There are now three criteria for an institution to secure—and retain—government subsidies. It must welcome a minimum of 10,000 annual visitors; have a minimum annual income of 4m kroner ($600,000) (3m kroner on islands with less than 10,000 inhabitants); and publish at least one peer-reviewed research paper every three years. - The Art Newspaper
This toilet, spray-painted gold and set on a faux-marble pedestal, is the latest in a series of protest artworks and installations taking aim at President Donald Trump and his administration. A plaque on each side of the structure reads: a Throne Fit for a King. - Washington Post
A red, white and blue spire sits atop the multistory tower. The library is set to feature golden escalators, a golden statue of the president raising his fist in the air and several aircraft, including what appears to be one of the jets used as Air Force One. - The Wall Street Journal
The Louvre is still no. 1, with the Vatican Museums a distant second; the National Museum in Seoul surpassed the British Museum to take third place. Attendance at some legacy institutions still hasn’t recovered from COVID, but some new museums are popular, and numbers keep growing in Asia and Latin America. - The Art Newspaper
A portrait, currently on loan to the Institute, in a UK collection that has long been dismissed as a workshop copy of an almost identical painting by Rembrandt was, in fact, also painted by the Dutch master, according to a leading scholar. (Scholars at the Art Institute are not yet convinced.) - The Guardian
Four hooded thieves forced their way through a first floor door in the museum’s Villa of Masterpiece overnight between March 22 and 23, but the museum chose to keep the audacious heist a secret, the police spokesperson told CNN. - CNN
What happens when something as intuitive as color gets the full industrial treatment? Turns out defining 'blue' requires lab coats, corporate committees, and aesthetic philosophers. Welcome to the bureaucracy of beauty. - The Wall Street Journal
Slow War Against the Nuclear State excavates the visual complicity between art and annihilation. These cultural archaeologists prove that the camera didn't just capture history—it helped make the bomb possible. Click, boom. - Hyperallergic
The hurried reviews, with construction cranes already swiveling above the White House grounds, are an abrupt departure from how new monuments, museums and even modest renovations have been designed and refined in the capital for decades. And the ballroom will be worse off for it, architects warn. - The New York Times
“The Magnani Rocca Foundation, a private museum, lies in the heart of the countryside 20 kilometres from Parma. Local media reported that the thieves were able to nab the paintings in less than three minutes and escape across the museum gardens.” - CBC
“At the crux of the controversy is the fact that Tabouret’s new windows would push out Viollet-le-Duc’s undamaged ones. Advocates for the project argue that since the windows date to the 19th century, instead of the Middle Ages, they are fair game to be replaced.” - ARTnews
"Developers discovered the cultural value of place-making. Corporations embraced art as branding. Cultural nonprofits and academic institutions increasingly adopted the vocabulary of community engagement while operating within the same economic structures driving displacement.” What now? - Hyperallergic
“Angelus Novus is renowned not just in its own right, but for what its most famous owner made of it. … It was purchased in Munich in 1921 by the German-Jewish writer Walter Benjamin, a titanic figure in 20th-century letters.” Now, ironically, it’s represented by “an authorized facsimile.” - The New York Times
It’s been widely assumed that the 8th-century manuscript was copied and illuminated at St. Columba’s monastery on Scotland’s island of Iona — this despite the fact that there's no archaeological evidence that Iona had a place or materials for such a major project. Evidence has, however, been found at another Scottish site. - Artnet
As the US-Israel war on Iran enters its fourth week, neighboring Gulf states, a hub of much of the region’s contemporary art production, are projecting an image of normalcy, with many galleries and museums reopening. - Hyperallergic
