James Meyer, a former studio assistant to the contemporary artist Jasper Johns, was charged with stealing 22 unauthorized works, which he then sold through an unnamed art gallery in Manhattan. Meyer, who worked at Johns’ studio in Connecticut from 1985 to 2012, made $3.4 million off of the sales, which totaled $6.4 million.

Meyer was assigned to protecting the works that Johns did not want sold but ended up creating fake inventory numbers and false documents for the paintings, which he photographed inside a binder that catalogued Johns’ authorized works. Meyer told the gallery in New York that he had received the paintings from Johns as a present and offered notarized documents that supported his claim.

Meyer, who was arrested at his home in Salisbury, CT on August 14, 2013, appeared in federal court in Hartford, CT where he was charged with interstate transportation of stolen property and wire fraud. The maximum prison sentences are 10 years for the stolen property charge and 20 years for wire fraud. Meyer was released on a $250,000 unsecured bond and will appear in federal court in Manhattan on or before August 23, 2013.

Michael Altman Fine Art in New York is suing Pace Gallery in Seattle over a damaged painting by Willem de Kooning worth $6.4 million. Michael Altman Fine Art had purchased Untitled IV from Pace last December. The Abstract Expressionist canvas was later sent to a prospective buyer in Dallas who upon receiving the painting discovered a horizontal mark where packing materials had been adhered directly to the canvas. James Sowell, a Dallas-based real estate developer, turned down the painting after seeing the damage.

In a case filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Michael Altman Fine Art claimed that Pace failed to take proper and adequate precautions while packing and handling the work. The gallery is suing to recover the $1.25 million it will cost to repair the painting.  

On October 27, 2013, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present Delacroix and the Matter of Finish, the first exhibition in the U.S. to focus on the French Romantic artist in over a decade. The show will include 27 paintings and 18 works on paper as well as a previously unknown and unpublished version of Eugène Delacroix’s masterpiece, The Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, which surfaced in a Santa Barbara private collection. After several years of scholarly and technical study, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Assistant Director and Chief Curator, Eik Kahng, authenticated the painting.  

Delacroix is often referred to as the father of French Romanticism, the movement that dominated French painting in the first half of the 19^th century. However, the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue by Kahng explore Delacroix’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 features works from 27 international institutions including the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Musée national Eugène Delacroix in Paris and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. After it closes at the Santa Barbara Museum on April 20, 2014, the exhibition will travel to the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama.

After being cancelled by Sicilian officials in July, Sicily: Art and Invention between Greece and Rome will open at the Cleveland Museum of Art on September 29, 2013 as originally planned. Sicilian officials feared that the traveling exhibition, which features 145 objects that celebrate the Greek culture that dominated Sicily between the 5^th and 3^rd centuries, was hurting the island’s economy, leading them to abruptly cancel the show.

Sicily: Art and Invention between Greece and Rome features a statue of a charioteer that measures six feet tall and a gold libation bowl, both of which are popular tourist attractions. The works are typically displayed at the Whitaker Villa on the tiny island of Mozia off of Sicily’s main landmass. Sicilian officials initially asked for more money for the loan but the Cleveland Museum refused, leading to the cancellation of the show. The two parties eventually reached an agreement and the institution will loan several of its masterworks, including Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of Saint Andrew, to Sicily in 2014.

Sicily: Art and Invention between Greece and Rome will be on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art through January 5, 2014.

George Bellows and the American Experience is currently on view at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio. The exhibition highlight’s the Columbus Museum’s significant Bellows collection, which is widely recognized as the best in the world. The show also includes a number of paintings on loan from other museums and private collections.

Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, George Bellows moved to New York City in 1904 to study with the influential artist and teacher, Robert Henri, and soon became the youngest member of the Ashcan School. Dedicated to chronicling the realities of day-to-day life, Bellows made a name as the boldest of the Ashcan artists. He was recently the subject of a major retrospective, which included his well-known paintings of boxing matches and gritty New York tenements, many of which came from the Columbus Museum.

Melissa Wolfe, the Columbus Museum of Art’s Curator of American Art, said, “For the past year our Bellows paintings have traveled the world as part of a major retrospective that drew crowds to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Royal Academy in London. We’re excited to welcome them home and to be able to celebrate the profound impact George Bellows had, and continues to have, on the art world.”

An international scholarly symposium will be held on November 8 and 9, 2013 to complement the exhibition. George Bellows and the American Experience will be on view at the Columbus Museum of Art through January 4, 2014.

On September 21, 2013, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. will present American Journeys – Visions of Place. The exhibition will showcase the reinstallation of the museum’s renowned collection of pre-1945 American paintings and sculpture while exploring the changing notion of place in the history of American art. The exhibition will include approximately 125 works, presenting more paintings than have ever been on view in the museum’s galleries of historic American art.

The museum’s illustrious collection of American art dating from 1718 to 1945 began as the private holdings of the museum’s founder, William Wilson Corcoran. The collection’s particular strengths include Hudson River School paintings, American Impressionism and early 20^th century realism.

An exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will highlight the works of Julia Margaret Cameron, a pioneer of modern portrait photography. Julia Margaret Cameron will be the first New York City museum exhibition devoted to the artist’s work in nearly a generation, and the first ever for the Met. The exhibition will present 35 works drawn entirely from the Met’s collection.

Cameron, who took up photography at the age of 48, had a superbly unique style that employed soft focus, long exposures and close framing. A friend of many notable Victorian artists, poets and thinkers, Cameron’s portraits of the painter G.F Watts, the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, the scientist Sir John Herschel and the philosopher Thomas Carlyle will be included in the Met’s exhibition.

Julia Margaret Cameron will be on view at the Met through January 5, 2014.

The National Academy Museum in New York presents William Trost Richards: Visions of Land and Sea. The exhibition features approximately 60 works by the 19^th century painter from the museum’s permanent collection. The National Academy houses a significant collection of Richards’ works thanks to the estate of the artist’s daughter, Anna Richards Brewster, which bequeathed over 100 works spanning Richards’ career to the museum in 1954.

William Trost Richards, a native of Philadelphia, was an American landscape painter associated with the Hudson River School as well as the American Pre-Raphaelite movement. Richards studied intermittently with the German-born landscape painter Paul Weber in the 1850s and greatly admired the works of Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church and the English Pre-Raphaelites. Richards is best known for his landscapes and marine paintings of Rhode Island, the White Mountains and the shorelines of Great Britain, France and Norway.

William Trost Richards: Visions of Land and Sea will be on view at the National Academy Museum through September 8, 2013.

When the Spanish cotton baron Julio Muñoz Ramonet died in 1991, he left his illustrious art collection to the city of Barcelona. In 1995, to comply with the terms of his will, Barcelona’s city council established the Julio Muñoz Ramonet foundation, which oversees Ramonet’s properties and art collection.

However, Ramonet’s will and collection has been mired in legal controversy after his four daughters asked that their late father’s requests be annulled. The Spanish Supreme Court recently ruled in Barcelona’s favor, allowing the city to maintain control of Ramonet’s collection. Following the case, authorities visited Ramonet’s villa only to find that the most significant works in his collection had been removed. Authorities are now seeking masterpieces by Rembrandt, E Greco, Diego Velázquez, Sandro Botticelli and Francisco de Goya that were once displayed in Ramonet’s private residence.

While Ramonet’s daughters are not suspected of wrongdoing, a full inventory of Ramonet’s collection is being conducted.

Sotheby’s will sell a rare round cut diamond dubbed “The Premier Blue” at the auction house’s bi-annual public sale in Hong Kong on October 7, 2013. The stone, which weighs 7.59 carats, is much larger and more vivid than other colored diamonds. Sotheby’s expects the gem to garner about $19 million, which would set a world record for the highest price paid for any diamond, per carat.

The Premier Blue will be previewed in Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Singapore, Jakarta and Taiwan along with other items from the sale. According to the New York Times, Quek Chin Yeow, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s in Asia, said, “Since about 2006, 2007, Hong Kong has ranked alongside Geneva and New York as a center for jewelry sales. It is now the third pillar of the global jewelry market.” In addition, Asian buyers tend to favor round cuts in color, which could have influenced Sotheby’s decision to auction the diamond in Asia rather than Europe or the United States.

The prestigious Winter Antiques Show, which is in its 60^th year, will present a loan exhibition honoring the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Fresh Take, Making Connections to the Peabody Essex Museum will present over 50 paintings, sculptures, textiles and decorative objects from the Peabody Essex, one of the country’s oldest and most progressive museums. The exhibition will be on view during the entire run of the Winter Antiques Show, which will take place from January 24, 2014 to February 2, 2014 at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.

Highlights from Fresh Take, Making Connections to the Peabody Essex Museum include an 18^th century inlaid ivory chair from India, a mahogany dressing chest by Thomas Seymour (circa 1810) and a 19^th century portrait of the author Nathaniel Hawthorne by Charles Osgood. Jeff Daly, formerly a senior design advisor to the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will design the exhibition.  

Fresh Take will coincide with the Peabody Essex Museum’s 215^th anniversary. The institution recently embarked on a $650 million campaign and expansion that will place the museum among the top 10 art institutions in the country in terms of gallery space and total endowment.  

Artvest Partners, which is helmed by Michael Plummer and Jeff Rabin, Christie’s former Chief Operating Officer of Financial Services and Vice President of Financial Services, respectively, will transform The Spring Show NYC for its 2014 iteration. The goal of the fair’s redesign is to better serve the global collector community that gathers in New York each year to attend the various important spring auctions. Launched in 2011 by the Art & Antique Dealers League of America and produced by The Art Fair Company, the Spring Show NYC presents art and design from antiquity to the avant-garde.

Artvest will revamp the Spring Show NYC’s look and feel as well as bring new dealers on board for the show. Clinton Howell, President of the Art & Antique Dealers League, said, “After fielding requests from leading dealers from the around the globe who were looking for a suitable venue to exhibit their best works in New York during the Impressionist & Modern auction week, we realized that we needed to reconfigure the Spring Show NYC to accommodate this demand.”

The Spring Show NYC will take place at the Park Avenue Armory from April 30, 2014 to May 4, 2014.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City will open its famed Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden to the general public for a portion of each day beginning on September 9, 2013. Sculpture Garden Mornings will grant visitors access to the outdoor space free of charge between 9AM and 10:30AM. Admission to the sculpture garden was previously only offered to paying MoMA patrons.

MoMA’s spokeswomen Diana Simpson and Eugenia Spektor said “New Yorkers and visitors alike can start their day in one of the city’s most beloved outdoor spaces.” The Sculpture Garden features works by Pablo Picasso, Claes Oldeburg and Joan Miró.

The New Mexico Museum of Art will be the only American venue to host the exhibition Renaissance to Goya: Prints and Drawings from Spain. The show, which opens at the New Mexico Museum of Art on December 14, 2013 and runs through March 9, 2014, was previously on view at the British Museum in London and the Prado in Madrid. It is currently on view at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

The exhibition spans from around 1400 to the mid-19th century and brings together for the first time prints and drawings by Spanish and other European artists working in Spain during this period. Renaissance to Goya is organized chronologically and by region and includes works from Spain’s “Golden Age” by such artists as Diego Velázquez and Jose de Ribera. Works by Francisco de Goya and his European contemporaries such as Giambattista Tiepolo demonstrate how printmaking and drawing dramatically gained popularity during the 18^th century and ultimately changed Spain’s artistic landscape forever.

Renaissance to Goya: Prints and Drawings from Spain is presented by the British Museum in collaboration with the New Mexico Museum of Art.

AXA Art Insurance Co. has leveled a lawsuit against Christie’s over several paintings that were destroyed last October during Hurricane Sandy. The claim states that the auction house failed to secure a valuable art collection that was being kept in one of its storage facilities in Brooklyn, New York despite the ongoing warnings about the damage Hurricane Sandy was expected to bring.

Paintings worth at least $1.5 million, which once belonged to the late cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and his chess champion wife, Jacqueline, were left on the ground floor of the storage facility where they were damaged by rising flood waters. While the suit didn’t specify which works were destroyed, the Piatigorskys’ collection included paintings by Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Chaim Soutine.

A rep for Christie’s told the New York Daily News that they have not yet been served with court papers.

A necklace by the American sculptor Alexander Calder, which was purchased at a flea market for $15 in 2005, will be sold at Christie’s this fall. The brass necklace from 1938 is expected to bring between $200,000 and $300,000.

Philadelphia resident Norma Ifill spotted the rare necklace while she was browsing a local flea market. She was drawn to the piece’s tribal aesthetic but it wasn’t until she visited a Calder jewelry exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Museum that she realized she had a true treasure in her possession. Ifill spoke with the exhibition’s curator and later took the necklace to the Calder Foundation in New York, where her find was deemed a genuine Calder. She also learned that the piece was once on display at the Museum of Modern Art.

The necklace will be offered on September 26, 2013 at Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art auction.

The master forger who was responsible for painting most of the fake modernist artworks sold through the Manhattan gallery Knoedler & Company has been identified. Pei-Shen Qian, a 73-year-old Chinese immigrant, created paintings that imitated works by Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn in his home studio in Queens. The works, which disgraced art dealer Glafira Rosales sold through Knoedler, garnered approximately $80 million; Qian was paid a few thousand dollars for each forgery.

Qian, who studied at the prestigious Art Students League, became involved in the scheme when he met Rosales’ boyfriend and colleague, Jose Carlos Bergantiños, in the early 1990s. Over the course of fifteen years, Qian produced at least 63 paintings and drawings in the style of revered Abstract Expressionists, which were then sold by Rosales and former Knoedler employee, Julian Weissman, through the once-esteemed gallery.

No charges have been brought against Qian although FBI agents did search his home last week. Rosales, who has been charged with wire fraud and money laundering, is the only person who has been indicted in connection to the Knoedler scandal thus far.

Premier collections of antiques and decorative arts in Chicago and Milwaukee are the focus of a trip led by Historic Deerfield’s President Philip Zea September 6-9, 2013. A few slots are still available.

“Guests will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view some of the top private collections of American decorative arts, folk art, and historic maps in the United States,” said Philip Zea. “These are wonderful pieces that people just don’t get to see.”   The five private collections include premier American decorative arts collections, New England folk art, Crab Tree Farm, and the MacLean Map and Book Collection. In addition, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago’s Driehaus Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Chipstone Foundation will provide special museum tours.

See www.historic-deerfield.org/trip for details. Call 413-775-7176 to register.

After leaving the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MOCA) board last year, California-based artist Ed Ruscha will join the San Francisco Museum of Art’s (SFMOMA) board. SFMOMA announced on Thursday, August 15, 2013 that Ruscha will take the one spot on its board reserved for an artist. He will serve on the board for a three-year term.

Ruscha has a profound relationship with SFMOMA and the museum is one of the few institutions in the world to have a complete collection of his seminal artist books, which he began making in the 1960s. SFMOMA also hosted Ruscha’s first retrospective in 1982. SFMOMA’s director, Neal Benezra, said, “Given his long history with SFMOMA and his exceptional knowledge and great influence in the art world, [Ruscha’s] input will be invaluable as we dramatically expand to become an international showcase for the best in contemporary culture.”

SFMOMA is in the midst of a $160-million renovation and expansion. Its central building is closed until at least early 2016.

The Denver Art Museum and the Clyfford Still Museum will present Picasso to Pollock: Modern Masterworks from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery from March 2, 2014 through June 8, 2014. The sprawling exhibition will bring together approximately 50 works by more than 40 significant artists from the late 19^th century to the present. The show is drawn from the holdings of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, which boasts one of the finest collections of 20^th century art in the country.

Modern Masterworks will present works by Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. The exhibition charts the evolution of modern art, starting with post-Impressionism and moving on to a number of groundbreaking movements such as Cubism, Surrealism, Pop Art and Minimalism. A large portion of Modern Masterworks is comprised of works by mid-century American artists such as Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell.

A related exhibition, 1959, will be on view at the Clyfford Still Museum from February 14, 2014 through June 15, 2014. The show re-creates Still’s seminal exhibition held at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in 1959. Still, one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism was a contemporary of Pollock, de Kooning, Motherwell and Rothko.

Christoph Heinrich, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the Denver Art Museum, said, “Not only are most of the iconic artists of the time represented, but the works themselves are masterpieces from each artist.”