A Math Prof's Digital Method For Flagging Suspect Art "Until now, [Dartmouth College mathematics department Chairman Daniel] Rockmore has only tested his program on Bruegel drawings, but he says there is no reason it could not be used for other artists. While it can identify suspicious works, it cannot definitively prove that they are fake." NPR 02/09/10

When Real-Life Details Matter In An Artist's Work "All artists who focus on wildlife, historical and nautical scenes are confronted on a regular basis by people who are knowledgeable in these fields" and who are "looking for mistakes. ... How to research is not taught in studio art classes, but it is a skill artists in the accuracy trade need to acquire." Wall Street Journal 02/09/10

Downturn In College Art Faculty Jobs The College Art Association tracks a decline in jobs through the economic downturn. College Art Association 02/10

Questions About Ambitious Stonehenge Development "We question whether, in this landscape of scale and huge horizons and with a very robust end point that has stood for centuries and centuries, this is the right design approach?" The Guardian (UK) 02/07/10

Iran Tosses Out British Museum "Iran cut ties with the British Museum on Sunday in protest at repeated delays in the loan to Tehran of an ancient Persian treasure." Beirut Star (AFP) 02/07/10

What's Hard About Art? "Not the agony of painting but the far greater torture of writing about paintings, in order to attract people to see them. Art for art's sake? Forget it. What you need is artspeak for artspeak's sake." The Guardian (UK) 02/05/10

SFMoMA Raises $250 Million For New Wing "The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced Thursday that it had raised more than $250 million to expand the museum and double its endowment. The museum is building a new wing to show the collection of Gap founders Donald and Doris Fisher." The Wall Street Journal 02/05/10

Does This Mean Giacometti Is The Best? "The sale prompts many questions, not least: is Giacometti the most important artist of the modern era? Is he really better than Picasso? Comparisons between different artists are vexed and horribly subjective." The Telegraph (UK) 02/05/10

London's Foundry Gallery To Be Replaced By A Hotel "[T]he Foundry, an east London gallery and pub that for more than a decade has served as a focal point for the area's alternative art scene, is set to be demolished after the site's owners drew up plans for an 18-storey hotel and retail complex." But "a wall painted with one of the biggest Banksy murals in Britain" will be preserved. The Guardian (UK) 02/04/10

In Portrait Gallery's Past: Rat Stomping & A Murder-Suicide "According to the records, 34 rats were captured and killed between 1940 and 1946, with the staff's boots being the main weapon of choice. The events surrounding [a] 1909 murder-suicide, in which a man shot his wife then himself in one of the galleries, minutes after they had been seen looking at portraits together, are recorded in detail." BBC 02/04/10

Giacometti Bronze Becomes Most Expensive Artwork Ever Sold At Auction Walking Man I "sold for £65 million ($104.3 million) at Sotheby's, setting a record price for a work of art at auction and signaling a potential resurgence in the art market." Wall Street Journal 02/03/10

Great Failures In Modern Architecture "Buildings sometimes fail because of incompetence or shoddy workmanship, but the examples that follow failed for a different reason: architectural ambition." A Hall of Shame of iconic buildings with major problems in structure (Fallingwater, MIT's Stata Center), mechanical systems (Pompidou Center), or the translation of ideology into practice (Le Corbusier's idea of "the Radiant City"). Slate 02/03/10 (slideshow)

How Our Obsession With Thinness Harms Life Drawing "It's a challenge that's been around since the aerobicized decades of the '80s and '90s.... The goal, teachers say, is for students to learn how to draw different bodies, learn a sense of proportion, and get a perspective on reality. You can't get that from drawing the same kind of body" -- that is, a young, slender body -- "all the time." Philadelphia Inquirer 02/03/10

Picasso Portrait Goes For £8.1 Million At Auction "Tete de Femme (Jacqueline), a 1963 portrait of the artist's second wife, had not been seen in public since 1967. A spokeswoman for Christie's auction house said the painting had been expected to fetch between £3m and £4m." BBC 02/03/10

Pearl Paint Closes In San Francisco, Mirroring Industry "The troubled 77-year-old art supplies chain is closing the 969 Market St. store, which has been open since the mid-1990s, along with seven other stores across the country," reflecting the fact that, as one analyst says, "the art supplies industry has not done particularly well in recent years." San Francisco Chronicle 02/03/10

Met Museum Operating Deficit Grew To $8.4M In '08-'09 "At least 250 employees," or 14 percent of the staff, "were fired or took buyouts as the museum reported that its investments declined by more than $600 million, or 24 percent," according to the museum's 2008-09 annual report. "Designated gifts by donors plunged by 46 percent to $43.1 million, according to the report." Bloomberg 02/03/10

MASS MoCA-Buchel Verdict Overturned "A federal appeals court has decided that a lower court erred in 2007 when it ruled in favor of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in a bitter dispute between the museum and the artist Christoph Büchel over an immense, unfinished installation." New York Times 01/29/10

A Bunker Too Far? England Gives Landmark Status To Concrete Bomb Shelters "Some of the most sinister historic monuments in Britain, a set of hardened concrete bunkers built to shelter American nuclear bombers, are to be protected and preserved." Government planners and the English Heritage agency have decided "that the site is one of the best preserved Cold War landscapes in Britain." The Guardian (UK) 01/28/10

The Met's Thomas Campbell Looks Back On His First Year "With hindsight, Mr. Campbell now sees a 'silver lining' to the turbulence of his inaugural year. He acknowledged, when asked, that the crisis had given him the opportunity to appoint a hand-picked team much sooner and less controversially than would have otherwise been possible." Wall Street Journal 02/02/10

Analyzing The Smithsonian's New Salinger Portrait "[I]t was jarring to read obituaries of the 91-year-old Salinger last week accompanied by pictures of him in what appeared to be his early 20s. A portrait from a 1961 Time magazine cover reveals a slightly different Salinger: grayer, morose, perhaps beaten. The National Portrait Gallery unveiled the work by Robert Vickrey today." Washington City Paper 02/01/10

Billionaire Michael Dell Buys Magnum Photos Print Archive "While no price was disclosed, the collection has been insured for more than $100 million" and includes about 185,000 prints. MSD Capital LP, Dell's investment firm, "will lend the photos for five years to the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin." Bloomberg 02/02/10

Politicians Like CultureLabel's One-Stop Museum Shopping "Dubbed an 'Amazon for the arts' by its creators, the Web aggregator is satisfying consumer appetite for art-related gifts, and boosting museum revenue at a time when subsidies are heading lower." Bloomberg 02/02/10

Richard Wright: Friendship With Turner Judge Irrelevant "The 49-year-old painter from Glasgow said there was nothing 'dubious' about his relationship with Charles Esche, one of the four [Turner Prize] judges, and that there was no way he could have decided the result. Last week, critics claimed the pair's friendship undermined the integrity of the £25,000 prize." The Sunday Times (UK) 01/31/10

Edmonton Gets A New Museum "The $88-million gallery was redesigned by Los Angeles architect Randall Stout. It has double the exhibition space of the former gallery." CBC 02/01/10

The New Art Buyers "An influx of collectors from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan are branching out to seek artists from the 20th century Western canon, such as Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin and Edgar Degas." The Wall Street Journal 01/30/10