Arts & Design Headlines

U.S. art dealer opens contemporary gallery in Rome
The biggest commercial art dealer in the U.S. has opened a modern art gallery in Rome, a city better known for its classical and Renaissance art.
Istanbul gets new 500-seat opera house
A historic Istanbul building, finished in 1927 as an opera house but relegated to use as a movie theatre until 2005, has reopened as a 500-seat concert hall after a two-year renovation.
4 A.J. Casson prints missing from Ontario archives
An audit of the Archives of Ontario has discovered that hundreds of valuable documents and items, including four prints by artist A.J. Casson, have gone missing.
Shock artist puts spotlight on Indian waste workers with excrement exhibit
Provocative Spanish artist Santiago Sierra is once again courting controversy with a new installation that displays 21 massive blocks created from human excrement.
Hirst donates pickled cow, cigarette butt art pieces to Tate
Britain's Tate Gallery revealed on Thursday that British artist Damien Hirst has donated works featuring his pickled cows, dead flies, cigarette butts and seashells to the venue's permanent collection.
Halifax curator moves to Calgary's Glenbow Museum
Jeffrey Spalding, the former director and chief curator of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, has taken over at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary.
German museum closes terracotta warriors exhibit after figures revealed as fakes
A German museum has reportedly closed an exhibit featuring several of China's terracotta warriors, following the revelation that the clay figures on display are fakes.
Huge dinosaur centrepiece of new ROM galleries VideoAudio
A 24-metre barosaurus nicknamed Gordo leans out over a Toronto street as the centrepiece of the Royal Ontario Museum's newly renovated dinosaur galleries.
$2M endowment to create chair in indigenous art at Ottawa gallery
The Ottawa-based National Gallery has received a $2-million grant from the Vancouver-based Audain Foundation to endow a curator of indigenous art.
New Zealander to be 1st artist to draw in space
New Zealand artist Makoure Scott hopes to create work while weightless on the inaugural flight of Virgin Galactic, the first privately run venture into space.
Sin City mayor, FBI to team up for mob museum
Sin City is moving ahead with plans for a museum dedicated to its mobster past — with the approval and assistance of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
UN launches human rights cartoon exhibit
The UN has launched a special exhibit of political cartoons in Rome to raise awareness of human rights issues, war, hunger and religious extremism.
N.S. artist's Vatican paintings to help save Halifax church
Nova Scotia artist Tom Forrestall plans to create a series of paintings about the Vatican and hopes to give half the proceeds from their sale to save a Halifax church.
New York museums move to confirm ownership of Picasso paintings
Two New York museums have taken legal steps to protect their ownership of two Picasso paintings at the core of a claim made by a German-Jewish scholar who says they belong to his family, who were persecuted during Nazi rule.
Morrisseau family feuds over artist's body
Plans for the cremation of Ojibwa painter Norval Morrisseau, who died Dec. 4, have been put on hold as family members and a close friend of the artist squabble over his body.
New funding for Beaverbrook Art Gallery
Fredericton's Beaverbrook Art Gallery received a $125,000 award from the New Brunswick Foundation for the Arts on Thursday as part of a heritage stabilization program to help the gallery stage future exhibits.
Nazi-looted work found in London to be returned to Montreal Video
A Canadian foundation set up to recover Nazi-looted works once owned by Montreal art dealer Max Stern has recovered a 17th-century Dutch painting.