The Guardian reported last Wednesday that Richard Prince’s re-photograph of 10-year-old Brooke Shields, Spiritual America, has been removed from their exhibition, Pop Life, Art in a Material World.

The photograph was removed after Scotland Yard became concerned that the photograph may have violated UK’s obscenity laws. There couldn’t be a worse moment to fight for the exhibition of Prince’s post-modern masterpiece given the recent and tragic news of a child sex-abuse ring here in the UK.

UPDATE: October 3, 2009

The Richard Prince installation has been taken down and the room is cordoned off. We asked Tate Modern staff and information services staff if the Tate would be re-installing Prince’s work and if so, when. They declined to give any information. The bookstore has also removed all Pop Life exhibition catalogs. No information was given as to the catalogs re-release date.

UPDATE: October 14, 2009

According to the AP, the Tate Modern has replaced Prince’s photo of 10-yr-old Brooke Shields and replaced it with a photo of Shields in a bikini taken in 2005.  Who says we all can’t get along?

Seemingly as a show of force, the city of Boston is cracking down on graffiti vandals. According to the Boston Globe, Danielle Bremner, a 24-year-old New Yorker, was charged with 13 counts of vandalism and defacing property for spray painting her moniker, “Utah,” in the Back Bay and East Boston. Last week she pleaded guilty to the charges, and on Thursday, October 1st, she is expected to be sentenced to six months in jail.

On Tuesday, September 22nd, Mexican federal prosecutors began investigating whether or not more than 1,000 items attributed to artist Frida Kahlo were forged. For previous entry on this story, click here.

Armed robbers have stolen Olympia, a painting by the Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, in broad daylight from a Brussels museum dedicated to Magritte’s life and works. The painting is estimated at four million euros.

Art Theft Central outlines all the art thefts occuring in the Boston area between 1970 and 1989. Quite interesting. According to ATC, “Rembrandt and Old Master paintings were always a hot commodity in Boston.”

Dr. Gunther von Hagens has another controversial exhibition of his plastinated corpses, this time combining the always controversial discourses of sex and death. The doctor’s newest stunt follows a German court’s ban of a display of his showing a pair of skinned cadavers in a unique sexual position. To try and get around the local decency laws, von Hagens hacked off the dead lovers’ torsos. More from The Art Newspaper here.

The Austrian Culture Ministry revealed earlier this September that it has received a formal request for the restitution of The Art of Painting by Flemish master Johannes Vermeer, which has been displayed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum since 1946. Vienna’s art museum is bracing for a protracted legal battle with the heirs of a man who reportedly sold his Vermeer painting to Adolf Hitler in 1940.