Even the middlemen whom NFTs are designed to cut out are trying to understand what this revolution means for them. Mario Paredes runs Mexico City’s Galería Unión and said he’s been hearing about NFTs “every day since, I think, two weeks ago.” He said he personally doesn’t get it. “I think when people buy art, what they need is...
“This zoning proposal would make the future uncertain for existing cultural exhibits and house museums and could derail efforts already underway to open new cultural institutions in historic buildings in residential communities.” - Chicago Sun-Times
That's more than twice as old as Stonehenge and the Giza Pyramids and by far the oldest surviving piece of ritual art. The new dating means that the Shigir Idol, as it's called, dug up from a peat bog in the Urals in 1890, "challenges the ethnocentric notion that pretty much everything, including symbolic expression and philosophical perceptions of...
As the issue of repatriating art and artifacts looted by European colonizers came to the fore over the past few years, Berlin came under pressure not to include its holdings of Benin bronzes in the new Humboldt Forum. Now high-level officials are negotiating the return of the bronzes — taken by British soldiers who destroyed the Benin royal family's...
While a recent report revealed that 2020 witnessed a global downturn in art sales overall, online sales surged, making up a quarter of the market’s value.Although a number of fairs are holding onto tentative summer and fall dates in the hopes that in-person events will be feasible, there are some who are continuing to forge ahead with digital programming...
The B.20 tokens based on Beeple’s work are about 41 times more valuable today than they were in January, when MetaKovan first made them available, according to CoinMarketCap. From the day the Christie’s auction began, on Feb. 25, to the close of the auction on March 11, the price of one B.20 token grew from $8.28 to $18.57. -...
The Palms Springs Art Museum, a low-slung building designed by E. Stewart Williams in 1974, is emblematic of the Midcentury Modern architecture now synonymous internationally with the desert enclave. Rather than a civic celebration of one of the town’s greatest cultural contributions, as the 2016 plan envisioned, the council opted instead for a civic celebration of the misdemeanor crime...
After a long-invested dictator falls, the Sudanese people (and some of the rest of the world) may gain access to the archaeological sites that show off the history of their country. "The ancient city of Meroe — part of a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2011 — is a four-hour drive from Khartoum, northeast along the Nile River. The pyramids here,...
Things aren't necessarily getting easier for museum directors thinking about what to do with their collections, and whether they should rely on their boards for money - or sell some art. "The debate has grown heated in recent weeks, pitting museum against museum, and forcing the — which serves as the industry’s referee and moral watchdog — to...
Gus Casely-Hayford has a vision for the new V&A East. "The space itself will be accessible in every possible way. We’ll build around it digital technologies, so you can both engage with the collection while you’re there and leave something of yourself behind, like comments. So it becomes not just a repository of objects, but of people’s thoughts and...
James Ransome just won the Gold Award. He's "well-known and loved for his illustrations, especially for his many children's books. But at age 60 he recently earned an MFA, and is developing a parallel career as a painter. His Gold Award was for Who should own Black Art -- a painting and book jacket — and his acceptance speech acknowledged some...
Julie Mehretu, who has a solo show opening at the Whitney: "There is a deep consideration of who you show and who comes to the museum and how do you shift that. There is a lot that has to be challenged." - The New York Times
And the confrontations - and revelations about who on MoMA's board and who on MoMA PS1's board are implicated in "security firms" in Iraq, not to mention ties to Jeffrey Epstein - are ongoing. Iraqi American art scholar Rijin Sahakian: "The denial of the artists’ right to peacefully protest through their work — on an active war actively accumulating...
Van Gogh died in 1890. By 1909, Anna, the oldest Van Gogh sister, "wrote of selling a picture that he had given Willemien, enabling her to pay for medical costs: 'I remember when Wil got the painting from Vincent, but what a figure! Who would have thought that Vincent would contribute to Wil’s upkeep in this way?'" - The...
Louis Grachos had a two-year stint, including a year of pandemic shutdown marred by controversy surrounding the museum's response to George Floyd's killing and by the deaccessioning and sale of a massive Helen Frankenthaler painting. Grachos is returning to New Mexico, where he'll be ED of "the contemporary arts organization SITE Sante Fe, which he led from 1996 to...
