The tension between architectural expressionism and restraint is nothing new. Still, there is a kind of reckoning in the field of museum design with the realisation that the tourist-candy structures that went up in recent decades did not succeed in truly making the art institution more accessible. - The Art Newspaper
And that's not an accident, says former Montreal Museum of Fine Arts curator eunice bélidor: "I realized they didn’t care about what I was going to bring here. They just needed me as a good news story." - Hyperallergic
The wide-reaching fraud included three separate groups that traded fake Norval Morrisseau paintings back and forth and created fake certificates of authenticity. More than 1,000 paintings were seized and eight people arrested. - CBC
Some neuroscientists believe "that the mind creates an opinion of an artwork after dissecting it into discrete elements. Basic features, such as color and texture, and complex qualities, like style, are ranked and weighed individually to make a judgment." - Hyperallergic
"Critics say these shifts are purely transactional, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman trading the appearance of an open culture to paper over a dismal human rights record and buy political capital." - NPR
New excavations make the ancient site fresher than ever. But people have been digging at the site ever since the lava cooled."It has always been in a state of flux." - The Observer (UK)
“Social media corporations have become cultural gatekeepers with unprecedented power to determine which artworks can freely circulate and which ones are banned or pushed into the digital margins,” says Don’t Delete Art (DDA), a project created in 2020 that documents art censorship on social media. - The Art Newspaper
"Vermeer's production was certainly larger, so the hunt continues. ... Art historians have found it particularly difficult to track down Vermeer's work for a number of reasons: ... only half his known works are signed, and, most importantly, he remained relatively unknown outside Holland until the late 19th century." - The Art Newspaper
The Tanesar sculptures were stolen from India circa 1961, ultimately ending up at such prominent locations as LACMA, the British Museum, and the Met. While many of the statues currently sit in legal limbo, Elizabeth Kadetsky went to find the rural temple that had once been their home. - The American Scholar
On February 24, the first anniversary of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, the Ukrainian postal service released a new stamp featuring a Banksy mural and the shorthand “FCK PTN!” in Cyrillic. - Hyperallergic
"Of the hazards that Westminster Abbey's 700-year-old Coronation Chair has survived – a suffragette bomb, schoolboys with penknives, thick brown paint, the violent theft of the Stone of Scone from inside it, Oliver Cromwell – the one that perhaps came closest to destroying it was an outbreak of white fungus." - MSN (The Telegraph)
"The ancient throne, known as the Coronation Chair, has been at the centerpiece of English coronations for centuries, including those of Henry VIII, Charles I, Queen Victoria and the late Queen Elizabeth II." It is likely the world's oldest piece of furniture still used for its original purpose. - CNN
Perhaps the key difference will be for the fund to look for longer-term benefits. Short-term benefits are easily measured, but research by the fund shows that the key issue is long-term viability. - The Art Newspaper
Blake Gopnik makes a case that the appropriation of imagery — at the heart of the legal dispute between the Andy Warhol Foundation and photographer Lynn Goldsmith — has been fundamental to the nature of "fine art" ("fArt," as he calls it) since the 16th century. - The New York Times