Louvre-Lens to restore long-lost Le Brun painting

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Louvre-Lens to restore ‘lost’ Le Brun | The Musée de Louvre-Lens has announced that it is to restore a painting by Charles Le Brun that has been missing for more than two centuries, reports The Art Newspaper. Le Brun painted Christ in the Garden of Olives for a wealthy aristocrat around 1660, and the work subsequently passed into the ownership of Louis XIV. In the turmoil that followed the French Revolution, the painting went missing until it was recovered in a monastery in 2008, having been considerably blackened by age. Restoration work will begin later this year and when completed the painting will hang in the Louvre’s Salle Charles Le Brun.

Royal Collection acquires Van Dyck’s preparatory sketch for Charles I portrait | Britain’s Royal Collection has acquired a preparatory painting for Antony Van Dyck’s portrait of Charles I and his family, reports the Sunday Times. The work was long attributed to a follower of the artist, but Julian Agnew identified it as the work of Van Dyck himself when it came up for auction in Austria in 2012. The Royal Collection has now bought the work from Agnew for an undisclosed sum.

Rashid Johnson joins Guggenheim Board | Rashid Johnson has been appointed to the board of trustees of the Guggenheim Foundation, becoming the first artist to sit on the body since museum co-founder Hilla Rebay. ‘Widely celebrated for his compelling contributions to contemporary art, Rashid is a dynamic and accomplished practitioner whose work is represented in the Guggenheim collection,’ said chairman William L. Mack and president Jennifer Blei Stockman in a statement. ‘He is an expansive and independent thinker and we look forward to engaging with Rashid in this new leadership role.’

Black Mountain College Museum names new executive director | Curator Jeff Arnal has been appointed executive director of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, effective as of 1 August. Arnal, who has previously worked as a senior specialist at the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and co-founded the Free Range Asheville organisation (a platform for performance and research) in 2015, will provide strategic and operational leadership. ‘Jeff is uniquely suited to lead BMCM+AC,’ said co-chair Brian Butler.

Bernard Dufour (1922–2016) | The artist, photographer, and writer Bernard Dufour has died at the age of 95, reports Le Monde (French language article). Born in Paris in 1922, Dufour had to interrupt his studies during the invasion of France in 1940, and he was pressed into forced labour in Germany. After the war, he took to abstract painting, attracting the eye of dealer Pierre Loeb and exhibiting in Paris and New York. His paintings explored themes of politics, sexuality, and voyeurism, leading to works such as 1975’s HM 75, inspired by the death (from going on hunger strike) of Baader Meinhof member Holger Meins in prison.