A global search for the full-length version of Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult horror classic “The Wicker Man” has turned up a print of the cut he made with the American distributor Abraxas.

It was discovered by StudioCanal, which will restore and re-release a fresh edition of the film in the UK on September 27. A DVD and Blu-ray release will follow on October 14 to celebrate the 40th anniversary, reports Screen Daily.

“We decided to check the Harvard archives in the US to see if they had anything,” the movie’s Facebook page reported. “We were very excited to hear that they did have a print, which they measured and informed us was 91½ minutes long! The print came into their collection in the ’90s from a private collector and had been in cold storage since 2004.”

The 83-year-old British director announced the news on a Facebook video yesterday. “This version will — optimistically — be known as the Final Cut,” he said with a faint smile.

It may be “final,” but it will almost certainly not be definitive. Hardy’s original cut (“the long version”) was 99 minutes long, though he has sometimes (and possibly erroneously) referred to the running time as 102 or 103 minutes. An 87-minute cut (“the short version”) was released in the UK as a B-feature on the same program as Nicolas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now.”

As a supernatural double bill, this has never been surpassed in English-language cinema — notwithstanding that “The Wicker Man”’s Celtic pagan rituals (and concomitant sexual exploitation) are entirely man-made. I wrote at length about the film here. It almost certainly influenced the nightmarish witch coven sequence of Ben Wheatley’s “Kill List” (2011), as Michael Reeves’s Civil War horror film “Witchfinder General” (1968, aka “The Conqueror Worm”) appears to have influenced Wheatley’s current “A Field in England.”

Since Hardy in his YouTube announcement is referring to the 95-minute Abraxas Cut (known as the “middle version” and sometimes described as 96 minutes long), “Wicker Man” diehards hoping to see the 99-minute cut will still feel short-changed. The middle version was issued to acclaim in the US in January 1979. The long version was available on VHS from Media Home Entertainment and later Magnum in the US in the 1980s and early ’90s, and can still occasionally be found on eBay.

The restoration holds promise, however, and a fresh generation of viewers is likely to be intrigued by the movie’s eeriness and perhaps more troubled than titillated by its intimations of depravity — and the way a Hebridean community’s conspiracy based on folkloric traditions elicits the paranoia of the mainland policeman (Edward Woodward) who has shown up to investigate a girl’s disappearance. Is the whole thing his fantasy — the return of the repressed?

No mention is made in current reports of the supposedly extant one-inch NTSC video copy of the long version that the UK producers had sent Roger Corman in 1973. Corman, who had expressed interest in distributing the film to the US drive-in market via his New World company, proposed 13 minutes worth of cuts to its owners, resulting in the short UK version; his print had disappeared by 2001.

The history of “The Wicker Man”’s three versions and how they differ can be read at Steve Phillips’s website, which features good stills reproductions. An urban rumor has it that 386 cans of Hardy’s raw location footage ended up as landfill in the building of the M3 motorway in southern England. The British film industry is not believed to be sponsoring an archaeological dig for them.   

The Toronto International Film Festival, an annual launching pad of major studio Oscars bait and the “official” start of awards season (if you’re into months of Hollywood machers patting themselves on the back) has announced the initial lineup of films screening at the event, which runs from September 5 through 15. “The Fifth Estate,” a timely film about Julian Assange, opens the party, and “Life of Crime,” an Elmore Leonard adaptation, closes the festivities.

The Assange flick, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the white-haired media scoundrel behind WikiLeaks, has already been denounced by its subjects. Director Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls”) claims people involved with WikiLeaks have not seen the film and are judging its content based on an old script, but the organization claims to have read the filming script and still doesn’t approve (WikiLeaks also denounced “We Steal Secrets,” a documentary that presented a damning portrait of Assange). Either way, considering Assange’s reported involvement in the asylum of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the film could not be coming out at a better time, and the producers are surely hoping they can use the traction gained at the festival to ride their way to awards season glory.

The Audience Award, the festival’s equivalent to Best Film, is the most coveted prize in Toronto, and films that take home this award are guaranteed nominations for other awards — almost. For every “Silver Linings Playbook” or “Slumdog Millionaire,” both previous recipients of the honor, there is an “Eastern Promises,” David Cronenberg’s underworld tale that left Toronto with high hopes only to receive scant notice when it came time for major awards recognition. The Audience Award is typically handed over to a film with a feel-good ending, something that can appeal to a wide audience. We suspect “The Fifth Estate” is not that, so its filmmakers will have to hope that people will praise its “seriousness” and “contemporary relevance.”

Other films competing for Oscar buzz include “August: Osage County,” starring Meryl Streep and Julie Roberts; Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave,” starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, and Brad Pitt; and Jason Reitman’s “Labor Day,” starring Kate Winslet.

In the shadow of the awards-season hype machine, there are a few films worth singling out: Kelly Reichardt’s eco-terrorist drama “Night Moves,” starring Jesse Eisenberg; animated “Attila Marcel,” from French director Sylvain Chomet; Sebastián Lelio’s “Gloria,” well received at the Berlinale earlier this year; Jonathan Glazer’s sci-fi thriller “Under the Skin,” starring Scarlett Johansson; and Bertrand Tavernier’s “Quai d'Orsay.” The festival will also be featuring some of the highlights from this year’s Cannes Film Festival, including controversial “Blue is the Warmest Color,” and Jim Jarmusch’s well-received vampire drama “Only Lovers Left Alive.”

In addition to the many narrative features screening at the festival, Toronto shows a wide variety of experimental films under its Wavelengths sidebar. These films are unfortunately pushed aside, but the lineup, which will soon be announced, is always worth paying attention to.

While Toronto doesn’t have the prestige of Cannes, or the film-lover excitement of Locarno or Berlinale, it very often determines which films will be discussed to death in America this fall. So if you want to impress your friends and family and pretend like you know which Hollywood movies will walk away with golden statuettes, keep your eyes locked on Toronto.

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Last week, Ragnar Kjartansson took a short break from art stardom to camp out and throw a couple of foam parties at MoMA PS1’s EXPO Colony. The Colony, part of PS1’s current environmentally themed, VW-sponsored mega exhibition “EXPO 1,” was designed by Argentinean architecture firm a77 in the museum’s courtyard and is composed of several silver streamline trailers, tents, picnic tables, and turquoise outdoor shower stalls. Seven groups of artists will live and create there for the duration of “EXPO 1.” The outdoor living space, which is meant to propose an alternative for housing and public space while also emphasizing the artistic process rather than presenting a specific product, is an ideal venue for Kjartansson’s always-collaborative performance-based practice.

For his week-long stay, Kjartansson, along with Hrafnhildur Arnardottir and Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir of Reykjavik art space Kling & Bang, invited ten other artists from the Reykjavik scene to live and create in the upscale hippie commune. The itinerant tenants took full advantage of the venue, creating matching tie-dye mini-dresses and throwing two foam party/folk concert events titled “Civilization: Monumental Materialism” that were inspired by art historian Kenneth Clark’s book “Civilisation.”

ARTINFO stopped by the colony during the middle of the Icelander's stay to chat with Kjartansson about the “S.S. Hangover,” Jay Z’s 6-hour Pace performance, and Alexander Calder’s dirty little secret.

So what exactly are you doing at EXPO Colony? Is there a plan?

No. When I was doing “A lot of Sorrow” with The National here in May, working with the curator Jenny Schlenzka, she was organizing the Colony for the “EXPO 1” show. She asked me and my girlfriend Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir and Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir A.K.A Shoplifter if we knew some artists who would live in the colony. So we contacted our friends from the Reykjavik art scene and they were all like, “Yeah it’s a good idea for us to have a holiday in New York, camping in Queens.”

Ragnar's tent and hammock at the Expo Colony / Photo by Micah Schmidt

So everyone is just hanging out?

No, constantly making foam and discussing poetry.

Is it a pseudo-performance?

I see it more as a pseudo-Cancun holiday.

Without the “Girls Gone Wild?”

They go wild here actually.

So who are some of the other artists from Reykjavik who are here?

Magnús Sigurðarson. He’s like one of my main mentors in art. He does this beautiful work that has a lot to do with the idea of the pathetic and the mediocre. Erling Klingenberg, Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir, Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir, and Anna Hrund Másdóttir. They all are fantastic artists and they run the lungs of the Reykjavik art life, which is this artist-run space called Kling & Bang. The scene in Reykjavik is very collaborative. Also connected to Kling & Bang are artists Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir and Kolbeinn Hugi Höskuldsson who both are hilarious mega-talents. Then there is also Ragnar Helgi Ólafson who is a writer and an artist, constantly saying something profound, Björk Guðnadóttir and my frequent collaborator Kría Brekkan with her boyfriend Ryan Erskine. Then Shoplifter is keeping us all safe tangled up in tie-dye. One big happy mess.

Gardens at the Expo Colony / Photos by Micah Schmidt

Do you get to spend a lot of time in Reykjavik? It seems like you are constantly traveling.

Constantly. But, I really like to live in Reykjavik. The good thing about it is it’s such a strong, tight knit scene so everything is kind of easy to do.

So you maintain your studio there?

Yeah, my studio is just in my kitchen in my home in Reykjavik. When you get those emails that say “studio Ragnar Kjartansson” that’s just me in my kitchen.

Tell me more about the project you just did with The National at MoMA PS1. What was that like?

It was fantastic. It was this idea of making music sculptural. I wanted to see a concert, like a regular rock concert, become sculptural. It was an idea for many years in the back of my head. And then I got obsessed by “Sorrow.” All last year I was constantly listening to that song. And then one day I was doing the dishes and then “ah!” I just realized that this song “Sorrow” and that idea would be the thing. But then the amazing thing was I just wrote an email to The National and they were just like, “Yep.”

Did you hear about this thing Jay Z did last week at Pace Gallery where he rapped the song “Picasso Baby” for six hours? A lot of people compared it to “A Lot of Sorrow.”

I was so pleased about that. Yeah, Jay Z is ripping me off. You can’t imagine how proud I am.

What was Venice like for you this year?

It was really like a dream come true. The musicians we got are so determined, good, fantastic people, and they are now, as we are talking, playing in Venice.

Wow. They are there for the duration of the show?

I was just with them last week and they were super tired and very tanned. The way they are playing the music now after all this constant repetition is just like breathing or standing up against a wall. Effortless, bored and mundane. The sounds become very interesting.

Are you going to go back and give them a pep talk every so often?

I have to. It’s kind of like an asshole thing to do to ask people to do these kinds of works, so I feel kind of guilty.

And you just did this monument that is part of a series of outdoor interventions in Munich called “A Space Called Public / Hoffentlich Öffentlich,” that read “All he wanted to do was to masturbate and eat chocolate.”

It was a monument in Munich. Such a nice monument in German. German is a perfect language for it because the monument is a marble memorial, made like The Monument to the Unknown Soldier, with a wreath and then the text says “All he wanted to do was masturbate and eat chocolate truffles.” But in German it’s “Alles was er wollte, war zu onanieren und Pralinen zu essen.” It sounds so much more serious. If it was in English it would be kind of ha ha funny, but in German it seems much more profound.

People aren’t sure if it is serious or a joke?

It’s serious because it is a memorial for somebody who didn’t do any harm.

Do you think of it as an anti-monument?

No, I think of it as a monument. I love monuments. Monuments are about feelings. Usually about the same ones; pride, patriotism, loss etc. There are so many feelings left to project in monuments.

The monument reminded me of “The End” in Venice, which seemed to be questioning the persona of the painter and the historical primacy of the male nude. This new monument also seems to be about questioning conventions of art history. I feel like you are turning these conventions on their heads and thinking about them in a humorous way.

For me it’s not deliberate. It’s not me being a deliberate thinker about turning things around. It’s just I’m a sucker for art history and for the lives of artists. Like Alexander Calder, he masturbated over all his sculptures. I just heard that somewhere. And now always when I see a Calder, I’m just like “Wow.” [EDITOR'S NOTE: ARTINFO checked with the Calder Foundation and although they were amused by the commentary, they found no evidence in the veracity of the statement] 

Alexander Calder?

Yeah. It’s so much more fun to look at Calder now.

I did not know that. You’re blowing my mind.

An artist is always trying to tell some truth, but then there are all these little semi-truths in their lives that skew the truth.

You’re interested in the artist’s persona and the narratives that are constructed around artists?

The whole narrative of deciding to do art. These people are like light beacons, but it’s also the ultimate egoism to say, “This matters, what I make.”

And at the same time they are total weirdos who masturbate on their sculptures.

I mean, everybody masturbates. Why not masturbate on a sculpture? It’s not a weirdo thing to do if you think about it. I think very few artists are weirdos actually.

You were a musician before you got into art. Was there a moment when you decided to become an artist? How did you make that decision?

I never really made it. It just happened. Slowly I started mixing the music into the art. Because I always felt like I was faking it when I was doing music. Like, writing a song, posing on stage. I was always pretending to be a musician. I always also have this feeling with being an artist. But it’s sort of easier to accept that you’re pretending to be an artist. A musician needs so much authenticity. 

You’ve gotten so famous. What has that been like for you?

More sex. More cocaine!

You’re planning another theater-based piece soon right?

I’m planning this piece called “Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen” or “The Explosive Sonics of Divinity” with Kjartan Sveinsson, who did the music for the S.S. Hangover. And also my frequent collaborator Davíð Þór Jónsson.

He did “The End” with you?

He did “The End,” “God,” “The Visitors” and many more. And Davíð is going to be the conductor and Kjartan is composing the music. It’s going to be theater sets and music and no actors or anything. There are going to be four sets, four tableaus. So painting, painting, painting.

How long will it be?

Probably one hour. I kind of like this idea that it is theater solitude. You just sit there in solitude for one hour.

Will that go over and over or is there a schedule?

It’s a schedule. It is on the program. Just a regular one-hour show. It’s in the Volksbühne in Berlin. It’s the most politically charged theater. They do these awesome, crazy political productions. It’s the most hardcore theater. And then there is the tension of creating a work  about beauty in the heart of hardcore in Berlin.  I think it’s going to be a big flop.

What are your favorite places to go in New York?

All of the art places. Always when I come to New York I try to educate myself. Go to the New Museum, MoMA,  PS1, go to galleries. It’s always a lot of work.

A museum marathon?

I try to catch up with the trends in the art world, man.

To see images of Ragnar Kjartansson's project at MoMA PS1, click on the slideshow.

To see Ragnar Kjartansson perform Christian country covers at an after-hours foam party at MoMA PS1's "Expo Colony," click on the video below:

– New "Swimming Cities" Expedition in Oregon: Street artist Swoon made waves with her "Swimming Cities" projects of years past, flotillas of ramshackle sculptural rafts that floated down the Hudson or across the lagoon in Venice, crewed by a motley team of free-spirited art types. Now, her friend Tod Seelie is planning to kick off a new installment of the rafting expedition in Oregon this August — though Swoon herself will apparently not be onboard. "[T]here’s a plan to do some rafts on the Willamette near Portland in mid-August," Seelie posted on his blog. "It’s mostly a different group but has a few of the original Swimming Cities crew, Swoon won’t be there as part for this. It will be a smaller affair but should have some fun shows and interactive events. Keep an eye on this blog or suckapants.com for more info. Thanks!’" [Wired, TodSeelie.com]

– Shepard Fairey’s Public Art Campaign: Shepard Fairey has been recruited by the nonprofit L.A. Fund for Public Education to create the third installment of its #ArtsMatter campaign by covering Los Angeles’s buses and billboards in his signature designs. Fairey’s campaign centers on the phrase "Create Your Future" and was inspired by responses from L.A. students to the question, "What does the world look like when you take away the things that limit you?" Previous #ArtsMatter campaigns have been designed by Barbara Kruger and John Baldessari. [Daily News]

– Reina Sofia Deploys Restoration Robot: Madrid's Reina Sofia Museum is using a giant robotic camera in its basement restoration lab to scan artworks for scratches, cracks, subsurface preparatory drawings, and traces of previous restorations, taking hundreds of close-up ultraviolet and infrared photos. Its current object of inquiry is Joan Miro's "Women, Bird in the Night" (1974). "With this Miro work we have already seen a series of touch-ups and stains that were completely hidden," said Humberto Duran, the designer of the robot, which was first put to use on Pablo Picasso's "Guernica," thus earning it the nickname "Pablito." [AFP]

– MCA Plaza Transformed Into Photo Studio: Amanda Ross-Ho’s new exhibition has turned the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago’s plaza into an open-air photo studio replete with with larger-than-life still-life models that visitors are invited to engage with and photograph. [ArtDaily]

– Art World Archive: The massive, unlabeled photo archive of the recently retired "Soho Photographer," D. James Dee, will be donated to non-profit digital archive ARTstor, which will work with museum and gallery officials, scholars, and librarians to try to caption the photographs. [NYT]

– Huge Market for Miniature Books: The Telegraph cracks open the growing market for miniature books, which can fetch as much as £3 million. [Telegraph]

– The Saint Louis Art Museum has hired Jason T. Busch, current chief curator and curator of decorative arts and design at the Carnegie Museum of Art, to be its new deputy director, a job he'll start in October. [Press Release]

– Two men have been indicted for growing marijuana on the grounds of the Frontier Culture Museum in Virginia. [NBC29]

– After having her debit card stolen, British art teacher Serena O'Connor handed the local authorities a watercolor portrait she painted of the suspect. [Independent]

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Check our blog IN THE AIR for breaking news throughout the day.

A member of Russian female punk group Pussy Riot lost her appeal for parole on Wednesday after nearly a year in prison for performing a protest song against President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral.

Maria Alyokhina’s appeal via video link against a previous decision to deny her early release from a two-year jail sentence was rejected by a court in the city of Perm, where she is serving her sentence, about 940 miles east of Moscow.

Alyokhina, 25, and two other Pussy Riot members were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred in August for bursting into the Russian Orthodox cathedral and belting out a "punk prayer" asking the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin.

Madonna, Paul McCartney and Adele were among more than 100 musicians to sign a letter calling for their release that was published by Amnesty International on Tuesday.

The rights watchdog said Wednesday's ruling was "a further confirmation that the Russian authorities are uncompromising in their suppression of freedom of expression".

The case is seen as part of a wider crackdown on protests since Putin returned to the Kremlin for a third term in 2012.

Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, are due for release in March. Both mothers of five-year-olds were denied pleas for a deferred sentence until their children are older.

A third member of the feminist group, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was freed last October when a judge suspended her sentence on appeal.

Characteristically breezy but etched with anguish, Woody Allen’s new tragicomedy “Blue Jasmine” focuses on a fallen Manhattan socialite who, uprooted from her caste and sent into working class purgatory in San Francisco, is unequipped to adjust to a world of cramped apartments and working stiffs.

Having barely escaped the bonfire of the vanities, soignée widow Jasmine (early Oscar contender Cate Blanchett), as self-deluded as she is self-entitled, has landed in the frying pan of poverty. Her hubristic attempt to become the trophy wife of a Marin County political wannabe (smoothly played by Peter Sarsgaard) likens her to “The House of Mirth”’s Lily Bart; her journey into incipient madness suggests Blanche DuBois.

Not merely a character study, “Blue Jasmine” is a rueful commentary on the unbridgeable class divide in America, and Allen’s most trenchant film since “Match Point.” Although two intentionally bland middle-class characters show up: the dentist (Michael Stuhlberg) who hires Jasmine as a receptionist and farcically hits on her, and the married audio engineer (Louis C.K.) who has a fling with her checkout-clerk sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), Allen emphasizes the polarities between blue-collar struggle and new-moneyed sloth.

There’s no question where his sympathies lies. If he pokes fun at the guidos Ginger usually goes for, he also acknowledges their sincerity and work ethic. He is less sparing of the idle rich represented by Jasmine, whose expertise is in shopping and whose husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin), dead at the start of the film, was a Ponzi Scheme operator of Madoffian proportions.

Allen remains a perceptive delineator of doomed neurotic women. In the spirit of both Dostoevsky and Hitchcock, he has had a few murdered — Dolores in “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” Lillian in “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” Nola in “Match Point.” But his disintegrating women have been more resonant: Eve in “Interiors,” Dorrie in “Stardust Memories,” Maria Elena in “Vicky Christina Barcelona.”

A member of this latter group, Jasmine has made fatal choices. Allen’s deft integration of her backstory reveals how Hal plucked her out of college before she finished her anthropology degree and lavished her with gifts as his ill-gotten wealth grew.

Flashbacks depicting their opulent lifestyle show how he also routinely cheated on her with her friends, their trainer (“You’ll do fine,” he purrs, setting up a tryst), a lawyer, and a teenage au pair. The accent is not on his philandering and embezzling but on Jasmine’s willful blinkeredness and her haute arrogance — their Fifth Avenue apartment and Hamptons spread are her personal Tuileries and Versailles.

Along the way, Hal defrauds Ginger and her naïve husband, Augie (a sympathetic Andrew Dice Clay), out of the  $200,000 he intended to invest in a contracting business. As a result, Ginger’s marriage has also ended, though she’s since fallen in love with Chili, whose hair-trigger temper masks a sensitive side.

Whereas Ginger’s own capacity for self-delusion, exemplified by her affair with the audio guy, is tempered by an ability to get back to reality, Jasmine can only retreat to the pathetic nostalgie of “Blue Moon,” her and Hal’s love song. Like Blanche, her only hope is the kindness of strangers, but where are they?

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The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office have officially deemed a group of artworks — supplied by Long Island dealer Glafira Rosales and sold by the now defunct Knoedler Gallery to various clients — as fakes. Rosales, who was arrested in May and charged with wire fraud and money laundering, is being held in a Manhattan jail without bail. Last week, prosecutors added to the charges, unsealing a seven-count indictment. In part, it read, “the painting Rosales sold were fake, that is not by the hand of the artists that she represented them to be; Rosales knew that the paintings were counterfeit and that the statements she made about their provenance were false.”

Rosales’s attorney, Anastasios Sarikas, declined comment. She was arraigned on July 19 and pleaded not guilty to the charges. The next scheduled conference is on October 1.

A key question in the Knoedler affair is now who gets to determine that the works in question are, indeed, fake. And, BLOUIN ARTINFO has learned that in the case of one of the defendants at least, challenging this determination is an emerging strategy.

How has the case about the fakes been made so far? Roughly half-a-dozen multimillion-dollar lawsuits have been filed against parties including Rosales, Knoedler, and its former president Ann Freedman, who handled the sales of most of the works in question. The lawsuits all note that (using the words of the FBI indictment), “the purported Swiss client on whose behalf [Rosales] purported to sell most of the paintings to the Manhattan galleries never existed.” Many of the plaintiffs further relied on scientific analysis carried out by highly esteemed forensic conservator James Martin, whose Williamstown, Mass.-business Orion Analytical, “investigates the structure and chemical composition of materials comprising cultural property,” according to the company’s website.

In all of the related cases, albeit with some variation on each work, Martin found inconsistencies between the supposed dates the paintings were created and the materials used to create them. For instance, in examining a purported untitled 1950 Jackson Pollock painting that a collector paid $17 million for, Orion’s report noted that “analysis of materials used to create [the work]… revealed physical evidence that certain materials are inconsistent with and evidently irreconcilable with the claimed attributes that Jackson Pollock painted in 1950 — or any other date.” The case was settled on confidential terms late last year.

Another $25-million lawsuit over an allegedly fake Rothko, brought by former Gucci executive Domenico de Sole, his wife Eleanor, and their daughter Laura, included a forensic report from Orion in which Martin wrote: “In spite of the signature ‘MARK ROTHKO,’ and date ‘1956,’ materials and techniques used to create the Painting are inconsistent and irreconcilable with the claim that Untitled was painted by Mark Rothko…in 1956 or any other date.”

A more recent suit was brought last month by collector John Howard over a $3.5-million work purportedly by Willem de Kooning, purchased in 2007. The painting was found to contain “one or more materials that are not found in works of art created at the time that Knoedler and Freedman represented that the work was created…contains materials that are found in other forgeries sold by Knoedler…and contains one or more materials that were not commercially available at the time that Knoedler and Freedman represented the work was created.” 

For her part, Freedman has frequently pointed out that paint producers often gave paints to artists to experiment with before they were commercially available. But many observers are skeptical that this could be the case with so many paintings. 

Martin declined to comment on whether he has conducted scientific analysis of any of the works on behalf of the FBI or the U.S. Attorney’s office, citing “confidential aspects of the lawsuits [and] criminal investigations.” But it’s hard to imagine he has not weighed in. According to the Orion website, Martin “has assisted the Federal Bureau of Investigation since 1994, and taught paint analysis and infrared spectroscopy at the FBI Counter-terrorism and Forensic Science Research Unit between 2002 and 2008.”

(When asked about their methods of determining fakes, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan said that it doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations. The FBI press office had not returned a request for comment at press time.) 

In what is likely to surprise many art world experts, the attorney for Ann Freedman plans to challenge Orion’s findings in court. “Our experts are presently analyzing the works, but one thing is already clear: Orion’s expert reports are not worth the paper they’re written on. Because of their fundamental flaws, no Orion report should be admitted into evidence in any of the Knoedler cases,” Nicholas Gravante Jr., of Boies, Schiller & Flexner wrote in an emailed statement. He declined, however, to identify which experts he and Freedman have enlisted to examine the works.

Further, says Gravante, “If the works are proven to be forgeries, Ann Freedman is a victim. She believed in these works, obtained affirmations of their authenticity from the foremost experts in the world, purchased three of the works for her private art collection, and expended significant resources researching them.”

The financially strapped city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania got a bit of relief last week (July 15–21), as thousands of antiques, rare artifacts, and items relating to the Old West were put on the auction block, with the proceeds earmarked to help pay down the city’s debt. New York-based auction house Guernsey’s managed the auction in partnership with online bidding platform The Finest, based in Omaha, Nebraska. “A significant portion of the auction sold to online bidders,” according to Guernsey’s president Arlan Ettinger. “We had record-breaking attendance online.”

Pair Black Feet Beaded Hide Chaps & Jacket / Courtesy Guernsey's

The collection was assembled by Stephen Reed, a former Harrisburg mayor who assembled the objects over the course of his 28-year term. However, his hopes of building a historical museum of the American West were never realized. Nearly all the artifacts were stored in warehouses until the city decided to liquidate them and use the money to help improve its financial situation.

Advertising Board for Colt Revolvers / Courtesy Guernsey's

Items in the sale were offered with no reserve. Among the highlights were possessions from legendary gunfighter and dentist of the Old West, Doc Holliday. His frock coat fetched $55,000, while his pistol in a case sold for $50,000, and his dental chair went for $40,000, all to online bidders. Also a top seller was Allan Pinkerton’s detective badge, which sold for $37,500 and a signed letter from W.H. Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, which sold for $32,500. 

Jessie James The Missouri Outlaw Poster / Courtesy Guernsey's

To see highlights from the Harrisburg auction, click on the slideshow.

Mick Jagger is definitely not fading away as he hits the grand old age of 70 on Friday.

Known for his big lips and swivelling hips, The Rolling Stones frontman has achieved a great deal over seven decades.

Not only is he a multi-millionaire from his hit records and sell-out tours, he's won two Grammys, one Golden Globe and has even been knighted by Prince Charles.

Born Michael Philip Jagger, Mick was the son of a teacher, Basil, and a hairdresser, Eva, in Dartford, Kent in 1943. He went on to study business at the London School of Economics.

He's been married twice, once to Bianca Perez Marcias, and the second time to Jerry Hall. In total he has seven children by four mothers and to date has four grandchildren.

Despite saying several times as a young man he'd never be playing when he was older, Jagger continues to tour. His latest “50 Years and Counting” saw him and the rest of Stones play 30 sell-out gigs around the world, grossing over $100 million dollars.

The London Design Festival includes over 300 events and exhibitions staged by hundreds of design organizations from around the world.

Compared to its international counterparts, the Brazilian art scene remains small. But a just-released study on the Brazilian contemporary art market makes the case that it is a vibrant, expanding scene, and offers some data points to back this up.

Latitude, which was formed in 2007, defines itself as a platform for Brazilian art galleries abroad. The organization has just released its second annual study, conducted by researcher Dr. Ana Leticia Fialho, and focusing on data from a group of galleries; a modest 44 were analyzed this year, though that improves on the 32 galleries surveyed by Latitude last year. The results, the report claims, “prove that Brazil is a competitive player in the international art market with sales that do not show signs of slowing.” 

Among the headline findings: Within Brazil, 81 percent of the surveyed galleries reported growth in their business over the past year, with the average growth rate standing at a healthy 22.5 percent. The number of galleries in business is also on the rise: half of the galleries in Latitude were created since 2000, another 11 were created since 2010 — and the number continues to rise.

Export sales in 2012 were $27 million (the number is based on a separate government survey of 52 galleries), up more than $8 million from the previous year, and an increase of roughly 350 percent since 2007. Latitude's researchers said the main destinations of exports were the U.S., U.K., Switzerland, France, and Hong Kong. The largest growth was in exports to the U.K., where demand grew 200 percent by value between 2011 and 2012.

While the majority of sales reported by the Brazilian galleries were done in the gallery space, the study also underscores the importance of participation in Brazilian and international art fairs. The Sao Paulo-based SP-Arte was identified as the fair where Brazilian galleries sold the most work, followed by Art Basel Miami Beach, which was the top-selling international fair.

To coincide with the report, Latitude also launched a new website (www.latitudebrasil.org) as a resource for information about international and local projects featuring Brazilian participants. The project, which currently has 47 primary market galleries, located in five Brazilian states, is a partnership between Apex-Brasil (the country’s trade and investment promotion agency), and the Brazilian Association of ContemporaryArt (ABACT).