"The factory was opened in 1721 by Spain’s King Felipe V. He brought in Catholic craftsmen from Flanders, which had been part of Spain’s empire, to get it started. … Some of the original wooden machines are still in use." - AP
This year, at least 1,000 birds died in one day from colliding with a single glass-covered building. In New York, which lies along the Atlantic Flyway, hundreds of species traverse the skyline and tens of thousands die each year. - The Guardian
"Lina Mendoni promised that the London institution’s revered Greek galleries would never go empty. 'Our position is clear,' she said. 'Should the sculptures be reunited in Athens, Greece is prepared to organise rotating exhibitions of important antiquities that would fill the void.'" - The Guardian
Approximately 2,600 feet above the ancient Pueblo cliff settlements, the archaeologists discovered a sprawling collection of “huge rock panels” stretching about 2.5 miles around a large plateau. - Miami Herald
"Lito Masters has partnered with several major museums to carry out detailed scans of paintings by artists including Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Wassily Kandinsky. It then uses 3D-printing technology to create textured, stroke-for-stroke reproductions on canvas or paper, complete with the originals’ cracks, ridges and imperfections." - CNN
The old windows in six side-chapels were designed by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc for the cathedral's 19th-century renovation and were undamaged by the 2019 fire. The president and the prelate want to replace them with six new panels chosen in a design competition, an option that a petition describes as "vandalism." - The Guardian
They routinely go viral before being debunked. They even occasionally win prestigious photography prizes. All of which has reignited a two-century-old debate: What exactly qualifies as a photograph? - The New York Times
An artist of impeccable character, he connected the group’s feuding factions, became an instructor and mentor to the impossible Cézanne, welcomed Georges Seurat and took up his pointillist cause, and even remained (until the Dreyfus Affair) on good terms with the irascible Degas. - The New Yorker
The oldest surviving depictions of the baby Jesus in a manger, surrounded by animals and shepherds and parents and such, go back to 5th-century Rome and Greece — and artists and artisans all over the world continue creating nativity scenes in a myriad of styles. - Hyperallergic
At noon last Friday. the anonymous street artist posted on social media that he'd installed a new piece — a stop sign with three drones painted on it — on a southeast London street. By 12:30, two men with bolt cutters arrived to take it down and make off with it. - CNN
The image at the centre of the 1893 design—depicting a pioneer with a rifle, a farmer and a Native American on horseback with a spear—has been routinely accused of glorifying the state’s role in westward expansion and the policy of “Manifest Destiny.” - The Art Newspaper
"A team led by scientists from England’s University of Bradford used artificial intelligence to determine that the face of Joseph in the Madonna della Rosa ('Madonna of the Rose') was painted by someone other than the Renaissance master." - CNN
Today, discerning which Warhol pictures are genuine is the business of authenticators, whose trained eyes and in-depth knowledge are supposed to be bulwarks against forgeries. Sometimes authenticators make bad calls, prompting other experts to weigh in and correct the error. - The Wall Street Journal
The thefts took place over 30 years, and many of the 2,000 missing items were among millions in the museum’s collection that had not been catalogued or photographed. That last point wasn’t new: a scathing investigation about the British Museum identifying several of its security weaknesses had been published in 2002. - ARTnews
Joanna Smith pled guilty to injuring museum property, punishable by up to five years' imprisonment; Tim Martin wants to see what a jury will say about his act and the "end-of-the-world climate emergency." The two splashed paint on the case of a Degas at the National Gallery. - The Washington Post (MSN)
