Top 11 Frank Lloyd Wright Houses You Can Tour
Few architects have had such a profound effect on contemporary culture as Frank Lloyd Wright. Not only did he change the face of modern living forever (you have him to thank for open floor plans, carports, and air conditioning), his work continues to inspire new generations of designers and design lovers alike. Just this fall, Opening Ceremony dedicated its entire Fashion Week collection to the almighty Wright. Part of the reason that the architect’s influence remains so pervasive, is the abundance of Wright-designed structures that remain intact and open to the public throughout the country. Click here to continue reading.

The Getty's Legal Battle Over "Victorious Youth" Will Continue Despite Favorable Ruling
There has been another twist in the long-running restitution battle between Italy and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles over the 2,300-year-old Greek bronze known as the Victorious Youth. The statue has been in the Getty’s collection since 1977. Crucially, a decision made by Italy’s court of cassation earlier this month means that the museum does not, for now, have to return the sculpture to Italy. Click here to continue reading.

The Portland Museum of Art Celebrates the New Year by Acquiring Works by Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth
The Portland Museum of Art has acquired two major new works: River Cove by Andrew Wyeth and Winslow Homer's An Open Window. According to the museum, An Open Window, painted in 1872,  fills a gap in its Homer collections, bridging early works from the 1860's and later compositions from the 1890's. Click here to continue reading.

The Burchfield Penney Art Center Receives Two Major Grants
The deep archives of the Burchfield Penney Art Center, which chart the life and career of its namesake Charles E. Burchfield and the broader creative history of Western New York, are about to get much bigger and a great deal more public. Thanks to two grants totaling $170,000, the center is embarking on a project to digitize, catalog and make publicly accessible much of its 25,000-item collection of material related to Burchfield’s life. Click here to continue reading.

A New Book Explores Robert Motherwell’s Early Collages
The artist, Robert Motherwell, was one of the important figures on the New York art scene in the 1940s and 1950s. A recent volume, “Robert Motherwell: Early Collages” (Guggenheim) by Susan Davidson and Megan Fontanella explores a little known aspect of his work. The pieces, most made during his first decade of exploratory art making, are a combination of figurative and purely abstract works, unlike the purely abstract works and paintings that came later in his career. Click here to continue reading.

North Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art Fires Director After News of Misconduct Emerges
North Miami on Thursday fired Museum of Contemporary Art director Babacar M’Bow amid allegations of sexual harassment. Interim City Manager Arthur Sorey made the decision after an investigation into a misconduct complaint against M’Bow by one of his female employees. Click here to continue reading.

The Met Breuer is Set to Open in March 2016
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is already one of the most expansive museums in the world, but this world-class institution will soon be getting an upgrade. On March 18, 2016, the Met will celebrate the opening of The Met Breuer, a separate building devoted to modern and contemporary art. The Met Breuer will be housed in the former home of the Whitney Museum of American Art (now located downtown on Gansevoort Street), a stunning building at 75th Street and Madison Avenue designed by Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer and completed in 1966. Click here to continue reading.

Robert Irwin Will Create a Permanent Installation at the Chinati Foundation
But Mr. Irwin doesn’t make sculptures or, for that matter, very many of what would be considered art objects of any kind. Instead, he has spent most of a restless career, based in Los Angeles and then San Diego, creating subtle, at times vanishingly evanescent, environments with plain materials — fabric scrim, glass, lights, plants and trees — “to make you a little more aware than you were the day before,” as he puts it, “of how beautiful the world is.” Click here to continue reading.

Archaeologists Discover Sandstone Statues in an Ancient Egyptian Shrine
A team of archaeologists in Egypt has discovered six rock cut statues inside two adjoining shrines, previously believed to be completely destroyed by an earthquake that shook the region centuries ago. The find occurred during a dig at Gebel el Silsila, an ancient major quarry site in Upper Egypt, by a group from Sweden’s Lund University. Led by Dr. Maria Nilsson and Associate Director John Ward, the archaeologists have been excavating the area since 2012.Click here to continue reading.

A German Conservator Employs an Innovative Technique to Clean a Pollock Masterpiece
Ever wondered how museums maintain their collections of priceless art? The restoration and conservation of artworks for future generations is one of the primary functions of contemporary cultural institutions. Thus, the cleaning of artworks has developed into a science, with restorers inventing an array of fascinating and unusual techniques to keep masterpieces in the condition in which the artists had intended them to be viewed. Click here to continue reading.

A Sculpture of Abraham Lincoln’s Hand Has Been Stolen from an Illinois Museum
A plaster sculpture of President Abraham Lincoln's hand has been missing from the Kankakee County Museum in northeastern Illinois since at least December 11, and there are no witnesses or suspects. A custodian initially noticed that the hand was missing and alerted the museum's executive director. Click here to continue reading.

For Sale: A Gilded Age Mansion, A Futuristic Beverly Hills Home, An Alpine Retreat, A Lakefront Castle & A Modern Miami Gem
1. This Gilded Age gem was once home to a top banker turned diplomat. Verner Z. Reed Jr., the Vice President of the Chase Manhattan Bank and later the U.S. Ambassador to Morocco, enlisted British architect William Mackenzie to design this Gilded Age masterpiece in the 1930s. Built to compliment the curve of the Newport coast, the crescent shaped “cottage” offers ocean views from every living space. Click here to continue reading. 

Guy Wildenstein’s Tax Evasion Trial Has Been Postponed
The highly anticipated trial of the Wildenstein family on charges of tax evasion and money laundering was blocked in Paris today, 6 January, due to a legal technicality. The family’s lawyers argued that initiating combined criminal and civil proceedings for the same case was unconstitutional. In a courtroom packed with more than 20 lawyers and dozens of journalists, the judges found that the question was serious enough to be put before the High Court of Justice. Click here to continue reading.

A Team of Scientists Have Discovered Picasso’s “Chemical Fingerprint”
An extensive analysis of Pablo Picasso's early work by a Spanish chemical engineer has provided some fascinating insights into the artist's paintings created between 1895 and 1900. Using cutting-edge, non-invasive technology, chemical engineer Dr José Francisco García Martínez of the University of Barcelona, in collaboration with the Museu Picasso, Barcelona analyzed works from the artist's early period, prior to the advent of Cubism. Click here to continue reading.

Southern California Museums Will Drop Admission Charges For the Day on January 30
Some of the largest museums in Southern California will offer free general admission to the public for one day only on Jan. 30. In all, 30 institutions are expected to participate in the free day, including the L.A. County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Natural History Museum of L.A. County. Click here to continue reading.

The Deputy Director of the Dallas Museum of Art Steps Down
The sudden end of Maxwell Anderson’s tenure as director of the Dallas Museum of Art left some speculating about what other changes may follow in its wake. After all, Anderson was the driving force behind a laundry list of high-profile initiatives at the museum that quickly made the DMA one of the most dynamic regional art institutions in the nation. Would the momentum continue without Anderson? Click here to continue reading.

Italy Will Invest Over $300 Million in Cultural Projects
The Italian government says it will invest 300 million euros, about $322 million, in cultural projects over the next three years, including the restoration of monuments like Nero’s Golden Palace in Rome and increasing security at museums. Italy’s vast artistic and cultural heritage has been chronically underfunded for decades, and private sponsorship of the arts has gained traction only in recent years. Click here to continue reading.

The Washington Winter Show Opens This Week, Marrying Connoisseurship with Philanthropy
Launched in 1955, the Washington Winter Show is the second oldest charitable antiques show in the United States. The renowned event, which has raised over eight million dollars for numerous local charities since its inception, attracts leading dealers and patrons from the Washington metropolitan area and beyond, year after year. The 2016 Washington Winter Show will kick off with a Preview Night reception on Thursday, January 7, at American University’s Katzen Arts Center -- a graceful and modern venue. Click here to continue reading.

The New York Public Library Releases a Trove of Images Into the Public Domain
The New York Public Library (NYPL) has released 187,000 images — or, in their parlance, “digital items” — into the public domain. The effort, which launched today, January 6, was spearheaded by NYPL Labs, a kind of think tank within the institution dedicated to innovative projects and collaborations. The images, which are downloadable without restrictions, can be browsed on a visualization tool created by NYPL, allowing viewers to organize the database by century created (11th century onward), genre, collection, and color. Click here to continue reading.

A Long-Debated Monet Painting Will Not Be Added to the Artist’s Catalogue Raisonné
While Guy Wildenstein faces charges of tax fraud and money laundering in Paris, another French court has handed down its final ruling on a Monet that was the subject of a bitter attribution battle between the owner and the Wildenstein Institute. And it is a clear “non!” The work, Les Bords de Seine à Argenteuil (dated 1875 on frame), featured in the BBC programme Fake or Fortune in June 2011, in which its owner David Joel enlisted the help of the programme presenters, Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould, to prove it was a genuine Monet. Click here to continue reading.

Egremont Family Treasures Go on View at the Petworth House for the First Time
More than half a century ago experts including art historians from the National Gallery in London toured the attics of a house in West Sussex, looking at grimy family portraits, dusky landscapes and dim religious works, choosing the paintings the government would accept instead of cash to settle a huge inheritance tax bill. Click here to continue reading.

A New Campaign Aims to Save J.M.W. Turner’s Country Retreat
The painter J. M. W. Turner is a veritable British legend, revered by public museums, collectors, and art lovers alike. Yet, all the adoration hasn't prevented Sandycombe Lodge—the country house that the British master designed and built outside of London in 1813—from falling into serious disrepair, with parts of the house damaged by flooding and collapsing ceilings. Click here to continue reading.

Impressionist Masterpieces are at the Center of a Heated Family Feud
The sons of a renowned art dealer who hobnobbed with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse are on a mission to recover a Claude Monet painting and other works by Impressionist greats worth tens of millions of dollars they claim their stepmother wrongfully took from their dad. Marc and Andre Salz say their stepmother, Janet Traeger-Salz, took at least three paintings from the estate of their father, Sam Salz, after he died in 1981.Click here to continue reading.

 The Chrysler Museum Names Dutch Art Expert Chief Curator
The Chrysler Museum of Art has selected a new chief curator, Lloyd DeWitt, the Norfolk, Virginia institution announced Thursday. He succeeds longtime chief curator Jeff Harrison, who retired in June 2015. The Canadian art historian and curator comes to the Chrysler Museum from the Art Gallery of Ontario, where he was curator of European art since 2011. Click here to continue reading.

A Recent Bequest Bolsters the Dallas Museum of Art’s Expressionist Holdings
Dorace Fichtenbaum had been generous toward the Dallas Museum of Art, donating funds as well as artworks. But the museum never expected this. Before Ms. Fichtenbaum died last summer, she stipulated in her will that the museum could choose works from her collection after her death, allowing it to curate the bequest and strengthen parts of its holdings. Click here to continue reading.

Egypt’s New Antiquities Database Aims to Identify and Recover Smuggled Artifacts
The Egyptian ministry of antiquities is developing a new digital database to help officials to identify and recover smuggled artifacts. Working with the Antiquities Coalition and the American Research Center in Egypt, the ministry aims to document the materials, location and provenance of each object in the nation’s extensive public collections. Click here to continue reading.

Picasso’s Granddaughter to Auction a Collection of the Artist’s Ceramics
Forget the wall: Collectors are making room for Pablo Picasso on their kitchen tables. Far less well known than his paintings and sculptures are the roughly 4,000 pieces of pottery that the Spanish artist hand-molded and painted over the course of his long career, from curling vases to smiling-face plates to animal figurines. Click here to continue reading.

Prince Charles Discusses His Decision to Save the Dumfries House
After taking on a multi-million-pound project to save an 18th century stately home and its priceless contents, the Prince of Wales may have expected congratulations all round. But the Prince has told how his successful intervention to saveDumfries House for the nation was not celebrated by all, after he risked the wrath of art collector millionaires. Click here to continue reading.