Posted on: October 1, 2020 by Alexander Herman
This comment first appeared on The Art Newspaper website on 25 September 2020. It has been reproduced with the editorial staff’s kind permission. Is the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) going to sell its Michelangelo? It seems a preposterous proposition, but these are rather preposterous times. The idea, apparently floated by a handful of Royal […]
Posted on: April 25, 2017 by Alexander Herman
A story has been brewing over the past few weeks involving the famed Charging Bull sculpture that sits in the middle of Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan. The sculpture was made by Arturo di Modica and installed without permission near Wall St as a Christmas gift from the artist to New Yorkers in December 1989. […]
Posted on: February 28, 2017 by Alexander Herman
In Yasmina Reza’s 1994 play ‘Art‘, three male friends spend much time discussing the question, ‘What is art?’ The reason is that one of the characters, Serge, has bought a work from a popular contemporary artist that is more or less just a white canvas. More or less, because there is some debate as to whether […]
Posted on: June 7, 2016 by Emily Gould
It was interesting to see that the judgment in the important ‘Old Flo’ case on which we reported in July 2015 has now been upheld by the Court of Appeal. You might recall the story. Old Flo – or Draped Seated Woman, to give Henry Moore’s 1,500 kg bronze figure her proper title – was […]
Posted on: October 22, 2015 by Janet Ulph
A dispute over a highly attractive marble statue sparked headlines in the national press in early September 2015. It had been seized by Customs officers and kept in the British Museum for safekeeping during the legal proceedings. The District Judge, John Zani, had examined the statue there before coming to a decision that it had been […]
Posted on: August 12, 2015 by Alexander Herman
The famous Sekhemka statue is in the news again. This is the Egyptian Old Kingdom sculpture thought to represent a court official that had once been in the possession of Northampton Borough Council and displayed at the Northampton Museum. The statue sold at auction last year for £15.76 million, but not before garnering controversy on a number […]
Posted on: July 9, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Judgment was handed down yesterday in an important case involving a Henry Moore sculpture (Draped Seated Woman) lovingly known as ‘Old Flo’. The sculpture, bought from the artist by London County Council in 1962 to be publicly displayed in the city’s East End, has been at the centre of a dispute between two London boroughs: […]