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☆ It Was the Biggest Job of His Life. Was He On Target, or Off by Half?
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-03 | by ( Graham Bowley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Whenever a worthy cause needs help in Rockland, Maine, this town of 7,000 overlooking Penobscot Bay, people reach out to Bruce Gamage Jr., an auctioneer who runs an antiques shop downtown. Walking sticks? Gamage is as established an expert on such items as you’ll find around Rockland, a working-class town once known for its quarries and fish canneries. Many in town say he is just as self-sacrificing a spirit. “It’s almost all we need to do is send him the date, he is just so generous with his time,” said Amie Hutchison, executive director of Trekkers, a local nonprofit that mentors young people.

Persons: Bruce Gamage Jr, he’s, “ It’s, ”, Amie Hutchison Locations: Rockland , Maine, Penobscot, French, Rockland

☆ Chicago Museum Says Investigators Have No Evidence Art Was Looted
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-24 | by ( Graham Bowley | Tom Mashberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Art Institute of Chicago has rebuffed an attempt by New York investigators to seize an Egon Schiele drawing in its collection, asserting in a strongly-worded 132-page court filing that the investigators have produced no evidence that the artwork was looted by the Nazis as they claim. The drawing, “Russian War Prisoner,” was purchased by the Art Institute in 1966. It is one of a number of works by Schiele that ended up in the hands of museums and collectors and have been sought by the heirs of the collector Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret entertainer from Vienna who was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp in 1941. In a court filing in February, the Manhattan district attorney’s office accused the museum of ignoring evidence of an elaborate fraud undertaken to conceal that the artwork had been stolen by the Nazis on the eve of World War II. But the museum in its filing on Tuesday argued that the drawing had legitimately passed from Grünbaum to his sister-in-law, who had sold it to a Swiss dealer after the war in 1956.

Persons: Egon Schiele, ”, Schiele, Fritz Grünbaum Organizations: Art Institute of Chicago, Art Institute Locations: New York, Vienna, Manhattan, Grünbaum, Swiss

☆ Opinion | Will the Rotters Keep Hounding Kate?
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-22 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

With her mop of red Renaissance curls and steely ambition, Brooks became the favorite lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch. But the moral is about amorality; the story underscores the viciousness and lack of decency of the British tabloids in the hacking scandal. I thought of that when I watched the video of Princess Kate sitting on a bench amid daffodils, telling her heartbreaking story of a cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy. Cancer is a very personal thing, and how you tell your children is the most personal of all. Princess Diana’s sons blame that ravenous behemoth for hounding their mother.

Persons: J.T, Rogers, Bartlett Sher, Rebekah Brooks, Brooks, Rupert Murdoch, Murdoch, Don Van Natta Jr, Jo Becker, Graham Bowley, Saffron Burrows, Princess Kate, Princess Diana’s, Harry Organizations: Lincoln Center, British, New York Times, Cancer, Mirror Group Newspapers Locations: Britain, British

☆ 5 Takeaways From the Sotheby’s Art Fraud Trial
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-31 | by ( Graham Bowley | Colin Moynihan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Over the course of three weeks, the art world watched as a Russian oligarch pursued a lawsuit in an American court in which he accused Sotheby’s of abetting a fraud. Sotheby’s, he said, was in on it. But after only a few hours of deliberation on Tuesday, the jury found differently, voting unanimously that Sotheby’s had not played a role in any fraud. The dealer, Yves Bouvier, who was not a defendant in the case, said he felt vindicated too. Bouvier has long insisted that he did nothing wrong and that he was always clearly acting as a dealer, free to charge Rybolovlev whatever price the Russian would pay.

Persons: Russian oligarch, Dmitry Rybolovlev, Sotheby’s, Yves Bouvier, Bouvier Locations: Russian, New York, Swiss

☆ Jury Finds Sotheby’s Did Not Help in Any Fraud of Russian Oligarch
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-30 | by ( Graham Bowley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A jury in a civil trial in New York decided in favor of Sotheby’s on Tuesday, rejecting a Russian oligarch’s claim that the auction house had helped a Swiss dealer who he said defrauded him out of tens of millions of dollars in high-end art sales. The oligarch, Dmitry Rybolovlev, had accused Sotheby’s of being in on a plot in which, he said, the dealer Yves Bouvier posed as an art adviser negotiating sales on Rybolovlev’s behalf when, in reality, he was secretly acting as an art dealer, buying works at Sotheby’s before flipping them to his client. In the resales, Bouvier at times increased the prices by tens of millions of dollars. Whatever the dealer did with the art after he bought it was none of the auction house’s business, the Sotheby’s lawyers had argued. If anyone were to blame for buying overpriced art, it was Rybolovlev himself, according to Sotheby’s lawyers, who said the Russian businessman was at fault for not protecting himself against the dealer’s actions.

Persons: Dmitry Rybolovlev, Yves Bouvier, Bouvier, Rybolovlev Locations: New York, Sotheby’s, Swiss, Russian

☆ At Art Fraud Trial, Sotheby’s Is Pressed on Role in Sales to Russian Oligarch
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-17 | by ( Graham Bowley | More About Graham Bowley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Valette was the Sotheby’s executive who dealt with Bouvier in the sale of the da Vinci and three other works that are the focus of the case. In each instance, Bouvier bought the works through Sotheby’s and then resold them to Rybolovlev at large markups. Rybolovlev says Bouvier tricked him by pretending to act as his art adviser in the transactions, even pretending to negotiate with phantom third parties when he was actually the owner of the works. He has argued that Valette understood what was going on and helped him. But for Rybolovlev, Valette is central to the argument that Sotheby’s was knowingly part of a scheme to defraud him out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Persons: Bouvier —, Valette, Bouvier, Vinci, Rybolovlev, Sotheby’s Organizations: Park West Locations: Manhattan, Sotheby’s

☆ Ukrainians in Germany Weigh Wrenching Choice: Stay or Go Home
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-03 | by ( Graham Bowley | More About Graham Bowley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Since fleeing Ukraine with her daughter, Iryna Khomich has made a home of a tiny space in a village of prefabricated units in southwestern Germany. A full tour of its single room takes only a few moments: an iron bunk bed and a wardrobe, shoes scattered near the door, clothes drying on radiators. On one recent afternoon, her cat, Dimka, walked in and out, while her daughter, Sofiia, 8, read a German textbook at a desk. But like other displaced Ukrainians who fled west to wait out the war against Russia, Ms. Khomich, 37, lives each day wrestling with an agonizing choice: Should she return home to Ukraine, where the fighting drags on interminably, or put down roots in Germany, effectively turning a temporary separation into something more lasting? And they are debating it in places like Freiburg, a city nestled on the edge of the Black Forest close to the French border that has offered open arms, an extensive social safety net and the attractive promise of a life without war.

Persons: Iryna Khomich, Sofiia, Khomich Locations: Ukraine, Germany, Russia, Europe, Freiburg

☆ In Hitler’s Birthplace, Soul-Searching Over a Poisonous Past
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-19 | by ( Graham Bowley | More About Graham Bowley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The Austrian town of Braunau am Inn, sitting just at the border with Germany, has a 15th-century church tower, cobblestone streets and cluttered rows of charming, colorful houses, some in green, pink and blue. It also has a fraught historical burden. On the upper floors of the house at Salzburger Vorstadt 15 on April 20, 1889, Adolf Hitler was born. One recent afternoon, Annette Pommer, 32, a history teacher, stared through the window of the Sailer cafe at the three-story 17th-century building across the street where Hitler spent the first few months of his life. She could hear the pounding of jackhammers; an excavator was crawling over a pile of bricks at the rear of the house while workers in hard hats swept the soil.

Persons: Adolf Hitler, Annette Pommer, Hitler Locations: Austrian, Braunau, Germany

☆ Top German Journalist Received €600,000 From Putin Ally, Leak Reveals
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-15 | by ( Graham Bowley | More About Graham Bowley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Germany went through a period of uncomfortable soul-searching about the close ties that some of its political and business leaders had to Moscow. That self-examination spilled into the country’s journalistic establishment this week after published reports revealed that an award-winning television broadcaster and author who has extensively covered Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, had received hundreds of thousands of euros in undisclosed payments from businesses linked to a billionaire ally of Mr. Putin. The reports, by a consortium of publishing outlets including Germany’s Der Spiegel and The Guardian of Britain, were based on what the consortium said was a leaked cache of offshore financial records. They said that the broadcaster, Hubert Seipel, had been paid about 600,000 euros (about $651,000) in installments from accounts connected to Alexei A. Mordashov, a prominent Russian businessman, who was placed under sanctions by the United States last year as a way to punish Mr. Putin for his war in Ukraine. The payments were to support Mr. Seipel’s books about Mr. Putin, the reports said.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, Mr, Der Spiegel, Hubert Seipel, Alexei A Organizations: Guardian, United Locations: Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Moscow, Britain, Russian, United States

☆ Move to Rename ‘Anne Frank’ Day Care Center Stirs Criticism in Germany
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-08 | by ( Graham Bowley | More About Graham Bowley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

A proposal in a small German town to rename a public day care center that is currently named after Anne Frank has become the center of a fraught national debate in the country about antisemitism. Germany has long engaged in palpable national soul searching about the responsibility to remember the past given the country’s own history, including specifically about Anne Frank herself. According to the report in the Volksstimme, the impetus to change the name had come from parents and day care employees, with the new name thought to be more child friendly. The story of Anne Frank was difficult for children to understand and “parents with a migrant background would often not know what to make of the name,” the newspaper reported, citing school authorities. The director of the school was quoted as saying the school wanted a name “without political background.”

Persons: Anne Frank, Anne Frank’s, Frank, ” Locations: Tangerhütte, Berlin, Saxony, Anhalt, Germany, Israel, Gaza, Amsterdam, Bergen

It won five cabinet positions in the three-party coalition, including the powerful economy and foreign ministries. And a host of missteps that some even within the party concede has stalled the Greens’ momentum. Today the Greens are widely viewed as a drag on the government of the Social Democratic chancellor, Olaf Scholz, which one poll gave a mere 19 percent approval rating. The Greens have drawn withering attacks from even their own coalition partners. To their opponents, the Greens have overreached on their agenda and become the face of an out-of-touch environmental elitism that has alienated many voters, sending droves to the far right.

Persons: Olaf Scholz Organizations: Germany’s Green Party, Greens, Social Democratic Locations: Ukraine

The story of the Bubon bronzes, though, is more than just a tale of looters’ remorse, investigative zeal, art market intrigue and antiquities repatriation. It’s also a lesson in history, one that presents a more nuanced view of ancient Rome than that popularized by Hollywood epics. Rome allowed a measure of self-government and promoted the promise of citizenship as potent tools to keep the peace. And there was often local buy-in, evident in the shrines built by invaded peoples to show respect for their conquerors. The Bubon bronzes, instead, remained underground, intact, for almost 2,000 years.

Persons: It’s, Severus, Trajan, Augustus, Roman Organizations: Hollywood Locations: Rome, Libya, Spain, Bubon, Asia

☆ Provenance of a Museum’s Greek Exhibit Is Questioned, Fueling a Debate
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-17 | by ( Graham Bowley | More About Graham Bowley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Fla., was riding high as “From Chaos to Order,” an exhibition of ancient Greek art, became its first major traveling show in years, making stops at museums in Florida and South Carolina before preparing to head west. “The idea was to look at the origins of Greek art in a new way,” said Michael Bennett, the former St. Petersburg curator who organized the show of works from the Geometric period, circa 900 to 700 B.C. “We felt it had something new to say about Greek art.”But earlier this year, when the exhibition was scheduled to travel to the Denver Art Museum, the staff there balked because many of the 57 artifacts lacked detailed provenances. The Denver museum had recently had its own scandal, when it returned four artifacts to Cambodia. Its director, Christoph Heinrich, suggested postponing the Florida exhibition in the hope that the provenance issues could be resolved.

Persons: ”, Michael Bennett, Sol Rabin, Christoph Heinrich Organizations: of Fine Arts, Denver Art Museum, Denver Locations: St . Petersburg, Fla, Florida, South Carolina, St, Petersburg, Denver, Cambodia

Nicholas O’Donnell, an art market lawyer in Boston who has been involved with efforts to get the industry to police itself without government regulation, said in the Ahmad case the market could have done a better job of reviewing its clients. When Mr. Ahmad was cited, the government issued a news release and his name and those of companies he was known to trade under were published on the database. The indictment cited relatives and associates of Mr. Ahmad who it said had helped him buy art in violation of sanctions and often dealt directly with the artists or galleries. Mr. Ahmad, who was born into a wealthy family of diamond traders, remains at large outside the United States, the authorities have said. The video shows a man it identifies as Mr. Ahmad firing a shoulder-launched rocket, in what the government presents as evidence of his connections to Hezbollah.

Persons: Nicholas O’Donnell, Ahmad, ”, “ It’s, Mr, Ahmad’s, Hind Ahmad Organizations: U.S . Office, Foreign Assets Control, The State Department Locations: U.S, Europe, Boston, Lebanon, United States

In 2006 she gave $200 million to New York University to help create the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, which operates in a townhouse her foundation bought near the Met. White and Levy had begun amassing their extensive collection of more than 700 antiquities in the 1970s. Beginning in 1993, the couple agreed to relinquish 16 items after claims they had been looted from an ancient Roman site in England. In 2008, White surrendered 10 objects to Italy and two to Greece. It had been part of the “Glories of the Past” exhibition at the Met in 1990.

Persons: White, Levy, Giacomo Medici, Robin Symes, Eucharides, “, ”, David Gill Organizations: Brooklyn Museum, New, Botanical, Lincoln Center, New York University, for, Carnegie, Met, Centre for Heritage, University of Kent Locations: England, Italy, Greece, Italian, British, Turkey

☆ Where Are Their Heads? Hordes of Ancient Statues Pose That Puzzle
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-12 | by ( Graham Bowley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

This is clear in any gallery of Greek & Roman art.”Headless Bodies in Top-Shelf MuseumsMany heads were lost because of the wear and tear of time. But other, less innocent explanations for the legions of severed heads include looting and regime change. Ancient insurrectionists and invaders decapitated statues to undermine the authority of rulers who had erected images of themselves as symbols of dominion. “Every culture in the ancient world seems to do it,” said Rachel Kousser, professor of ancient art at the City University of New York. was decapitated by Kushite raiders in Egypt, who then defiantly buried the severed head beneath temple steps in the Kushite capital of Meroë, in modern Sudan.

Persons: ” Kenneth Lapatin, ”, Rachel Kousser, it’s, Emperor Augustus Organizations: Paul Getty Museum, City University of New, British Museum Locations: Los Angeles, “, City University of New York, Egypt, Meroë, Sudan

☆ After Seizures, the Met Sets a Plan to Scour Collections for Looted Art
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Robin Pogrebin | Graham Bowley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Cambodian officials have said in recent years that at least 45 artifacts at the Met were stolen from ancient sites there. Instead, the Met has requested evidence from Cambodia demonstrating that the works were stolen. The British Museum has been in talks with Greek officials, who have long sought the return of the Parthenon marbles. The Vatican announced last year that it would give fragments of the Parthenon that were long held in the Vatican Museum to the Greek Orthodox Church. Some critics want museums to do far more than simply ensure that ancient objects were not stolen.

☆ Alec Baldwin Returns to ‘Rust’ Set as Charges He Faced Are Dropped
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Julia Jacobs | Graham Bowley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

PRAY, Mont. — Alec Baldwin was mounted on a chestnut horse in a steep gully in a snow-dusted valley in Montana on Friday, his first day back filming “Rust,” the western whose cinematographer was shot and killed in 2021 when a gun he was practicing with on its set went off. “Set, ready, and … action,” cried Gerard DiNardi, the movie’s new first assistant director, and Mr. Baldwin urged the horse forward, toward a camera rigged on a pickup truck. As Mr. Baldwin returned to the set of “Rust,” prosecutors in New Mexico filed court papers formally dismissing, at least for now, the involuntary manslaughter charges he had been facing in the shooting of the film’s original cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, who was killed outside Santa Fe, where the movie was initially filmed. The prosecutors, Jason Lewis and Kari Morrissey, wrote in their filing in the case of the State of New Mexico vs. Alexander Rae Baldwin III that they were withdrawing the charges against him “since new facts were revealed that demand further investigation and forensic analysis” that could not be completed before a hearing, set to begin on May 3, at which a judge was to rule on whether the charges against Mr. Baldwin could proceed.

☆ The Kylix Marvel: Why Experts Distrust the Story of an Ancient Cup’s Rebirth
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Graham Bowley | Tom Mashberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“Dietrich turned what was a bunch of fragments into something that was beautiful,” said Hemingway, the Met curator. It is not clear how the dozens of fragments that were used to reconstruct the kylix came to be so widely dispersed. And all of them had some kind of relationship with von Bothmer. Fritz Bürki, who sold the Met the first fragments in 1978, was an expert in the reassembly of fractured artifacts. He had rebuilt the infamous Euphronios krater for Hecht, the dealer who sold it to von Bothmer and the Met.

SANTA FE, N.M — Alec Baldwin was on the set of his latest film, a low-budget western called “Rust,” working on a scene in which his character, a grizzled outlaw named Harland Rust, finds himself in a small wooden church, cornered by a sheriff and a U.S. Members of the small crew — including the director, cinematographer, cameraman and script supervisor — clustered around Mr. Baldwin inside the cramped, spartan set. As light poured through the church’s windows, casting slanted rays in the dust that swirled over the pews, a shadow fell, and the crew had to adjust the camera angle. The crew had been assured the gun was “cold,” meaning it held no live ammunition, according to court papers. In fact, investigators said, it was loaded with a live round.

Persons: N.M — Alec Baldwin, ”, Harland Rust, Baldwin, Jimmy Stewart Organizations: SANTA FE, Hollywood Locations: SANTA, U.S, Santa Fe, Laramie ”

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