Denver Returns Works to Kenya

NYT 1/3/2014

Sending Artworks Home, but to Whom?

The Denver Museum of Nature and Science will return 30 totems to the National Museums of Kenya, which will decide whether to search for their owners.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/04/arts/design/denver-museum-to-return-totems-to-kenyan-museum.html?smid=pl-share

“The process is often complicated, expensive and never straightforward,” said Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, the museum’s curator of anthropology. “But just because a museum is not legally required to return cultural property does not mean it lacks an ethical obligation to do so.”

May inspiration and creativity be with you!

Egyptian Cats Big & Small

"Seated Wadjet," a bronze statue from the Late Period, 664-332 B.C., exemplifies the important role that cats played in ancient Egyptian imagery.

Review in the New York Times by Holland Cotter of the Brooklyn Museum Show "Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt." 

Its Reign Was Long, With Nine Lives to Start

A show at the Brooklyn Museum explores the role of cats, big and little, feral and tame, celestial and not, in ancient Egypt.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/arts/design/divine-felines-cats-of-ancient-egypt-at-the-brooklyn-museum.html?smid=pl-share 

May inspiration and creativity be with you!

Women and Tattoos

Book review in the NY Times for “Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo" by Margot Mifflin: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/books/bodies-of-subversion-explores-womens-tattoos.html?smid=pl-share 

Above: Tattoo by Stephanie Tames

Below: Tattoo by Saira Hunjan

Excerpt from the review: 

“Bodies of Subversion” is delicious social history. Tattooing was an upper-class social fad in Europe in the late 19th century. Winston Churchill’s mother had a tattoo of a snake eating its tail (the symbol of eternity) on her wrist. The fad spread to America. In 1897, Ms. Mifflin writes, The New York World estimated that 75 percent of American society women were tattooed, usually in places easily covered by clothing.

By the 1920s, tattooed women were mostly to be seen in freak shows and in circus acts, where they could make more money than tattooed men. They offered, the author avers, “a peep show within a freak show.”

Tattoos lost their appeal for nearly everyone shortly after World War II. One reason was because “tattoos perpetrated in concentration camps had added a ghastly new chapter to tattoo history.”

May inspiration and creativity be with you!

Restitution of Nazi-Looted Art

George Grosz's heirs want MoMA to return Poet Max Herrmann-Neisse.

     Great article and short video posted to the Arts section of the New York Times today by Patricia Cohen (7/1/13).  I am currently researching something related to this and thought the article was on point.  Cohen's argument focuses primarily on the fact that these cases are not being heard on their merit, because museums are evading the cases through legal loopholes, such as time expiring, museums showing up and talking to the judge who declares that the art belongs to the museum before the family has a chance to appear in court, and so forth.  

     There is no independent committee for hearing these cases of Nazi-looted art and possible restitution to their surviving heirs in the U.S.  There are legal committees dedicated to this process in many European countries, since it is quite a challenge to sort through the documentation, whether or not art dealers were coerced or threatened by the Nazis, and how precisely the art was obtained by the museums (provenance).  One of the problems indicated is that many art institutions in Europe are owned by the state, so they can uniformly apply the order for the designated committee to hear the cases.  Since the majority of institutions in the U.S. are privately owned, such unilateral measures could not be so easily enforced here as they are in Europe.  

Video Link: http://nyti.ms/14jZGOm 

Article Link & Excerpt: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/arts/design/museums-faulted-on-efforts-to-return-art-looted-by-nazis.html?smid=pl-share 

Museums Faulted on Restitution of Nazi-Looted Art

Critics assert that museums have backtracked in recent years on returning art to the heirs of Jews whose property was seized by the Nazis.

May inspiration and creativity be with you!

A Jackson Pollock Restored

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/arts/design/jackson-pollocks-one-number-31-1950-restored-by-moma.html?smid=pl-share 

A Pollock Restored, a Mystery Revealed

Conservators at the Museum of Modern Art have gained insights into how Jackson Pollock worked through a restoration of his “One: Number 31, 1950.”

NYT article 5/27/2013 by Carol Vogel

May inspiration and creativity be with you!