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TikTok Fame Remakes A Young Artist’s Narrative

A young Australian potter thought she'd always be known to other people as "the cancer girl." But her popularity on TikTok has changed that understanding - and her life - dramatically. "Sherritt has gained half a million followers on TikTok by hosting a wildly successful series from her Ballarat art shed, where every week she makes a new piece from a...

Reframing Nature Photography

Nature photography means what - Ansel Adams? The National Geographic's contests and covers? Or ... the nature that's around us all of the time in cities, in parking lots, in the area between apartment buildings, the in-between spaces where plants, bugs, birds, rodents, and some humans thrive? "Working within predominantly Black neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Los Angeles and her home...

President Biden Reverses The Truly Terrible 45 ‘Classical Architecture’ Order

The executive order, which the former president signed "in December after losing his bid for re-election, was titled 'Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,' and it praised Greco-Roman architecture as being 'beautiful” while describing modernist designs as 'ugly and inconsistent.'" - The New York Times

How Museums Use Consultants To Hide Behind Their Biggest Problems

“Consultants are hired to tell museums the truth,” says Adrienne Horn, the president of Museum Management Consultants and a former executive board member for the American Association of Museums. But a series of missteps and hollow promises from institutions that have relied on third-party advice are bringing new scrutiny to the influx of for-profit strategies in a nonprofit world....

New Director Takes Control Over Pompeii Site

"He was among the first crop of foreigners picked to direct an Italian museum or cultural site as part of what was a contentious drive to revamp the management of the country’s heritage. Not only was he foreign but he was the youngest person in charge of a major site." - The Guardian

Was This Picture Painted By A Human Or By AI? Most Folks Can’t Tell, Finds Study

"A majority of respondents were only able to identify one of the five AI landscape works as such. Around 75 to 85 percent of respondents guessed wrong on the other four. When they did correctly attribute an artwork to AI, it was the abstract one." - Artnet

Major Layoffs Coming At London’s V&A Museum

"Vast cuts at the Victoria and Albert Museum are feared to be imminent, with curators and conservators in the line of fire. … Details of the museum's 'recovery strategy' were briefed to unions on Thursday. Staff are expecting to hear news of redundancies within days. One insider expressed dismay that the curatorial division may have to make 20% cuts."...

More People Are Sending Nude Selfies Of Themselves. Why?

As the pandemic forces relationships to be conducted remotely, more people than ever are resorting to the virtual exchange of intimacies. Last autumn, a poll of 7,000 UK schoolchildren by the youth sexual health charity Brook put the figure at nearly one in five who said they would send a naked selfie to a partner during a lockdown. -...

160 Public Confederate Symbols Were Taken Down In 2020

In the group’s “Whose Heritage?” report, the Southern Poverty Law Center said that last year had been transformative, but that more than 2,100 symbols of the Confederacy remained, including 704 monuments. - The New York Times

Claim: Once-Proud Glasgow School Of Art Now A Toxic Mess

First there was the fire. "Since then, tragedy has turned to travesty and toxicity as a wall of silence coupled with multiple sackings has left Glasgow reeling. The city that was once renowned for both its hundred-plus years of artistic heritage and current can-do dozen Turner prize winners now has a vast burnt-out shell – literally – at its...

Collection Worth $400 Million Donated To Seattle Art Museum

" 19 20th-century abstract expressionist and European masterworks — including those by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning — from the Lang Collection, once owned by the late Medina philanthropists Jane Lang Davis and Richard E. Lang. The gift also includes an additional $10.5 million in dedicated funds for the museum." - The Seattle Times

Van Gogh Painting Unseen For More Than 130 Years Now On View

"A Street Scene In Montmartre has been owned by a French family for most of the time since it was painted in 1887. Sotheby's estimates it could fetch up to eight million euros (£6.9m) when it is sold at auction next month." - BBC

How The Indianapolis Museum Went Wrong (By The Guy Who Used To Run It)

"Every decision made by Charles Venable over the past decade seemed to be in service of remaking a museum founded in the 19th century into an income-generating attraction, when in fact it is a peer of other great Midwestern art museums that are open to the public for free and pursue an educational mission rather than masquerading as amusement...

Critics Say The Prado Broke The Law When It Acquired A 20th-Century Painting

"The Prado paid €70,000 (around $85,000) for La Boulonnaise, a 1929 work by the Spanish painter María Blanchard. … But the move has riled some commentators, who point to a 1995 law dictating that any works created after 1881 belong in the collection of the Reina Sofia ." - Artnet

Commercial Art Galleries In UK Can Reopen Before Museums Do, And Museum Folks Are Furious

"Museum and gallery leaders in England have expressed anger, disappointment and bafflement at why commercial art galleries – which count as non-essential shops – can open five weeks before them. 'It is just nuts' said Rebecca Salter, the president of the Royal Academy of Arts which, like other public galleries, has been told it can reopen no sooner than...

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