How do you move Rodin’s three-ton sculpture “The Kiss” from Europe to Australia? The Art Gallery of New South Wales would probably have answered when it took possession of the piece in late 2016: “With a great deal of paperwork.” Moving fine art anywhere in the world is a massive ...

Posted: November 13, 2017

Category: Blockchain

In 2012 Hurricane Sandy bit off the front of a seaside home and tossed it into the sea, then spat a Thomas Hart Benton painting into the ocean along with it, according to ArtNews. The cyclone was the most destructive of its kind in the Mid-Atlantic region’s history. By late 2017, thousands of ...

Posted: October 27, 2017

Category: Blockchain, Market

The earliest depiction of an art marketplace in the West comes from the Greek ceramicist and painter Phintias. Circa 500 BCE he illustrated a cup with the image of a man buying a vase. The first art auctions were not to be depicted until Roman was great, during the time of Augustus (43 bce–18 ...

Posted: October 9, 2017

Category: Blockchain

Art historians find an odd yet telling blip in the creation of paintings of flowers: a dearth on the subject was produced in Holland between the late 1630’s and during the 1640s. Alastair Sooke, art critic of The Daily Telegraph, suggests in a BBC article that, “Perhaps, for a few years at ...

Posted: September 26, 2017

Category: Blockchain

The Ming dynasty Chinese saying “Water That Is Too Clear Has No Fish” applies to the modern day art market like few other aphorisms. The opacity and secrecy of the sector have mired artists, buyers, sellers, and middlemen in murky business dealings that have not changed since the Medici ...

Posted: September 4, 2017

Category: Blockchain