"Her magically vibrant and simultaneously mournful and vulnerable painting expresses the dualism at the heart of her vision — and perhaps at the heart of existence itself." - Washington Post
Michelangelo was trapped with his thoughts. He began to have doubts, ones he described as “crazy.” He worried painting in such an unnatural position would lead to bad work. “The painting is dead,” he wrote, adding “I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.” - Artnet
A second staff member, who also requested anonymity, wrote to Hyperallergic in an email that the text was “a broadly unpopular move, and people in all departments were making it known they weren’t okay with it and wanted the exhibit edited if not removed.” - Hyperallergic
The $12 million museum – a part of Chapman University – will expand from 7,500 to 22,000 square feet, nearly tripling its size. Galleries will grow from 12 to 26. - Culture OC
"(Mario) Perron allegedly asked his class to create artwork in the style of Jean-Michel Basquiat for a 'creepy portraits' project … (at) the Lester B. Pearson School Board in Montreal. On February 8, two students Googled Perron and stumbled across his selling platform, where they encountered their homework for sale." - Hyperallergic
"The mural is the tenth to have been discovered on the walls of the house (in Aix-en-Provence), having been found last August in the Grand Salon as the home, Bastide du Jas de Bouffan, underwent renovations in preparation for a celebration of Cézanne’s connection to the city." - ARTnews
The best stewards for these privately held collections, I believe, are university museums openly committed to provenance research, repatriation, and public education about cultural heritage and museum ethics. - ARTnews
"The Dallas-based foundation honoring the group updated its name ... to recognize their contributions, highlighted their work in a new exhibit ..., and is set to publish for the first time in English a memoir in which one of the women describes spying on the Nazis while working at a Paris museum." - AP
The work in question, sold for roughly $1 million early this week, is Ivan Aivazovsky's painting Moonlit Night. Ukraine's prosecutor-general tweeted that the item had been looted from the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore. The auction house claims that it sold a different Aivazovsky work with the same title. - Artnet
"I am frustrated by how often repatriation activists have to reinvent the wheel, which is another reason that I think social media has been so important." - ARTnews
"Cairo's citadel, one of the Egyptian capital's most prominent landmarks, opened another wing housing two semi-circular towers to the public on Sunday. … (The 12th-century fortress) was the base of Egypt's government for over 700 years." - Reuters
“We’re at the place where the straw breaks the camel’s back,” Kate Scher said. She called the crisis a “combined product” of the museum’s lack of long-term funding, the pandemic, and shifts in audience habits and philanthropic priorities. - Seattle Times
MoMA had shut down completely. It would not reopen until the following day. Visitors were ferried to the exits. Outside, a soft-spoken museum employee was assisting would-be museumgoers with refunds. “They’re protesting Gaza—our trustees are funding it,” he explained. “We can’t let you see the artwork. There are too many protesters.” - The Nation
"After more than a decade of work, scientists from Argentina, Chile and the United States have successfully dated the Huenul 1 cave paintings in Argentina’s Patagonia region. … The oldest paintings in the cave date back 8,200 years, several millennia earlier than previously suggested." - El País (Spain) (in English)
