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Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project Adds AI to Provenance Search Tool

The Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project (JDCRP), an organization founded in Berlin in 2016, announced today that it has added AI capabilities to its provenance research tool, Legacy Explorer , which launched last year. Legacy Explorer is currently able to search five archives, including the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg archive at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, as well as several others that organize property cards and photographs. A sixth archive will be added later this month, according to a statement from the JDCRP. Prior to this AI sync, users would have to search each archive individually. Now, the AI document-scanning tools, along with partnerships with organizations and archives around the world, will allow researchers to pull information about the same cultural object from different sources at the same time. There are still dozens of other databases and archives for looted artwork and artifacts that contain information about Nazi-looted art ...
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Alison Nguyen to Screen New Film Exploring the Hidden History of Westbeth on the High Line Next Month

The High Line and the Chanel Culture Fund have commissioned artist Alison Nguyen to create a new film examining the overlooked history of one of New York’s best-known cultural landmarks. Prior Occupants , as Nguyen’s work is titled, is the fifth installment in the High Line Originals series and the second produced in partnership with the luxury brand’s arts initiative. The film will premiere on September 8 and screen daily through early November on the High Line Channel, the park’s public video space at 14th Street. Rather than focusing on the High Line itself, Nguyen turns her attention to the nearby Westbeth Artist Housing, a former Bell Laboratories complex where talking movies, television, and other technological breakthroughs were developed and where part of the Manhattan Project’s research for the atomic was once conducted. In 1970, it was converted into affordable artist housing, whose notable past tenants have included Robe...
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Sale of a “Stunning” UK Fossil Collection to the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi Sparks Controversy

A “stunning” British collection of 318 Jurassic-era fossils has been sold to the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, the Guardian reports, in what some have described as a loss to the nation. The trove was collected by UK fossil hunter Chris Moore along the Jurassic Coast, a UNESCO world heritage site in southwest England that is rich in fossils dating from 200 million to 245 million years ago. They include ichthyosaurs, fish, and crustaceans, among other creatures, some of which could be new species. The collection was initially offered to the Natural History Museum in London and to Amgueddfa Cymru (a natural history museum in Wales) for what is said to have been an eight-figure sum. Both museums passed, citing a lack of funds. In first making the collection available for purchase to those museums, Moore was following the area’s fossil-collecting codes, which specify that scientifically important specimens must first be offered to UK-registered institutions for...
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The New York Gallery That Brought You Adrien Brody Is Suing a Collector for More than $800,000 in Unpaid Invoices

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New York’s Eden Fine Art filed a legal complaint in New Jersey district court last month, saying that collector Jacob Shochat hasn’t paid for some $822,390 worth of artworks he bought from the gallery. The gallery is accusing the collector, who has a background in medical technologies, of breach of contract. Eden says it began taking orders from Shochat in 2018 for $900,000 worth of “artworks and sculptures.” Based on past experience in which he had paid for his purchases, the gallery handed over pieces, sometimes even personally delivering them to his home in Mahwah, New Jersey. Eden says it’s a small, family-owned gallery that can’t withstand these kinds of losses and is suing for the balance as well as interest, attorney’s fees, and expenses. Shochat could not immediately be reached. Eden’s attorney declined to comment for this article.  Founded in 1997 by Cathia Klimovsky, Eden boasts “over 100,000 square feet of spectacular gallery spaces” ...
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One of the Greatest Private Hiroshige Collections Ever Assembled Is Heading to Christie’s

For decades, if you wanted to talk about Japanese prints, the conversation usually began and ended with Hokusai’s  Great Wave . That may be starting to change. This September, Christie’s will begin selling more than 600 prints from the collection of Alan Medaugh, an American businessman who spent half a century chasing the finest impressions he could find by Utagawa Hiroshige, Hokusai’s great rival and one of the towering figures of Japanese printmaking. Specialists say the collection ranks among the finest ever assembled. The first auction, on September 17 in New York, will include more than 180 prints. The timing might be ideal. The market for Japanese prints has quietly become one of the auction world’s success stories. Hokusai has led the charge, with exceptional impressions of  The Great Wave  regularly smashing expectations. Last year, Sotheby’s  sold one from the Okada Museum collection for $2.8 mill...
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New York’s School of Visual Arts Reports One-Third Drop in Enrollment Since 2019, Faces Largest Budget Deficit Ever

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Amid a broad crisis in higher education in the US resulting from demographic trends and a combative Trump administration, enrollment at New York’s School of Visual Arts (SVA) is down some 34 percent since 2019, and the school faces a $22 million structural budget deficit, “the largest in its nearly 80-year history,” according to a previously unreported July 1 email to faculty and staff from interim president Christopher J. Cyphers. The school’s annual operating budget is around $200 million. SVA is largely dependent on tuition; full-time tuition is $55,270 annually for the coming school year. The drop in enrollment is partly due to the so-called demographic cliff, a plunge in enrollment resulting from a drop in birth rates in the US at the advent of the Great Recession, starting around the end of 2007. The email also puts the crisis partly down to “the ongoing dismantling of education and the arts by the federal government, and an onslaught of threats to ...
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Pacific Health Leaders Recognised in Pasifika Medical Association Awards

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Pacific health leaders recognised for decades of service and leadership at the Pasifika Medical Association’s 30th anniversary conference. Photo: Pasifika Medical Association Members of the health sector were recognised for their decades of service and leadership with a commitment to improving the health and wellbeing of Pacific communities in Aotearoa New Zealand.  As part of the Pasifika Medical Association (PMA) 30th anniversary conference held in Auckland this week, PMA honoured 13  health leaders and advocates with Life Member and Service Awards and President’s Medals. PMA Chief Executive Debbie Sorensen says the awards are an important opportunity to acknowledge the people whose service has helped shape Pacific health over generations. “Leadership in Pacific health has always been grounded in service. These awards recognise our outstanding leaders who have given their knowledge, expertise, time and leadership to our communities, often over many decades.”...
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