Events
- March 9 – The identification of Portrait of Olivia Porter as an original work of the 1630s by Sir Anthony van Dyck is announced. It is in the collection of the Bowes Museum, County Durham, England.[1]
Portrait of Olivia Boteler Porter by Anthony van Dyck before and after restoration. The version on the left was the photograph originally posted to the Your Paintings website. - March 18 – The identification of Self-portrait wearing a white feathered bonnet as an original work of 1635 by Rembrandt is announced. Hanging in Buckland Abbey, Devon, England, it is the only painting by this artist in the collection of the British National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty to whom it was gifted in 2010.[2]
- April – The philanthropist and art collector Leonard Lauder promises for donation his important collection of Cubist works by artists including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris estimated to be valued at over one billion US dollars to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.[3]
- April 13 – The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is re-opened by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands after a ten-year refurbishment.[4]
- May – Extension to Lenbachhaus art museum, designed by Foster and Partners, is opened in Munich.
- May 9 – Charles Ray's sculpture "Boy with Frog" is removed by the city of Venice from where it stood before the Punta della Dogana overlooking where the Grand Canal meets the Giudecca Canal. The work which had been commissioned by Francois-Henri Pinault to stand outside the aforementioned historic building which serves as an annex to his main museum housed in the Palazzo Grassi is replaced by a contemporary copy of a streetlamp which once stood at the same spot.[5]
- July–October – Gromit Unleashed in Bristol, England.[6]
- July 10 – Reclusive English artist Audrey Amiss dies at the age of 79 in London, leaving behind a personal archive including hundreds of albums and books, and around 50,000 sketches.[7]
- July 14 – The dedication of the statue of Rachel Carson in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.[8]
- July 25 – Katharina Fritsch's sculpture Hahn/Cock is unveiled on the fourth plinth, Trafalgar Square, London.[9]
- October – The English street artist Banksy stages an entire month of daily public installations all over New York City entitled "Better Out Than In".[10]
Flowers left at Banksy's depiction of the former World Trade Center in TriBeCa - October 21 – Cleveland Museum of Art director David Franklin resigns citing personal reasons.[11] Numerous published sources later revealed that the married Franklin had been involved in an affair with a subordinate. When this revelation came to the attention of the board, Franklin chose to leave.[12] The woman in question, Christina Gaston, committed suicide.[13]
- November 3 – The magazine Focus reveals that in March 2012, 121 framed and 1,258 unframed artworks were discovered by German customs authorities in an apartment in Schwabing, Munich. Seized from the possession of Cornelius Gurlitt, son of 1930s and later degenerate art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, the cache includes works by Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Otto Dix and others.[14]
- November 12 – The triptych Three Studies of Lucian Freud by the painter Francis Bacon sells for US$142.4 million (including the buyer's premium) to an unnamed buyer at Christie's New York auction house, becoming the most expensive work of art ever to be sold at auction.[15] The 2013 sale also represents the highest price paid for a work by a British artist, beating Bacon's Triptych 1976, which fetched $86.3 million in May 2008.[16]
- November 19 – Museo Júmex in Mexico City, designed by David Chipperfield, is opened to show part of the contemporary art Colección Júmex.
- November 20 – The "Graffiti Mecca" 5Pointz on the sides of a twentieth-century warehouse in Long Island City, Queens, New York, is whitewashed by a team of painters in the employ of the site's new developers.[17]
- November 25 – "The Church of Vezzoli", the PS1, New York City leg of Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli's three part retrospective, "The Trinity", is cancelled after the church he arranged to buy in the town of Montegiordano for deployment in the exhibition is remanded in Italy prior to its leaving the country for the United States.[18]
- November 28 – The Tetley (Leeds) opens as a contemporary art gallery in England.
- December 4 – Pérez Art Museum Miami, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is opened.[19]
- December 12 – From today until March 16, 2014, the Dying Gaul is put on display in the main rotunda of the west wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. This temporary tenure marks the first time the antiquity has left Italy since it was returned in the second decade of the nineteenth century after Napoleon brought it to the Louvre in 1797 as a plunder of war.
