— UK Museums Guard Against Theft: The Arts Council England has issued a “severe and imminent” threat warning for museums to look out for theft. William Brown, the council’s security adviser, told all museums to put their smaller valuables in spaces with “the best available defense against any attack” — the “attack,” in this case, being theft — and stay “extra vigilant to visitors paying undue attention to collections.” A bulletin from the Scottish Council on Archives elaborates: “The National Crime Agency are aware of an imminent threat of theft of collections across the UK. They are aware of a group who has made reconnaissance visits to a number of museums and other venues across the UK. It is thought that smaller, more portable items will be targeted rather than items such as large paintings.” [TAN]
— Wirths Top ArtReview Power 100: Swiss couple Iwan and Manuela Wirth, of Hauser & Wirth, have topped the ArtReview Power 100 list, beating out David Zwirner, who dropped from second to third since last year’s list, and Larry Gagosian, who rose from eighth to sixth. ArtReview editor Mark Rappolt noted his appreciation for the way Hauser & Wirth elaborated upon the “conventional white cube” of the gallery model: “You can see this in the museum style in LA they are opening next year alongside the more conventional spaces in Zurich and New York, and then having something completely different altogether in Somerset,” he said. “So it’s more of a global enterprise that consistently keeps in touch with the local. To some extent they are reinventing the gallery model, challenging that traditional white space we are all used to.” The top 10 goes as follows: Iwan and Manuela Wirth; Ai Weiwei, David Zwirner; Hans Ulrich Obrist and Julia Peyton-Jones of Serpentine Gallery; Sir Nicholas Serota of Tate; Larry Gagosian; Glenn Lowry of MoMA; Marina Abramović; Adam Weinberg of the Whitney Museum; and curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. [Guardian, Independent, BBC, TAN]
— Hank Willis Thomas Gives Brooklyn a Finger: A 12-foot arm pointing skyward has been commissioned from Hank Willis Thomas by the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs for the Brooklyn terminus of the Brooklyn Bridge. The bronze sculpture is part of the Department of Transportation’s reconstruction of the Brooklyn Bridge Gateway. Of the arm’s outstretched index figure, Thomas told DNAinfo it could be interpreted a number of ways. “You could read that we are all one, you could read that someone’s checking the wind. You could read that someone’s getting our attention and telling us to look up,” he said. [DNAinfo]
— Possible Donatello Goes on View: A gilded wooden sculpture several eminent scholars have newly attributed to Donatello is set to go one view October 30 at Moretti Fine Art on New York’s Upper East Side. The renewed interest in the piece supplants earlier doubts cast on such an attribution via the statue’s twin, which is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. [NYT]
— Dutch Museum Secures 20 of 25 Surviving Bosch Panels: The Noordbrabants Museum has managed to borrow a vast majority of surviving works by Hieronymus Bosch for a 500th anniversary exhibition of the artist’s work. A small institution located in the city of Bosch’s birth, the museum persuaded major holders of Bosch’s work with a promise to share research from an international project it has initiated on the artist’s life and work. [Guardian]
— Germany Grants Ai Weiwei 3-Year Visa: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has been granted a three-year visa in connection with his appointment at Berlin’s University of the Arts. He will join his partner and child, who have been living in Berlin for much of the past year. [ARTnews]
— Two pieces from Mike Kelley’s “Memory Ware Flats” series will be sold at auction on November 11, one at Sotheby’s and one at Christie’s. [Art Market Monitor]
— Around 4,000 artworks from the Venice Biennale are now available to view on Google — which will also offer virtual tours of the show’s major venues, including the Giardini and the Arsenale. [WP, NYO]
— Microbiologist Melanie Sullivan created a version of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” in mold for the American Society for Microbiology’s “Agar Art” contest — i.e., works created from organisms within the confines of a petri dish. [CNN, Science World Report]
