Good texts take time. The field of visitor studies even recommends workshopping texts with an audience. Curators working on relentless deadlines don’t have that kind of luxury. Yet the particular genre of bad text I am thinking of, paradoxically, seems worst at the most elite levels of the industry. - Artnet
In 2023, on Putin’s personal orders, the 15th-century icon of the Trinity by Andrei Rublev, Russia's most revered icon painter, was moved from Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery and is now at the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery. Conservators said that, without museum-quality climate controls, the piece could be severely damaged. Well, guess what's happened. - Meduza (Moscow/Riga)
The surest way for the Smithsonian to free itself from the unwanted attentions of the current administration or any future one would be to adopt a business model that doesn’t involve government funding. - The Wall Street Journal
The overhaul, badly needed to ease overcrowding, remedy deferred maintenance, and improve security, is expected to cost well over €1 billion (US$1.2 billion). Christophe Leribault, who became the museum's director in February, went to Tokyo and Hong Kong to talk about the necessity of the project. - South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
“In a statement on behalf of the unionized staff, Local 2110 UAW said all three museums must raise their minimum pay rates, noting that average wages for their staff fall below … the minimum required for a single adult to afford to live in New York City.” - ARTnews
The burial chamber was found at Chan Chan, once the capital of the Chimú people, whose culture flourished on what’s now Peru’s northern coast from the early 10th century CE to 1470. Because the tomb was never looted, researchers will be able to learn more about Chimú society than ever before. - Smithsonian Magazine
“(A family of art collectors) is suing more than a half-dozen individuals and companies across Florida, Philadelphia and Peru, whom they claim served as ‘suppliers, fake authenticators and distributors’ in an elaborate and far-reaching forgery scheme.” - The Wall Street Journal (MSN)
Donors underwrite celebration. Nobody endows a wing to say “it’s complicated.” That’s why the critical museum barely exists as a category. I’d rather build a Howard Zinn People’s History Museum than rehash a heroic retelling of our glorious past, but I have no idea how that gets funded. - Josh Goldblum
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which opens this month in Exposition Park, just south of downtown Los Angeles, is a swooping, brain-beggaring, super-sexy, twin-bodied leviathan of a megastructure, white as the gown of Princess Leia, half spaceship, half cetacean, all curves, Shangri-la for skateboarders if they could ever get inside. - The Atlantic
Is it possible to make qualitative judgements in an unbiased way? Maybe not. Some people feel that the whole idea of making judgements is just another form of cultural oppression. On one level, aesthetic preferences are all cultural. Take for one example the preference for consonant music over dissonant—it’s cultural, not intrinsic. - Artnet
The newly vibrant “Stories of St. Francis” were shown to the public last week in the Basilica of Santa Croce, just in time for the 800th anniversary of the saint’s death on Oct. 4. - AP News
“In recent decades, debates over the architecture of the American college and university campus have been nearly as fraught as battles over the National Mall.” - The New York Times
“Museum workers, the police and government officials are rattled. They worry about how to protect France’s cultural patrimony in an era of increasingly violent criminal gangs, some of whom have broken into museums in broad daylight.” - The New York Times
Of course, the “request” came on conservative social media site Truth Social. It “underscores a perception that he sees himself as curator-in-chief of the nation’s national museum.” - The Guardian (UK)
