Displaying items by tag: Research

New research by an Italian scholar has shown that a painting in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum known as the "Meidum Geese" may be a fake. Writing for our sister newspaper, "Il Giornale dell’Arte," the Egyptologist Francesco Tiradritti called the five-foot-long fragment of wall decoration “what the Mona Lisa is to Western art.” A facsimile is on view in the Egyptian galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

According to the historical records of Egypt’s Antiquities Service, the work was discovered in 1871 at the tomb of prince Nefermaat and his wife Itet (also Atet) at Meidum, and dates to around 2575-2551 BC in the early fourth dynasty.

An oil painting thought to have been created by French Impressionist Claude Monet has been proven to be genuine through scientific testing.

"A Haystack in the Evening Sun" had not previously been authenticated because the work is largely unknown and the artist's signature is covered by paint.

However researchers at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland uncovered the signature using a hyperspectral camera.

Gabriele Finaldi has been appointed the new head of the National Gallery, replacing Nicholas Penny who announced his retirement last year.

The 49-year-old is currently deputy director for collections and research at the Prado museum in Madrid.

Finaldi was a curator at the National from 1992 to 2002, where he was responsible for the later paintings in the Italian and Spanish collections.

He said he was "deeply honored" to take on the directorship.

Vincent van Gogh’s reds have been turning white, but the exact reason why has remained unclear. Research published last month out of Belgium has identified a rare lead mineral in his paint as the missing link.

As reported this week by Matthew Gunther at the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Chemistry World, a team at the University of Antwerp examined a microscopic sample of van Gogh’s “Wheat Stack Under a Cloudy Sky” (“Heuschober an einem Regentag”) from 1889 at the Kröller-Müller Museum using X-ray powder diffraction tomography, basically focusing beams to reveal crystalline compounds.

The Lens Media Laboratory (LML), a new research facility that will apply scientific principles to the characterization and conservation of photographs and other lens-based media, has been created as part of the Yale Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage (IPCH), a center dedicated to improving the science and practice of conservation globally. Paul Messier, a renowned photography conservator, will join Yale as the inaugural head of the LML. Funding for the endowed directorship and laboratory start-up has been provided by an anonymous donor.

“This extraordinary gift will catalyze the development of new methods for scholars to classify, preserve, and interpret photographs and other lens media, both physical and digital,” said Stefan Simon, director of the IPCH. “In Paul Messier, we have successfully attracted one of the foremost experts in the world, whose track record of working across a diverse range of constituencies and disciplines — from museums to individual collectors and humanities to the sciences — will be a tremendous asset to this endeavor.”

A San Francisco gallery was stunned to discover that it had unknowingly bought a previously-unseen Gustav Klimt drawing.

The Lost Art Salon, which specializes in the rediscovery of fine art, bought a hoard of unidentifiable works on paper at a Bay Area auction last spring. During the research process, gallery staff discovered a series of drawings signed by Johannes and Maria Fischer, who were close friends of Egon Schiele. This clue led the researchers to believe that other pieces could be associated with other Viennese Secessionists.

Andy Warhol was the top-selling artist at auction in the past year as increased competition for the most-expensive segment of the market drove global art sales higher.

Collectors bought 1,295 works by the deceased artist totaling $653.2 million, ahead of sales for Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon, according to preliminary figures by New York-based researcher Artnet. Auctions worldwide rose 10 percent to $16 billion.

Art sales have more than doubled from $6.3 billion in 2009, as surging financial markets lifted the fortunes of the world’s richest.

A five-volume catalogue raisonné of Francisco de Goya’s drawings will be developed in a rare collaboration between the Museo Nacional del Prado and the Santander- and Madrid-based Fundación Botín. The project, which kicks off this month and is due to run for at least five years, will involve researching, cataloguing and conserving nearly 1,000 drawings by Goya, and will conclude with two exhibitions: one at the future Botín Center in Santander, when the first volume is published in 2016, and another at El Prado in 2019—for the museum’s 200th anniversary—when the rest of the volumes are due to be finished.

“The indisputable novelty of the catalogue is in its collaborative execution,” says an official release from the Fundación Botín. The foundation has dedicated €1.7 million to the editorial coordination and management of the project.

The Delaware Art Museum unveiled its renovated and reinstalled 18th- and 19th-century American Art galleries—Galleries 1, 2, and 3—to the public. Just in time for the holiday season, the beautifully redesigned space displays over 50 works of art, including many permanent collection objects that have not been on view for over 10 years. As part of this reinstallation, the galleries highlight 150 years of portraiture, sculpture, landscape painting, still life, and history painting.

“I am excited to be able to present our regional history within the context of the dynamic national art scene,” explains Heather Campbell Coyle, Curator of American Art at the Delaware Art Museum. “The product of more than two years of research and planning, the redesigned space gives us the opportunity to showcase the Museum’s outstanding collection of American art to the local community, visitors, and school groups in new and exciting ways.”