of Gulf States Paper Corp., founded Alabama’s Tuscaloosa Museum of Art in 2011.

The exhibition, which spans the entire 19th century, includes works by Gilbert Stuart, Charles Peale Polk, Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Severin Roesen, William Merritt Chase, James McNeill Whistler, Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, Maurice Prendergast, John Henry Twachtman, and Mary Cassatt. The comprehensive show tracks the evolution of painting in the United States from early American portraiture to the romantic paintings of the Hudson River School and the rise of American Impressionism during the tail-end of the century.

“An American Odyssey: The Warner Collection of American Painting,” which was organized by the Warner Foundation, will remain on view at the Frick Art Museum through May 25, 2014.

Although he was one of the most celebrated portrait painters at the turn of the 20th century, Swedish artist Anders Zorn is not widely recognized today.The National Academy in New York aims to highlight many rarely seen works by Zorn in the exhibition “Anders Zorn: Sweden’s Master Painter.” Zorn, who rivaled John Singer Sargent as the most sought-after portraitist of members of high society, was an accomplished watercolorist and etcher.

The exhibition features 90 rarely seen works including watercolors, etchings, and sculptures drawn from public and private collections throughout Europe and the United States. Before traveling to the National Academy, the exhibition went on view at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

“Anders Zorn: Sweden’s Master Painter” will remain on view at the National Academy through May 18, 2014.

The Louvre in Paris, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and the Terra Foundation in Chicago have announced the third installation in their four-year collaboration focusing on the history of American art. "American Encounters: Anglo-American Portraiture in an Era of Revolution," which is currently on view at the Louvre, examines how portraiture style evolved in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as American and European painters were influenced by each other.

The exhibition features five works that have never before been exhibited together -- "George Washington after the Battle of Princeton," attributed to Charles Wilson Peale; "Portrait of Hugh Percy, Second Duke of Northumberland" by Gilbert Stuart; "Lieutenant Robert Hay of Spott" by Henry Raeburn; "George Washington (The Constable-Hamilton Portrait)" by Gilbert Stuart; and "George Washington, Porthole Portrait" by Rembrandt Peale. When its presentation at the Louvre ends on April 28, 2014, the exhibition will travel to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (May 17, 2014-September 15, 2014) and to the High Museum of Art (September 28, 2014-January 18, 2015).  

Guillaume Faroult, the Louvre's Curator of Paintings, said, "The potential for new scholarship and education that comes from bringing these five portraits together is exactly the spirit of our international collaboration and shows how much all of our institutions have to gain from it, as now our visitors are familiarizing themselves with American painting and are greatly anticipating this third installation."

Six near life-size stained glass windows from England's historic Canterbury Cathedral are on view at The Cloisters -- a branch of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Located in northern Manhattan's Fort Tryon Park, The Cloisters is made up of architectural elements, both domestic and religious, from the 12th through the 15th centuries. Its comprehensive collection includes nearly 3,000 works of art from medieval Europe.

"Radiant Light: Stained Glass from Canterbury Cathedral" marks the first time that the panels have left the cathedral since their creation in 1178-80. Recent repairs to the cathedral's stonework required the removal of the windows, which have recently been conserved. The panels on view at The Cloisters feature six figures from an original cycle of 86 ancestors of Christ, the most comprehensive stained-glass cycle known in art history.

"Radiant Light," which will remain on view through May 18, 2014, concludes the celebration of the 75th-anniversary of the founding of The Cloisters.

In the midst of its considerable expansion project, the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky has been working with conservators to assess the condition of its collection and to oversee any necessary repairs. As part of this effort, the museum sent Paul Klee's "Seven Blossoms," an abstract watercolor and ink drawing on paper, to Nashville-based conservator, Christine Young, in hopes of halting discoloration to the already darkened work. Young was tasked with removing the acidic core of the paperboard that the drawing was mounted on, which was causing the discoloration. After carefully removing "Seven Blossoms" from its mount, Young discovered a previously unknown second drawing by Klee on the reverse.

Kim Spence, Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Speed Art Museum said, "Any discovery of a new work by an artist of Klee’s significance is exciting, but this discovery is particularly significant for the Speed. It expands our representation of the artist and illustrates different facets of his artistic production."

The drawing, which depicts a town or village with geometric buildings set against a faint landscape, will go on view at the museum's satellite space, Local Speed, on February 28, 2014. The work will be displayed in a double-sided frame so that both Klee compositions will be visible.

Each year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York commissions an artist to create a site-specific installation for its rooftop, which features a garden cafe, martini bar and breathtaking views of Manhattan. The museum announced that it has tapped American conceptual artist, Dan Graham, to create this year’s exhibit, which will be on view from April 29 through November 2.

Graham, who is best known for his architectural environments and glass pavilions, will work with the Swiss landscape architect Günther Vogt for the commission. While officials say that Graham’s pavilion for the Met is still in development, it has been revealed that it will be made of steel, glass and hedgerows.

Graham, who began his career as the director of the John Daniels Gallery in New York, where he put on Sol LeWitt’s first one-man show, has been making his well-known pavilions since the 1980s.  

Amherst College in Massachusetts and the FBI are reopening the investigation into a theft from the campus art museum that took place nearly 40 years ago. In February 1975, three centuries-old paintings worth more than $400,000 were stolen from the college’s Mead Art Museum. Two of the paintings were recovered in 1989 following a federal sting operation in Illinois, but “Interior with Figures Smoking and Drinking” by the Dutch artist Jan Baptist Lambrechts was never found.

Since joining the Mead in 2006, the museum’s head of security, Heath Cummings, has been examining museum files, college archives and old newspaper stories as well as speaking with various art experts and law enforcement agents. Cummings brought his information to the FBI, hoping that the agency would agree to take a fresh look at the case.

The FBI is hoping that the renewed search will generate new leads and tips from the public.

On Saturday, February 22, over 40 protesters took over the Guggenheim in New York. Organized by a coalition of groups called the Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.), the 20-minute intervention was staged to draw attention to the poor labor conditions at the construction site of the Guggenheim’s outpost in Abu Dhabi. A “manifesto for action” hung on the Guggenheim’s wall until it was torn down by a security guard.

According to Occupy Museums, the manifesto read, “Is this the future of art? Guggenheim is expanding its museum empire to a luxury island in Abu Dhabi. The migrant workers labor in 130 degree heat and essentially debt bondage conditions. Human Rights Watch and Call Labor are investigating this exploitation. Culture is not a debt spiral. Art should not violate human rights. Art is not a luxury asset of the 1%. Art is an act of freedom not bondage. Exploitation is not the future of art."

A number of cultural institutions including the Louvre and New York University are constructing outposts in Abu Dhabi. According to multiple reports, laborers are required to work long hours in intense heat for low wages and live in cramped, windowless rooms. If the workers complain to authorities about the conditions, they are threatened with violence.

The Guggenheim has yet to comment on the protest.

The Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock has received 290 watercolors and drawings by the early American modernist, John Marin, from Norma B. Marin, the artist’s daughter-in-law and administer of his estate. Norma Marin said, “I am thrilled that this collection of my father-in-law's watercolors and drawings is going to the Arkansas Arts Center, where it will give people a deeper understanding of his work. The Arts Center has a long history of collecting and exhibiting great American works on paper on paper, so I feel like we've found the perfect home for them.” This substantial gift, coupled with the works already in the Center’s collection, establishes the Arkansas Arts Center as the second largest repository of works by Marin in the world.

Marin, who was one of the first American artists to experiment with abstraction, is best known for his depictions of urban structures, landscapes and seascapes. The gift spans Marin’s career, beginning with early architectural drawings, moving on to the works created by Marin at the turn of the century in Paris, and ending with the modernist works he made following his return to America. The collection also includes works that explore subjects not readily associated with Marin such as portraits, nudes, animals, and the circus.

The Arkansas Arts Center is planning a major Marin exhibition tentatively scheduled for 2016.

This March, the Museum of Modern Art in New York will present a selection of new works by the celebrated contemporary artist Jasper Johns. “Jasper Johns: Regrets” features approximately 30 works created by the artist in the last year and a half.

Johns, who emerged as a pioneering figure in American art in the late-1950s, is known for his exploration of iconography, especially flags, targets and numbers. Johns’ new series introduces a new motif -- the British painter Lucian Freud. Johns took a photograph of Freud sitting on a bed with his arm raised to obscure his face, and not only incorporated the image into his work, but also the physical qualities of the original black-and-white print, which had been torn and creased. The new series includes an array of mediums such as watercolor, pencil and ink-on-plastic.

“Jasper Johns: Regrets” will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art from March 15, 2014 through September 1, 2014.

On February 22, “Delacroix and the Matter of Finish,” the first exhibition in the U.S. to focus on the French Romantic artist in over a decade, opened at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama. The exhibition, which features works from 27 international institutions including the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland, the Musée national Eugène Delacroix in Paris and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, was previously on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California and was organized by the institution’s assistant director and chief curator, Eik Kahng.

The show presents 25 paintings and 20 works on paper, including a previously unpublished version of Delacroix’s “The Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius,” which Kahng authenticated after several years of scholarly and technical study. Jeannine O’Grody, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Birmingham Museum of Art, said, “We are thrilled to be one of only two venues for this show, which represents works of collections from around the world including Paris, Zurich, Madrid, and Toronto.”

Delacroix is often referred to as the father of French Romanticism, the movement that dominated French painting in the first half of the 19th century. However, the exhibition explores the artist’s relationship to Neoclassicism, Romanticism’s alleged antithesis, due to the artist’s allegiance to classical subjects and his admiration for the art of the past. The exhibition also suggests that Delacroix, with his fiery palette and loose brushwork, was something of a forefather to Impressionism.

“Delacroix and the Matter of Finish” will remain on view at the Birmingham Museum of Art through May 18, 2014.

The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts announced that it has nearly doubled its collection after acquiring the art and archives from the Famous Artists School in Westport, Connecticut. The major gift includes more than 5,000 un-catalogued works, several original works created by Norman Rockwell, and an archive of hundreds of thousands of items.

Speaking on behalf of the Museum’s board of trustees, Board Chairman Anne H. Morgan said, “We extend our heartfelt thanks to the generous artists and collectors who have become the patrons of our remarkable collection, built entirely through their donations of American illustration. We are proud to be sharing these works locally, through traveling exhibitions, and online with an international audience eager to absorb the work of Rockwell and many other illustrators who portrayed American culture."

The Rockwell Museum, which was established in 1969, holds the world’s largest collection of original Norman Rockwell art. Recently, the prices of Rockwell works at auction have skyrocketed, making it difficult for the museum to add to its collection by purchase.

According to a plan announced on Wednesday, February 19, Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art could hand over its vast, 17,000-piece collection to the government-backed National Gallery of Art. Under the proposed plan, George Washington University would assume control of the Corcoran’s historic Beaux-Arts building as well as the Corcoran College of Art and Design.

The proposal aims to keep the Corcoran open to the public and its collection, which features works by Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Edward Hopper and Willem de Kooning, would remain in public institutions. The National Gallery would present exhibitions of modern and contemporary art in the Corcoran under the name Corcoran Contemporary, National Gallery of Art. It would also oversee the Corcoran Legacy Gallery, which would present a selection of works from the Corcoran’s collection.

The Corcoran, the largest privately supported art museum in the country, opened to the public in 1897. The museum has been struggling financially for years and is in need of considerable renovations.

A decision regarding the proposal is expected to be made in April.

On Wednesday, February 19, the Menil Collection in Houston unveiled plans for the Menil Drawing Institute, the first freestanding facility in the U.S. created especially for the exhibition, study, storage, and conservation of modern and contemporary drawings. The $40 million project will be helmed by the Los Angeles-based architecture firm, Johnston Marklee.

The 30,150-square-foot building will be located between the museum’s Cy Twombly Gallery, which houses a veritable retrospective of the modern artist’s career, and Richmond Hall, the Menil’s 1930s-era building that holds a large-scale light installation by Dan Flavin. The new one-story building will have a thin, flat roof made of painted steel plate that will unite the structure’s indoor spaces with its three open courtyards.

The Menil Collection was founded by Houston-based collectors John and Dominique de Menil in 1987. The museum houses their comprehensive collection of 20th century art, which includes works by Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, and Mark Rothko.  

Construction on the Menil Drawing Institute is scheduled to begin in early 2015. A $110 million capital and endowment campaign is currently underway.

In an effort to halt the global boom in wildlife trafficking, the Obama administration announced that it would ban the commercial trade of elephant ivory by prohibiting its import, export and resale within the U.S., with a few exceptions. A high demand for wildlife products has left certain species, such as the African elephant and the rhinoceros, on the brink of extinction.

In a letter accompanying the new National Strategy to Combat Wildlife Trafficking Obama said, "Record high demand for wildlife products, coupled with inadequate preventative measures and weak institutions, has resulted in an explosion of illicit trade in wildlife in recent years. The entire world has a stake in protecting the world's iconic animals, and the United States is strongly committed to meeting its obligation."

Current regulations only permit ivory to be imported if it is an antique and commercial objects made before 1976 and antiques can be exported. Domestic sales are more or less unregulated. The new system will not allow the import of antique African elephant ivory or the export of any ivory that is not an antique. To be considered an antique under the new system, an object must be more than 100 years old and meet the stringent requirements outlined in the Endangered Species Act. The administration will also ban the resale of elephant ivory across state lines, except for antiques. Sales within a state will only be allowed if the seller can prove that the object was lawfully imported before 1990 for African elephants and 1975 for Asian elephants.

 The Obama administration will begin implementing the new regulations in the following weeks.

The Portland Art Museum in Oregon is the only U.S. venue for "Venice: The Golden Age of Art and Music." The show focuses on La Serenissima" or "the most serene," the period between the early 16th century and the fall of the Venetian Republic at the end of the 18th century that was defined by a surge in artistic innovation. During this time, music and art flourished thanks to painters such as Tintoretto, Canaletto, and Guardi, as well as composers such as Willaert, Gabrieli, Monteverdi, and Vivaldi.

Organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the exhibition is the first to explore the important interrelationships of the visual arts and music in Venice's civic ceremonies, festivals, and culture. The show will present 108 objects from 38 lenders including paintings, prints, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculptures, original period instruments, and early music texts. Period music will be audible in the galleries to create a more comprehensive visitor experience.

 "Venice: The Golden Age of Art and Music" will be organized by theme. Sections will include -- Basilica of San Marco, which will explore Venice's center of religious devotion; Civic Pageantry, which will look at the many festivities and processions held throughout the year in Venice; The Scuole and The Ospedali, which will explore the impact that schools and hospital orphanages had on art and music in Venice; Musicians and Concerts, which will look at the impact and importance of music in the city; Popular Music; and Mythology and Opera.  

 "Venice: The Golden Age of Art and Music" will be on view at the Portland Art Museum through May 11, 2014.

This June, the Picasso Museum in Paris will reopen following a five-year renovation. The institution, which holds one of the most comprehensive collections of Pablo Picasso's work, initially closed for a two-year refurbishment, but once underway, the scope of the project expanded. The renovation cost around $71 million to complete.

Prior to the renovation, the Picasso Museum could only display a fraction of its 5,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, photographs, and documents. The project nearly doubled its exhibition space, allowing the institution to exhibit more of its illustrious collection.  The museum will also be able to accommodate more guests than ever before and annual admission figures are expected to rise from 450,000 to 850,000.

The museum, which is located in a 17th-century Baroque mansion in Paris' historic Marais quarter, first opened to the public in 1985. Most of its collection was left to the French state upon Picasso's death in 1973. A number of works were also donated by the artist's family, including his widow Jacqueline.

In mid-2015, The Picasso Museum will begin holding one major exhibition each year. The first annual show will be in collaboration with New York's Museum of Modern Art and will focus on Picasso's sculpture.

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are currently hosting the exhibition “Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George” at the de Young Museum. The show, which was organized by the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, New York in association with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the first exhibition to explore Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of Lake George.

Between 1918 and 1934, O’Keeffe would spend months at her husband Alfred Stieglitz’s family estate slightly north of Lake George Village in New York’s Adirondack Park. During this highly productive period, O’Keeffe created over 200 paintings depicting the bucolic, wooded setting, which differ greatly from her well-known renderings of the sparse Southwestern landscape.

“Modern Nature” features 53 works from public and private collections and includes botanical compositions of flowers and vegetables as well as still lifes and paintings of the trees that grew on the 36-acre estate. The exhibition also includes paintings of weathered barns and other structures as well as panoramic landscapes. Works have been loaned from a number of celebrated public institutions including the Seattle Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Walker Art Center.

Colin B. Bailey, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, said, “It is especially gratifying to host this pioneering and scholarly exhibition of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Lake George‒period works, as the artist’s ‘Petunias’ (1925), featured in the exhibition, is a highlight of our renowned collection of modernist works by artists associated with the Stieglitz circle.”

The de Young Museum is the only west coast venue for the exhibition. “Modern Nature” will remain on view through May 11, 2014.

According to officials at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, on Sunday, February 16, a visitor smashed a vase from Ai Weiwei’s “Colored Vases” installation. The work, which is estimated to be worth $1 million, was destroyed by a local artist who was charged with criminal mischief and later released in lieu of bail. Maximo Caminero allegedly told a police officer that his act was a protest against the museum’s decision to exhibit only international art and its exclusion of local artists in its shows.

The Pérez Art Museum, which opened in December, released a statement saying, “As an art museum dedicated to celebrating modern and contemporary artists from within our community and around the world, we have the highest respect for freedom of expression, but this destructive act is vandalism and disrespectful to another artist and his work, to Pérez Art Museum Miami, and to our community."

Caminero claimed that he was inspired by one of Weiwei’s most famous works, “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn,” a series of three photographs showing the contemporary Chinese artist dropping an ancient Chinese vase. Weiwei is no stranger to controversy and has openly criticized the Chinese government’s position on democracy and human rights.