Prado cancels loan of two Bosch works

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Prado Pulls Two Works from Bosch Show | The Noordbrabants Museum’s once-in-a-lifetime Hieronymous Bosch show has been praised to the skies, with the Guardian’s Jonathan Jones describing it as ‘one of the most important exhibitions of our century’. Despite critical plaudits, not everyone is quite so keen. Following a disagreement over attributions, the Prado has cancelled the loan of two works – The Cure of Folly and The Temptation of St Anthony – that the Dutch museum had previously negotiated for the show. For the full story, and for some insight to the murky world of attribution standoffs, see Martin Bailey’s piece for The Art Newspaper. 

Belgium’s Museums in Crisis | The Daily Telegraph today reports on the sorry state of some of Belgium’s most prestigious museums. According to James Rothwell, institutions including Brussels’ Cinquantenaire Museum are in a state of advanced disrepair, and require immediate renovations costing upwards of €20 million. The Cinquantenaire’s roof has apparently fallen into such poor condition that museum staff are being forced to cover objects in clingfilm to protect them from rain leaking in, Rothwell writes.

92 Skeletons Discovered Under Aberdeen Museum | Shivering a little? Pity the poor construction workers at Aberdeen’s Art Gallery, who have dug up an enormous medieval cemetery underneath the museum. This ‘hugely significant’ find is believed to date back to the 13th century, and provides more support for the theory that an abbey once stood on the site. The discovery has meant that the works on the gallery’s £30 million redevelopment have been put on hold for six weeks while archaeologists examine the site properly.

Pinacothèque Closes | Paris’s Pinacothèque has closed its doors today, after a severe drop in attendance and severe financial worries at its parent company. The temporary exhibition, ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Visual Journey’, was intended to run through until March, but has closed early, while the museum’s permanent collections (which, as TAN points out, are ‘really only medium-term loans from collectors’) will be moved to its affiliated outpost in Singapore.

Melanie Clore to Leave Sotheby’s | Melanie Clore, Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe and Co-chairman Worldwide, Impressionist & Modern, has decided to leave the auction house at the end of the month. Clore joined Sotheby’s 35 years ago, and has since gained a reputation as one of the best in the business. As Colin Gleadell writes in Telegraph Luxury, her departure ‘will be a great loss’.

The Weekend’s Best Comment & Reviews | In the Sunday Times, Waldemar Januszczak slams the Whitechapel Gallery’s ‘Electronic Superhighway’ show while John Carey praises Tiffany Jenkins’s ‘timely’ book arguing the case against restitution for Western museums. Meanwhile, in the FT, Henry Mance takes ex-BBC Creative Director Alan Yentob out for lunch at the River Cafe. And if you’ve lost track of the labyrinthine Garden Bridge saga, you could do worse than investigate Ian Jack and Rowan Moore’s columns in the Guardian and the Observer respectively.