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The article reviews Jacques Schuhmacher's book "Nazi-Era Provenance of Museum Collections: A research guide," which provides a framework for researchers and museum professionals to uncover the tragic stories of families and art lost during the Holocaust. The book contextualizes provenance research, emphasizing the importance of commemorating victims and seeking justice to challenge the lingering impact of Nazi actions. It covers Nazi spoliation, restitution efforts post-1945, and practical research techniques for provenance work, highlighting the complexities and challenges faced by researchers in uncovering historical truths. The book is available in multiple formats, including a freely accessible PDF, and features historical photographs that shed light on Nazi looting and persecution. [Extracted from the article]

Digital image processing is a constantly evolving field encompassing a wide range of techniques and applications. Researchers worldwide are continually developing various algorithms across multiple fields to achieve accurate image classification. Advanced computer vision algorithms are crucial for architectural and artistic analysis. The digitalization of art has significantly enhanced the accessibility and conservation of fine-art paintings, yet the risk of art theft remains a significant challenge. Improving art security necessitates the precise identification of fine-art paintings. Although current recognition systems have shown potential, there is significant scope for enhancing their efficiency. We developed an improved recognition system for categorizing fine-art paintings using convolutional transformers, specified by an attention mechanism to enhance focused learning on the data. As part of the most advanced architectures in the deep learning family, transformers are empowered by a multi-head attention mechanism, thus improving learning efficiency. To assess the performance of our model, we compared it with those developed using four pre-trained networks: ResNet50, VGG16, AlexNet, and ViT. Each pre-trained network was integrated into a corresponding state-of-the-art model as the first processing blocks. These four state-of-the-art models were constructed under the transfer learning strategy, one of the most commonly used approaches in this field. The experimental results showed that our proposed system outperformed the other models. Our study also highlighted the effectiveness of using convolutional transformers for learning image features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Eidos magazine, from the University of the North, presents its 40th issue with a variety of essays and a review. Highlights include an article that reinterprets the concept of community based on everyday connections, an analysis of the dialogue between Rosmini and Tocqueville in search of a third political way, and two articles on the philosophy of science. Topics such as text and experience, art as a map of intensity, the concept of death from Kierkegaard's thinking, memory in alternative museums, and the case of violence in El Salado are also addressed. The issue concludes with a review of the book "The Swimmer of Paestum" by Tonio Hölscher. [Extracted from the article]

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In this invited paper, as first runner-up for the 2023 Elliot Eisner Doctoral Research Award in Art Education, Kendall Crabbe draws upon her 2022 dissertation, Intergenerational Counternarratives of Creative Agency: Reimagining Inclusive Practices Through Youth Participatory Action Research, to problematize how art museum educators include young people in teen-centric programs. Through a review of literature and theory in youth studies, Crabbe demonstrates how historical and Progressive Era framing of young people persists and impacts art museum education programs for young people today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During a poignant saga of American history, Henrietta Lacks stands as an emblem of both scientific triumph and ethical controversy. In 1951, Mrs. Lacks, a tobacco farmer and mother of five, visited Johns Hopkins Hospital for treatment of what was later discovered to be advanced stage cervical cancer. Her doctors treated her with radium, which was standard practice at the time. However, Mrs. Lacks's cancer rapidly metastasized and she ultimately passed away just months later on October 4, 1951, at the age of 31. During the course of her treatment, Mrs. Lacks's cells were non-consensually removed for purposes of scientific research. The cell line, coined "HeLa cells," have in many ways immortalized Mrs. Lacks, playing an instrumental role in numerous medical breakthroughs, including the development of Covid vaccines. Despite the immense contributions her cell line made to scientific research, Mrs. Lacks and her family never received acknowledgement or compensation for the non-consensual taking and continued usage of HeLa cells. Decades later, her family filed a lawsuit against Thermo Fisher Scientific, seeking damages in profits gained from the commercialization of her cell line. This article explores the legal precedent governing the ownership of human biological materials and compares them to cases involving entrusted goods and stolen art. It scrutinizes the hurdles encountered by the Lacks family in their quest for accountability and compensation. Ultimately, the Lacks family settled with the biotech giant, sparking discussions about the ethical implications of using human biological materials in research and the need for greater protections of patient rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the use of morality in determining a claimant's entitlement to restitution of cultural property looted during 1933-45. Topics include the application of moral standards for restitution claims under the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, which call for fair and just solutions.

The intersection of arts and public policy is three-dimensional. A multitude of direct subsidy, regulatory, and support programs are advocated and managed as "arts policy," but a wide variety of non-arts-targeted realms such as tax law, public education, public health, and urban development and housing programs importantly influence artists and their encounters with their audiences. These interactions, and the complexity and thorniness born of the difficulty of clearly categorizing the arts as either market or non-market goods, as well as our difficulty in their valuation, make a particularly good area for teaching about public policy generally. And finally, policy of all kinds is too important to be made without the insights and guidance of artists, whose job is to show us the society we live in and who we are. Our "Arts and Cultural Policy" course explores this landscape for students in both fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provenance research in museums has traditionally been reactive and focused on singular objects with dubious histories, such as colonial-era acquisitions, Nazi-looted art, and objects with active ownership claims; the 'crimes' we expect to see. But what if what we think we know prevents us from seeing the bigger picture within and across museum collections? We argue that a machine-learning approach to provenance could allow the detection of broader patterns of unethical or even criminal behaviour that are embedded in the relationships underpinning museum collections. To demonstrate the potential of a machine-learning approach, we present a computer-assisted model that predicts plausible patterns and connections, 'leads' or 'hot tips', derived from a dataset of unstructured texts concerning the antiquities trade. Preliminary results have revealed what may have been a multi-decade scheme involving the donation of low-value Latin American antiquities to museums as a form of 'reputation laundering' potentially in advance of criminal fraud. We believe that such patterns could not be identified by an approach to museum provenance that is restricted to known problems within individual institution, demonstrating the need for innovative provenance tools and approaches that consider the complex networks within which museum objects exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crisis of democracy calls upon public art museums to reflect on what is expected from them as public spaces. This article investigates the art museum as an engaged political participant in its local surroundings and the neighborhood assembly as the platform of this participation. Through original interviews with museum professionals, the article examines three examples of museum-based neighborhood assemblies in different geographical contexts: the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Spain), Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (Chile), and Whitechapel Gallery (UK). Drawing on political theory to analyze the horizontal, discursive, and performative features of these practices, the article examines their democratic potential and limitations. The argument is put forward that the neighborhood assembly functions as a practice of participatory cultural citizenship, whereby the art museum can enter a space of co-authorship of the local cultural environment with the local constituents and can be a participant among many. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chiyo Yoko Photo Supplies emerged as a leading specialty store catering to the highly international population of photographers in the international treaty port of Shanghai, the beating heart of art, culture, and commerce in early twentieth-century China. Drawing on Chinese, Japanese, and English-language period sources, this essay reconstructs the profile of this influential Japanese retailer, examining its committed investments in the business and culture of photography during this formative period of amateur photography in China. The store's multifaceted retail marketing strategies, ranging from advertising in multiple languages to its backing of a photographic society and organization of a large-scale international exhibition, cultivated a cosmopolitan clientele base spanning the diverse communities of Chinese and foreign nationals in the city. This case study recaptures the transnational dynamics and cross-border movements of people and goods that empowered photography as a business, which in turn galvanized the popularization of amateur photography during this period of heightened national consciousness in modern China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This work aims to establish the relationship between painting art and sustainability, which allows for highlighting implications likely to improve sustainability for humanity's welfare. Design/methodology/approach: To achieve this objective, painting art is measured by a composite index aggregating the quantity and quality represented by the market value. As for sustainable development, it is represented by a composite index comprising three variables: the climate change performance index (ecological dimension), the wage index reflecting distributive justice (social dimension) and the gross domestic product (economic dimension). The composite indices were determined through adjusted data envelopment analysis. In addition, two other methods are used in this work: correlation analysis and a neural network method. These methods are applied to data from 2007 to 2021 across the world. Findings: The correlation method highlighted a perfect positive correlation between painting art and sustainability. As for the neural network method, it revealed that the quality of painting has the greatest impact on sustainability. The neural network method also showed that the most positively impacted variable of sustainability by painting art is the social variable, with a pseudo-probability of 0.90. Originality/value: The relationship between painting art and sustainability is underexplored, in particular in terms of statistical analysis. Therefore, this research intends to fill this gap. Moreover, analysis of the relationship between both using composite indices computed via an original method (adjusted data envelopment analysis) and a neural network method is nonexistent, which constitutes the novelty of this work. Peer review: The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2023-0006 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the actions carried out by the municipality of Montevideo between 1951 and 1964, with the aim of creating an Art Center, which was the seed of the Museum of Art History, currently MuHAr. The municipal advisor in plastic arts, architect Fernando García Esteban, led the aforementioned process, which involved the purchase of pieces abroad, the reception of donations and loans, while organizing exhibitions and shows that were disseminated through the press. The Art Center was basically born as a museum of casts, with a collection that placed special emphasis on ancient art and undoubtedly on European art. The strong pedagogical mission attributed to the project was undoubtedly one of the reasons why the process was brief and successful. [Extracted from the article]

In 2021, the Pandora Papers were released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, revealing a global network of secret financial dealings by wealthy individuals and world leaders who took advantage of shell companies, offshore accounts, and tax havens. Although the data leak was shocking, the Pandora Papers sent waves through the museum world, revealing a darker side to art dealers, wealth, and museums. The art and museum world has latched on to one major player: Douglas A. J. Latchford (1931--2020). Latchford was the pre-eminent collector and dealer of Cambodian antiquities. Prior to the Pandora Papers, Latchford was under investigation for forging documents and dealing in looted art and artifacts. With the release of the Pandora Papers, museums have had to take the brunt of the criticism surrounding the data regarding Latchford's shell companies and offshore accounts. Museum responses have been varied but are important and will set precedents for museum ethics, art dealers, collectors, and what happens when dealers or donors of objects lose their reputation. The response to the Pandora Papers from museums is an opportunity to restructure relationships between the market and the public museum. Using publicly available information, I examine how codes of ethics from museum governing bodies fall short of addressing the issues raised by the Pandora Papers. A lack of guidelines has also added to reputational harm. I focus my response on the three following museums: the Met, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Denver Art Museum. I then offer a range of solutions to move forward at the institution level, at the museum association level, and at a broader government policy level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]