Oliver Wainwright: "The Lizzie line is a worthy winner, providing a dazzling demonstration that, for all chaos surrounding HS2, Britain is still capable of pulling off gargantuan transport infrastructure projects with style and panache." - The Guardian
"The Grand Egyptian Museum will open 12 halls with exhibits about ancient Egypt starting this week ahead of the still-unannounced official opening. … The museum, a mega-project near the Giza Pyramids which has cost well over $1 billion so far, will open the halls for 4,000 visitors per day starting Wednesday." - AP
"Egyptian and German experts have successfully restored the lost colors and glimmering metals that once enlivened ancient Egypt’s second largest, and perhaps best preserved, temple … the Temple of Edfu, which is devoted to the falcon god Horus and situated along the Nile’s west bank, just below the river’s midway point." - Artnet
Bjarne Melgaard, whose career soared in the 2010s, developed some very ill-advised habits (including crystal meth) and ran up big debts. Two investors gave him roughly $10 million in this Faustian deal — with a contract Melgaard says he was too drunk to understand at the time. - The New York Times
Walker, who has been a board member of the National Gallery since 2019, is perhaps best known for his 11-year tenure at the helm of one of the nation’s largest and most influential philanthropies, the Ford Foundation.
The Nairobi National Museum, flagship of Kenya’s museum system, is in trouble, overwhelmed by a bounty of specimens and a lack of money to keep them safe. Darkening the outlook are criminal charges against its former director-general for allegedly masterminding a scheme to steal $4 million from its coffers. - The Wall Street Journal
As in, as big as movie screens across the world. “The paintings and the film developed in tandem. Kaphar would wake up to write at 5 a.m., drive his children to school, then come to his studio and listen to what he’d written via an app on his phone.” - The New York Times
"We’ve got lots of old Victorian statues of men, particularly in Leeds, and I think there was an ambition to redress this gender imbalance in public art in the city.” - The Guardian (UK)
“Built in just three years and inaugurated as part of the 1900 Paris world fair, the Grand Palais, a steel-and-glass monument, has a floor space covering 775,000 square feet. ... More steel went into its construction than into that of the Eiffel Tower.” - The New York Times
“Our facility has been designed to withstand a direct hit from a category three on the second floor, we just completed a 25,000 square-foot renovation, which brought up to code the first floor for a direct hit at a Category Four,” Tomor told ARTnews. “So we’re ready.” - ARTnews
Adalbert Parlagi and his son Franz kept meticulous ownership and search records. After Franz’s death in 2012, Françoise Parlagi stumbled upon her father’s cache of documents, including the original receipt from her grandfather’s purchase of the Monet pastel. - AP
The unit seized from museums and collectors 11 works by Egon Schiele; most were surrendered when agents proved the pieces had been looted by Nazis. But the Art Institute has gone to court, arguing that the Manhattan DA's unit not only is wrong about provenance but lacks jurisdiction. - The New York Times
Documents filed earlier this month indicate that, in 2020-21, agents at the airport impounded a vase, jars, figurines, and other items dating from roughly 2,500 to 5,000 years ago. Collectors had evidently purchased the items via eBay. - ARTnews
Close reading even such an unserious set of prompts and images offers clues about the scaffolding behind these operations, as well as broader insights into the clumsy, grab-bag way humans tend to deploy language when attempting to describe an image. - The Guardian
