The executive order, which the former president signed "in December after losing his bid for re-election, was titled 'Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,' and it praised Greco-Roman architecture as being 'beautiful” while describing modernist designs as 'ugly and inconsistent.'" - The New York Times
“Consultants are hired to tell museums the truth,” says Adrienne Horn, the president of Museum Management Consultants and a former executive board member for the American Association of Museums. But a series of missteps and hollow promises from institutions that have relied on third-party advice are bringing new scrutiny to the influx of for-profit strategies in a nonprofit world....
"He was among the first crop of foreigners picked to direct an Italian museum or cultural site as part of what was a contentious drive to revamp the management of the country’s heritage. Not only was he foreign but he was the youngest person in charge of a major site." - The Guardian
"A majority of respondents were only able to identify one of the five AI landscape works as such. Around 75 to 85 percent of respondents guessed wrong on the other four. When they did correctly attribute an artwork to AI, it was the abstract one." - Artnet
"Vast cuts at the Victoria and Albert Museum are feared to be imminent, with curators and conservators in the line of fire. … Details of the museum's 'recovery strategy' were briefed to unions on Thursday. Staff are expecting to hear news of redundancies within days. One insider expressed dismay that the curatorial division may have to make 20% cuts."...
As the pandemic forces relationships to be conducted remotely, more people than ever are resorting to the virtual exchange of intimacies. Last autumn, a poll of 7,000 UK schoolchildren by the youth sexual health charity Brook put the figure at nearly one in five who said they would send a naked selfie to a partner during a lockdown. -...
In the group’s “Whose Heritage?” report, the Southern Poverty Law Center said that last year had been transformative, but that more than 2,100 symbols of the Confederacy remained, including 704 monuments. - The New York Times
First there was the fire. "Since then, tragedy has turned to travesty and toxicity as a wall of silence coupled with multiple sackings has left Glasgow reeling. The city that was once renowned for both its hundred-plus years of artistic heritage and current can-do dozen Turner prize winners now has a vast burnt-out shell – literally – at its...
" 19 20th-century abstract expressionist and European masterworks — including those by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning — from the Lang Collection, once owned by the late Medina philanthropists Jane Lang Davis and Richard E. Lang. The gift also includes an additional $10.5 million in dedicated funds for the museum." - The Seattle Times
"A Street Scene In Montmartre has been owned by a French family for most of the time since it was painted in 1887. Sotheby's estimates it could fetch up to eight million euros (£6.9m) when it is sold at auction next month." - BBC
"Every decision made by Charles Venable over the past decade seemed to be in service of remaking a museum founded in the 19th century into an income-generating attraction, when in fact it is a peer of other great Midwestern art museums that are open to the public for free and pursue an educational mission rather than masquerading as amusement...
"The Prado paid €70,000 (around $85,000) for La Boulonnaise, a 1929 work by the Spanish painter María Blanchard. … But the move has riled some commentators, who point to a 1995 law dictating that any works created after 1881 belong in the collection of the Reina Sofia ." - Artnet
"Museum and gallery leaders in England have expressed anger, disappointment and bafflement at why commercial art galleries – which count as non-essential shops – can open five weeks before them. 'It is just nuts' said Rebecca Salter, the president of the Royal Academy of Arts which, like other public galleries, has been told it can reopen no sooner than...
After 101 years of reproducing the Group of Seven’s art to the point of saturation, it feels like the time has come to give other, contemporary voices the same opportunities. - The Walrus
“The Smithsonian was always about how it could help the country reimagine itself, understand itself,” said Bunch, a historian and founding director of the popular National Museum of African American History and Culture. “The work we did with early aviation, even the way we collect history, which was always trying to ensure future generations understand how we got where...
