– Brancusi Show Revives Row: A long-standing dispute over the authenticity of bronze sculptures cast from Constantin Brancusi’s original plaster molds after the artist’s death is flaring up again thanks to a show of five such objects at Paul Kasmin Gallery that the dealer brokered through a new partnership with Brancusi’s estate. “There is no such thing as a posthumous edition of a Brancusi — there are replicas, which is what these are,” said New York-based dealer and collector Asher Edelman. [WSJ]
– DIA May Have to Pay For Help: The Detroit Institute of Arts has received a pledge of $330 million from a coalition of charitable organizations looking to safeguard its collection and prop up municipal pension funds, and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is trying to broker a deal whereby the state can kick in another $300-400 million. But Detroit’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr said in his first meeting with museum officials on Thursday that the institution may have to contribute an additional $100 million of its own over a 20-year span in order to access those funds. Shedding some light on the matter, Rip Rapson, president of the Kresge Foundation, said, “At the end of the day, the package has to have a philanthropic component, a state component, and a DIA component, and each one of those has to be substantial.” DIA officials, however, say it’s not possible. “It’s completely unfeasible to do that and continue to raise what we do to cover expenses and what we’ve committed to raise in endowment dollars,” said Annmarie Erickson, DIA’s chief operating officer. “This is a delicate balance. If we can’t secure our financial future, everything will come undone, and that would be a tragedy.” [Detroit Free Press]
– Louvre Sends Another Leonardo to the Lab: Following the extensive and controversial conservation work done on Leonardo da Vinci’s “Saint Anne” by the Louvre, observers are understandably uneasy by the Parisian museum’s decision to send the artist’s dramatic portrait of an unknown woman, “La Belle Ferronière,” away for restoration — including the removal of several layers of yellowing varnish. It’s unclear how the work, which da Vinci painted on a walnut panel sometime between 1495-99, came into François I’s collection, but it was only attributed to da Vinci some 20 years ago. [Le Figaro]
– Hedge Funder Leaves Collection to Whitney: Hedge fund manager Robert W. Wilson, who committed suicide in December, left his entire art collection save one piece — James Rosenquist’s “The Meteor Hits the Swimmer’s Pillow” — to the Whitney Museum, where he was a board member. [Bloomberg]
– Frick Keeps Its Vermeers in Line: Following the huge success of “Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting From Mauritshuis,” which closes Sunday, the Frick Collection will keep its three Vermeer paintings — “Officer and Laughing Girl,” “Girl Interrupted at Her Music,” and “Mistress and Maid” — installed side-by-side for at least another two months in hopes of sustaining the renewed interest in Dutch Golden Age painting. [NYT]
– New Non-Profit Art Book Publisher: The Artist Book Foundation is a newly formed non-profit co-founded by Gibb Taylor and Leslie Pell van Breen that will publish books and catalogues devoted to artists and exhibitions that would otherwise receive little attention, donating 10 percent of every print run to university, art, and public libraries. [NYT]
– The Metropolitan Museum has put Swiss Symbolist Ferdinand Hodler’s massive 1898 painting “Der Traum des Hirten” (“The Dream of the Shepherd”) — which it acquired from Christie’s in Zurich last month for $3.25 million — on view in its 19th-century painting galleries. [NYT]
– The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College has bestowed its 2014 Award for Curatorial Excellence upon Van Abbemuseum director and 2014 Sao Paulo Biennial curator Charles Esche. [Press release]
– Antique dealers Anthony Barreiro and Ernest Ray Parker have been charged with running a fraudulent business that they claimed loaned money to collectors looking to acquire art, and pocketing some $1.5 million of investors’ money. [KTVU]
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