ARTINFO - After almost a year of speculation, the Puerto Rico–based multimedia duo Allora & Calzadilla has been announced as the United States' representatives to the 2011 Venice Biennale, marking the first time that an artist pair or collective has been picked by the nation to fill the prestigious role. The selection was made by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which the U.S. State Department has entrusted to organize next year's pavilion; Lisa Freiman, the chair of the museum’s contemporary art department, has been tapped as the commissioner of the pavilion. She will also curate the presentation.

ARTINFO - Dresden's Museum of Military History has existed in a variety of incarnations over the years, each mirroring the successive regime that shaped its image. Established in 1897 in a stately neoclassical building that once housed an arsenal, the museum became a celebration of German military might under the Nazis. Its location outside the historic center of Dresden allowed the building to survive the Allied bombing campaign at the end of World War II; thereafter it proudly displayed Communist tanks and submarines under East German rule. In 1989, Germany's Bundeswehr — or Federal Defense Force — was unsure how the museum would fit into the newly unified German state, deciding to simply shut it down.

ARTINFO - Half a decade after it shuttered its exhibition space in Long Island City, the Museum for African Art announced on Friday that it would delay opening its new Upper East Side building by at least five more months as a result of construction delays. Slated to open in April 2011, the Robert A. M. Stern-designed museum will not be inaugurated until at least September 2011, according to he museum’s director, Elsie McCabe Thompson.

ARTINFO - As if the action-packed fall art season wasn't sexy enough already, Jerry Hall — world-famous supermodel, actress, and the alleged subject matter of Mick Jagger’s hit love song, “Miss You”— will be selling her collection of contemporary art at Sotheby’s next month. The 14 artworks, which attest to Hall’s glamorous life amidst the avant-garde 1970s and 80s in New York, will be auctioned to coincide with London’s Frieze Art Fair.

ARTINFO - Egyptian authorities have been unable to recover the $50 million van Gogh that was stolen in broad daylight from Cairo's Mahmoud Khalil Museum last month, but they have certainly wasted no time in finding scapegoats for the embarrassing theft. Eleven people in the country's arts establishment, including a senior culture minister and the head of the museum, are now set to be tried in court on charges of negligence in protecting the painting.

ARTINFO - It appears that the millions of sweat-stained tourists who invade Rome's landmarks every year are a nuisance to more than just the locals — they're even starting to disturb God. At least, that is, the depictions of God on the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, which showed signs of damage during a routine cleaning this summer. According to Vatican Museums director Antonio Paolucci, the harm has been caused by the 4.5 million people who visit the site each year.

ARTINFO - Yesterday, ARTINFO ventured into the world of numismatics, discovering a strange and exciting land of niche collectibles. But today we are being even bolder, delving into what some might argue is an even narrower, more specific pursuit: timbrophily! Stamp collectors the world over received a jolt of excitement on Saturday when Hong Kong postage auction house Phila China brought the hammer down on a toasty timbrophilic lot at $1.3 million, a new record in the already-sizzling Chinese stamp market.

ARTINFO - Damien Hirst has been accused of a lot of things in his day — from peeing in the sinks of posh Soho clubs in his early years to, of late, making "ugly, ugly, ugly" paintings — and one of the more persistent allegations has been that the bad-boy YBA is a little too quick to steal other artists' ideas. Now this complaint has been vociferously resurrected by Charles Thomson, co-founder of the Stuckist movement, who is accusing Hirst of plagiarizing at least 15 of his most famous works, including his medicine cabinets, spin paintings, diamond-encrusted skull, and pickled shark.

ARTINFO - Though corporate America appears to have weathered the worst of the housing-market collapse, the nonprofit sector is continuing to suffer from the weak economy. The latest organization to face considerable danger is the Seattle Art Museum, which has filed a motion in county court asking for approval of a plan to borrow $10 million from its $96 million endowment in order to avoid having to default on a loan that financed its 2007 downtown expansion.

ARTINFO - In a turn to a story that seems to have been tailor-made to relieve the late summer news doldrums, the courier who claimed to have lost a $1.35 million Corot painting while on a drunken bender at a New York hotel now appears to have been in the employ of a serial scam artist. The improbable imbroglio received its latest twist when it was revealed that Tom Doyle, the co-owner of the missing artwork, is really Thomas Doyle, a convicted crook who just got out of prison for, you guessed it, art theft, according to the New York Times.

ARTINFO - Vincent van Gogh spent much of his adult life alternately browbeating and charming his brother Theo into sending him money, since he was unable to generate much income selling his art. Theo unfailingly complied, but Vincent nevertheless lived a life of rather serious poverty. Thankfully, society treats the artist’s paintings a bit better than it did the artist who made them, as evidenced by the Van Gogh Museum’s announcement that, after six months of labor, his 1888 masterpiece, "The Bedroom," has been restored.

ARTINFO - A bill was approved by California lawmakers on Monday that allows for the extension of the amount of time during which citizens in that state can sue museums, galleries, and auction houses for the recovery of stolen works of art — an important step in creating decisive legislation to deal with the myriad difficult-to-try, emotionally fraught cases concerning the restitution of Nazi-looted art.

Reuters - Please be advised that Friday's London story saying composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's private art collection is to go on show this month is wrong. The exhibition has already taken place. The following story has been withdrawn.

ARTINFO - Looking to improve on its $6.7 million haul at its June auction of Modern and Contemporary Indian art, fledgling Mumbai–based auction house Saffronart has announced that it hopes to net $6.5–$8.7 million at its September edition of the auction. Set for September 8 and 9, the 90-lot sale includes work by 43 artists, including the big-name masters — like S. H. Raza and N. S. Harsha — that have proven to be the auction house’s bread and butter in recent sales.

ARTINFO - Zimbabwean painter Owen Maseko will go to trial later this month in his native country for exhibiting realistic depictions of massacres that took place three decades ago under the regime of Robert Mugabe, who served as prime minister at the time. The artworks — some small, others wall-engulfing murals — depict images of political events that, according to government authorities, are prohibited under current law.

ARTINFO - Here’s a story, sad but true, about a man who took a coy-looking female to a hotel, then got drunk and lost her. Unfortunately for this man, an art courier named James Carl Haggarty, his lady friend was highly two-dimensional. In fact, she was contained within a painting — none other than "Portrait of a Girl," a 19th-century work by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot with an estimated value of $1.4 million, which Haggarty was taking to show to a potential buyer. In a lawsuit filed against Haggarty by Kristyn Trudgeon, the majority owner of the portrait, she states that Haggarty woke up to find that he "did not have the painting and could not recall its whereabouts, citing that he had too much to drink the previous evening." Whoops.

ARTINFO - Mexico City’s burgeoning art scene will welcome a new private museum in November, when billionaire collector Carlos Slim inaugurates a new branch of his Soumaya museum. The $750-million project — that’s 50 percent more than SFMOMA plans to spend on its recently announced expansion, for those keeping track at home — has been designed by Slim’s son-in-law Fernando Romero and is already under construction in western Mexico City, according to Reuters.