From fireworks injuries to the collapse of UArts to Venice Biennale drama to prison sentences for the original climate-protesting art vandals, here are 26 events and developments that made 2024 the year it was. - ARTnews
More than five decades of severe repression under father Hafiz and son Bashar al-Assad left Syria with no structure for any kind of art scene and almost no living experience of free expression. Here four artists who have spent recent years in exile share what they expect and hope for now. - Artnet
"A construction worker turning up a nude marble deity hidden some 1,600 years ago, an art historian spotting a missing painting on his social media feed, an amateur excavator digging up a confounding ancient Roman object. Experts … locating the earliest known cave paintings in South America and the oldest lipstick scientifically documented." - CNN
So what is Neo-Rococo, really? It’s a contemporary movement that merges the delicate pastels, ornamental elegance, and sensuality of 18th-century Rococo with modernist abstraction and feminist perspectives of contemporary art. - Artnet
In Bend, Oregon, “there have been previous reports of sculptures being decorated with Christmas garb in the past, but the googly eyes are a newer development” - one city officials are begging people to stop. - Oregon Public Broadcasting (KLCC)
Sign language poetry, which is similar to but not the same as American Sign Language, is "a well-established artistic form within Deaf culture that has received little recognition among wider audiences.” Until now, that is. - The New York Times
In an email statement, a Sotheby’s spokesperson said, “Given the challenges the market has faced this year, we’ve taken a careful look at our business and staffing levels to perform well and grow going forward." - ARTnews
The median annual income for self-employed visual artists currently stands at just £12,500, 40% less in real terms than they were earning in 2010. More than half of visual artists take on additional jobs, 51% of which are in non-creative fields. - The Conversation
By the end of the war, 26,984 freight cars of artworks from French collections had left Paris, their contents destined for temporary storage in mines in Germany and Austria. - The Wall Street Journal
Just seven years after two major donations doubled the size of the museum's Old Dutch/Flemish holdings, a group of works is headed to Christie's. Said the chief curator of paintings, "Our (review) revealed that some pictures were similar to, even duplicative of, other works by the same artists at the MFA." - Artnet
Luis May Ku, a native Mayan artist and teacher in the Yucatán Peninsula, spent years researching Spanish colonial documents, interviewing village elders about their traditional methods, and experimenting with recipes in order to recreate Maya blue, an ancient synthetic pigment which is unusually durable. - Al Jazeera
Stardust is the latest in a niche genre of films about architects made by their children. The punishing profession is clearly something that inspires both a kind of filial awe and morbid curiosity, if you’re forced to grow up immersed in it. Each film seems to ask: ‘Why did my parents do this to themselves?’ - The Guardian
“While we did not secure all the improvements we had hoped for, the union was able to secure a number of wage and benefit improvements that went far beyond what SAM leadership initially offered,” the SAM VSO Union said. - Seattle Times
"If the Marbles return to the Acropolis, the hole they will leave in the British Museum may be filled by perfect replicas. The Oxford-based Institute for Digital Archaeology uses robot sculptors following detailed computer scans to carve copies that are accurate to within fractions of a millimetre." - The Telegraph (UK) (MSN)
The "Ladies' Lounge" at the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania reopens through January 13 after an appeals court voided a ruling that the installation was discriminatory. Artist Kirsha Kaechele says the Ladies' Lounge "could appear anywhere at any time, especially in centres of male power." - AAP (MSN)
