– Pussy Riot Freed: Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, the two members of the Russian punk collective Pussy Riot who were still serving prison camp sentences stemming from a 2012 performance, have been freed following the passage of an amnesty law introduced by President Vladimir Putin, though they considered the gesture an elaborate distraction from Russia's ongoing humanitarian violations. "If I had a chance to turn it down, I would have done it, no doubt about that," Alyokhina said. "This is not an amnesty. This is a hoax and a PR move." [Guardian, BBC]
– Miró Show Shut Down Over Fakes: An exhibition of works by the Spanish surrealist Joan Miró at the ARETE gallery in Ankara, Turkey, was shut down after the artists foundation claimed that some of the roughly 60 pieces on view were fakes. The gallery, which acquired the works from galleries in the U.S. and Canada, will be receiving a visit from the artist's foundation in the new year. "We are waiting to learn which of the pieces are fake so that we can go back to our suppliers," ARETE owner Emre Sefer said. [AP]
– Is Conceptual Art Really Art?: Since acquiring Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo's seminal collection of conceptual and minimalist art in the early 1990s — including pieces by Donald Judd, Robert Smithson, and others — the Guggenheim Museum has been grappling with many of the fundamental questions posed by those movements' artists, about the authenticity of the art object, and the status of copies and reproductions. "People are always asking us, ‘What does the artist want?’ — as if that’s a simple, monolithic thing," said Jeffey Weiss, the Guggenheim curator in charge of the Panza collection. "It turns out that it’s one of the most complicated parts of the whole process. It’s not just him and us. It’s the changing him and the informed us." [NYT]
– Vasari's "Last Supper" Still Spoiled: Giorgio Vasari's enormous painting "The Last Supper," which was badly damaged — some said beyond repair — when Florence flooded in 1966, is slowly being restored by the Opificio dell Pietre Dure and the Getty Trust, and its five poplar panels were recently reassembled for the first time since the flood. [NYT]
– Jury Upholds Seller's Privacy: The jury in a federal court in Dallas agreed that an agreement to keep secret Marguerite Hoffman's identity as the seller of a major Mark Rothko was violated by collector David Martinez and dealers Robert Mnuchin and Dominique Lévy, but the judge awarded Hoffman much less than the $12.4-22.4 million she was seeking in damages — she will have to choose between $500,000 and $1.2 million. [WSJ]
– Nobody Happy About Nazi Loot's Handling: With Nazi loot restitution cases attracting a great deal of attention in the wake of Cornelius Gurlitt's trove being seized, the U.S.'s special envoy for Holocaust issues, Douglas Davidson, paid a visit to Berlin to pressure the German government to return the works to their rightful owners expediently; meanwhile, George Grosz's heirs are renewing their calls for MoMA to return three works by the artist they say were stolen by the Nazis in 1933, highlighting U.S. museum's similarly fraught record on restitution. [Jerusalem Post, USA Today, TIME]
– Some 66 works from Cheech Marin's renowned collection of Chicano art are on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in the exhibition "Chicanitas: Small Paintings from the Cheech Marin Collection," through March 23, 2014. Says Marin: "I'm the Chicano Johnny Appleseed out there, spreading his seeds." [WSJ]
– The 10 top-earning art auction lots of 2013, which cumulatively brought $669 million, accounted for more than five percent of the year's total global auction revenue. [Forbes]
– Eliseo Garza Salinas, the director of three museums in Mexico's Nuevo Leon state, was murdered during a robbery at his home in Monterrey. [Latin Times]
ALSO ON ARTINFO
See Artists' "12 Trees of Christmas" at TEMP Space
Cleveland Museum of Art Acquires Major Indian Painting Collection
Third Louvre-Crystal Bridges-High Museum Collaboration Focuses on Portraiture
Here Are Your Frieze New York Exhibitors for 2014
Superman-JFK Comic Donated to Presidential Museum 50 Years Late
A Fresh Perspective on Paul Guiragossian in Beirut
Check our blog IN THE AIR for breaking news throughout the day.
Please note that this will be the final Daily Checklist of 2013. We'll be back on January 2, 2014.
