Disappointingly, however, that silver lining has been tarnished by an unconscionable rush to the auction house by numerous museums eager to take advantage of a very bad decision made last year by the Assn. of Art Museum Directors. To ward off expected catastrophe, AAMD hastily relaxed a fundamental prohibition against using income from the sale of museum art to...
No other American city has opened up this sort of wide-ranging dialogue about how cities make monuments. Swept up in this inquiry are five statues of Abraham Lincoln, as well as monuments to George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and the Italian Fascist Italo Balbo. - Bloomberg
"To better understand this critical turning point, Artnet News brought together three key figures for a conversation about the restitution of the Benin bronzes: Victor Ehikhamenor, a Lagos-based artist and trustee of the Legacy Restoration Trust, an organization working on the Benin bronzes' return; Pitt Rivers Museum curator Dan Hicks, author of The Brutish Museums; and Marla Berns, director...
The museum owns the former Safeway building, where its Education Center is located; the 1870s Bergere House, where museum administrative offices as well as library, archives and research center are located; and the two-story, 19,362-square-foot office building at Marcy Street and Grant, where the Sommer Udall Law Firm and the museum have offices. - Santa Fe New Mexican
Yemen's museums, the richest in the Arabian peninsula, are a reminder of the toll that war has taken on the country's cultural heritage, often eclipsed by civilian casualties and the dire humanitarian situation. In the disputed city of Taiz, nature has combined with conflict to leave the historic National Museum building in ruins. Charred manuscripts, burned shelves and shattered...
Thomas Cole's Arch of Nero wound up being one of the symbols of the ongoing argument about US museums' deaccessioning of artworks in order to get through the financial difficulties caused by the pandemic. Fortunately, the destination of this particular painting is neither inappropriate nor far away: the purchasers are placing it on long-term loan with the Philadelphia Museum...
"Your ability to express what you see in an artwork, to explain why it is good, and to examine the ways in which it stinks has impressed your art history professors. After nine years in college, you wonder what it would feel like to have others read your writing. Can the theory-heavy jibber jabber you ingested and regurgitated in...
"Fewer art and cultural heritage works were stolen in Italy in 2020 compared with the previous year, according to the annual report of the Carabinieri TPC, the country's police force dedicated to recovering stolen art." (Well, except for antiquities, it seems.) "The drop was partly caused by the pandemic, which also forced dealers in stolen art online, but is...
"The looting of ancient art in Italy is … at least as old as the Roman empire, which not only contended with its own tomb raiders — or tombaroli, as they are known in Italy — but also pilfered riches from other nations. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has offered these thieves new opportunities to raid closed archaeological sites, churches...
Set to open in autumn next year, and operate virtually, online until then, the £4.5m Farrell Centre will occupy a former 19th-century department store close to the university’s architecture school, on a prominent corner facing the civic centre. It is planned to host exhibitions, events, office space for startup companies working in the built environment, and, most importantly, a...
Today, it’s possible to capture the average growth of the stock market through passive index funds, which if balanced with some government bonds, have realized 10% returns over the last 100 years. It’s hard to fathom why an endowment would spend so much time and money on actively managing its investments to do considerably worse than that. - Hyperallergic
"As part of the new programs strategy I developed in 2019, we reconceptualized our mission as providing emancipatory learning experiences about Palestine. A learning experience may be an exhibition, a virtual-reality simulation, a family open day, school visits, a young designer’s summer school, symposia, publications, concerts, a play. Learning experiences can also be aesthetic experiences, inasmuch as they affect...
Haring painted the mural inside a nightclub in 1989. The nightclub turned into a billiards hall, and the mural was preserved, but now the building is slated for demolition. What should, what will, happen to the mural? - The Guardian (UK)
Cinque, founded by Romare Bearden, Ernest Crichlow, and Norman Lewis in 1969, showed more than 450 artists of color during its 35-year existence. "The fact that Cinque sustained itself for more than three decades attests to an indisputable fact: the existence of at least two art communities, which were separated along color lines." - Hyperallergic
Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's new L.A. museum was delayed, and delayed and delayed again - the last delay coming from the pandemic - that worked in its favor for staying up-to-date: "While the 300,000-square-foot, $482 million museum, designed by Renzo Piano, has been under construction, the movie business has been going through a process of deconstruction,...
