Tehran Museum Loses 30 Paintings it Loaned Out, Identity of Mysterious Man Buried Under Notre-Dame Revealed, and More: Morning Links for September 18, 2024

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The Headlines

ART LOANED AND LOST. In July, Tehran’s Imam Ali Religious Arts Museum loaned 30 paintings for an exhibition that never materialized, and the paintings have since disappeared, according to Iran International. A member of Tehran’s City Council announced on Sunday that the paintings were loaned without official documentation, despite  some works being valued at about $500,000. With many questions still left unanswered, the borrower has been described by local media as an “unidentified entity outside the municipality.”

MUNICH’S PINAKOTHEK KEEPS PICASSO. The German state of Bavaria has acquired Pablo Picasso’s iconic 1911 painting Woman with a Violin for Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne, where it had been on loan since 2014, reports The Art Newspaper. Six sponsors banded together to purchase the painting from a private collector, including the government. As for the final selling price, all we know is that one of the sponsors, the Bavaria’s Cultural Foundation, paid $1.5 million for its part. “Until now, the Munich collections had no central work devoted to analyzing the human form from Picasso’s peak period,” said Oliver Kase, chief curator of modern art at the Pinakothek der Moderne.

The Digest

Scientists have identified the mysterious man discovered embalmed in a sarcophagus under the Notre-Dame Cathedral during renovations. Buried in the cathedral’s nave, researchers announced on Tuesday that the man was celebrated French Renaissance poet, Joachim Du Bellay, who died aged about 35 in 1560. [Le Monde]

Multidisciplinary Indigenous artist Rebecca Belmore has won Canada’s Audain Prize for the Visual Arts, worth $73,600. Based in Toronto and Vancouver, Belmore is a member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe) and has exhibited her work at the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial, as well as major museums. [The Globe and Mail]

The Hong Kong-based artist Holly Lee has passed away at the of age 71. She was a pioneer in conceptual photography and her work is in the collections of the Hong Kong Heritage Museum and M+. [ArtAsiaPacific]

The very first annual MUNCH award, launched by the Munchmuseet (home to world’s largest collection of Edvard Munch works) and honoring artistic freedom, has been awarded to Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino. She bags $25,000 in the process. [MUNCH]

The Fondation Cartier has revealed details about its new Paris space right across the street from the Louvre, in what was formerly known as the Louvre des Antiquaires. Renovated by architect Jean Nouvel, it is set to open in 2025. To mark its 40th anniversary, the foundation is installing portraits of artists in the windows of the new location. [Press release]

The Kicker

A LASTING IMPRESSION. A new book about Claude Monet’s life by Jackie Wullschläger titled, “Monet: The Restless Vision,” has been given a glowing review by The New Yorker’s Jackson Arn, who compares Wullschläger’s biographical style to the subject’s artistic style. The book “could be called an Impressionist biography of the central Impressionist,” he writes. Arn also seizes the opportunity to skilfully eulogize the artist’s genius at capturing the ephemeral. Arn writes, “there may be no other painter for whom so many competing responses seem not only valid but right.”