Displaying items by tag: government

Germany's most important contemporary artist, Gerhard Richter, is the latest art star to criticize the German government's planned tightening of their cultural protection legislation.

Last Sunday, Georg Baselitz took radical action and withdrew all of his works on long-term or permanent loan from German museums to protest government plans, which would restrict artworks classified as “nationally significant cultural heritage" from being exported.

The Tate will receive an extra £6m from the government to help fund the cost of running Tate Modern, we have learned. The agreement, which has not been formally announced, was made ahead of the General Election, which saw the Conservative Party win a slim majority.

The promise of extra money for the Tate is a remarkable achievement by the Tate’s director, Nicholas Serota, who 15 years ago secured an extra £5m from the then Labour government so that Tate Modern could open without charging for admission.

An international investigation into antiquities looted from India and smuggled into the United States has taken authorities to the Honolulu Museum of Art.

The museum on Wednesday handed over seven rare artifacts that it acquired without museum officials realizing they were ill-gotten items. Agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take the items back to New York and, from there, eventually return them to the government of India.

U.S. customs agents say the items were taken from religious temples and ancient Buddhist sites, and then allegedly smuggled to the United States by an art dealer. The dealer, Subhash Kapoor, was arrested in 2011 and is awaiting trial in India. Officials say Kapoor created false provenances for the illicit antiquities.

A lawyer representing a Jewish family trying to retrieve a long-lost Matisse painting looted by the Nazis said Tuesday a deal had been signed with the German government for its restitution.

London-based attorney Christopher Marinello, who works for the Rosenberg family, said that the order inked by German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters had now paved the way for the 1921 masterpiece "Seated Woman" to be handed back.

"I can confirm that an agreement has been signed for restitution of the Rosenberg Matisse," he told AFP in an email, following a report in German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to be published Wednesday.

Serge Lasvignes, a high-level French government official, was nominated this week to head the Pompidou Center, in a surprise choice to replace Alain Seban.

Mr. Seban’s term of service is ending after eight years in which he drove the expansion of the Paris museum, which houses one of the largest collections of modern art in Europe.

The succession — the topic of rumors for weeks — must still be approved by a government council, which will weigh the appointment of Mr. Lasvignes, 61, whose hiring was unexpected because of his low profile in the art world. (When Mr. Seban was hired in 2007, he had no museum management experience.)

An ancient statuette and an 18th-century painting that were stolen from Italy decades ago have been returned to its government after turning up in New York.

U.S. prosecutors and the FBI gave the artworks to an Italian official Tuesday.

The painting of “The Holy Trinity Appearing to Saint Clement” is attributed to the renowned Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, also called Giambattista Tiepolo. It disappeared from a Turin home in 1982.

A UK government export bar has been placed on a recently rediscovered and gloriously light-filled harbor scene by the 17th-century French painter Claude Lorrain. The painting, considered one of the finest examples of Claude’s seaport scenes, will leave the UK unless £5,066,500 can be raised following its purchase by an overseas buyer.

The export bar was ordered by the culture minister, Ed Vaizey, on the recommendation of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA), which decides on whether art should be considered of national importance and worth trying to keep in the UK.

In mid-september the German casino conglomerate Westspiel announced their plan to sell "Triple Elvis"(1963) and "Four Marlons" (1966) at Christie’s, New York in November. The paintings are expected to fetch over €100 million or £80 million. A petition has since been sent by twenty-six museum directors in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia to the regional government, demanding it prevent the auction of two works by Andy Warhol, reports "Die Welt."

In the petition, the directors claim that the sale “contravenes international conventions” whose ultimate goal is to “protect public cultural heritage.” They fear the sale could set a very dangerous precedent that could become a “controversial political issue with considerable ripple effect.”

Thousands of public sector workers in courts, job centers and museums went on strike for better pay on Wednesday, prompting an angry response from the government.

The Public and Commercial Services union said around 250,000 of its members would take part in the strike but the government said only 80,000 would join industrial action.