For 84 years the museum, built with private funds, paid $1 annual rent for land in a city park. But a new law calls for the museum to pay part of fair market rental value and to accept 60 days' notice for lease termination. The museum is resisting. - Idaho Statesman
After an outcry from those who thought the Courtauld was mocking mental illness and psychosis for fun and profit, the museum removed the erasers and the soap bar "for the tortured artist who enjoys fluffy bubbles" from its inventory. (The emotional first-aid kit remains in stock.) - Artnet
But there’s a hitch: The valuable paintings, including a Caravaggio said to be worth millions, cannot physically be moved from their location due to national heritage laws. - Artnet
The six-inch statuette of an oddly-shaped nude woman dates from about 600 years after the battle at the site, near the Baltic coast of Germany. It might have been a religious object, a good-luck talisman, or a weight for a balance scale (if not all three). - The New York Times
Earlier this month, there were reports that Mastaba, a 500-foot-tall quasi-pyramid made of 410,000 brightly colored steel barrels and planned for a desert site 100 miles south of Abu Dhabi city, had been given the go-ahead by UAE authorities. Those reports, it turns out, were premature. - Dezeen
Mental illness, hilarious: "Apart from the eraser ear, visitors can buy a £5 bar of soap, marketed as ideal for 'the tortured artist who enjoys fluffy bubbles.' An 'emotional first aid kit'" is £16 - but are depression, self-harm, and suicide really so funny?. - The Guardian (UK)
How do we know the pots weren't used for something like olive oil instead of, well, feces? Ah, science: "Intestinal parasitic worms trapped in layers of mineralization from years of use as a chamber pot." - Hyperallergic
The Burrell Collection "represents a road that turned out to be less travelled in modern British architecture, where buildings were considered as things composed, like music or poetry." Or, rather, it did represent that road. After a five-year, £68 million renovation, things have changed. - The Observer (UK)
Maybe this was the end goal of the (environmentally destructive) infatuation with NFTs? "Catering to the tastes of the crypto nouveau riche has become the frantic obsession of the commercial art world, which is reshaping itself around these new collectors." - The New York Times
Ask the Hammer Museum at UCLA, where not only more study access but a new gallery space will show off, in careful rotation, the collection. "Call it a coming out party for works on paper, as an exceptional collection sees a new light of day." - Los Angeles Times
Mississippi House Clerk Andrew Ketchings "said he had been bothered by the statue for years 'because of everything he stood for. ... It was way past time to do it. I just read through a lot of his quotes that were offensive.'" - US News And World Report
In 2003, the area was put on Unesco’s World Heritage in Danger list. Now rapid building work and digging under the new rule of the Taliban, combined with environmental factors, are contributing to the speedy destruction of the Bamiyan Valley and its heritage. - The Art Newspaper
After years of research, the painting has been returned, the first restitution of any artwork looted from a Jewish family in the second world war by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, which covers six museums, with works spanning the old masters to Magritte. - The Guardian
