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Featured image: Cure Parkinson’s in association with Bonhams and Artwise announces the fourth edition of Cure3 exhibition. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Artwise

Nearly 90 artists, including Tracey Emin and Frank Bowling, have created works for the fourth edition of Cure3 with all profits going directly to Cure Parkinson’s. The selling exhibition is in aid of medical research into Parkinson’s disease and will take place at Bonhams in London from January 13th to 17th and online at cure3.co.uk.

Susie Allen and Laura Culpan of Artwise, the curatorial collective behind Cure3 have also announced exciting news for NFTs to be included in the sale. “We are also excited to announce the addition of specially commissioned NFTs for Cure3 2023, trialing a new format of charitable giving in the crypto world,” they said. Anna Carreras, Anna Lucia and Marcelo Soria Rodriguez are among the artists minting NFTs for the sale.

Since the Cube3 inaugural sale in 2017, the initiative has raised in excess of £1.2m ($1.5 USD) for Parkinson’s research and commissioned 220 works from 176 artists. Cure3 is a free event and is open to the public.

London’s National Portrait Gallery has acquired a $3.6m public toilet. More recently known as Tourist Island, the hexagonal structure which is situated behind the gallery is a victorian-era lavatory that was functioning until the 1970s. It sits at the intersection of Charing Cross Road, Orange Street, and Irving Street and from 2011 until 2021 served as a tourist information center. The above-ground space measures just 250 square feet, but a spiral staircase heads down to a basement six times the size, at 1,448 square feet.

The gallery plans to convert the space into gallery space that will serve as an annex for the institution. The museum plans to apply for permission from the Westminster Council to tear down the existing kiosk and erect a new entrance to replace the single entrance below ground. Funds to purchase the kiosk were taken out of the £10 million ($12 million) donation made by Ukrainian-born, British-American philanthropist Len Blavatnik earmarked for the gallery’s extensive renovation plans.

Archaeologists in Denmark have unearthed a 10th century Viking hall dating back to the reign of Harald I during the late Viking Age. Located in the village of Hune in Northern Jutland, Denmark, the discovery had been lauded as the largest discovery of its kind in over a decade. Measuring 131 feet long and some 32 feet wide, with 10 to 12 oak posts supporting the roof, the hall might have been part of a larger plot or farm. “We only had the opportunity to excavate part of the hall, but there are probably several houses hidden under the mulch to the east…A building of this nature rarely stands alone” said Thomas Rune Knudsen, the Historical Museum of Northern Jutland archaeologist who led the dig.

Indications of a large house structure have also established a theory that the structure was owned by a noble family with a key piece of archeological evidence to help support. A rune stone was discovered not far from the dig site, which is engraved with the words, “Hove, Thorkild, Thorbjørn set their father Runulv den Rådnilde’s stone.”

“It is difficult to prove that the found Viking hall belonged to the family of Runulv den Rådsnilde, but it is certainly a possibility,” Knudsen added. “If nothing else, the rune stone and hall represent the same social class and both belong to society’s elite.”

The results of their research are due at the end of 2023 including carbon dating of artifacts to accurately situate the site in history.

Sotheby’s London has announced its “Royal and Noble” auction event scheduled for January 18th, 2023. The sale will be led by the Attallah cross, a sparkling cross pendant that was a favorite of the late Princess Diana. “Sotheby’s annual ‘Royal and Noble’ auction in London is the most wonderful vehicle for selling things with important aristocratic provenances,” said David Macdonald, Senior Director of Decorative Art and Single Owner Collections. “So many of the objects have a story to tell, and of course none more so than Diana’s cross.”

The pendant is set with square-cut amethysts accented by circular-cut diamonds. It weighs approximately 5.25 carats and measures approximately 5.35 x 3.74 inches. The spectacular object was created in the 1920s by court jewelers Garrard, and was lent to Princess Diana by her friend Naim Attallah, CBE, who bought it in the 1980s. “Diana is the only person who wore the jewel when it belonged to Naim Attallah,” said Macdonald. Diana wore the piece in 1987 to a charity event for ‘Birthright’, an organization that helps protect human rights during pregnancy and childbirth. It is estimated to fetch £80,000–£120,000 ($96,235–$144,353).

 

Italian Police have confiscated a $4.2m Peter Paul Rubens painting from a Genoa exhibition as part of a fraud investigation. The artwork’s two owners have been accused of money laundering and illegal exportation. “The resurrected Christ appears to his mother” (c. 1612-16), a six-foot-tall painting, attributed to Rubens and his workshop and depicts the Madonna kneeling before Christ in a cobalt blue cloak. The artwork’s current owners acquired the artwork from the noble Cambiaso family for €300,000 in 2012, according to the Carabinieri agency for the protection of cultural heritage in Genoa. However, the pair purportedly falsified sale provenance in an attempt to boost the works value after the work was marked as a work by an unknown Flemish painter rather than Rubens.

“No Genoese source and no document attests the reference to Rubens of the painting exhibited in Genoa,” Vittorio Sgarbi, an art historian now serving as Italy’s undersecretary to the culture minister, said in a statement to La Repubblica. He pointed to the “uncertain quality of the work” and noted that the “history of the art lived for three hundred years without this improbable Rubens.”

In response, the Genoa show’s co-curator Anna Orlando said that “the work is not under discussion.” Orlando pointed out that the exhibition’s other organizer, Nils Büttner, is “the highest authority on Rubens in the world.”

The 17th-century canvas has been returned to the show, called “Rubens in Genoa” hosted by Palazzo Ducale. However, the probe into the owners continues.