Disputed work is Rembrandt, Di Caprio gift millions, Russian sales dive, Emma 's rape mattress photos, Canadian journalist fraud

— Disputed Work Reattributed to Rembrandt: In 1969, art historians cast doubt on whether
the painting “Saul and David” was in fact by Rembrandt, demoting it to the work of a talented
follower or studio member — but now, thanks to eight
years of “CSI-style” investigation, an international team of conservators and experts have
officially reattributed it to the Dutch master. The work is
the centerpiece of a new exhibition at the Hague’s Mauritshuis museum, titled “Rembrandt?
The Case of Saul and David,” detailing the painstaking process.
[TAN, WP, NYT, ArtDaily]

— Canadian Journalist Fired Over Art Dealing: Canadian television and radio host Evan
Solomon has been fired after the Toronto Star reported that he brokered lucrative art sales to his interviewees — among them, Bank of England governor Mark Carney
and BlackBerry founder Jim Balsillie. At first, both Solomon and the CBC denied the
allegations, but upon receiving incriminating transcripts of Solomon’s
emails, both recanted: “Some of Evan Solomon’s activities were inconsistent with our
conflict of interest and ethics policy as well as our journalistic

standards and practices,” said CBC spokesman Chuck Thompson. [Toronto Star, Guardian, Telegraph, Bloomberg]

— Designs Unveiled for Two World Trade Center: Architecture firm BIG, helmed by Bjarke Ingels,
has revealed its plans for Two World Trade Center: a glass skyscraper composed of stacked
box-like sections. (The job was originally supposed to
go to Foster + Partners, but 21st Century Fox and News Corp reportedly felt their submission
was too stodgy.) “The completion of the World Trade Center will
finally restore the majestic skyline of Manhattan and unite the street-scapes of Tribeca
with the towers downtown,” Ingels said. “From Tribeca, it will appear
like a vertical village of singular buildings each tailored to their individual activities
stacked on top of each other, forming parks and plazas in the sky.”
[Dezeen]

— DiCaprio Gives Art to LACMA: Leonardo DiCaprio will donate John Gerrard’s large-scale
video installation “Solar Reserve (Tonopah, Nevada),” which was on view outside Lincoln
Center last year. [LAT, TAN]

— Russian Art Sales Take a Dive: Judging by last week’s Russian art sales in London,
the market has dropped to only one-fifth of its peak prices from 2007. [Telegraph, AMM]

— Ed Ruscha Goes West: “You would think it had been done before, but I couldn’t
find any other show on Ed that focused on the West,” said curator Karin Breuer of her
forthcoming exhibition at San Francisco’s De Young Museum, set to open in
July 2016. The show is aptly titled “Ed Ruscha and the Great American West.” [TAN, WSJ]

— “We have to figure out together how New York City doesn’t lose the art world,”
said Cultural Affairs commissioner Tom Finklepearl last night at the annual awards
dinner for the International Association of Art Critics. “It could happen.
It’s becoming so expensive to live here. The pricing out of one neighborhood after
the next is compounded by the crisis of student debt.” He added: “The core
audience of museums is 91 percent white. That is in a country that is going to be
majority minority soon. [...] One of the problems around some of these shows
that come up that are controversial, that deal with race, is [that] there’s not
really that diverse a group of people writing about it in the most prominent
places.” [ARTnews]

— Piggybacking on an already vicious comment section, hackers blocked the website
displaying Emma Sulkowicz’s new video art piece, “Ceci n’est pas un viol,” which
restages a similar scenario to the alleged assault that sparked her famous rape video

“Mattress Performance.” [Guardian]

— Danish artist Nadia Plesner has released a book chronicling her arduous three-year legal battle with Louis Vuitton after she depicted one of the company’s bags being carried by an African child on a T-shirt. [TAN]