MILAN (AP) - Restorers at Milan’s famous Brera Art Gallery have taken measures to protect the collection after its humidity control system failed during a “once-in-a-decade” dry, cold spell that moved through Milan last weekend, officials said. Donato Bramante’s “Christ at the Column” and a Bastiani piece were removed from their exhibit spaces for immediate stabilization and 40 other artworks w...

Jun Joon-hyuk will join Britain's Royal Ballet in August, becoming the first Korean ballerino to become a member of the prestigious group of dancers, he said Wednesday. "I officially got the offer from Kevin O'Hare, director of the ballet company on Tuesday afternoon (British local time)," the 19-year-old ballerino told Yonhap News Agency by telephone. "I'm still thrilled because it's something ...

PARIS (AFP) -- France has deemed a newfound Leonardo da Vinci sketch to be a national treasure and now has 30 months to raise 15 million euros ($15.8 million) to purchase it, an auction house said Tuesday. The Renaissance master’s dreamily sensual sketch of Saint Sebastian was classified as a French national treasure on Dec. 29, Tajan auctioneers in Paris said during an unveiling of the work to ...

NEW YORK (AP) -- More than a decade before Philip Johnson designed his iconic Glass House, French designer and architect Pierre Chareau designed the Maison de Verre in 1932 in Paris. It featured one of the world’s first glass-brick exterior walls -- three stories high. Chareau’s work straddles industrial aesthetics and traditional fine craftsmanship, clean spare lines and playful 1920s whimsy. H...

In the art exhibition “Dark Yellow,” actress Koo Hye-sun’s color of choice symbolized the contradictory nature of fearing what had once been a source of inspiration. “My favorite color used to be yellow, but my feeling toward it has changed with age. I used to think having a dream is only natural, but not anymore. ... After I’d grown up, the yellow started to take on a darker shade,” she said du...

MADRID (AFP) - Madrid’s Reina Sofia museum said Tuesday it would stage a major Pablo Picasso exhibition to mark the 80th anniversary of his famed “Guernica” painting, a universal symbol of the cruelty of war. “Pity and Terror in Picasso -- the Path to Guernica” will open on April 4 and last five months to celebrate the anniversary of the painting itself, as well as its arrival at the museum 25 y...

Major arts venues offer shows that range from the avant-garde to the classical

The debate on whether the painting “Beautiful Woman” is a genuine work by late Korean artist Chun Kyung-ja is far from over, despite the prosecutors’ recent conclusion that the piece was Chun’s creation. During a heated press conference in Seoul on Tuesday, Jean Penicaut, CEO of French image analysis firm Lumiere Technology, fiercely defended his firm’s conclusion that there is only a 0.0002 per...

Lumiere Technology stands by its September report that ‘Beautiful Woman’ is most likely a forgery

Based on the eponymous 1992 American blockbuster film “The Bodyguard,” the iconic movie-turned-musical has made its Asian premiere in Seoul. A cult classic starring Kevin Costner as Frank Farmer and the late Whitney Houston as Rachel Marron, the film’s soundtrack went certified 17 times platinum and snagged a Grammy Award for Album of the Year, propelling the already popular rhythm and blues di...

Ballerino Choi Young-gyu to have first performance in Korea

ROME (AFP) -- When he was just plain old Bonaparte, the man who was to became Napoleon pillaged works of art from all over Europe with the aim of making the Louvre in Paris a museum for all mankind. Now some of the major works that the little corporal‘s armies took from Italy have been gathered together in an exhibition in Rome to mark the 200th anniversary of their restitution, and the unexpect...

Prosecutors settle 25-year controversy