“This feeling of being at the mercy of incomprehensible forces is an old one in art. For 19th-century painters of the sublime like J.M.W. Turner and Caspar David Friedrich, nature was humanity’s foil. … , A.I. fits the bill nicely.” - The New York Times
"Portrait of a Lady belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, a Jewish-Dutch art dealer who fled Amsterdam in mid-May 1940 to escape the Nazis, but died after falling through an open hatch into the hold of the SS Bodegraven, the ship carrying him to the UK.” - The Guardian (UK)
“The biggest question in the room, more relevant than ever in Germany and cities across Europe, is how to create affordable, quality housing.” - The Guardian (UK)
Each of the brief snippets “will end with the words ‘If you hear something, free something,’ which is also the title of this ambitious public art project by the conceptual artist Chloë Bass.” - The New York Times
By 1937, the 16th-century portrait of King Herod’s stepdaughter with the head of John the Baptist was considered “unbearable for refined people,” so a Cologne gallerist separated Salome’s upper half to sell separately and returned the severed-head-on-a-plate to its previous owner. Now the restored bottom section and the top have been reunited. - Artnet
“When I left the Smithsonian, a number of organizations reached out, and they were all different types,” Sajet told The Washington Post, adding that the Milwaukee Art Museum — whose collection contains more than 34,000 works, from antiquities to modern and contemporary art — felt like “a really good fit." - Washington Post
In the staff memo, Lonnie Bunch shared details of his formal response to the White House, indicating that the Smithsonian intends to undertake its own review, rather than be directed by the Trump administration. - Washington Post
The painting, Portrait of a Lady by 18th-century artist Giuseppe Ghislandi, was spotted in a photo from a house in Mar del Plata owned by the daughter of an advisor to Hermann Goering, who extorted it from the Amsterdam art dealer Jacques Goudstikker before the latter fled Europe in 1940. - The Independent (UK)
“Kim Sajet, who left her role as director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery after a high-profile clash with President Donald Trump in June, has landed a new post at the helm of the Milwaukee Art Museum.” - Artnet
By training artificial intelligence to detect emotional signals in more than 600,000 European paintings spanning 600 years, the researchers found that collective shifts in artistic mood often aligned with historical moments of prosperity, hardship, or upheaval, from the rise of trade networks to the disruptions of new technologies. - Artnet
Is it the idea that the art museum as we’ve understood it is under genuine existential threat, a relic of a battered Enlightenment worldview? Or is it the decision by so many museums in a period of extreme flux, by charging ahead with expansion plans by the dozen, to pretend that nothing has changed? - The New York Times
Turns out the walls are easier to drill into, and to accurately level the art being hung, than drywall. What’s more, they can be colored, when desired, with a special glazing technique developed by a friend of Peter Zumthor, the new building’s architect. - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
“Two activists, representing the campaign group Futuro Vegetal, targeted the basilica on Sunday, August 31, spraying the colored powder over a column while shouting ‘climate justice.’ … (They were protesting) what they call the Spanish government’s failure to act on this summer’s record wildfires.” - Artnet
Director Emilie Gordenker says the original building, which is owned by the Dutch state, is in such poor condition it needs urgent and extensive repairs to keep its priceless collection and visitors safe. - US News
The Guitar Player, housed at Kenwood in London, is signed by Vermeer and accepted as authentic. There’s a slightly different version in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection, long assumed to be a later copy; in 2023, one scholar suggested it was Vermeer’s own copy. Now they can be seen side-by-side. - The Guardian
