Displaying items by tag: experts

Digging up forgotten treasure in grandma's dusty attic sounds like a tale too good to be true.

But for some, that dream has become a reality. The popular PBS television series "Antiques Roadshow" has earned some local antique owners a small fortune. From art to toys to clothes, people bring in all sorts of goodies to be professionally appraised by experts. Most leave in disappointment, but a lucky bunch have walked away with more than expected.

A growing desire to understand and prove the provenance of goods in the fake-ridden Chinese antiques market has led to a boom in old auction and exhibition catalogues. This trade has been driven by China’s tens of thousands of art advisors, auction houses and dealers, who in recent years have been building private reference libraries for experts and clients. Book collectors and dealers in Hong Kong and Europe have been quietly doing a thriving business in catalogues for exhibitions and auctions of Chinese arts and antiques.

While China has always had a black market for imported art publications that cost a few dollars each, in-demand catalogues command prices in the thousands of dollars.

German government-appointed experts on Friday gave the green light to the restitution of one of the most valuable artworks in the trove of late collector Cornelius Gurlitt to its American owners.

In his first television interview, the elderly artist whose look-alike paintings in the styles of Abstract Expressionists including Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock fooled experts and sent shock waves through the art world claims he was ”shocked” to learn that his works were sold as newly discovered masterpieces to wealthy collectors for tens of millions of dollars.

“When I made these paintings, I had no idea they would represent them as the real thing to sell,” said Pei Shen Qian in an interview to be broadcast Tuesday on “World News With Diane Sawyer” and “Nightline” as part of an ABC News investigation of the fake art industry and the Long Island fraud ring that flooded the market with over $80 million in forged work.

Four hundred and four years after his death, the remains of Caravaggio will be buried near the Tuscan coastal town of Porto Ercole in a memorial park due to open on 18 July. Mystery surrounded the circumstances of Caravaggio’s death for centuries. Porto Ercole had been identified as the artist’s final resting place, but the whereabouts of his body was not known until Silvano Vinceti, the president of the Caravaggio Foundation, and a team of experts discovered the artist's remains in a local church in 2010.

The 2014 New Orleans Antiques Forum, “Southern Expression,” will explore the many facets of regional style with acclaimed experts in the field of decorative arts. This year’s topics include furniture, pottery, mourning jewelry and art, southern landscape paintings, clocks, quilts, and more.

The Historic New Orleans Collection established the New Orleans Antiques Forum (NOAF) in 2008 in an effort to boost cultural tourism in New Orleans and south Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina. Centered on a series of educational and entertaining talks, the three-day forum encourages the appreciation of decorative arts created in and imported through the Gulf Coast. Sessions are accessible to experienced collectors as well as beginning antiques enthusiasts.

According to Italian art critic and former undersecretary of cultural heritage Vittorio Sgarbi, writing in Corriere della Sera‘s magazine Sette, a painting currently attributed to the followers of 16th-century Florentine painter Giuliano Bugiardini may actually be by Raphael. The portrait of an unknown woman was snapped up by collector Peter Silverman at Dorotheum in Vienna on April 9 for €36,900 ($50,000), well over its €15,000–20,000 estimate ($20,000–27,000), and now he is trying to have its attribution changed to the master from Urbino, Le Figaro reports.

“Vittorio Sgarbi is the first to suggest an attribution to the master, Silverman says. Now I’m going to let the experts have their say and see if a consensus emerges. For my part, all that I can say with certainty is that my wife and I are very happy to own this magnificent portrait.”

Michelangelo's famous statue of the biblical figure David is at risk of collapse due to the weakening of the artwork's legs and ankles, according to a report published this week by art experts.

The findings, which were made public by Italy's National Research Council, show micro-fractures in the ankle and leg areas.

The "David" statue dates from the early 16th century and is housed in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence. The results of the report were published this week in the Journal of Cultural Heritage, a publication devoted to research into the conservation of culturally significant works of art and buildings.

German authorities have appointed 13 experts in art history, provenance research and restitution issues to a task force that will be responsible for establishing the history of hundreds of artworks discovered in a dilapidated apartment in Munich this past November. The works, which include masterpieces by Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Albrecht Durer, were found in the possession of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of Hildebrandt Gurlitt. Hildebrandt had been put in charge of selling Nazi looted artworks abroad by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda.  

Jane Milosch from the Smithsonian, Thierry Bajou from the Musées Nationaux Récupération in France, Sophie Lillie from Vienna, Agnes Peresztegi from Budapest, and Yehudit Shendar and Shlomit Steinberg, both from Israel, will join the task force’s German members -- Uwe Hartmann, the head of Germany’s office for provenance research, art historian Meike Hoffmann, Michael Franz, the head of Germany’s restitution office, Magnus Brechtken, the deputy director for the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, Roland Kempfle, a Munich-based prosecutor, Heike Impelmann from the office for unresolved property issues and Stephanie Tasch, who represents Germany’s 16 states.

First, the task force will research the ownership histories of the drawings, prints and paintings believed to have been stolen by the Nazis from their Jewish owners. The task force will then investigate the works believed to have been looted by the Nazis from public institutions. So far, authorities have begun photographing and publishing the artworks. Over 450 pieces have been added to Germany’s Lost Art Internet Database.