English Heritage commissioned six portraits to emphasize the history - including Roman emperor Septimius Severus, who ordered the strengthening of Hadrian's Wall while on a trip to Britain. English Heritage's curatorial director: "African figures from the past have played significant roles at some of the historic sites in our care but many of their stories are not very well...
The collection certainly demands a change: "The current facility, which opened in 1997, originally housed a collection of 40 O’Keeffe paintings. The museum had always been looking to expand, Hartley said, but as the years went on and the museum’s permanent collection size increased to more than 3,000 works — the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation donated 981 additional items in...
Art historian Gregory Buchakjian did his Master's thesis at the Sorbonne on the art collection of the Sursock Palace, where he identified two unattributed canvases as the work of the 17th-century Italian painter. With the decades-long turmoil in the Lebanese capital, Buchakjian and the rest of the world forgot about those two paintings — until the catastrophic explosion in...
"Most drivers are on the road for weeks, sometimes months at a stretch, living a nomadic life and often sleeping and eating in their vehicles. Their trucks become their travel companions and their homes, and the drivers go to great lengths to beautify them. … Hand-painted symbols, elaborate patterns, and quirky slogans with bold typography coalesce into vibrant, idiosyncratic...
"He brought back enough loot from his conquests to fill what would soon become the Louvre Museum. And his ravenous and methodical art seizures — a cultural legacy now being highlighted in 200th-anniversary commemorations of his death — paved the way for similar French excesses in sub-Saharan Africa a century later. Yet many of those works were returned after...
"The exquisite set of Raphael tapestries currently on display in the grand gallery of Madrid's royal palace has survived five tumultuous centuries of wars, rebellions, bombs, bullets and fire – only to find itself menaced by the more quotidian threat of opportunistic pigeons and their droppings. … The need to ventilate the gallery, which gives on to the...
"Located just a few meters from the seashore , the structure, a public building" — known then as a basilica (not to be confused with the later, Roman Catholic use of the term) — "was divided into three sections: a main hall and two side parts. According to the archaeologists, the main hall was surrounded by massive marble columns...
When the artist is the instigator of damage (to their own work, or that of another, such as Robert Rauschenberg erasing a Willem de Kooning work), the act of vandalism becomes part of an artistic strategy. - The Art Newspaper
Disappointingly, however, that silver lining has been tarnished by an unconscionable rush to the auction house by numerous museums eager to take advantage of a very bad decision made last year by the Assn. of Art Museum Directors. To ward off expected catastrophe, AAMD hastily relaxed a fundamental prohibition against using income from the sale of museum art to...
No other American city has opened up this sort of wide-ranging dialogue about how cities make monuments. Swept up in this inquiry are five statues of Abraham Lincoln, as well as monuments to George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and the Italian Fascist Italo Balbo. - Bloomberg
"To better understand this critical turning point, Artnet News brought together three key figures for a conversation about the restitution of the Benin bronzes: Victor Ehikhamenor, a Lagos-based artist and trustee of the Legacy Restoration Trust, an organization working on the Benin bronzes' return; Pitt Rivers Museum curator Dan Hicks, author of The Brutish Museums; and Marla Berns, director...
The museum owns the former Safeway building, where its Education Center is located; the 1870s Bergere House, where museum administrative offices as well as library, archives and research center are located; and the two-story, 19,362-square-foot office building at Marcy Street and Grant, where the Sommer Udall Law Firm and the museum have offices. - Santa Fe New Mexican
Yemen's museums, the richest in the Arabian peninsula, are a reminder of the toll that war has taken on the country's cultural heritage, often eclipsed by civilian casualties and the dire humanitarian situation. In the disputed city of Taiz, nature has combined with conflict to leave the historic National Museum building in ruins. Charred manuscripts, burned shelves and shattered...
Thomas Cole's Arch of Nero wound up being one of the symbols of the ongoing argument about US museums' deaccessioning of artworks in order to get through the financial difficulties caused by the pandemic. Fortunately, the destination of this particular painting is neither inappropriate nor far away: the purchasers are placing it on long-term loan with the Philadelphia Museum...
"Your ability to express what you see in an artwork, to explain why it is good, and to examine the ways in which it stinks has impressed your art history professors. After nine years in college, you wonder what it would feel like to have others read your writing. Can the theory-heavy jibber jabber you ingested and regurgitated in...
