Modern Meets Classical in Chicago Museum Wing

'The Faun' outed as impostor after decade in Chicago art museum

(NEWSER) - After a decade on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, a ceramic figure allegedly sculpted by Paul Gauguin was revealed yesterday to be a fake. The museum discovered 'The Faun,' a half-man, half-goat figure, to be the work not of the 19th century French artist, but of a British family notorious for producing art forgeries, the AP reports. More»

What will we still be talking about next decade? Britney, for one

(NEWSER) - The ‘00s were full of important contributions to culture, but which ones will we still be talking about in another decade? Here are some of New York ’s picks:

• TV: The Sopranos for inventing quality cable, American Idol for changing the music industry, and of course all things Oprah Winfrey.
• Books: The Da Vinci Code for singlehandedly sustaining the book industry, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay for blazing the trail of combining geek lit with high lit.

(NEWSER) - Herb and Dorothy Vogel had just modest incomes—he was a postal clerk, she a librarian—but over four decades they acquired more than 3,600 drawings, paintings, and collages from America's leading artists. They collected so much that they had to stuff works under their bed. But now the Vogels' one-bedroom apartment has been cleaned out, and their works have been scattered: 50 each to 50 museums across the country plus another 1,100 to the National Gallery in Washington. More»

Reactions mixed on gallery exhibit

(NEWSER) - An exhibit at Scotland’s Gallery of Modern Art intended to “reclaim the Bible as a sacred text” did not go entirely as planned, the Telegraph reports. Visitors were invited to “write your way back into” the Bible on display, and the resulting additions ranged from the angry—“This is all sexist pish”—to the silly—“The Gospel According to Luke Skywalker.” More»

Could be due to planned imitation exhibition, of course

(NEWSER) - The head of London’s National Gallery wishes “we had more fakes,” he tells Reuters. “It’s worth having some in a collection. Not having them on display for what they pretend to be, but for what they are,” Nicholas Penny explains ahead of a 2010 show exploring imitations. In the Gallery’s actual collection, there are probably few fakes—but, Penny adds, “you don’t know for certain.” More»