This isn't idle speculation. "Cambodian officials said they have developed a spreadsheet of 45 'highly significant' items at the Met that the evidence suggests were stolen before being donated or sold to the museum." - The New York Times
No, but yikes. "When that initial plume dispersed a bit the first things I could see were dozens of people running in the opposite direction, masked or scrambling to find their masks, and throwing their kids over their shoulders to escape." - Hyperallergic
Uplift promotes ‘Constellation Vault’: ‘a platform for commercial promotion and exhibition in low Earth orbit’. ‘The Constellation Vault will offer patrons the exclusive opportunity to acquire highly coveted items for private sale and auction in space, delivered upon return to Earth.’ Apollo
The newly discovered work, called Untitled (Virginia Summer) and dated ca. 1946-47, was found when the Arshile Gorky Foundation sent out The Limit (1947) for routine conservation. - Artnet
A robot artist made it to an exhibit at Egypt’s pyramids after its British maker said airport security held his creation for 10 days on suspicion it could be part of an espionage plot. - Washington Post
James Rondeau, the Institute’s director, said that the docents program had long been viewed as logistically unsustainable, and that the Institute had stopped adding new volunteers 12 years ago. - The New York Times
Richard Hambleton painted his dark silhouette figures around the Lower East Side in the 1980s, becoming "the godfather of street art." The artist known as Nullbureau has lately been painting fresh copies of Hambleton's Shadowmen around New York, and some Hambleton devotees are outraged. - The New York Times
The layout of the Metaverse website, similar in format to NFT-specific platforms such as OpenSea and Nifty Gateway, is designed to display the NFTs so that viewers can easily see the transaction history of any piece. - ARTnews
Why? Because capitalism has gone bananas. So now there are 10,000 bananas (real ones) piled around Charging Bull, with a seven-foot statue of the late Harambe the gorilla a few feet away. As with Fearless Girl, this is a marketing stunt. - Artnet
"Rebranded simply as MUNCH, it will open on 22 October following a decade of development drama, political U-turns and staggering logistical challenges. The result is one of the largest single-artist museums in the world." - The Art Newspaper
Why? Because Facebook, Instagram and TikTok keep taking down their nude artworks — Peter Paul Rubens, Egon Schiele, even the Venus of Willendorf — for violating obscenity rules. - ARTnews
With technology that creates fantastical game worlds readily available, its creators could’ve set it on Tatooine if they wanted to, or at least the moon. Instead, its aesthetic might best be described as Marfa Modernism. Lots of open space and clean lines. - Wired
“It was like finding the Holy Grail. William Edmondson worked in Nashville, so who would ever dream that a piece would be in St. Louis?” - The New York Times
