From the BBC:

A 60-year-old South Korean man ran a private museum stuffed with fakes, police said as they arrested him. The man collected 530 million won ($443,000) from people who thought the objects on display were ancient treasures, AFP news agency reported….The museum was set up in August 2004 and has attracted more than 130,000 visitors, police said. Police told AFP that 153 of the 184 artefacts on display at the museum in Gongju, about 160km (100 miles) south of the capital, Seoul, were fakes.

Score one for Turkey. From last week’s Guardian:

A British artist walked free yesterday after being cleared of insulting Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, by portraying him as a dog in a case seen as a test of Turkey’s tolerance of free speech. A Turkish court acquitted Michael Dickinson of criminal charges despite citing “some insulting elements” in his depiction of Erdogan as a dog attached to a leash in the colours of the US flag. But the court ruled that the artwork was “within the limits of criticism”.

From the CBC:

Celebrity and fashion photographer Bert Stern has filed a lawsuit over seven missing photographs from his famed “last sitting” shoot with Marilyn Monroe shortly before her death. The iconic series, shot for Vogue magazine in July 1962, depicts the Hollywood icon nude aside from some jewelry, posing behind a series of translucent scarves and lying among rumpled white bed linens. …Stern’s suit calls for the return of the photos and at least $1 million US in damages and legal fees.

From today’s NY Times:

Italian police have recovered a Renoir painting that was stolen from a private collection 33 years ago, Agence France-Presse reported. Following a tip from an art critic, Vittorio Sgarbi, who was enlisted to evaluate the work by a gallery owner in the city of Riccone, the police arrested the gallery owner and two other suspects. The oil painting of a nude woman, above, which is valued at $730,000, was stolen from a family in Milan in 1975. It was recovered along with a forgery of a Manet work, which Mr. Sgarbi had also been asked to appraise.

The Fruitlands Museum “has taken a series of steps to improve its bookkeeping procedures and is confident it will successfully weather the $1 million embezzlement scheme that officials allege was carried out for seven years by Peggy Kempton, former deputy director and chief financial officer.”

The museum has filed a lawsuit in Worcester Superior Court against Kempton and her children, Bunker Kempton, Kristen Kempton, and Robert Kempton, all of Hollis, N.H.

The suit alleges that Kempton and her children obtained credit cards in the museum’s name and made personal purchases. It also alleges that Kempton used museum funds to pay for personal credit cards; violated her lease by not paying monthly rent for a museum-owned cottage; used Fruitlands funds to pay for utilities at the cottage; and diverted museum funds to her children. The suit alleges that Kempton concealed the financial charges and payments by falsely adjusting Fruitlands’ financial books and records.

The nonprofit museum has an annual budget of $1.2 million. More from the Boston Globe.

From the Art Newspaper:

A retired Massachusetts lawyer who tried to sell seven stolen pictures worth $30m, which a client had left with him shortly before being shot dead, will be sentenced in November. In August, a federal jury in Boston found Robert Mardirosian guilty of knowingly possessing stolen goods that had crossed a United States boundary. The 1978 theft from collector Michael Bakwin was the largest home burglary in Massachusetts history. Mardirosian, 72, now faces a maximum sentence of ten years in prison plus three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.

The New York Post reports today that a NY judge has ordered Degas’ sculpture, “Dancer Looking at Her Right Foot,” to be returned to retired businessman Norman Alexander. Alexander was reportedly conned out of his dance four years ago.

According to the Post:

Alexander, 80, had just suffered a stroke and was in very ill health when he considered selling off his estimated $10 million art collection back in 2004. At the urging of his financial adviser, he gave the Edgar Degas sculpture to a man named Thomas Doyle III to be authenticated. Within 24 hours, Doyle had sold the sculpture for $225,000.