Ansel Adams Negatives Bought at Garage Sale - Are They Authentic? "A team of experts who have examined Rick Norsigian's stash of antique negatives say they appear to be part of Adams' body of work. The photographer's family and friends remain skeptical." Los Angeles Times 07/28/10

Hungary Sued for $100M Worth of Art Looted by Nazis "For more than two decades the heirs of a world-renowned Jewish collector have been petitioning the Hungarian government to return more than $100 million worth of art, most of which has been hanging in Hungarian museums, where it was left for safekeeping during World War II or placed after being stolen by the Nazis." New York Times 07/28/10

Rediscovering the Women of the Hudson River School "These women ventured on their own or alongside male relatives into the wilderness, painting the glorious scenery that inspired America's first art movement. And … they made works that are just as awe-inspiring as those of their male counterparts." Smithsonian 07/21/10 (includes photo gallery)

The Amazing Story Of How They Saved The Leaning Tower Of Pisa And why did it lean in the first place? "By a quirk of local geography, Pisa's water-table rose higher on the tower's north side, often reaching within one foot in rainy season, and this gave the tower an annual ratchet southward." The Telegraph (UK) 07/28/10

'What I Learned From Caravaggio' Martin Scorsese, David LaChapelle, Peter Doig and three more artists "explain how Caravaggio's prophetically cinematic paintings inspired them." The Observer (UK) 07/25/10

Claimed Caravaggio Goes On View "The "Martyrdom of St. Lawrence" will now be subjected to X-rays and other analyses to ascertain its attribution. But art officials and scholars attending the unveiling agreed the painting did not look like a Caravaggio -- but rather like the work of one or more of his followers." Yahoo! (AP) 07/27/10

Vatican Dismisses Caravaggio Claim "The Vatican's leading art historian has dismissed claims made in its newspaper that a painting found in a Jesuit church in Rome is a Caravaggio." BBC 07/27/10

'Pacific Standard Time': The Art Extravaganza That Will Devour L.A. "When the many-headed exhibition extravaganza 'Pacific Standard Time' opens in October 2011, some 40 Southern California museums and nonprofit galleries will offer shows focusing in one manner or another on the origins of the art scene here, from 1945 to 1980." Now the Getty Trust, the project's lead funder and organizer, is making the event even bigger. Los Angeles Times 07/26/10

'Towering Ambition' - Recreating Emblems of Architecture in Lego An exhibition at DC's National Building Museum features facsimiles, by "Lego master" Adam Reed Tucker, of such icons as the Empire State Building, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the Gateway Arch, Fallingwater, and Calatrava's never-built Chicago Spire. "The Lego brick … [is] the perfect toy for the age in which it was introduced, which helps explain why Tucker's models have a cultural power that ordinary architectural models might not." Washington Post 07/23/10

Palm Springs Art Museum Makes Plans To Open Second Branch "The Palm Springs Art Museum has formed a committee to oversee fundraising and other activities related to a new satellite site that is expected to open in late 2011 or early 2012 in Palm Desert." Los Angeles Times 07/22/10

The Sculpture of Arabia (Yes, There Was Plenty of It) "Forget about Arabia as a land without figural representation. It was already there in the fourth millennium B.C." and continued ruight up to the advent of Islam, as a new exhibition at the Louvre shows. International Herald Tribune 07/24/10

Pasadena's Design Biennial Finally Includes Architecture "In a what-took-them-so-long bit of news, the California Design Biennial at the Pasadena Museum of California Art has added an architecture category for the first time." Los Angeles Times 07/23/10

Henry Moore's Biggest Sculpture Restored Henry Moore's heaviest bronze sculpture, Large Divided Oval: Butterfly, has been restored in Berlin. Weighing nearly nine tons, it was his final major work, completed just before he died in 1986 The Art Newspaper 07/21/10

'I Looked Into the Heart of an Artichoke': Making Art From MRI Scans of Fruit Francis Lam: "Presumably, Andy Ellison's artichoke didn't feel the terror I did when he laid it down to a nice magnetic resonance bath, but the images he got of it - and 14 other fruits and vegetables so far in his project Inside Insides - are stunning." Salon 07/21/10

Vienna Museum Pays $19M to Keep Looted Schiele "Austria's Leopold Museum paid $19 million to the heirs of the Jewish art dealer Lea Bondi Jaray to settle a decades-long dispute over Egon Schiele's portrait of his lover Wally, stolen by the Nazis in the 1930s." Bloomberg 07/21/10

Cleveland Museum Of Contemporary Art Gets Design Approval MOCA's design was one of five presented to the commission for the district, a $150-plus million development project in University Circle. Akron Beacon-Journal 07/22/10

Why Are Museums Allowed To Sell Off Their Work? "This is not the time to forget the true value of our collections: a historical and aesthetic resource held in care for future generations. Let's keep the doors open to the public but closed to the salesman. Losing these treasures is too high a price to pay for short-term financial gain." spiked-online 07/22/10

SF-MOMA Selects Architect For $250M Expansion: Snohetta "Can an art museum in this economic climate raise $480 million for an ambitious expansion and endowment campaign without a world famous architect like Frank Gehry or Renzo Piano attached to the project? SFMOMA has just placed a very big bet that it can, by selecting the critically acclaimed but not so commonly known Oslo-based firm Snøhetta," which is best known for Norway's new national opera house. Los Angeles Times 07/21/10

Proposition: John Szarkowski Was The Most Important Post-War American Photographer "Szarkowski was a good photographer, a great critic and an extraordinary curator. Like all good critics and curators, Szarkowski was both visionary and catalyst." The Guardian (UK) 07/21/10

I Went To The Blockbuster Impressionists Show And... "The boon of blockbusters is also their curse: too many people. The Impressionist show was by no means the worst; the Palace of the Legion of Honor does an even worse job of traffic control. I have literally been held motionless by a crowd at a Mayan exhibition at the Legion. I just stood there and prayed that Brownian motion would take me safely to the next room." San Francisco Chronicle 07/21/10

Israel Museum Completes Three-Year, $100M Renewal "For the last 45 years, the Israel Museum has been both the crown jewel of this country's cultural heritage and a bit of a mess," giving visitors "a feeling of being overwhelmed by quantity and mildly perplexed about substance." Beginning next week, "[t]here will be far fewer objects on display, with twice the space to view them, as well as richer links and explanations. … The idea is not simply to make the museum easier to navigate but also to suggest interesting connections among objects and between the particular and the universal." New York Times 07/21/10

Will Prestige Architecture Fall Victim To UK Cost-Cutting? "The man behind the design of the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon has predicted a long period of stagnation for architecture that will scar both the British landscape and the national economy. After the boom in the early years of the millennium, an era of paralysis lies ahead, according to Rab Bennetts." The Guardian (UK) 07/18/10

Six Artists Shortlisted For Trafalgar Plinth "The fourth plinth in London's Trafalgar Square - occupied at the moment by Yinka Shonibare's Nelson's Ship in a Bottle - has in the past decade become a stage for works of contemporary art. And six artworks were shortlisted yesterday to be considered to become the next installation on the plinth in time for the 2012 Olympics." The Independent (UK) 07/20/10

Another Lost Caravaggio May Have Surfaced In Rome Scholars are examining an unsigned canvas depicting the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, part of the art collection of the Jesuit order, to determine if it is by Caravaggio. Several historians note that the painting bears many of the artist's stylistic trademarks; others urge caution, noting that no documentary evidence has been found that he ever tackled this particular subject. The Independent (UK) 07/19/10

Great Britain Blocks Export Of Spanish Golden Age Canvas "A painting of The Virgin and Child by the Spanish old master Murillo has been temporarily barred from export while efforts are made to keep it in the UK. A 'last chance' attempt to save the £3m painting for the nation was announced by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey." BBC 07/19/10