These Were the 15 Most Popular Artnet News Stories of 2019, From Finding Salvator Mundi to One Very Expensive Penny

Amid the many, many changes the art world underwent in the past
year, some things remained the same.

Not unlike in years past, controversies dominated the headlines,
while little splashes of fun have always drawn audiences. Whether
in anger, astonishment, laughter, or sheer surprise, our readers
have flooded to our coverage.

Here are the 15 most popular stories of the year.

15. A Long-Forgotten ‘Lewis
Chessman’ Piece That Languished in a Drawer for Decades Could Fetch
$1.2 Million at Auction Next Month

June 3, 2019 — “A medieval chess piece
from the famed Lewis Chessman trove, the most revered collection of
chess pieces in the world, first discovered on the Isle of Lewis in
Scotland’s Outer Hebrides in 1831, is heading to auction at
Sotheby’s London next month.”

14. Venice Has Fined the
Architect Santiago Calatrava $86,000 for Building a Bridge
That—Oops—Can’t Handle Tourists

August 19, 2019 — “The Spanish architect
Santiago Calatrava, who is no stranger to lawsuits arising from his
ambitious designs, has been ordered to pay a €78,000 ($86,000) fine
to the city of Venice for “macroscopic negligence” in constructing
a bridge over its famous Grand Canal.”

13. Trump’s 2020 Budget Is the
Largest in Federal History—and It Would Entirely Eliminate the
National Endowment for the Arts

March 18, 2019 — “It’s that time of year
again: the National Endowment for the Arts and the National
Endowment for the Humanities are in trouble, with President Donald
Trump again aiming to eliminate the two agencies, this time in his
budget for the 2020 fiscal year.”

12. ‘I Have Never Seen Such
Chaos’: Mass Confusion Ensues After the Louvre Moves the ‘Mona
Lisa’ to a Different Gallery

July 31, 2019 — “Visitors to Paris hoping
to see the Mona Lisa this summer, beware. Only those
holding a pre-booked ticket with an all-important timed slot were
given access to the Louvre last week after its most famous painting
was moved to a different gallery. The temporary rehang has thrown
the world’s most popular art museum’s crowd-control measures out of
whack.”

11. RM Sotheby’s Botched the
$22 Million Sale of the ‘First Porsche’ Because Bidders Couldn’t
Understand the Auctioneer’s Dutch Accent

August 19, 2019 — “It was meant to be the
star lot in a banner automobile sale for RM Sotheby’s in Monterey
Beach, California. Billed as the ‘first’ Porsche, the 1939 Type 64
automobile was one of just three ever built, and the only one to
have survived. The car was estimated to sell for up to $22 million,
but instead it failed to sell at all due to an embarrassing
combination of technical difficulties and an apparently
hard-to-parse Dutch accent.”

10. Experts in Pompeii Have
Discovered a Female Sorcerer’s Mysterious Arsenal of Charms—See
Them Here

August 13, 2019 — “Archaeologists have
discovered an incredible array of amulets, gems, and lucky charms
in Pompeii. Researchers think that the mysterious trove belonged to
a female sorcerer who could have been a victim of the catastrophic
eruption of Mount Vesuvius more than 2,000 years ago.”

9. Art Basel Is Organizing a
Three-Day Sustainability Summit in Abu Dhabi in Its Latest Effort
to Evolve Beyond Art Fairs

September 9, 2019 — “Art Basel organizers
have made it clear that they have no interest in bringing yet
another art fair into the already-crowded fair landscape. But that
doesn’t mean the company isn’t interested in expanding. And the
latest area of growth for the organization is high-profile
events.”

8. Introducing the Art Angle
Podcast: How MoMA Remade Itself for the Trump Era

October 28, 2019 — “After over $400
million in renovations and a multiple-month closure to the public,
the Museum of Modern Art is back. But do roughly 75,000 square feet
in new exhibition space and a (supposedly) radical rehang of the
permanent collection add up to a MoMA fit for our turbulent
times?”

7. Russian Researchers Used AI
to Bring the Mona Lisa to Life and It Freaked Everyone Out. See the
Video Here

May 31, 2019 — “Art historians have longed
puzzled over the Mona Lisa’s beguiling smile, wondering what, if
anything, it reveals about the sitter. In May, a freaky viral video
clip that brought her to life raised even more questions.”

6. Where In the World Is
‘Salvator Mundi’? Kenny Schachter Reveals the Location of the Lost
$450 Million Leonardo

June 10, 2019 — “When I received intel
from a source with deep Middle Eastern ties as to the possible
whereabouts of Salvator Mundi, the world’s most expensive,
missing-in-action painting, I immediately went to the authority
every writer consults first (whether they admit it or not):
Wikipedia.”

5. Sorry, Anish Kapoor: MIT
Scientists Made the Blackest Black Ever Invented, and an Artist
Just Used It to Do Something Magical

September 17, 2019 — “In a remarkable new
mashup of art and science, an artist has used the blackest black
ever created to make a 16.78-carat yellow diamond completely
‘disappear.’ The result of the intensive 5-year long project called
The Redemption of Vanity, the super-black diamond
currently sits on view in an unlikely, but—as explained to Artnet
News—very fitting venue: the New York Stock Exchange on Wall
Street.”

4. Archaeologists Discover
That Easter Island’s Statues May Have Served a Surprisingly
Practical Function

January 11, 2019 — “According to
archaeologists, the location of those hulking ancestral figures
(moai) and the platforms they’re placed upon
(ahu) is based on their proximity to fresh water
sources—an exceedingly rare and precious resource.”

3. Here’s the Story Behind
That Bizarre Painting of Bill Clinton in a Blue Dress Seen at
Jeffrey Epstein’s Home

August 16, 2019 — “Given the
hurricane-force storm of media attention swirling around the case
of Jeffrey Epstein, the news that he owned a particularly strange
work of art perhaps doesn’t seem like the biggest of
deals. This particular work of art, however, features an image
of former president Bill Clinton clad in a blue dress and high
heels, gesturing to the viewer. Given that Bill Clinton’s name has
been prominently connected to Epstein, word of the painting sent
the internet conspiracy machine wild.”

2. A 16-Year-Old Found a Rare
Penny in His Lunch Money. Then It Sold for $204,000 at
Auction

January 14, 2019 — “They say there’s no
such thing as a free lunch. But what about a lunch that ends up
making you more than $200,000? That fantasy became reality for
the family of Don Lutes Jr. of Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, who received an ultra-rare 1943 Lincoln penny as
change from his school cafeteria in 1947.”

1. For a Project Called ‘Selfie
Harm,’ the Photographer Rankin Asked Teens to Photoshop Their Own
Portraits. What They Did Was Scary

February 6, 2019 — “Is photo-editing software
warping our perceptions of reality? The British fashion
photographer John Rankin Waddell, known professionally as Rankin,
took portraits of 15 teenagers and asked them to edit the pictures
to make them more social-media friendly. The hyper-retouched
images—with giant, cartoon-like eyes, pouty lips, and unnaturally
glowing skin—are nothing short of shocking.

The post These Were the 15 Most Popular Artnet News Stories
of 2019, From Finding Salvator Mundi to One Very Expensive
Penny appeared first on artnet News.