Arts

PISA, Italy - The Leaning Tower of Pisa is no longer leaning quite so perilously, according to Italian engineers and scientists who say the medieval landmark's ever-increasing tilt has been stabilized. Although the tower will never be brought fully upright — which would diminish its appeal, anyway —  two decades of work by the Committee for the Safeguard of the Leaning Tower has finally solved the 800-year riddle of what was causing the World Heritage Site's mysteriously incline to the north. Full Story »

NEW YORK - It may be the dead of summer, the doldrums of the academic calendar, but multimedia professors — and potentially artists — have plenty of reason to party thanks to new "fair use" rules issued by the U.S. Copyright Office that allow the legal decryption and projection of excerpts of copyrighted material for educational purposes. In addition to meaning that college students will be treated to a great deal more feature-film content in the future, the changes also serve to clear consciences — or, more to the point, any hints of liability — for art students looking to creatively play with copyright-protected multimedia. Full Story »

NEW YORK - Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly has been selected to build the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, a planned educational facility that will abut the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on the campus of the University of Massachusetts, Boston. The $60 million project, scheduled to break ground this fall, will include a 44,000-square-foot building with two stories of space for an exhibit hall detailing the politician's storied life and 46-year senate career, a re-creation of his senate office, an oral history archive, and educational facilities. Full Story »

LOS ANGELES - Rick Norsigian, the school maintenance worker who claims to have purchased 65 glass negatives created by photographer Ansel Adams at a garage sale 10 years ago, has returned to the spotlight, after a team of photography experts that he hired authenticated the works and pricing them at a hefty $200 million. Descendants of Adams, however, are not as confident about the find, telling press that the images of Yosemite and other national parks don’t look like the master’s work. Full Story »

NEW YORK - The fourth season of AMC’s drama "Mad Men" premiered on Sunday, and watching it — as more people did than ever before in the show’s history — was a highly pleasurable aesthetic experience, one that bathed viewers in a kind of hazy comfort. Because despite little clear advancement to the plot,  the new episode brought an amplification of that thing at which "Mad Men" already excelled — that same thing that Tom Ford brought to "A Single Man," and which Luca Guadagnino offers in "I Am Love": the imbuing of everything from the fashion, to the architecture, to all aspects of the art and design with an undeniable, inescapable, meticulous aesthetic seductiveness.  Full Story »

NEW YORK - It's a mark of how much Andy Warhol's reputation has matured — indeed fermented — since his amphetamine-fueled days as the art world's cipher and high society's indulgence that Dom Pérignon has hitched its latest promotional campaign to the artist. The venerable champagne company has introduced a new limited-edition collection of three bottles created by Central Saint Martin's Design Laboratory that pay tribute to Warhol through labels that evoke the sometimes garish colors of the artist's Pop masterpieces, from his famed "Death and Disaster" (look at that red) to his more venal commissioned portraits. Full Story »

NEW YORK - In what could be the single largest Nazi restitution claim in history, descendants of Hungarian banker Baron Mor Lipot Herzog have filed suit against Hungary in U.S. court, alleging that the nation is holding more than 40 works of art that were stolen from Herzog during World War II. The new lawsuit comes a week after another notorious restitution case involving Egon Schiele's "Portrait of Wally" was settled in a U.S. court, allowing the Nazi-looted work to remain in the hands of Austria's Leopold Foundation upon the payment of $19 million to the heirs of the work's original owner.  Full Story »

NEW YORK - Steven Meisel, one of the premier fashion photographers working today, has teamed up with fashion house Balenciaga (the founder of which, Cristóbal Balenciaga, was once dubbed "the master of us all" by Christian Dior, no sartorial slouch himself) to present the label’s Fall/Winter 2010/11 campaign. Featuring some of the top models of the moment (such as Stella Tennant), Meisel’s series of images is composed of close-up portraits of the models alongside wider shots of the women standing in small groups. All are photographed against a lurid, fiery backdrop that looks one-part Southwestern sunset, one-part blazing wildfire. Full Story »

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. - LACMA director Michael Govan and his curatorial team have opened their new Resnick Pavilion to the public only on select days this summer, showing off the expanse of its 45,000 square feet with a display of Walter De Maria’s sprawling "2000 Sculpture" arrayed across its floor. When LACMA held a party to celebrate the pavilion on Sunday, guests hoping to see the fine new exhibition space, built with money donated by philanthropists Lynda and Stewart Resnick, were out of luck: the fete was in the Hamptons. Full Story »

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood is coming to Ohio with a different kind of solo show, spotlighting his paintings and other art. Full Story »

VATICAN CITY - Just a week after the Vatican proudly proclaimed the discovery of a new work by Caravaggio, just in time for the 400th anniversary of the Renaissance master’s death, the head of the Vatican Museums has taken to the pages of the city-state’s official newspaper to suggest that the Holy See may have spoken too soon. Full Story »

NEW YORK - Although these days quizzical mentions of actor-turned-student-turned-writer-turned-artist James Franco’s name are frequently heard in art-world precincts, ARTINFO just recently discovered that the artist's multifarious productivity is an even more significant topic than previously thought. The epiphany came from Sam Anderson, book critic for New York magazine, whose cover story in the latest issue explores the nuances of Franco’s frenetic career. At great length. No: At extraordinary length. Full Story »

NEW YORK - A humble chariot that may have played a role in King Tut's death is currently traveling to the highly-publicized exhibition displaying the boy pharaoh's finery at the Discovery Times Square Exposition — the first time that the mysterious 3,300-year-old artifact has left Egypt. Full Story »

LONDON - Perhaps the 20th century’s most notorious artist, Marcel Duchamp is often grouped with the Dada movement, though the artist was never a card-carrying member of any circle other than his own. Now, however, he's finally been swept up by an irresistible force: the Gaga movement. For a show at London's SHOWstudio.com gallery, Lady Gaga — already more famous than the readymade creator will ever be — has signed the side of a urinal with the inscription, "I’m not fucking Duchamp but I love pissing with you." The work, entitled "Armitage Shanks," is on view as part of a show called "Inside/Out" — and the price is available only on request. Full Story »

CHICAGO - Ghoulish Elvis Presley fans hoping to snap up autopsy equipment used to prepare the singer’s corpse for burial are out of luck: a planned auction featuring the tools has now withdrawn them from the sale. Were the rubber gloves, forceps, lip brushes, needle injectors, and other items too gruesome? Was the August 12 auction date, four days before the anniversary of Presley’s 1977 death, deemed a bit déclassé? Nope. Rather, its seems that the equipment may not be authentic. Full Story »

NEW YORK - "Stillies" is what Andy Warhol first dubbed the 500-some filmic portraits that came to be known as his "screen tests" — lingering looks at those who frequented the Factory from from 1964 to 1966. But with a 2008 commission by the Andy Warhol Museum and Pittsburgh Cultural Trust of Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips (former members of the pop outfit Luna), the films might be taking on a new moniker: "soundies." Full Story »

NEW YORK - When someone calls to tell you that candy-sweet pop star Katy Perry is in pastry-loving painter Will Cotton’s studio, and will talk to you about the nude portrait she commissioned from him for the cover of her latest album ("Teenage Dream"), but only if you get in a cab immediately, and then run through the streets of the Lower East Side — well, you do it. In fact, yesterday that is exactly what ARTINFO did in order to watch the tail end of the unveiling of Cotton’s luminous painting of a demure Perry, in the buff, reclining on a fluffy pink cotton-candy cloud. Full Story »

WASHINGTON, D.C. - These days, it’s hard for a talented underground graffiti artist to retain his or her street cred, with gallerists hovering in darkened back alleys in hopes of snatching up the next Banksy-esque spay-paint sensation. For 39-year-old artist Ben Eine (real name Ben Flynn), remaining an anti-establishment vandal just got even more difficult, as British prime minister David Cameron offered one of Eine’s paintings to president Barack Obama as a diplomatic gift earlier this week. (Obama, for his part, offered the newly elected pol a tasteful Ed Ruscha print — always a safe bet.)  Full Story »