"The Council of State ruled that the Culture Ministry was correct in cancelling the concession it had given to the Dignitatis Humanae Institute," a conservative think tank whose stated mission is "supporting Christians in public life, … response to increasing efforts to silence the Christian voice in the public square." Bannon was leading an effort to establish a...
The two-month-long Coachella Valley biennial known as Desert X will not include a relocated Judy Chicago piece, the artist has told The Times, and the cancellation of the work is threatening a smoke sculpture planned for San Francisco’s de Young museum in mid-October. - Los Angeles Times
We seem to have an insatiable appetite for finding "masterpieces" and consequently may readily believe in "expert" judgment. But what is the value of expert opinion in the art world, anyway? And does it matter which expert’s view it is? - The Art Newspaper
For all the talk of robust online viewing rooms and hybrid auctions, with sales reportedly doubling in 2020, all market segments “experienced declines last year, creating the biggest recession in the global art market since the financial crisis of 2009,” Art Basel Americas director Noah Horowitz writes in the introduction to the study. - Artnet
"Museums have at times withheld information about thefts, fearing that revealing security weaknesses could make other institutions less likely to loan them art or that it could encourage other thefts, according to current and former museum officials. Art security experts say the failure to report thefts, particularly involving items stolen from storage, has prevented museums from recovering items." -...
"In an informal poll, members of the Association of Art Museum have voted 91-88 against asking its trustees to explore a controversial change in its deaccessioning policy to permit institutions to sell art to finance direct care of their collections." - The Art Newspaper
Oliver Wainwright: "It is a fitting moment for a prize once reserved for flamboyant sculptors of icons to be awarded to a practice that would prefer you didn't notice their presence at all. … In an age of demolishing public housing and replacing it with shiny new carbon-hungry developments in the name of 'regeneration', Lacaton & Vassal have worked...
More fully stated, the professional creed of Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal is "Never demolish, never remove or replace, always add, transform, and reuse!" The pair are best known for their innovative and economical work renovating public housing projects in France. - NPR
Sebastian Smee: "No painting by Titian or Raphael has ever fetched as much as “Everydays.” So of course this is big news. But it’s also just one more riotous example of high-roller groupthink, market manipulation and the seemingly unstoppable human urge to commodify everything. - Washington Post
It turns out the NFT craze has many parallels to the art world. After even a few short days in the aftermath of the sale, we can already see that NFTs are creating effects that are hilariously and tragically the opposite of the utopian fantasies so many have placed upon them. - ARTnews
Once data is “on-chain,” it cannot be deleted, and it can be reviewed forevermore by anyone with access privileges and enough technological know-how. This means each NFT’s scarcity and provenance are secure, which in turn amplifies demand, which in turn builds a more confident, more robust market than we’re used to seeing for digital artworks without blockchain backing. -...
"Boris Johnson has used his first interview with a European newspaper since becoming the UK's prime minister to issue a point-blank rejection of the Parthenon marbles being returned to Greece. insisted that the sculptures, removed from the monument by Lord Elgin in circumstances that have since spurred one of the world's most famous cultural rows, would remain in...
Justin Davidson: "No memorial, no matter how grand or artful, can encompass the infinite varieties of pain, or comfort everyone who experienced a global pandemic. So we at New York and Curbed have taken a stab at reducing an event of unimaginable magnitude to a series of local and communal yet personal markers. At our request, and in a...
Some healthcare workers created dances to deal with the losses and tragedies - and stresses of people not believing in the virus' toll - and some painted. Some silkscreened; some embroidered on old bedsheets when fabric became less available. But all of the healthcare workers used art to cope. One physician: "The suffering we have seen with COVID-19 is...
So much not fans that they've sued the artist making the images. Hergé's heirs specifically said of Xavier Marabout's images that "it was not funny to take advantage of Tintin by putting him in an erotic universe, especially as Hergé had chosen not to caricature women." - The Guardian (UK)
