Or you could call it a frieze. Hockney was inspired, he says, by the Bayeux Tapestry as well as by the seasons in Normandy, where he now lives. - Artnet
So far, of 56 US institutions surveyed, 16 museums are in the process of returning Benin Court artworks, and five more would do so if requested. Added to similar efforts in other countries, there are now more repatriation requests than Nigerian officials can promptly process. - MSN (The Washington Post)
The figure of Christ the Redeemer that reigns over Rio de Janeiro is 98 feet tall (not including the pedestal or the mountain it sits atop). This new statue, Christ the Protector, is in Encantado, Rio Grande do Sul, a small city closer to Montevideo than to São Paulo. - Artnet
The Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery, like most of its counterparts in Ukraine, hid its collection to protect it from destruction or looting by invading Russian forces. Now some of its artworks are going back on display in the museum's 18 branches across Lviv province. - The New York Times
An elderly American woman, who may have been feeling ill or may have tripped on the slightly raised platform, landed on Guido Reni's St. Francis receiving the stigmata (1612) at Rome's Galleria Borghese. The damage? A 1½-inch "slight superficial tear." - Artnet
Indeed, the work — full title Shot Sage Blue Marilyn and dating from 1964 — is also the highest-priced 20th-century artwork and the second-most expensive artwork of any kind ever sold, trailing only Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi ($450 million). - ARTnews
All told, an online auction of 150 of items owned by the late justice raised $803,650 for Washington National Opera, one of the late justice’s passions. - Toronto Star
Sometimes, collectors of physical objects also make a transition to "curating" those objects in digital forms for social media or other online exhibits. But others hold tight, and try to figure out conservation along the way. - The Observer (UK)
Simon Jenkins does not like the plans for a new building. "I could not imagine that London might inflict any more visual damage to the Thames than it has already done. No city on earth has made such a mess of its river." - The Guardian (UK)
Especially for those in diaspora communities, "artists destabilize the idea of a monolithic culture and instead construct works that are influenced by locations of cultures that reflect an 'in-between space': a site of dialogue reflecting these interconnected influences." - Fast Company
Iceland made some questionable decisions about national identity in the early 2000s, including copying a statue from the 1930s called The First White Mother in America. That copy was stolen and placed in a rocket "to comment upon its aggrandizing of colonialism." - Hyperallergic
A new Russian website known as Art For Victory, which belongs to an organisation known as Terricon Project, is supporting the Russian war in Ukraine by selling works of art, a number of which appear to be fakes. - The Art Newspaper
Joshua Hammer traveled to Lviv to look into the history of the Bohorodchany Iconostasis, a 36'-by-42' wall of delicately painted icons in a lavishly decorated wooden framework, and the dangers it has survived over its 317 years. - Smithsonian Magazine
