– "The Scream" Comes to Sotheby's: One of four versions of Edvard Munch's iconic painting — and the only one still in private hands — will be sold at Sotheby's May sale of Impressionist and modern works. As one of the most iconic images of all time, you can expect the ghoulish work to fetch a pretty penny: The 1895 pastel-and-board composition carries a value of at least $80 million, according to the auction house. [Bloomberg]
– Antonio Banderas IS Pablo Picasso: The Spanish actor has been cast as the Cubist in Carlos Saura's upcoming biopic "33 Dias," which chronicles the painter's emotional struggle while working on his anti-war masterpiece "Guernica." "He is a character that followed me for a long time, but I had always rejected it," said Banderas, who, like Picasso, is from the southern town of Malaga. "I was born four blocks away from here he was born. It has always fascinated me." [Just Jared, El Pais]
– Palin's Hometown Inflamed by Vagina Art: Residents of Sarah Palin's hometown are up in arms over an oblong public sculpture at the local high school that some claim resembles the female genitalia. The work, which was created in conjunction with the state's Percent For Art program, has now been covered with a tarp. [LAT]
– Senator Proposes Selling Art for Tuition: A Washington state senator has proposed selling off the state's art collection to raise funds for low-income students to attend college. The senator, Karen Keiser, has justified herself by claiming that many of the state art commission's 4,000 pieces are never seen by the public, and therefore should be viewed as "an asset to be used." [My Northwest]
– Folk Art Society Defends the "Oskars": Hollywood's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — best known for giving out the annual Academy Awards — is demanding that Poland's Association of Folk Artists stop giving out its annual awards, called the "People's Oskar," because the name infringes on the Academy's "verbal trademark" of the word Oscar. [Boston Globe]
– Claes Oldenburg Returns to New York: An exhibition of the Pop sculptor's work from the 1960s, currently on view in Vienna, will travel to Cologne, Germany, and Bilbao, before coming back to the States to the Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. According to Oldenburg, his famous food sculptures are autobiographical: "If I ate BLT's, which I did, I would sooner or later want to create them," he said. [WSJ]
– How Do You Lose Art Longer Than a Pickup Truck?: That's the question that the New York Times asks as it chronicles the tale of incompetence that led the University of California, Berkeley to misplace and then mistakenly sell a 22-foot-long carved panel by celebrated African-American sculptor Sargent Johnson to the Huntington Library for $150 plus tax. [NYT]
– Is There Frank Gehry Backlash?: The architect thinks so. He told the Guardian the disdain is not only directed at him, but also at "everyone who has done buildings that have movement and feeling." (He pointed to t-shirts that read "Fuck Frank Gehry" as evidence, though he bought some of those himself.) Artists like Olafur Eliasson and Anish Kapoor, Gehry says, are now filling the void left by "bland" architects. [Guardian]
– Fine Art Ticket to Ride: As part of an effort to bring art to unlikely places, the Aspen Art Museum has released ski-lift tickets that feature original art by painter Mark Grotjahn. The artist, who grew up skiing in California's Squaw Valley, said getting his art on 30,000 lift tickets "could be one of the pinnacles of my career." (No pun intended, we're sure.) [WSJ]
– A New Generation of African-American Museums: Large museum projects dedicated to African-American history are in the works across the country, from Jackson to Atlanta to Charleston to Washington, D.C. "The folks who actually participated in the civil rights movement are getting to an age where legacy is important," said the director of Smithsonian's African American museum. [NYT]
– "AbFab" Star to Cut Fourth Plinth Ribbon: Elmgreen & Dragset's monumental statue of a boy on a rocking horse for the Fourth Plinth in London's Trafalgar Square will be unveiled Thursday by British actress Joanna Lumley, who played Patsy Stone on the BBC's booze-soaked sitcom "Absolutely Fabulous." She previously lent her voice to one of the joke-art team's sculpture-protagonists in their theater production "Drama Queens." [Artlyst]
– Marcel Duchamp Prize Shortlist Released: Bertrand Lamarche, Franck Scurti, Valérie Favre, and the duo Dewar & Gicquel are in the running for France's most prestigious art prize. The winner will be awarded during FIAC 2012. [Journal des Arts]
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