Management says that the museum will remain open to the public despite the walkout and picket line, which the union is staging to press for some progress in bogged-down contract negotiations that have dragged on for two years. - The Philadelphia Inquirer
Each museum that pledges to surrender some or all of its African collection intensifies the pressure on the holdout institutions to follow. But each of these pledges also intensifies the uncertainty about what exactly is being pledged. What does it mean to return an object “to Nigeria”? - The Atlantic
When the city commissioned a permanent version of Wesley Wofford's traveling Tubman statue, objectors demanded the commission go to a Philadelphia artist of color instead. But the city's new RFP calls for a statue of Tubman "or another African American's contribution to our nation's history." - The Philadelphia Inquirer
Museums must be disentangled from national and corporate interests that guide narratives and reproduce dominant social norms. Structural transformation is needed which involves more diverse staff, especially in senior and executive positions. - The Conversation
The movement’s prominence has led to fierce debate in art circles, with some arguing that it creates an “ethical and copyright black hole,” given that A.I.s are trained on databases of real art, i.e., hand-drawn and illustrated works made by humans. - Artnet
While the dream that was Instagram did once serve artists, many artists have spent years struggling against not just Instagram’s algorithm, but for access across the internet. The rise of moralism online is pushing some artists and creators not just to the sidelines but offline altogether. - Hyperallergic
"An archaeological survey along section 5 of the project, between Playa del Carmen and Tulum, has uncovered an 'impressive' archeological site of more than 300 buildings, 'some of which are over 8 meters high'." - Artnet
Sak Tz'i' was an ancient but small city, caught between more powerful neighbors; scholars weren't aware it had existed until they found inscriptions describing its defeats. Nobody knew where Sak Tz'i' had been, until a Chiapas rancher showed a researcher a carved limestone slab he'd found. - The New York Times
We showed average Americans pairs of paintings side by side. Each of the pairs are similar in style, motif and period, but one work was by a male artist and the other by a female artist. Participants were in two groups. One group saw the artists’ names and the other didn’t. - The Conversation
"Self-Portraits: Masterpieces from the Uffizi ... is the first to kick off a series of 10 exhibitions that the Florence-based museum will loan to (the Bund One in Shanghai) over the next five years. ... The partnership with the Bund Museum is generating some $6 million for the Uffizi." - Artnet
The arrival of widely available image synthesis models such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion has provoked an intense online battle between artists who view AI-assisted artwork as a form of theft (more on that below) and artists who enthusiastically embrace the new creative tools. - Ars Technica
These new AI capabilities confront the world with a mountain of questions over the rights to the images the programs learned from, the likelihood they will be used to spread falsehoods and hate, the ownership of their output and the nature of creativity itself. - Axios
"The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is in talks to potentially return a collection of Asante gold artifacts that were looted during a British military raid of the Ghanaian city Kumasi in 1874." - ARTnews
Ememem "has made a speciality of filling divots and potholes with multicoloured mosaics made from tiles of different sizes and different hues, arranged in striking geometric patterns. Some bear his signature, often in the form of an image of a trowel underscored by his name." - The Observer (UK)
"This particular sculpture ... was stolen on the night of June 16, 1999, from the house of its caretaker in Thalkhu Tole. The community was heartbroken: 'When it was lost, we felt as if we lost our history, we lost everything.'" It's been found, at a museum in Singapore. - Hyperallergic
