More thefts have hit the Santa Fe, N.M. area, AP reports: Three handwoven blankets are the latest rdf_Descriptions to be stolen, taken from the Medicine Man Gallery on April 15, the same day a task force of law enforcement agencies and the state Department of Cultural Affairs met to come up with a strategy to stop the burglaries. Gallery owner Mark Sublette said the blankets were made in New Mexico and are worth $9,000, and that the gallery has 24-hour surveillance and the burglary was recorded. Police were not sure if the burglary was related to a string of thefts from state-owned museums and private Santa Fe galleries over the past four months. In December, a Georgia O’Keeffe painting was stolen from the Museum of Fine Arts and a second O’Keeffe was taken in January from The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. A $165,000 Joseph Henry Sharp painting was stolen January 28 from Nedra Matteucci’s Fenn Galleries. It has not been recovered, and neither has a $30,000 San Ildefonso pueblo bowl taken in late December or early January from Morning Star Gallery. A carving by early Twentieth Century santero Celso Gallegos, a Stuart Davis oil work and a Billy The Kid bronze statue were also taken from various museums and galleries. Meanwhile, David Brandle, a Santa Fe man, has been sentenced to nine years’ probation for stealing two bronze statues of imps from a Chalk Farm Gallery. State District Judge Michael Vigil on April 19 sentenced Brandle, 22, and ordered him to repay the gallery. A jury in March convicted Brandle of second-degree larceny exceeding $20,000.

The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, N.Y., will present its annual Award for Curatorial Excellence to Walter Hopps, founding director of the Menil Collection in Houston, at a gala dinner on Tuesday, May 4, in Manhattan. Artist James Rosenquist and Ann Temkin, curator at the Museum of Modern Art, will present the award. There will also be a toast by Robert Rauschenberg. Hopps’s “sensitivity to works of art takes in not only the works themselves but also the dialogue that he believes can and should occur between one work and another,” wrote Calvin Tomkins in a 1991 profile of Hopps for The New Yorker. Hopps is curator of Twentieth Century art for the Menil Collection and adjunct senior curator of Twentieth Century art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. He began his distinguished curatorial career in Los Angeles in 1957, when he and Edward Kienholz founded the now-legendary Ferus Gallery. As curator and director of the Pasadena Art Museum from 1959 to 1967, Hopps organized the first museum exhibition of Pop Art and the first solo museum exhibition of Marcel Duchamp.

Indian artifacts said to be almost 5,000 years old have been found at a Lake Fort Smith, Arkansas construction site, reports the Associated Press. The artifacts found at the site include arrowheads and pottery. Once removed, the rdf_Descriptions will be taken to the University of Arkansas researchers, who will then catalog them. Other artifacts from more recent periods have been discovered at the lake expansion site, where construction started in 2002 and is scheduled to be finished in 2006.

Greg Martin Auctions, San Francisco, has announced that Wm Pete Harvey has joined the company as an agent. In this new position, Harvey will be available to the firm’s East Coast clients to consult, appraise collections of property and serve as liaison for auction information and services. Harvey has a long history as a collector and dealer of firearms. When this avocation became more lucrative than his business as a building contractor in Falmouth, Mass., he decided in 1954 to focus his efforts on firearms. In 1964, he became a full-time dealer and later began cataloging and appraising firearms for various auction houses. In 1993, he also established his own auction and appraisal firm, Wm Pete Harvey Auctions, in Portsmouth, N.H.

The Metrolina Antiques & Fine Collectibles Show, North Carolina, has changed its name to the Charlotte Antiques & Collectibles Show. The 2004 show schedule is as follows: June 3-6; July 1-4 (1,000-plus exhibitors); August 5-8; September 2-5; September 30-October 3; November 3-7 (more than 2,000 exhibitors); and December 2-5.

Augustin Tzen has opened China Gallery at The Manhattan Art & Antiques Center, No. 13, at 1050 Second Avenue, New York. He specializes in ancient Chinese art including some significant pieces from the Neolithic period (Twenty-First Century BC), Han (206 BC-220 AD), Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties.