Sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s were down for the second year in a row in 2024. With both supply and demand for big-ticket art in a slump, the auction houses are making major bets on selling luxury goods and niche experiences to make up the shortfall. - The New York Times
Artifacts found at the tombs included bronze coins with the image of Alexander the Great dating to the Time of Ptolemy I (367-283), children’s toys made of clay, cartonnage and funerary masks that covered mummies, winged scarabs, beads and funerary amulets. - APNews
I’ve been waiting years for the emergence of a bold timber architecture with designs that take advantage of the material’s expressive personality, its strength and malleability, its ability to support immense burdens or be worked in fine filigree, to form great blocks and stiff walls or else to bend like reeds. - New York Magazine (MSN)
"Dancing between art, philanthropy and activism, For Freedoms addresses issues including racism, misogyny, violence and free speech, most visibly by commissioning artists to make billboards. They hope their imagery will provoke questions in people who see them." The results of the election have them reassessing their efforts. - The New York Times
Though they depict no sexual activity, Mann's nude portraits of her young children have attracted controversy ever since they first appeared 35 years ago. This week five of them were taken down from a group exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth after a complaint was filed with police. - Glasstire
In the current climate, I would argue there are few more urgent subjects for art than identity and contemporary politics, just as was the case when the Whitney staged its groundbreaking biennial in 1993. - The Art Newspaper
The team used pictures of verified Raphael paintings to "train the computer to recognize his style to a very detailed degree, from the brushstrokes, the color palette and the shading and every aspect of the work." - CNET
"Cave’s kinetic sculpture The Air Up There … consists of 2,800 colorful spinners that dangled from the ceiling of the check-in hall at Kansas City International Airport. But it was removed in October after the part of one spinner fell to the floor below." - The Kansas City Star (Yahoo!)
According to Fortune, Justin Sun “pressured the crypto trade publication CoinDesk to retract a December 2 article by Callan Quinn that was critical of Sun’s press conference,” where he ate the banana for which he’d paid millions. - ArtNews
“There has been a surge in applications for office-to-residential conversions since the lifting of an office space limit last March. However, architects say they can be daunting and costly with challenges around deep floorplates and a lack of natural light.” - The Guardian (UK)
"There is no room for revisionism concerning the regime’s cruelty, but the Casa del Fascio and other buildings by Terragni and his circle show how complicated it can be to pass judgments on the intentions and messages of the architects who served it.” - The New York Times
Photographer Todd Webb chronicled much of the artist’s private life. For instance, “O’Keeffe kept a series of Chow dogs, which she loved for their loyalty and dignity, their massive beauty. Their coats were so thick that she had a shawl made from the sheddings.” - The Atlantic
Such a staggering budget may seem to befit the late queen, a towering figure of British history, but why is so much money being thrown at this statue when the country is still gripped by austerity? - ARTnews
