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SO MUCH HISTORY IS AWAITING REDISCOVERY, just underneath the earth’s surface or hiding in plain sight. Recent excavations at Stonehenge in England have revealed “burnt flint, grooved pottery, deer antlers, and burials,” the Art Newspaper reports. Digs have been occurring as part of a plan to build a new highway tunnel near the site, which has been opposed by some experts who fear it could damage the area. Officials maintain they are being careful. “There isn’t one option that would allow zero impact on archaeological remains; that’s true of every development you can think of,” one told the Guardian. In India, meanwhile, scientists recently spotted what could be a 550-million-year-old fossil among the cave paintings in the Bhimbetka Rock Shelters in Madhya Pradesh, the New York Times reports. And the archaeological field has lost a major figure, the Tehran Times reports, with the Iranian scholar Firouz Bagherzadeh dying at the age of 90. Curious about other recent archaeological developments? Claire Selvin asked experts for their picks of the greatest breakthroughs of the past decade in ARTnews.
MWAZULU DIYABANZA, WHO HAS BEEN ARRESTED ON VARIOUS OCCASIONS for attempting to take African works now housed in European museums in order to repatriate them, spoke to the Guardian about his activities. “This restitution must be immediate and unconditional and carried out with dignity and respect—and it must happen everywhere in Europe,” he said. His future targets include the British Museum in London and the Vatican. A very different kind of politically motivated art theft is at the center of the new book, The Woman Who Stole Vermeer , which was written by Anthony Amore, the director of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. As Amore told WBUR, in 1974, Rose Dugdale stole 19 Old Masters, including a Vermeer, from Russborough House in Ireland with the aim of ransoming them for the relocation of two Irish Republican Army members imprisoned in England. Alas, Dugdale was caught and got six years. Amore thinks she was also involved in another Vermeer theft six weeks earlier. Also, for the record, he says that he is still hopeful that the bounty of paintings stolen in the notorious 1990 Gardner will be recovered.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is considering selling some of its works to help pay for the care of its collection. “This is the time when we need to keep our options open,” Max Hollein, the Met’s director, said. The Met’s former director, Thomas P. Campbell, said that such deaccessioning risked becoming “like crack cocaine to the addict—a rapid hit, that becomes a dependency.” [The New York Times]
Detroit artist Charles McGee, who cofounded the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, has died at the age of 96. His influence on the city “looms as large as his towering downtown murals,” Rip Rapson, the CEO of the Kresge Foundation, said. [The Detroit News]
The Louvre is preparing to open a conservation center that can hold a third of its collection in the north of France. Here is a look inside. [Architectural Digest]
While works by the pioneering modernist artist Florine Stettheimer almost never come up for sale, her market has been more active recently. However, Stettheimer expert Barbara Bloemink has identified a few of the offered pieces as fakes. [The New York Times]
Sotheby’s has published excerpts from the late artist Christo’s appointment books, to promote its upcoming sale of the collection he amassed with his wife and collaborator, Jeanne-Claude. They include notes about meetings with Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol and a shopping list to make bolognese sauce. [The Guardian]
The New York residence of architect Annabelle Selldorf, who’s designed spaces for Zwirner, Gagosian, and Skarsted, includes works by Franz West, Joseph Beuys, and Donald Judd . . . [WSJ. Magazine]
. . . and the Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn home of Museum of Modern Art collection specialist Kayla Dalle Molle sports a Marcel Wanders Studio sofa and a Morgan Spaulding coffee table. [Clever/Architectural Digest]
The Nam June Paik Art Center in Yongin, South Korea, has unveiled an augmented-reality app. [The Korea Herald]
The new film Black Art: In the Absence of Light premieres on HBO on Tuesday. Read Maximilíano Durón’s review of the “powerful and important documentary.” [ARTnews]
A FRENCH COURT HAS ORDERED THAT BRITISH DEVELOPER PATRICK DITER tear down the roughly $70 million chateau that he constructed in Provence because he built it without the proper permits. The ruling came down in December, but the New York Post and the Daily Mail have recently done the important work of compiling a trove of photographs of this mansion , which includes—to quote the Post —“two helipads, a salt water swimming pool, a medieval cloister, a bell tower and a greenhouse, plus 17 acres of gardens, vineyards, olive groves and lily ponds.” It also appears to contain a framed copy of Leonardo’s The Last Supper. The battle over the estate has been going on for more than a decade, but Diter is not giving up just yet. “Even the idea of demolishing Château Diter, which is an architectural masterpiece, is unimaginable and foolish,” his lawyer told Air Mail. “We’re going to fight to avoid this.”
Thank you for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.