Weekly Art Digest | Hirst’s Brits Statue, Tate’s new record, Guggenheim’s “No Country”, Sweden’s Matisse and Serra’s Threat.

(The Telegraph)
“The man reported to be the world’s wealthiest living artist has followed in the path of Vivienne Westwood and Sir Peter Blake by being the latest to redesign the Brit Award – ahead of the ceremony next month. The design itself is unlikely to have taken Hirst too long. The normally metal statue of Britannia has been overhauled with polka dots – a motif already used by the artist in his earlier work.”

(The Independent)
“Despite uncertainty over the “Olympics effect” on cultural institutions in 2012, the year proved golden for Tate Modern which went on to welcomed 5.3m visitors through its doors, the most in its history. The number of visitors was up 9.5 per cent on 2011 in what Alex Beard, the Tate’s deputy director, described as an “extraordinary year”.”

(Art Info)
“The closely-guarded list of 22 artists in the major exhibition of South and Southeast Asian art at the Guggenheim is finally out, and it includes prominent Indian multidisciplinary artist Shilpa Gupta, Thai-Indian provocateur Navin Rawanchaikul, Filipino multidisciplinary artist Poklong Anading, Malaysian video and photography artist Wong Hoy Cheong, and even a London-based collective, Turner Prize-nominated The Otolith Group.”

(Art Daily)
“A Matisse painting stolen 25 years ago from the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm has turned up in Britain, where a dealer had hoped to sell it on behalf of an elderly Polish client, it emerged on Monday. Henri Matisse’s “Le Jardin”, an oil on canvas from 1920 which is now worth about $1 million (760,000 euros), was found when art dealer Charles Roberts ran it through a global database of stolen art — standard practice before a sale.”

(The Art Newspaper)
“An independent curator has claimed that Richard Serra threatened to withdraw one of his works from the collection of Eli and Edythe Broad if he was not allowed to rework the drawing. Magdalena Dabrowski, speaking to an audience of lawyers and art appraisers in New York recently, argued that historical accuracy is being compromised as a result of the Visual Artists Rights Act (Vara), which gives artists “moral rights” to disclaim their works and prevent their alteration by third parties.”