➡️ Read the full article here: https://bit.ly/3RC8Cwn A French court has ruled that the former Louvre director is guilty of antiquities trafficking and has upheld the charges against him. This Monday, the allegations against ex-Louvre president and director Jean-Luc Martinez were sustained by a French appeals court. Martinez is being investigated for possible involvement in the illicit trade of ancient Egyptian artifacts. During the years 2013–2021, Martinez oversaw the Louvre as its director. The authorities have been investigating a big trafficking ring for years, and in May, he was charged with "complicity in fraud," "money laundering," and "facilitating" the acquisition of antiquities from the organization. The French government believes that the art thieves and their accomplices sold stolen works to museums and galleries around the world, including the Louvre's outpost in Abu Dhabi, between 2014 and 2017. Curator and archaeologist Jean-Francois Charnier, a former Martinez colleague, was also implicated in the plot. According to Le Monde, both parties want to appeal the ruling at France's highest court. Paris and the international art community were taken aback last year when the charges against Martinez and Charnier were initially announced. To promote international cooperation on cultural heritage concerns, France has appointed Martinez as its official ambassador. He has devoted the latter part of his career to securing the safety of artwork in hotspots. In addition, he highlighted innovative strategies for preventing looting in a study submitted by France to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. In November of 2022, the public prosecutor reexamined the evidence against Martinez and requested that the charges be withdrawn. It appeared from the prosecutor's ruling that Martinez, an expert in the field of archeology, had been wrongfully accused. An indictment in French law does not necessarily result in a trial for the accused. A special magistrate has the authority to drop charges at any moment. Although the Louvre Abu Dhabi has not yet opened, Le Monde reports that in 2019 police began to investigate the provenance of a stone stele of Tutankhamen that had been purchased for the museum. Martin­ez served as director of the Louvre. When he was in charge of the museum, he oversaw a government panel that had to sign off on any major purchases. Fake export licenses and certificates of provenance were included with the stolen artifacts, leading police to believe that Martinez had authorized their acquisition. Attorney Francois Artuphel told Le Monde that his client "has no doubt that the next stage in the procedure will re-establish this injustice" after the court decided to keep the allegations against him. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RD1OPs8uJ4

➡️ Read the full article here: https://bit.ly/3YIRI0V A large LGBTQ+ show in Hong Kong puts the city's free speech to the test. Censorship in the city is increasing, although so far only one piece has been removed from the exhibition. According to the press release, "the first major survey exhibition on LGBTQ+ viewpoints in Hong Kong," Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III is a must-see. It's an experiment in free expression in a city where things are changing rapidly. This is the third in a series of exhibitions by the Sunpride Foundation showcasing LGBTQ+ Asian art. Until April 10th, you can catch it at Tai Kwun Contemporary. There has only been one work pulled from the exhibition, despite the fact that censorship has been tightening in Hong Kong. A film from Shu Lea Cheang's 3x3x6 series, which depicts ten accounts of imprisoned sexual non-conformists, is replaced in the exhibition with a rejection letter. This is because of reports that suggest sexual material in the video. Cheang's work was first exhibited at the 2019 Venice Biennale in the Palazzo delle Prigioni, which, like Tai Kwun, was formerly a jail. Participating Indian artists discussed altering one of their pieces for the exhibition. The Hong Kong art community's concerns about mainlandization are warranted. The LGBTQ+ population in China's art world is sizable and widely accepted, although few artists there openly discuss their identities, and LGBTQ+ artists from other countries that exhibit in China often experience "straightwashing." Yet, Hong Kong maintains a high degree of individual liberty. Patrick Sun, a Hong Kong businessman who founded Sunpride in 2014 to collect and promote LGBTQ+ Asian art, has reported "tremendous community support" and curiosity from the public since the display opened in late December. Ellen Pau's video pieces bookend the exhibition; she's been an artist in Hong Kong since the '80s, when the scene was just getting started. Song of the Goddess (1992), the first piece in the show, depicts "the close friendship between the opera actresses Yam Kim-fai and Pak Suet-sin on and off screen in the 1960s," as stated by the curators, Chantal Wong and Inti Guerrero. They call it "one of Hong Kong's earlier examples of viewers collectively identifying with a same-sex love story" and "the main field in which queerness was manifested culturally and publicly, though sometimes unacknowledged," along with broadcast Cantonese opera featuring cross-dressing female actors. Pau's dreamy new film 52Hz (2022), an indirect tribute to two Hong Kong high school students who committed suicide after their connection was discovered, closes the performance. Pau's videos framing each end of the display demonstrate the range of historical periods represented. They also demonstrate the long history of LGBTQ+ representation in Asian art. Among the historical figures included in the first segment, "Queer Mythologies: On and Off the Stage," are the late Filipino-American artist Alfonso Ossorio and the Indian artist Bhupen Khakhar. Josef Ng's groundbreaking work Brother Cane from 1994 appears in the second section titled "Body Politics: Criminalization, Control, and Counter Narratives." When Spectrosynthesis debuted in 2017 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, it was the first comprehensive survey of LGBTQ+ artists at a reputable Asian art museum. It's crucial to note that LGBT artists still need to exercise caution throughout most of Asia. For instance, state pressure led to the cancellation of Shanghai's long-running Pride event, and while Singapore recently decriminalized gay sex, it still outlaws gay marriage. In contrast to this anarchy, the Spectrosynthesis series has popularized discussions of queerness in regional art and raised the profile of lesser-known artists in the area. Almost fifty paintings by twenty-two ethnic Chinese artists were on display in Taipei in 2017, two years before the island legalized same-sex marriage. The Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre played host to Spectrosynthesis II in 2019 and 2020. There were works by over fifty different painters on display. Throughout the years, it has evolved to feature the work of 130 Hong Kong artists. Hong Kong artists Trevor Yeung and Beatrix Pang are among those taking part. A group of volunteers from the 2018-formed charity LGBTQ Reads Library created this repository of historical materials. A sound work by Samson Young that recreates the throbbing sounds of club Propaganda and photographs of the Kowloon Park cruising location by Jiaming Liao anchor the exhibition in the LGBT community's collective memory. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDq1TutJA-g

Read the full article here: https://bit.ly/3N7f7a2 In the vast story of art history, works with rectangular or square shapes stand out for their success and frequency, often overshadowing the less common round or other shaped media. In fact, there was a time when circular supports, which in Italian are called "tondi" (which means "round"), were very popular. I'm talking about the Renaissance, when the circle was once again a popular shape and an undisputed symbol of perfection, thanks to the imago clipeata of ancient Rome. To show you what has been said, I'll just talk about the round masterpieces kept in a single Italian city: Florence, the capital of Tuscany, where the Renaissance dream began and never ended. Even today, the city still has the shine of that time, which is shown by its solemn buildings and monuments, which are often kept in the most important institutions in the city. With that in mind, I want to start this story, which will take us on a tour of the greatest masters of the time, at the Uffizi Gallery, one of the most important museums in the world, which holds one of the most famous paintings in art history, Michelangelo's Holy Family (1504–06), a tempera on panel painting that shows St. Joseph, the baby Jesus, and the Virgin Mary. Such figures, caught in a peaceful moment of family life, were a very popular subject in Renaissance art. It was a theme that changed a lot, as in this case, where it was "associated" with the image of some naked young people talking to each other under a small part of the sky in the background. In addition to what we can see, the above-mentioned masterpiece, which is also known as the Tondo Doni, tells us other stories from the past. It was made during the time when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael were all living in Florence at the same time. These three artists gave the city, which was already a lively place, a boost of growth. The first decade of the century was a time of the highest cultural fervor. Just before Michelangelo's famous masterpiece is Botticelli's Madonna of the Magnificat (1483–85), a tempera on panel painted on a round support that is also kept in the Uffizi. The title comes from the word that the child Jesus points to on the open page of a book, where part of a canticle from Luke's Gospel is written in a way that makes it easy to read: "Magnificat anima mea Dominum." This scene, in which the Virgin is also seen being crowned by angels, takes place in front of a window that looks out onto a clear country scenery, as if to separate heaven from earth. Lastly, the grains of the pomegranate in the masterpiece, which are brushed by the fingers of the major characters, remind us of the blood that Jesus shed so that people could be saved. Turning instead to a happier time in Christ's life, we must look at the last Uffizi work in this review, the Adoration of the Magi Tornabuoni (1487), a tondo by Domenico Ghirlandaio in which, following in the footsteps of Botticelli and Leonardo, the artist created a composition in which the characters, who are placed behind the Holy Family, leave an empty space at the ideal center of the scene, within which the group of the Mad The work has more meanings that can be found in its architecture. For example, the shed is made out of a large, old, and broken portico, which is a symbol of the decline of the pagan faith that gave birth to Christianity. After the most sacred families, we can move on to a family that is not religious but is still very important. This is the family of Filippo Lippi and his son Filippino, who made the Tondo Bartoli (1452-53) and the Tondo Corsini (1481-2), which are two of the most famous paintings in art history. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqRwe6KD9NE

Read the full article: http://tinyurl.com/mus6kkua Ernesto Poma, hailing from El Salvador, sought solace in his exquisitely designed haven nestled in Aspen, Colorado, during the peculiar and dystopian days of the pandemic. Engaging in a conversation with him offers a twofold delight. The first entails delving into the mind of a Latin American elite collector, whose vast collection could easily belong to someone from any corner of the globe. The second pleasure arises from conversing with a figure who bridges the realms of business and patronage, whose words possess a mesmerizing quality reminiscent of a bygone era when discussions in taverns were moments when time seemed to suspend. Ernesto Poma, originally born in El Salvador, is an integral part of the Poma Group, a conglomerate that spans a range of industries, from automotive to hospitality, real estate, and telecommunications. His collection not only embodies a refined sense of aesthetics but also mirrors a distinctive worldview and an enduring affection for the continent of his birth, rendering it truly exceptional. "When the civil war in El Salvador erupted, my family and I relocated to Miami, enduring tremendously challenging times, including the kidnapping of one of my brothers. This was back in the late '70s when I was a mere 17 years old. I pursued my studies in New England and later in Boston, eventually finding my way back to Miami, where my family had established an investment office. In 1987, I married my wife, also of Salvadoran descent. Although many of my family members returned to El Salvador, and I visit there frequently, I deliberately chose to remain in Miami," Poma shared. Expanding on the topic, he added, "One should honor art even in the manner of its display and allowing the pieces to engage in conversation with one another. This is guided by the invisible thread that binds them, making them intriguing because collectively they narrate a particular story. It's something I developed over time, influenced by my parents, who, although not initially collectors, instilled in us an appreciation for the beauty in everything around us, whether it be a sunset or a beautiful flower. My mother, in particular, possessed a discerning eye and began acquiring exquisite pieces of Central American art." "At the age of 23," he continued, "I made a conscious decision to bring about changes in my life. I transitioned from being a college student who relished a vibrant social life to embarking on a different path with new aspirations. It was during this phase that I opened my eyes and began discovering the beauty in my surroundings. It was akin to a positive catharsis where I would glance around and exclaim, 'Wow, I can't believe the vividness of this blue sky.' In this context, my interest in the world of art blossomed. The very first piece I acquired was a still life, showcasing remarkable technical craftsmanship and featuring a fruit known as pitaya, which boasted captivating colors. It was a humble $200 investment that marked the inception of my journey into art. Initially, I collected Salvadoran art, then ventured into the realm of Central American art, and ultimately, I embraced the richness of Latin American art on a global scale." ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1THVpRF7I4