Dresden Museum Targeted in Theft of Artifacts—and More Art News – ARTnews.com

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The Market

While protests in Hong Kong continue to gain momentum, Art Basel has said that its annual fair in the city, which is scheduled to run March 19 to 21, will go on as planned. Meanwhile, the powerhouse gallery Hauser & Wirth has indefinitely postponed an Annie Leibovitz exhibition that was slated to take place at its Hong Kong space. [ARTnews]

Archaeologist Christos Tsirogiannis is urging Christie’s to withdraw a first-century Roman statue from its antiquities sale in London on December 4, citing the object’s association with “notorious dealers connected with numerous cases of illicit antiquities.” The auction house said “we have found no grounds under which title to sell can be questioned.” [The Guardian]

Crime

Two British men have been sentenced to prison for failing to report their discovery of a collection of ancient Anglo-Saxon coins and jewelry, which they found using metal detectors. [Associated Press/Courthouse News]

Jewels and other precious objects have been stolen from the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden, Germany. An investigation into the matter has been opened. [The New York Times]

Los Angeles

Ray Kappe, a prominent modernist architect in Los Angeles and founder of the Southern California Institute of Architecture, has died at 92. [Curbed Los Angeles]

In case you missed it: 50 workers at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles have announced plans to form a union. [ARTnews]

And here’s a handy guide to 25 free art museums in and around Los Angeles, including the Broad, the California African American Museum, and the ICA L.A. [Los Angeles Times]

Restoration

Visitors to the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence will be able to witness the conservation of Michelangelo’s Pietà. The work will take place on a stage installed around the base of the statue in the museum. [The Art Newspaper]

Artists

Artists from around the world travel to Senegal to paint on the walls in the Médina neighborhood of Dakar. Here’s a look at their vibrant and prolific creations. [The New York Times]

Varda by Agnès, the final film by the late director Agnès Varda, who died earlier this year, is now in theaters. [Vogue]

Exhibitions

A traveling exhibition of 200 works by 81 contemporary European artists—including Anselm Kiefer, Olafur Eliasson, and Zhanna Kadyrova—will open at Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery in 2020. [The Art Newspaper]

And finally, on the occasion of Pope.L’s recently opened retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, here’s a piece on how the artist has “perfected crawling as his particular kind of disruption” over the course of his career. [The New Yorker]