Art Market Recovery Forecast

Something Useful To Do With Those Publishers' Clearing House Thingies (Austan, TX, US)

When junk mail arrives in the mail, most either throw it in their recycle bin or toss it in the garbage, but one woman sees it as art. "I was a bit bothered by the amount of paper that came into my home," said artist Annette Lawrence. Instead of tossing it in the recycle bin, Lawrence decided to save every piece of it. "It is a year's worth of junk mail torn into two inch wide strips and stacked and bound," said Lawrence. "It is intended to show how much junk mail comes into a one-person household in one year."
Austin News

Cerny's EU Sculpture, Now With Toilet Discreetly Veiled (United Nations)
A depiction of Bulgaria as a toilet in an artwork at the European Union headquarters in Brussels was covered up following a complaint by the government in Sofia. The section of the 'Entropa' avant-garde installation showing Bulgaria as a Roman or 'Turkish' toilet was draped with a black cloth last night, said Jan Vytopil, a spokesman for the Czech presidency of the EU."
Bloomberg

How A Symbol Of Freed Slaves Didn't End Up On DC Statue (Washington, US)
When Barack Obama takes the oath of office as president of the United States, Thomas Crawford's 'Statue of Freedom' will preside over the event from its exalted perch atop the Capitol dome. Metaphorically, at least, the nation's first African American president will complete something the statue's artist originally planned to evoke.
Los Angeles Times

The Getty Grows Up (Los Angeles, US)
That was the state of affairs at the world's richest museum some six years after its namesake died in June 1976, leaving $1.2 billion (about $2.7 billion in today's dollars) to "a museum, library and gallery of art for the diffusion of artistic and general knowledge." The bounty came as a surprise. Getty had implied that the Malibu museum he'd opened in 1954, modeled on a first-century Roman villa, would inherit little.
Wall Street Journal

Survey: Contemporary Art Market Recovery 3-5+ Years Away (Art Market)
Confidence levels in the contemporary-art market have fallen 81 percent since May 2008 and may take between three and five years to recover, according to a survey by research company ArtTactic Ltd. ArtTactic's Western Art Market Confidence Indicator dropped to 10.5 from 56, the lowest level reached since the survey was first conducted in May 2005....
Bloomberg

American Owns Posters Taken By Nazis, Court Rules (Germany)
A German court today declared a retired U.S. airline pilot to be the rightful owner of his father's poster collection, which was seized by the Gestapo in 1938 and is currently housed in a Berlin museum." This decision contradicts an earlier judgment.
Bloomberg

Help Wanted: Money Manager For A Louvre Endowment (Paris, France)
Eighteen banks, including UBS AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co., are competing for money-management business from an elderly, refined first-time client -- the Louvre. The Paris museum, which opened to the public in 1793, says it is starting a U.S.-style endowment next month with the 175 million euros ($230 million) it received to set up an Abu Dhabi offshoot. Bloomberg