"Aboudia, aka Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, 40, whose art is inspired by street culture in his hometown of Abidjan in Ivory Coast, heads the Hiscox Artist Top 100, … based on the number of artworks sold at auction." The bestselling artist by cash value? You've heard of that one … - The Guardian
The unnamed, now-former collections management staffer at the Deutsches Museum in Munich took one painting right off the gallery wall, replaced it with a forgery and sold it at an auction house. He also stole three artworks from storage and sold two of them. Then he bought himself a Rolls-Royce. - CNN
In the 2010s, China built new museums with a frenzy. According to the China Museums Association, 1,563 new museums opened between 2009 and 2014. They face an increasingly chaotic censorship regime as well as the fallout from zero Covid policies, a global downturn and a collapsing property market. - The Art Newspaper
Unionized employees of the Art Institute of Chicago museum (AIC) and its affiliated school, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), have secured their first contract, which guarantees wage increases “across the board” over a four-year period. - ARTnews
“They are taking my work and presenting it as theirs,” said Christos Tsirogiannis. “They are showing off with my academic work and not giving me the credit. It is an abuse of my intellectual property. But now, enough is enough.” - The Guardian
It is not just the losses that are so damaging but also the way the museum has dealt with the issue since antiques dealer Ittai Gradel alerted its bosses after he became suspicious about objects being sold online. - The Standard
"A sacred tablet that was stolen by British troops during the 1868 Battle of Maqdala in Ethiopia was restituted in a service at a church in London on Monday. Also known as a tabot, the object is a symbolic representation of the Ark of the Covenant for the Ethiopian church." - ARTnews
That piece of land is referred to as "the promenade." According to the descendants of Memphis founders, who are referred to as the "heirs" in legal documents, the city should not be building on the property since it belongs to the citizens. - Memphis Commercial Appeal
"The system had suffered from low enrollment since the coronavirus pandemic began. Previous challenges included a $95 million settlement after fraud allegations in 2015 and a loss of accreditation that led to the shuttering of nearly 20 other locations in 2018." - The New York Times
The megadealers love museums. They need them. They’re the best of friends. But there’s no longer any hiding it: They’re also trying to clone them, to do what museums do — just better. And they’re willing to go where museums have lately been too afraid to venture. - Washington Post
Just as a photographer walks around a city or forest looking for compelling scenes to photograph, so an AI artist explores the “latent space” of images a tool like Midjourney can produce. In a literal, pixel-by-pixel sense, images are produced by the software, not the artist. - Ars Technica
In Egypt, President Sisi has grand plans "for a highway cruelly named the Passage of Paradise, a series of flyover bridges that the government claims will relieve some of Cairo’s notorious traffic congestion" - and displace millions of the alive and dead. - The New York Times
The painting emerged "during attempts to trace all the paintings sold off across Europe after Charles I’s execution, which included seven recorded Gentileschi paintings." - The Observer (UK)
