Under the legislation, France would become the only major market art center to impose a wealth tax on the mere possession of artworks, says the statement. France is the world’s fourth-largest art market, and accounts for more than half of the European Union’s market value, at $4.2 billion. - ARTnews
The Holy Redeemer Church and Community Center of Las Chumberas, designed by Spanish architect Fernando Menis, has been named as the World Building of the Year at the 2025 World Architecture Festival. - Archinect
The six-foot-tall painting, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16), shows a young heiress and daughter of Klimt’s patrons draped in a Chinese robe. Its sale price of $236.4 million is exceeded only by the notorious Salvator Mundi attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which sold for $450 million in 2017. - The Guardian
The Frattini Bivouac is not staffed, ticketed or mediated. Anyone can enter it, but only after a six-to-eight-hour ascent on foot across scree, moss and snowfields. - The Guardian
The museum has shuttered some office space and the Campana Gallery (which showcases ancient Greek ceramics) due to “particular fragility of certain beams holding up the floors.” - AP
“Like many of my museum colleagues,” said Eliza Rathbone, chief curator emerita at the Phillips, “I’m deeply saddened and appalled that the Phillips Collection would so irreparably mar the vision of the founder by selling such carefully chosen works.” - Washington Post
The museum director: “In many ways I do feel the timing of our opening now is ideal. … We’re opening in a moment that's very much like the moment when the museum was founded.” - Gothamist
“Children ran, some of them in stocking feet, through the displays, with abandon. (Running had been discouraged in the safety lecture, but this did not dissuade a young boy who shouted ‘I have to look for the animals that will hunt us in the night.’)” - The New York Times
He “was seen on CCTV waiting outside the gallery for about 10 minutes on 8 September last year, before repeatedly smashing the glass door with a heavy blunt object.” - The Guardian (UK)
Basically, “without consideration of multiple outside candidates, the search committee had in effect become simply a hiring committee for an in-house nominee.” That in-house nominee might be great - but that doesn’t fix the hiring process. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
Some four-fifths of the city’s roofs are covered in the lightweight, malleable, low-maintenance metal. Many of them now need replacing — to prevent leaks in more intense rainstorms and because high summer temperatures turn the rooms below them into ovens. Parisian artisans are finding ways to address these problems. - Smithsonian Magazine
Nigeria's stunning new Museum of West African Art (Mowaa) has found itself in the crosshairs of local power politics on the week it was supposed to - but failed - to open its doors to the public for the first time. - BBC (MSN)
In addition to staff furloughs and suspended or canceled programs, the 2018-2019 shutdown resulted in a loss of some $5 billion, according to the American Alliance of Museums. - NPR
For a decade, See Saw has reigned as the app for art world denizens, but the last year has seen the arrival of new apps and influencers — curator types, reviewers and spirit guides whose mission is to get you to discover art shows, exhibitions and events in New York, even internationally. - The New York Times
“The institution has announced an experimental art lending program that coincides with its new exhibition ‘Letters for the Future,’ created in collaboration with the artist-organized group Department of Transformation, which opened earlier this month.” The effort mirrors an art lending initiative the library had in the 1950s and ‘60s. - Artnet
