ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

VISUAL

A Year Ago A Beeple Sale Started An NFT Gold Rush. So Has It Changed The Artworld?

In the 12 months since, something like $44 billion has been spent on about six million NFTs, usually issued to certify digital creations but sometimes for physical objects like paintings and sculptures.

Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Near Kyiv Mostly Undamaged By Russian Missile

The rocket fired on March 1 was aimed at the Ukrainian capital's main TV/radio tower, adjacent to the site of the largest single massacre of the Holocaust. A Jewish cemetery and building set to be used as a museum were hit, but the main memorial and synagogue are intact. - Forward

6,500 Russian Architects Sign Letter Protesting Invasion Of Ukraine

More than 6,500 Russian architects, designers and urban planners have signed an open letter to condemn the invasion of Ukraine and "demand the immediate end of violent war". - Dezeen

NFT Investors Furious Over The Quality Of The Art They Bought

What was promised to be a beautifully-designed, Pokémon-inspired NFT project called Pixelmon turned out to be a huge mess of irredeemably ugly pixel art — and investors are now furious. - Futurism

Love It Or Loathe It, It’s Architectural History In Concrete: London’s Barbican At 40

"Part bastion, part Brutalist Hanging Gardens of Babylon," it's is a city-within-a-city in the heart of old London, with apartments, schools, pubs, an artificial lake, and a major arts complex. In 1982 as now, some adore it, some abhor it, and everyone finds it confusing to navigate. - The Guardian

Forgotten Design By Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe Has Now Been Built

The 1952 design was initially commissioned by a fraternity at Indiana University, but money ran out before construction could begin in earnest. The plans were rediscovered at MoMA and the building is now open in Bloomington as the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design. - Dezeen

Financial Institutions Are Isolating Russia. Will The Art Market Follow?

As the financial community shuts its doors to Russia, scores of Russian millionaires and billionaires may need to convert their trophy Warhols, Rothkos, and Picassos into cash—just as international sanctions have made them toxic to do business with.  - Artnet

Dubai’s Architecturally Fabulous New Museum Of The Future

In recent years, Abu Dhabi has been the United Arab Emirate to build and open high-profile museums in eye-catching new buildings. Now Dubai has joined in with a museum in a building shaped like an ovoid ring, covered with windows and skylights in the shape of Arabic calligraphy. - AP

Russian Invaders Burn Ukrainian Museum To The Ground

The Historical and Local History Museum in the city of Ivankiv, about 50 miles north of Kyiv, was destroyed on Sunday. It housed 25 works by folk artist Maria Prymachenko, one of the country's most beloved painters. - ARTnews

The Wild Projects Chris Burden Couldn’t Make

They include an effort to convert a World War II British destroyer into a ship with sails (blocked by price and preservation issues), an application to hang a fishing boat on the side of the Seattle Art Museum (met with “vehement objections” from the building’s architect, according to Burden) and a plan to put a Sputnik satellite replica into...

Possible New Info In Gardner Museum Theft

At least, new info to the public. Investigators have been looking at links between the 1990 art heist and a 1991 execution-style murder for a decade or so. - Boston Globe

That Time Mies Van Der Rohe Designed A Frat House

The frat house didn't get built, but the design did - as a building for Indiana University's art, architecture, and design department. - Hyperallergic

Black Women Photographers Want To Be Seen In Full Color

Says one, "So much of the photography we have seen of the lives of Black and brown people is in black and white, which to me can sometimes give this sense of fungible devastation." She would rather show people "in all their vibrant, living colors." - Wired

Where Are Today’s Monuments Men And Women?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has alarmed cultural experts still waiting "more than two years after the Army, with some fanfare, announced  new effort, styled after the old, of dedicated art experts working in a military capacity to preserve the treasures of the past." - The New York Times

Nelson Mandela’s Paintings Of Life In Prison Are About To Be Sold

They'll be sold as NFTs, of course. Mandela's daughter: "My dad was all about creating an accessible society. This is a way of democratising his art." - The Guardian (UK)

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