A collection of bronze sculptures made from plaster models of wax originals by Edgar Degas were at the center of a legal battle in New York. American art dealer Walter Maibaum sued the Canadian businessman Yank Barry and the Global Village Champions Foundation, a charity he spearheaded, for breaching a number of sales contracts. Maibaum also claimed that Barry failed to pay him for a number of bronzes.

In 2004, Maibaum, the executive director of the Degas Sculpture Project in Newark, NJ, discovered 74 plaster sculptures made from wax originals by Degas at a foundry near Paris. In 2005, the French Valsuani foundry began producing 29 sets of bronzes from 73 of the newly discovered plaster figures. Maibaum claimed that because Valsuani owned the plasters, it did not need to get permission from Degas’ heirs to cast the bronzes. In 2007, Succession Degas authenticated the plasters and the resulting bronze editions.

In 2008, Barry agreed to buy at least two sets of 73 bronzes from Maibaum, with the option to buy eight more sets. Ultimately, Barry failed to pay for the sculptures and never received any works from Maibaum. The contract was amended in 2009 but again, Barry failed to pay and no works were received. Finally, in 2010, Barry proposed that his charity buy a set of 74 bronzes, estimated to be worth $30 million, with the intent to raffle them to raise money for the victims of the Haiti earthquake. After receiving $400,000 from Barry, Maibaum shipped the sculptures. He never received another payment and the Haiti raffle was abandoned.

Ultimately, the Degas Sculpture Project amicably resolved its dispute with Barry, Global Village Champions Foundation, and all others named in the filings. A statement was issued that said, "Global Village Champions Foundation, Inc. is not an instrumentality of fraud, but rather a very worthy charitable organization that works to eradicate hunger around the world. The Dega Sculpture Project Ltd has the utmost respect for Mr. Barry, a two time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, in that goal and we fully commend Global Village Champions Foundation, Inc. for its international humanitarian efforts."

In honor of the holiday season, the Art Institute of Chicago is exhibiting a recently acquired Neapolitan crèche (a set of statues depicting the scene of Jesus Christ’s birth) from the mid-18th century. The Art Institute’s crèche features over 200 intricately carved figures, animals and items of food and drink set in an ornate 14-by-15¼-foot Baroque cabinet with an elaborately painted backdrop. The work is one of the very few examples of its kind found outside of Naples.

Crèches date back to 4th century Rome, but it wasn’t until the 13th and 14th centuries, in part due to their association with Saint Francis of Assisi, that such scenes became a permanent feature of Neapolitan churches. During the 18th century, crèches took on a more dramatic, theatrical style and were often commissioned by churches, wealthy citizens, and members of the nobility.

The Art Institute of Chicago acquired the crèche from a Neapolitan collector in April. The work will be on view through January 8, 2014 and is slated to be shown once a year for six weeks during the holiday season.

The American Art Fair is celebrating its sixth year at the Bohemian National Hall in New York now through December 5. The show opened on Sunday, December 1 with a gala preview, which also marked the beginning of American Paintings Week.

The American Art Fair focuses on American 19th and 20th century art and features top-notch exhibitors such as Adelson Galleries, Avery Galleries, Driscoll Babcock Galleries, Godel & Co. Fine Art, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, John H. Surovek Gallery and Questroyal Fine Art. This year’s show marks the first time that Tom Veilleux Gallery will be counted among the exhibitors.

Galleries will present everything from landscapes, portraits and still lifes to studies and sculptures. Highlights include a portrait by John Singleton Copley (Alexander Gallery), a landscape by Childe Hassam (Driscoll Babcock Galleries) and other works by Maurice Prendergast (Adelson Galleries), Marsden Hartley (Questroyal Fine Art), and Jacob Lawrence (Jonathan Boos).

On Sunday, December 1, Sotheby’s wrapped up Beijing Art Week, a series of sales that marked the company’s first commercial auction in mainland China. The auction house offered $212 million worth of western and Chinese art, jewelry and furniture in three private sales and an auction.

During the Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art auction on Sunday night, a record was set for Chinese-French artist Zao Wou-Ki. the artist’s 1958 oil-on-canvas abstract work, which was sold by the Art Institute of Chicago, brought $14.7 million. Wou-Ki’s previous record was set on October 5 during a sale at Sotheby’s Hong Kong when a work sold for $11 million.

China is home to the fastest growing art market and the success of the Beijing sales indicates that there are active buyers on the mainland.

The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA is currently hosting the exhibition Impressionists on the Water. The show, which features over 90 paintings, prints, models and photographs, explores how France’s waterways and oceans influenced artists such as Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Georges Seurat. These key Impressionists spent a considerable amount of time at sea, on riverboats and on floating studios attempting to capture the atmospheric quality of water and the unique way that light played on its surface.

Daniel Finamore, the Peabody Essex Museum's Russell W. Knight Curator of Maritime Art and History, said, "While the Impressionists have been popularly celebrated for generations, this exhibition introduces aspects of their work not often explored. Rather than viewing Impressionism as a moment of schism and revolution, we see how artists handled maritime subject matter from the birth of the movement, through its creative evolution and the lasting impact of the Impressionists' vision of the sea in art."

Impressionists on the Water will be on view through February 17, 2014.

Disgraced gallery Knoedler & Co. is at the center of two new lawsuits. The first suit was filed by Los Angeles’ Manny Silverman Gallery and Richard Feigen’s gallery in New York. The two dealers are asking to be repaid $1,050,000 for a forged Clyfford Still painting that was sold in a three-way transaction with Knoedler in 2000. The second suit was filed by Los Angeles collectors Martin and Sharleen Cohen, who bought two works, one by Mark Rothko and another by Willem de Kooning, both of which turned out to be forgeries. The couple is demanding to be repaid $475,000 plus interest for the two paintings.

All of the works were part of a trove of fake paintings supplied to Knoedler & Co. by Long Island art dealer, Glafira Rosales. Knoedler & Co. has been involved in over a dozen lawsuits as a result of the forged artworks it received from Rosales.

On January 28, 2014, the Hill Collection of Renaissance and Baroque bronzes will go on view at the Frick Collection in New York. The Frick will be the only venue for the first public exhibition of the figurative statuettes, which span the 15th through the 18th century. The Hill Collection is exceptional in that it contains a number of rare, autograph masterpieces by Italian sculptors such as Andrea Riccio, Giambologna, and Giuseppe Piamontini.

In an unexpected twist, the show will juxtapose the bronzes alongside modern masterpieces from the Hill’s collection including works by contemporary artists such as Cy Twombly and Ed Ruscha. Collectors Janine and J. Tomilson Hill have spent around 20 years amassing their holdings -- a mix of Renaissance sculptures and works by postwar artists, specifically Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, Lucio Fontana, Brice Marden, Ruscha, and Twombly.

The Hill Collection will be on view at the Frick through June 15, 2014.       

Sicily’s regional government has set a travel ban on 23 of its most important artworks, including a painting by Caravaggio, ancient Greek sculptures, and a rare collection of Hellenistic silver.

The ban was put into effect due to growing concern that Sicily’s most treasured holdings spend too much time outside of the country, causing their own museums to suffer. Officials also stated that loans to foreign museums “have not produced benefits” for Sicily and have not occurred under “conditions of reciprocity with the borrowing institutions.” By keeping the works in Sicily, officials hope to draw more tourists to the island.

The culturally rich island of Sicily has its own regional government, which operates individually within the Italian system. Sicily’s new policies differ substantially from Italy’s more flexible lending practices.   

The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, owner of 72 works of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, has launched a website (www.pearlmancollection.org) to make its collection readily available to the public. The site allows visitors to explore individual artists and works, create their own galleries from the collection, and to save those galleries privately or share them socially.

At the core of the Pearlman Collection are 33 works by Paul Cézanne including 16 watercolors that are rarely exhibited because of their sensitivity to light. The collection also includes works by Vincent Van Gogh, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Edgar Degas.

Henry Pearlman, the founder of Eastern Cold Storage, collected from the mid-1940s up until his death in 1975. The Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection is on long-term loan to The Princeton University Art Museum, where many of the major works are on display. A five-city tour of the collection’s masterpieces – organized in conjunction with Princeton – is planned for 2014-15. While individual works are often loaned to special exhibitions around the world, the collection has not been seen outside of the New York area for more than 35 years.

One of only 11 surviving copies of the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in the United States, sold for $14.2 million on November 26 at Sotheby’s in New York. The book, which was purchased by American businessman and philanthropist David Rubenstein, set a new world auction record for any printed book. Rubenstein plans to loan the book to libraries across the country before putting it on long-term loan at one of them.

The Bay Psalm Book’s selling price soared past the previous auction record for a printed book, established in December 2010 at Sotheby’s London when a copy of John James Audubon’s Birds of America sold for $11.5 million. The last time a copy of the Bay Psalm Book appeared at auction was in January 1947 when it sold at Sotheby’s for $151,000.

The Bay Psalm Book was published in Cambridge, MA by the Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony about two decades after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. Approximately 1,700 copies of the book were printed.

Radu Dogaru, the ringleader of a gang that stole $24 million worth of art from Rotterdam’s Kunsthal Museum, has been sentenced to six years and eight months in prison by a Romanian court. Fellow gang member, Eugen Darie, received an identical sentence. The trial will continue on December 3 of four other defendants, including Dogaru’s mother, who is accused of destroying three of the stolen masterpieces.

Dogaru and Darie pleaded guilty to stealing seven paintings from the Kunsthal Museum including works by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Meyer de Haan, and Lucian Freud. The works were on loan from the Triton Foundation to celebrate the Kunsthal Museum’s 20th anniversary. None of the paintings have been recovered.  

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum announced that they discovered a previously unknown oil sketch by English Romantic painter John Constable. The sketch of trees, which dates back to 1821 or 1822, was found tucked beneath another work by the artist, “Branch Hill Pond: Hampstead.” Conservators had removed the painting’s lining while preparing for the upcoming exhibition, “Constable: The Making of a Master.”

Constable’s daughter donated the contents of the artist’s studio -- including 92 oil sketches, 297 drawings and watercolors, and 3 sketchbooks -- to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1888. The recently discovered sketch is currently on view at the institution.    

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art has received a $1.8 million gift from Oman; it is the largest donation in the institution’s history. The bequest will fund a series of programs called “Connecting the Gems of the Indian Ocean: From Oman to East Africa,” which will focus on Omani art and the connections between cultures in East and North Africa and the Middle East.

The National Museum of African Art, which was founded in 1964, holds about 9,000 works, making it the largest publicly held collection of African Art in the United States. The museum’s holdings include musical instruments, sculpture, jewelry, textiles, photographs, and pottery.

London’s National Maritime Museum is currently hosting Turner and the Sea, the first large-scale exhibition to explore J.M.W. Turner’s lifelong fascination with the sea. The British Romantic painter, who is often called the “painter of light,” was drawn to the sea’s sublime yet dangerous nature and spent decades trying to capture its wild beauty.

Turner and the Sea includes 120 works from some of the world’s most prestigious institutions including London’s National Gallery, the Tate, the Yale Center for British Art, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Works on view range from Turner’s transformative paintings of the 1790s to his unfinished works created towards the end of his life. Highlights include The Battle of Trafalgar, Turner’s largest painting and only royal commission; Fishermen at Sea, the first oil painting Turner exhibited at the Royal Academy; The Wreck of a Transport Ship, which has not been seen in London since the 1970s; and The Wreck Buoy, Turner’s last exhibited marine painting.

Turner and the Sea will be on view at the National Maritime Museum through April 21, 2014.

The European Parliament has decided to increase the culture budget for its 28 member nations by nine percent and will designate $1.97 billion for the Creative Europe program, which will help support artists, museums, performing arts institutions, and other cultural organizations. Creative Europe also plans to launch a new financial guarantee facility in 2016, which will enable small cultural and creative businesses to access up to 750 million euros in bank loans.

The goal of Creative Europe is to boost cultural and creative sectors to help stimulate economic growth, employment and innovation. Europe, which is in the midst of an economic crisis, has seen its overall budget cut down to 960 billion euros (from 975 billion euros) for the seven years between 2014 and 2020.

At a recent press conference, Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism, Sport, Media and Youth, said, “I am very pleased that we have achieved a 9 percent increase [for the program] despite the fact that the European budget in general has been decreased. We have to recognize that culture has an increasing value as a public good, especially in times of crisis, because it helps the social cohesion of our societies. Research clearly shows the strong growth potential of the cultural and creative sectors. They play a major role in Europe’s economy and account for about 4.5 percent of the EU GDP, employing about 8 million people. This is not to be underestimated.”

Pablo Picasso’s grandson, Olivier Widmaier Picasso, will raffle off Man in the Opera Hat (1914) to raise funds for the International Association to Save Tyre. The Lebanese city of Tyre is a UNESCO World Heritage site whose history goes back to ancient Phoenicia.

Picasso will sell 50,000 raffle tickets for $135 a piece and a winner will be drawn during an event at Sotheby’s in Paris on December 18. The market value of the small Cubist gouache is said to be around $1 million. The raffle money will go towards creating an arts center and educational institute in Tyre, which has been severely damaged by decades of military conflict.

Picasso will travel to New York in December with the work to promote the raffle. To date, 40,000 raffle tickets have been sold. 

Art, photography, and furniture dealer, Daniel Wolf, and Maya Lin, his award-winning architect wife, are planning to purchase the Yonkers City Jail for $1 million. The couple will turn the rundown, 10,000-square-foot structure into studio, gallery and loft space. The former jail closed in September and was put on the market by the city for $2.5 million.

The space, which will be designed by Lin, will house Wolf’s collection and serve as a base for dealing art as well as holding exhibitions and other public events. Yonkers’ Mayor, Mike Spano, said, “This prime waterfront real estate in the heart of our vibrant downtown area was no place for a jail, but it’s an ideal location for an international art collection like that of Daniel Wolf.”    

A closing is expected in December when the city approves the transaction.

Maine philanthropists, Owen and Anna Wells, have donated their impressive photography collection to the Portland Museum of Art. The gift includes works by Robert Mapplethorpe, Ansel Adams, William Wegman and Berenice Abbott. 45 photographs from the Wells’ collection will go on view on December 21, 2013 as part of the exhibition American Vision: Photographs from the Collection of Owen and Anna Wells.

Owen Wells, Vice Chairman of the philanthropic Libra Foundation, and his wife, Anna, President of the Portland Museum’s Board of Trustees, began collecting photography in the 1990s. The couple initially gravitated towards American artists with ties to Maine, but their collection has grown to include some of the most well-known photographers of the 20th century. The Wells’ collection spans more than eight decades and includes landscapes, portraits and scenes of everyday life.   

American Vision: Photographs from the Collection of Owen and Anna Wells will be on view at the Portland Museum of Art through February 23, 2014. 

Sotheby’s announced that Tobias Meyer, who has served as the auction house’s worldwide head of contemporary art since 1997, will leave the company. Meyer joined Sotheby’s in 1992 as head of the contemporary art department in London. Rumors have swirled that Meyer’s departure was the result of pressure from Sotheby’s investors to establish new leadership and more efficient operations. Hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, who owns Third Point LLC and is Sotheby’s largest shareholder, has spoken critically of the auction house’s executive compensation and supposedly waning competitive edge.

Meyer said, “I will always cherish my time at Sotheby’s and look forward to the next chapter in my career.I have had over 20 years of the most marvelous experiences at Sotheby’s where I have made many friends and had wonderful times. I wish Sotheby’s the best of luck in the future.”

The auction house said that it has no plans to fill the role of worldwide head of contemporary art. Alex Rotter will continue as the head of contemporary art in the Americas and Cheyenne Westphal as the head of contemporary art in Europe.

After being closed for over 30 years, the Baltimore Museum of Art will reopen its historic Merrick Entrance beginning on November 23, 2014, in honor of the institution’s 100th anniversary. The event also marks the reopening of the renovated Dorothy McIlvain Scott American Wing and a new presentation of the Baltimore Museum’s collection of American fine and decorative arts. A redesigned East Wing Lobby and Zamoiski Entrance will reopen in fall 2014.

The upcoming openings are part of the Baltimore Museum’s multi-year, $28 million renovation. The final phase of the project is expected to reach completion with the reinstallation of the African and Asian art collections and the opening of a new center for learning and creativity in 2015.

Doreen Bolger, the museum’s Director, said, “The reopening of the BMA’s historic Merrick Entrance and the Dorothy McIlvain Scott American Wing will be an extraordinary moment in the museum’s distinguished history—bringing together museum-goers of all ages to experience John Russell Pope’s first vision of a great public art museum. We are looking forward to celebrating the BMA’s 100th anniversary with many new and exciting experiences for our visitors.”

The Baltimore Museum’s Merrick Entrance, which was designed by the American architect John Russell Pope, welcomed generations of visitors into the museum from 1929 to 1982. The entrance’s facade is being conserved and will have improved lighting. The existing doors and vestibule will remain unchanged. A $1 million gift from the France-Merrick Foundation is supporting this portion of the renovation.