– Aussies Seize Obscene Justin Bieber Collage: Austrialian police recently seized works by 25-year-old artist Paul Yore depicting children with sexual objects from an exhibition titled "Like Mike" at St. Kilda's Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts in Melbourne. Among the works confiscated was a collage of Justin Bieber’s head on a child’s body with a dildo. Although the works were eventually returned, Yore may be charged with the production and possession of child pornography. Arts officials in the country have spoken out against the situation. "What you can find in the internet within a couple of clicks is so much more sexually explicit than what was within this artwork," said National Association for the Visual Arts executive director Tamara Winikoff. [The Australian]
– Michigan Senate Protects DIA: A committee in the Michigan State Senate has taken a major step to protect the art in the Detroit Institute of Arts’s collection with the passing of a bill this past Tuesday. The bill, which protects collections at all Michigan museums from being liquidated in the event of municipal bankruptcy, passed on a vote of 5-0. "I introduced the bill to protect the art institutes in Michigan," said Senate majority leader Randy Richardville when introducing the bill. "A piece of art might have a certain value in terms of dollars, but like a family heirloom, the value goes beyond dollars." [Detroit Free Press]
– Warhol Foundation Sued Over Gretzky Polaroids: Vancouver-based dealer Frans Wynans is suing the Andy Warhol Foundation for auctioning off a group of Polaroid photographs that Andy Warhol took of Wayne Gretzky in 1983 when Warhol was commissioned to make six paintings of the hockey great. Wynans's company paid Gretzky $50,000 and royalties to license the resulting works, plus $175,000 to Warhol for producing them, under the agreement that although the artist retained copyright, he needed permission from Gretzky to "reproduce, restrike, utilize or otherwise exploit the Art," while Wynans was given exclusive rights to selling the works. The dealer's complaint continues: "Being fully occupied with the marketing and selling the Paintings and Prints, Mr. Wynans gave no thought to the Photos, of whose continued existence after the Art was produced, he was unaware." [Courthouse News]
– Christie's Pulls Brazilian Art Over Forgery Fears: In May Christie's made a last-minute decision to pull 10 works of Brazilian art from its Latin American sales — including pieces by Ivan Serpa, Mira Schendel, Ubi Bava, and more — all of which had come from the collection of Rio de Janeiro-based collector Ralph Santos Oliveira. One week later Phillips also took a work by artist Alfredo Volpi out of its Latina American auction. "They seemed very suspicious, clearly strange," said Gustavo Rebello, a dealer based in Rio who collects Serpa's work. "They also seemed too flat and plain to be Serpa paintings, especially the smaller ones." [TAN]
– London Galleries' Lopsided Gender Audit: The East London Fawcett Group has announced the results of a study that zeroes in on gender inequality in the London art world, and, unsurprisingly, those results aren't great. Of 100 commerical galleries in London, only 5 percent represent an equivalent number of female and male artists, not one woman was included in the top 100 auction lots of 2012, and in data from 134 commerical galleries, only 31 percent of represented artists were women. "By raising awareness of the challenges specific to female artists, we hope that the campaign will widen the dialogue around this issue and that as a result the gender balance will continue to improve," said Gemma Rolls-Bentley, arts director at ELF. "The art audit's message is one of optimism." [Guardian]
– UK Museum of Year Announced: After undergoing a major renovation last year, North London’s William Morris Gallery has won the UK’s annual Museum of the Year award, which comes with a £100,000 Art Fund prize. The gallery, named for Victorian designer William Morris, is devoted to showing Morris's work. The judges of the competition stated that the museum "set the highest standards of curatorship, and reached out impressively to its local community, and offers a memorable way of experiencing art of the highest quality in the context of a great historic personality." [Telegraph]
– Minneapolis Museum Gets $25M of Japanese Art: Libby and Bill Clark, California-based collectors who made their money in cattle breeding, have donated nearly 17,000 artifacts valued at $25 million to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. "I’m a fifth-generation central Californian and I wanted it to be on the West Coast if possible," Bill Clark said. "But when I considered the options, to be honest, they weren’t there… Minneapolis is one of the great cities in our country… I think it’s the perfect home for our collection because they’re going to continue our programs." An exhibition featuring more than 100 of the donated artworks will open at the MIA in October. [Start Tribune]
– Retiring Gallery Photographer Gives Away His Work: For the last four decades D. James Dee (who goes by "The Soho Photographer") has been taking photos of artworks and installation shots of exhibitions at New York City galleries, but now that he's retiring he's looking for a home for the roughly 250,000 slides and transparencies — mostly unlabeled — that he has produced during his career. He's hoping to place the collection with a non-profit so he can receive a tax deduction. "It has value to someone," Dee said. "Not to me… I’ve decided it is time to do the next thing in my life, while I still have the energy." [NYT]
– Ron Burgundy Gets Museum Show: In November, one month before the release of "Anchorman: The Legend Continues," the long-anticipated sequel to LACMA collector committee member Will Ferrell's 2004 comedy "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," Washington, D.C.'s Newseum will open "Anchorman: The Exhibit." Artifacts on view will include Burgundy's jazz flute, and an interactive KVWN-TV news anchor desk at which visitors can perform the legendary fictitious newsman's "You stay classy" farewell. [Washington Post]
– Robbed Collector Goes Rogue: After police could not solve the case of the 800-piece art collection that was stolen from Anthony Shaia’s Oregon home in late 2011, the art collector decided to take matters (and a .38 handgun) into his own hands to find the thieves. Back in April, at a local pizza parlor, Shaia threatened to shoot a 24-year-old man he suspected of being involved with the theft, if he did not talk to the police about the crime. Shaia has since pleaded guilty of coercion and unlawful use of a weapon. "I was just at my wits’ end," Shaia said. "I was trying do something to keep him there until police arrived, but then I ended up being arrested." [Register Guard]
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