Abraham Bredius, museum director from 1889 to 1909, bequeathed the Mauritshuis 25 of his own Old Master paintings — pieces by Rembrandt, Jan Steen, and others — on condition that the works be displayed and not lent out. Because the museum doesn’t display all of them all the time, Bredius’s heirs sued — and lost. - ArtDependence
For the Obama Presidential Center on the South Side of Chicago, Barack and Michelle Obama commissioned original works by 30 artists from diverse backgrounds, a bold move never seen at such scale at a presidential library. - The Guardian
“A massive Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv has badly damaged the Dormition Cathedral in the Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, a UNESCO world heritage site and one of Ukraine’s most significant religious and cultural sites.” - The Guardian
After standing in the glow of this new South Side landmark, I admittedly feel like a buzzkill focusing on documents, kind of like visiting the Sistine Chapel and contemplating the plumbing. - The Atlantic
“Among their demands were a section of the museum dedicated to Black (and, in a later, amended statement, Puerto Rican) artists, an artist committee granted curatorial power, a ‘rental fee’ paid to artists for the exhibition of their work and free admission for all.” - The New York Times
“Mora, who is 91 and tiny, wearing head scarves around her weathered face, has clung to a mix of ancestral Indigenous and Spanish traditions.” - The New York Times
“Despite evidence that Neumann did appropriate the Zoellners’ furniture and paintings, he was not convicted; in 1947 he was deported from the Netherlands as an ‘enemy subject’ under the Nazi regime, and emigrated to the United States with his family.” - El País English
“What’s so revolutionary about Hockney’s paintings is not just that they portray male nudity and desire, but scenes of domesticity: men swimming, showering and brushing their teeth together.” - The Guardian (UK)
“One of the cardinal rules of museum-going is that art should be enjoyed from a comfortable distance and never touched. However, in the 1960s, a cohort of artists began inviting audiences to interact with, and thus alter, their works.” - Aeon
As the men’s World Cup gets underway, LA’s Holocaust Museum has a show on the “beautiful game” that "shines a light on the important but largely overlooked relationship between Jewish life and the global game” - and how WWII changed everything. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
“The museum initially removed the painting to have it repaired but later decided to display it — with the damage — on the last day of the exhibition.” - The New York Times
“‘He loved the sunlight, the weather, the boys,’ said Richard Benefield, a veteran museum executive who served as the first director of the David Hockney Foundation.” - The New York Times
One answer lies in the sheer ubiquity and sensory intensity of gardens by the second half of the 19th century, when impressionism came into being. Social change that made leisure gardens accessible to all (no longer just kings and aristocrats). - The Conversation
