ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

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What Obligation Does A City Have To Physically Commemorate Its History?

While monuments to important figures and concepts are useful teaching tools, nothing is quite as impactful as physically confronting a space where historical tragedies have occurred. - The Urbanist

A NY Banksy Museum Without Banksys?

“Banksy changed the rules. If you want to organize something about Banksy, you have to change the rules also,” he said on a recent walk through the exhibit. - NPR

Photographers Go To War Over Adobe’s AI Suggestions

Adobe marketing materials seemed to suggest it could replace photographers with AI outraged many customers, further igniting an ongoing battle between tech companies and creatives. - Fast Company

Over 600 Looted Artifacts, Worth $80 Million, Returned To Italy From The US

"Ranging from life-sized bronze statues to tiny Roman coins, from oil paintings to mosaic flooring, the pieces span the 9th century BC to the 2nd century AD and amount to just one year’s stolen and trafficked art confiscated by Manhattan prosecutor Col. Matthew Bogdanos’s team and returned to Italy." - CNN

One Of Every Four Ancient Rock Art Sites In Wyoming Has Been Vandalized

There are over 1,100 such sites known in the state; most have been discovered during preparation for coal and oil projects. Vandalism to the sites tends to fall into categories of initial and names, dates, firearm damage or painting. - Casper Star-Tribune (Casper, WY)

Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum Staff Walks Out Over Exhibit On Hate

The walkout, which involved about half the museum’s staff, has shut the museum down for several days (a reopening date has not been set), and the employees involved say they plan to withhold their labor until their demands are met. - Seattle Times

How An Antiquities Dealer On A Small Danish Island Discovered The British Museum Thefts

"In 2020, Danish antiquities dealer Dr. Ittai Gradel began to suspect an eBay seller he had been buying from was a thief who was stealing from the British Museum. … More than two years later, the museum would announce that thousands of objects were missing, stolen or damaged from its collection." - BBC

Ransomware Hackers Claim Responsibility For Christie’s Attack

A hacker group called RansomHub said it was behind the cyberattack that hit the Christie’s website just days before its marquee spring sales began, forcing the auction house to resort to alternatives to online bidding. - The New York Times

Hackers Who Paralyzed Christie’s Threaten To Leak Clients’ Confidential Info

"Brett Callow, a threat analyst at Esmisoft, a cybersecurity firm based in New Zealand, posted on X an image of a post from (the website of cybercriminal gang) RansomHub with a blurred sample of some of the information contained in the trove." - Artnet

Van Gogh’s Addiction To Coffee: What He Told His Doctor

“Rey says that instead of eating enough and regularly I have been particularly sustaining myself with coffee and alcohol. I admit all that, but it will still be true that I had to key myself up a bit to reach the high yellow note I reached this summer.” - The Art Newspaper

Australia’s Richest Art Prize Put On Hiatus

The prize was established in 1988, initially as a biannual event, and was then awarded every year from 2007, other than in 2020 due to Covid lockdowns. But the prize was not given out in 2023, though no announcement was made that it had been cancelled, and it will not reappear in 2024. - The Guardian

For A Century, Egyptology Was Dominated By Europeans And Americans. Can The $1 Billion Grand Egyptian Museum Change That For Good?

When it fully opens later this year, 1¼ miles north of the Pyramids, the GEM will be, at over 5 million square feet, the world’s largest museum devoted to a single civilization, with a large and well-staffed archaeological research and conservation center. Can GEM change the course of an entire field? - Nature

Stolen $5.4 Million Portrait By Francis Bacon Recovered

"Spanish police have recovered a painting by the late artist Francis Bacon that was stolen from a banker's Madrid home in 2015. The €5m work is one of five portraits of the banker, José Capelo, who was a friend of the artist. Three of the stolen paintings were recovered in 2017." - BBC

Well, Here’s This Week’s British Royal Family Portrait For People To Freak Out Over

This one is a formal painting of HRH The Princess of Wales (that's Kate Middleton to you and me) by Zambian-British artist Hannah Uzor for the cover of Tatler magazine. The image's reception on social media, like that of the red portrait of King Charles III, is less than rapturous. - ARTnews

Investigation: 1000 Damien Hirst Works Weren’t Made When He Said They Were

At least 1,000 paintings that the artist Damien Hirst said were “made in 2016” were created several years later, the Guardian can reveal. - The Guardian

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