Anger in Ukraine over Tretyakov Gallery exhibition

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Tretyakov Gallery criticised over Crimea loans | Ukraine’s culture ministry has reacted angrily to an exhibition at Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery dedicated to 19th-century Crimean-born Armenian artist Ivan Aivazovsky, reports The Art Newspaper. The exhibition, which opened on 29 July, features 38 works from the Aivazovsky National Art Gallery on the Crimean coast. The ministry has called on foreign states to ‘halt cooperation with Russian institutions’, claiming that works were ‘unlawfully taken’ from the occupied territory. Officials at the Tretyakov insist that they ‘have not stolen anything’ from Crimea or Ukraine.

Students identify rare Dürer woodcut in German museum | Two art students inspecting a collection bequeathed to the Museum Kurhaus Kleve have discovered a previously unidentified woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, reports the WDR news channel. (German language article, via Artnet News.) The image is part of Dürer’s ‘Die kleine Holzschnittpassion’ cycle (1509–11), but the museum’s print is thought to be a test print, and as such is unique, according to curator Valentina Vlasic.

National Gallery of Art returns Schnorr von Carolsfeld drawing to heirs of Holocaust victim | The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has returned a 19th-century drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld to the heirs of its former owner, Marianne Schmidl, who was forced to sell it under duress following the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1939, and later died in the Holocaust.

Harvard launches Bauhaus database | Harvard University Art Museums have launched an online database featuring more than 32,000 works and objects related to the Bauhaus, in anticipation of the Dessau school’s centenary in 2019. ‘We wanted to encourage the study of these collections and better understand the history and significance of Harvard’s own Bauhaus legacy’, said Lynette Roth, Daimler Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum at the Harvard Art Museums.