Looters broke into the Egyptian Museum in Cairo Friday night smashing vitrines,damaging statues and mummies.The robbery took place while police attempted to quell the violent protests which erupted on the streets last week and have carried on throughout the weekend. The museum is home to the world's largest collection of Ancient Egyptian treasures, including the priceless collection of King Tutankhamen. 
Christies has announced sales figures of £3.3 billion or $5.0 billion for 2010. This is up 53% and a record for the world’s leading art business. The 245-year-old company now holds the record for the highest total recorded in the industry. The contemporary art market bounced back last year, logging $961 million, compared to a relatively weak $387 million the previous year. Impressionist and modern art was Christie's leading category, totaling $1.2 billion, a rise of more than 50% over $786 million realised in 2009. Read Full Article......
New Contemporaries gives people still at, or just after, art school the opportunity to show their work in the context of a professional art gallery. It is important in that it takes the work out of the educational context and into the real. The relationship between education and art is known, respected, but strangely not recognised enough. As an organisation New Contemporaries is, however, totally independent of the art school as it allows applicants a democratic chance for the work itself to shine through. Reputations that might otherwise become set within the art school system are able to break out. 
Dennis Oppenheim the pioneering conceptual artist has died of complications from liver cancer, he was 72. Oppenheim was born in 1938 in Electric City, Washington and studied at the California College of the Arts and Stanford University, before moving to New York in 1966. He made a name for himself as one of the first land artists in the 1960s, and explored Body Art at the inception of the movement. Oppenheim’s work evolved into the first wave of Conceptual Art and was influential and embraced by a younger generation of artists. He was a contemporary of ground breaking artists including, Vito Acconci, Gordon Matta Clarke and Bruce Nauman. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally, including Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Read Full Obituary...
Works by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Samuel Peploe and Federico Barocci Returned.
Sir John Ritblat,Chairman of the Wallace Collection has announced the appointment of Dr Christoph Vogtherr as the next Director of the Collection upon the retirement of Dame Rosalind Savill DBE next October 2011.
Yoko Ono, the avant-garde artist and widow of John Lennon, has been awarded the eighth Hiroshima Art Prize. This is awarded for her contributions to world peace through contemporary art. The Mayor, Tadatoshi Akiba stated the city will continue with its “Obamajority” anti-nuclear weapons campaign, amid controversy over a recent U.S. subcritical nuclear test, the first under President Barack Obama. Ono released a comment through the city, saying, “The tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were created by humans by themselves, and the humans also have the wisdom to eliminate their root causes,” in reference to the 1945 atomic bombings of the two Japanese cities in World War II. Read Full Article....
The National Portrait Gallery in London is calling for entries into the BP Portrait Award 2011. You must submit your entry by Thursday 10 February. First prize is £25,000, second prize £8,000, third prize: £6,000. There is also the BP Travel Award 2011 of £5,000 and BP Young Artist Award: £5,000.
The copyright lawsuit between the American Urban Artist, Shepard Fairey and AP (Associated Press), came a step closer to a conclusion yesterday, when U.S. District Judge, Alvin Hellerstein dismissed the case. The artist who had created the Barack Obama "HOPE" image from a photograph by a professional AP news photographer, has been excluded from the current lawsuit, but a March trial date has been scheduled for claims between the news service and companies that sold merchandise using the artist's image. Hellerstien also said the claims could be reinstated within a month if either side requested it.
The ICA has named the successor to Ekow Eshun by appointing Gregor Muir, as its new head. He is currently the director of Hauser & Wirth's, a London gallery, In addition to closing the gap between the commercial and curatorial jobs, Muir will inherit an institution in deep crisis. The former broadcaster and journalist, Ekow Eshun,who had held the post as ICA Executive Director since 2005, resigned in August, as did the chair of the board Alan Yentob. Muir has prior experience at the ICA, having co-curated the 1997 show "Assuming Positions”.He has also served as a curator at Tate Modern. Read More....
As the Oscars approach the bickering begins. Joachim Levy a 34-year-old Swiss filmmaker is contesting the omission of his name on the Banksy film, Exit Through the Gift Shop in what he sees as an unjust oversight. Levy worked as a producer and editor with Thierry Guetta the driving force behind the doc" Life Remote Control," a rambling homage to street art which first screened in 2006. When Banksy's saw the chaotic footage from the Guetta /Levy's movie the idea of "Exit Through the Gift Shop was born". 
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| Photo: Anselm Kiefer. |
Do artists only create for each other? Since Hegel, the idea of the end of art has become a staple of aesthetic theory. Will Post Art be the end of art? The concept of “Post Art” was developed by the happening artist, Allan Kaprow based on his idea that life is much more interesting than art, at the expense of art. Post Art is not a point of no return and in fact there are many fine artists who continue to make important art,so it was perhaps inevitable that “Post Art” would be attacked as non-elitist. Marcel Duchamp called it “intellectual expression” over “animal expression” 
