The Hunt: $200 Million Worth of Art Is Still Missing From a Paraguay Museum
In July 2002, a heist at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Asunción in Paraguay rocked the world, not only due to the lost masterworks, which were valued at around $200 million, but the elaborate ploy the thieves used to pull off their robbery. They favored European paintings, with a haul that included a […]
Eureka: What Was Helen Frankenthaler’s Soak-Stain Technique?
When the artist Helen Frankenthaler, then in her early 20s, met Jackson Pollock, he was building an international reputation with his drip paintings, in which he flung enamel paints—the kinds used for household decorating, which were cheaper and more readily available than traditional artists’ paints—onto canvases which were laid on the ground. By allowing the […]
Long-Lost ‘Star Trek’ Props Resurface After More Than 50 Years
A pair of props from the original Star Trek series is heading to auction after disappearing for more than half a century. The items in question are an original phaser and communicator as used by William Shatner’s James T. Kirk in NBC’s 1966 television show. The props are expected to fetch between $100,000 and $200,000 […]
How an Art Heist at Taco Bell Is Fueling a Thriving Black Market
In 2015, a Taco Bell in Westlake, Ohio, made headlines when someone stole a printed canvas featuring an original artwork designed for the fast food chain. Fast forward nearly a decade, and there appears to be a thriving black market for the art, which has been a pillar of the restaurant’s decor for some 20 […]
In a New Show at Gladstone, Alissa Bennett Unpacks the Mystery Novel ‘The Secret History’
About six years ago, Alissa Bennett, a director at the Gladstone Gallery, fell under the thrall of Donna Tartt’s 1992 novel, The Secret History. The book traces a coterie of students studying ancient Greek at an isolated Northeastern college. Myth, reality, and ritual overlap and ultimately Dionysian rites collide with deadly hubris. Bennett read it, […]
Do Art History Majors Really Face the Worst Job Prospects of Any Profession?
Art History majors face the worst employment prospects of any profession after graduating from college, a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has found. The data, released by the Fed in February, became a talking point online this week, just as students close out the academic year and many start the job […]
Fotografiska New York to Settle Lawsuit Alleging Pregnancy Discrimination
Fotografiska’s New York outpost has reached a tentative settlement agreement with a former worker who alleged in a lawsuit that she faced discrimination for being pregnant. Lawyers for the worker revealed that the settlement was reached in principle in a June 12 letter to the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan, asking for time to […]
Macron’s Divisive Plan to Install Contemporary Stained Glass in Notre-Dame Thwarted
A highly controversial proposal to replace the historic stained glass windows in Paris’s iconic Notre-Dame cathedral with contemporary works has been rejected by France’s National Heritage and Architecture Commission. President Emmanuel Macron could still go against its advice but his position has been significantly weakened by the shock result of France’s recent election. The original […]
Is ‘Moby Dick’ America’s Most Illustrated Novel? A New Exhibition Makes the Case
Today, Moby Dick’s place in the literary canon is as weighty as its titular antagonist, but upon its release in 1851, the book barely made a ripple. “This is an odd book, professing to be a novel, wantonly eccentric and outrageously bombastic,” wrote the London Literary Gazette, before declaring it so torturous that readers might […]