Police said they believed the men planned to cut up the statue and sell it for scrap metal. Watch out Donald Judd!

Daniel Grant has an interesting article regarding art schools that provide business classes and undergrad and grad business degrees to aspiring artists and designers.

Artists “seek to be hired in upper level positions or become more successful in their current roles, but they need to be able to articulate the value of their skills in a way that management can understand. And, in large measure, these are the messages they are seeking to communicate: Innovation and creativity need to be incorporated into every aspect of business rather than isolated from key decision-making; design is not just a picture of something to be made or something that is purely tactical (a logo, for instance), but an integral part of a long-term strategy that needs to be integrated into overall planning.”

I wonder which institution will be the first to offer a joint MFA/MBA/JD degree program. Yale anyone? Via The Huffington Post.

Apparently even drug dealers are accepting stolen art. Last March, Bronislaw “Bruno” Nestir was arrested and charged with larceny, possession of guns and narcotics, and selling drugs. Police say he was receiving stolen paintings from an art thief and doling out bags of heroin in return. The 39 paintings—including some from Yale’s Slifka Center and the Free Public Library—were recovered.

After  his arrest, there were questions as to Nestir’s mental competency to stand trial, and yesterday, Judge Roland Fasano accepted the findings of a report on Bruno’s mental competency to stand trial. He ruled that Bruno is competent and released him on a promise to appear again in court on June 3.

Via The New Haven Independent.

Anthony Amore, Director of Security at the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum, has some interesting insights into why thieves steal art–and more importantly–why they’re sadly mistaken in their belief that art theft is a sexy Hollywood thriller.

The theft last week of priceless paintings, including works by Picasso, Matisse, and Modigliani, from the Paris Museum of Modern Art was not only a large-scale property theft, but another reminder that our cultural property remains vulnerable to criminals with little regard for our history as a civilization. … In order to properly protect the public against further attacks on our cultural heritage, it’s important that we understand who commits these crimes. Institutions need to realize that “it can happen here.”

Via The Huffington Post.

Thieves have stolen five pictures, including a lithograph by Picasso, from the home of a private collector in southern France. The owner was beaten up during the robbery at his Marseille home. The value of the stolen works has not yet been made public. Via the BBC.

Lawrence Weiner

The recent Guggenheim appointment of Jefferey Weiss is part of the Panza Collection Conservation Initiative (PCCI), which the Guggenheim announced last month along with a major grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of $1.23 million to support the first phase of this project. According to the Guggenheim, the first phase will undertake a comprehensive evaluation of the Minimalist, Post-Minimalist, and Conceptual artworks, from the 1960s through the 1970s, in the Guggenheim’s Panza Collection. During the first phase of the project, case studies will be constructed around the work of four artists in the Guggenheim’s Panza Collection: Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Bruce Nauman, and Lawrence Weiner.

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I haven’t posted much (actually none at all) on the Barnes Foundation move mainly because of the overwhelming response to this spectacle by other bloggers and writers. However, if you’re still unsure of what exactly is going on in Pennsylvania (and I’m not just talking about art here), the LA Times’ Christopher Knight congratulates the Weekly Standard’s art critic, Lance Esplund, for what Knight calls a “splendid service” to readers for informing them on the tragedy of the Barnes move. Knight zeroes in on “Pennsylvania blockheads” specifically because, as he sees it, the move hinges on the tourist-trap misconception that crowds equal in-depth appreciation. Tough to argue with that conclusion.