You can buy this photographic print for 25 BitchCoins or $2,500.  Sarah Meyohas

BitchCoin: A New Cryptocurrency for Buying Art and Investing in the Artist

When you buy art, you typically get something physical in return: A print, a painting, a sculpture. And that piece of art, depending upon who created it and what happens after you bought it, can become very valuable down the line. Or not. But here’s an interesting idea: What would happen if you were to invest in the artist instead of the art? That’s a question Sarah Meyohas, a young photographer from Yale’s MFA program, hopes to answer with her latest project.

Tiananmen Square ‘Negatives’: An Art Book or a Protest?

BEIJING — The latest book by the photographer Xu Yong is filled with the images of young Chinese idealists clamoring for democracy and denouncing the Communist Party, but he insists that there is nothing political about his decision to publish this trove of snapshots he had kept hidden for more than two decades.

Cuba refuses to return seized art despite thaw in relations with US

With the recent loosening of US restrictions on trade with Cuba, prisoner exchanges and the promise of warmer relations to come, the two countries are closer than they have been for 50 years. But for those Cuban exiles in the US whose art was seized by the Cuban authorities in the 1960s, restitution of their property is still no closer. Cuba continues to reject the charge that the art in question was stolen, and has no mechanism for its return.

MFA Boston Acquires What’s Left of Legendary Rothschild Collection

The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston, is the lucky recipient of a major gift from heirs of the Rothschild family. The works, 186 in total, are part of a treasure trove of family heirlooms that was looted during World War II, but had been partially restored over the ensuing decades. (For more news regarding acquisitions at the MFA Boston, see JFK Portrait by Jamie Wyeth Lands at MFA Boston and Finest Collection of Japanese Art in US Given to Four Museums.)

Gurlitt Munich Art Trove Matisse Restitution Delayed

There seems to be no end in sight for the saga of Cornelius Gurlitt’s ‘Munich Art Trove’. The collection was originally collated by Cornelius Gurlitt’s father, Hildebrand Gurlitt. Gurlitt senior was one of four art dealers entrusted with selling so-called degenerate art during the Nazi regime’s rule. The collection included a number high-value works from the period by Henri Matisse, Max Liebermann, Otto Dix, and Marc Chagall, among others. Originally estimated at the value of nearly £700 million – the value dropped significantly as many pieces are believed to have been looted from Jewish families by the Nazis.

Market News: at what value art?

A report on the rising value of art exports which suggests that the Droit de Suite – or Artists’ Resale Royalty charge – has not impacted on sales as much as had been feared has caused a stir among economists and dealers representing the British art trade. The charge, introduced in 2006 and expanded in 2012 to conform to European legislation, is applied to all re-sales in the UK of work by living European artists (and by European artists until 70 years after their death) and was seen by the trade as a major threat to the UK art market.