Free Republic

A painting by Paul Gauguin on loan to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. was attacked by a gallery-visiting woman on Friday who repeatedly struck the work of art while screaming ‘this is evil.’ According to other gallery-goers and security personnel the woman attempted to tear the painting down from the wall and thrashed the painting with her fists. Luckily, a clear plastic covering surrounding the work of art protected it from the assault. 'She was really pounding it with her fists. It was like this weird surreal scene that one doesn't expect at the National Gallery,’ Pamela...

Late last year, the “arts community” was outraged when our government-funded National Portrait Gallery removed a video from a gay-art exhibition after complaints from conservative members of Congress. Jack-booted storm-troopers didn’t close down the sprawling, silly show. Curators merely withdrew a short film that featured ants crawling over a crucifix—one of the greatest art works of all time, if the howls from the left are a measure of its quality. Artists and their entourages wailed and rent their designer outfits, castigating the “cowardice” of those who pulled the clip. By way of contrast, the artist, who died of AIDS two...

Artist Andy Goldsworthy is best known for working alone in nature, making fragile, temporary sculptures from leaves, rocks, even ice. The sculptor works quietly for hours in each place, a process captured in the 2001 documentary Rivers and Tides. Photographs of Goldsworthy's work hang in galleries and museums around the world. His latest project is a permanent piece in the center of Washington, D.C. It's the first new work commissioned by the National Gallery of Art in 26 years. Goldsworthy mastered optics and engineering to create a series of domes constructed of slabs of slate designed to hold together permanently...

Is British National Gallery's New Raphael a Fake? Feb.20, 2004 LONDON (Reuters) - A Raphael painting bought by Britain's National Gallery this month for $41.7 million is a fake, a U.S. art professor says. The gallery secured the "Madonna of the Pinks," which it called the most significant Old Master in any British collection, after a fight to keep it in the country. But James Beck, Professor of Art History at Columbia University in New York and the President of ArtWatch International, told Friday's edition of the Times the gallery had paid "a record price for a fake." "They haven't...