This fall alone, the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the UC Irvine Orange County Museum of Art have exhibitions curated by students ranging from high-schoolers to grade-schoolers. Professional staff assisted, but they put the kids through their paces. - The New York Times
Excessive deterioration due to deferred maintenance is the reason city officials have given for their (controversial) decision to demolish the (controversial) Brutalist artwork. However, newly rediscovered documents indicate that the city has not been the party responsible for the fountain’s upkeep. - Artnet
“About 150 original bronzes have been returned to Nigeria over the last five years. … Their public display inside the $25m state-of-the-art museum in the city of Benin … was to be the crowning moment of an almost century-long effort to reclaim Africa’s stolen art.” An uplifting story — the reality is messier. - The Guardian
That’s not to say, mind you, that the moai walked by themselves. A new paper published by two archaeologists lays out, through observation and experiment, how the Rapa Nui people likely rigged up the moai and walked them from the quarry to their platforms. - Artnet
An estimated one-third of Navajo Nation members make and sell art for a living, and in Zuni Pueblo, as many as 85 percent of households include a working artist. Yet for more than a century, Native artists have been subject to a marketplace that undervalues their work and rips off their designs. - Mother Jones
The Smithsonian manages 21 museums around Washington, DC, and in New York, as well as the National Zoo and 14 research facilities. It had previously said it could rely on remaining funds from past fiscal years to remain open, originally for “at least” five days past the 1 October shutdown. - The Art Newspaper
The actor “had a very genuine passion for historic preservation, not only for the buildings or the cultural landscapes, but for what they mean to people and what they would mean in the future.” - Variety
“Monuments are supposed to be collective tributes to shared ideals. Like Confederate statues, would function as the opposite — broadcasting a one-way message.” - Aesthetic Insecurity
“Destroying the Vaillancourt Fountain, its supporters say, would be erasing history and modern architecture, and counter to the city’s reputation for being weird.” But wow, has the city neglected it for years. (The city says it just sort of aged out. Yup.) - The New York Times
One artist wrote that the private university's censorship of other artists’ work, mostly about immigrants, “is a loss for the students and for the art community, and it signals that the gallery, under current conditions, can no longer function as a place for art.” - Hyperallergic
As the developer mulls a gubernatorial run, Carolina Miranda has some thoughts. “These places are rigidly controlled simulacra. … Collectively, these cloyingly tantalizing spaces offer an insightful read on his vision for real cities and the political points he likes to make about them.” - New York Review of Architecture
Yes, the favorite sculptor and architect of 17th-century Rome was the first designer whom the Sun King commissioned to make over the traditional Paris home of France’s monarchs. Yet construction was stopped and Bernini returned to Rome just a few days after the foundation stone was laid. Here’s why. - Artnet
Nouvel’s latest movie: a new home for the Fondation Cartier, a private art foundation established in 1984 that’s dedicated to the accumulation, display and creation of contemporary art. It is now headquartered in a remodelled 19th-century building in the heart of bourgeois Paris, right across the rue from the Louvre. - The Guardian
Its meaning and symbolism are under the spotlight in debates often producing more heat than light. Is the increasingly widespread public display of the union jack – and the St George flag – patriotism or provocation? - BBC
