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Denver Post’s Investigative Series Into A System That Enables Looted Art Trade

The series highlights the cozy nature between curators, scholars, museums and dealers — and how incentives align to allow the dirty world of the international art market to proliferate. - Denver Post

Qatar’s Unreal New Landscape Of Amazing New Buildings

Qatar spent a reported $220 billion preparing for the tournament, conjuring new buildings, new neighborhoods and even an entirely new city. To be here now is to exist in a bubble of high unreality. - The New York Times

Turner Prize For 2022 Goes To Sculptor Veronica Ryan

At 66 the oldest person ever to win Britain's top art award, Ryan was honored for her memorial to the Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants to the UK — a group Ryan is herself part of (her family brought her to England from Montserrat when she was 3). - The Guardian

AI-Generated Avatars Are Wildly Popular. Artists Aren’t Happy

Multiple artists have accused Stable Diffusion of using their art without permission. Many in the digital art space have also expressed qualms over AI models producing images en masse for so cheap, especially if those images imitate styles that actual artists have spent years refining. - NBCNews

Angels In The Bible Have No Wings. Who Gave Them Wings, When, And Why?

The ancient Near East had many divine beings with wings, including cherubim and seraphim.  Yet, in both Old and New Testaments, angels are identified by gleaming robes or "a countenance like lightning," and they got to and from heaven on ladders. Their wings appeared several centuries later. - History Today

Group “Concerned With Slavery Justice” Sues Smithsonian To Stop Repatriation Of Benin Bronzes

A New York-based nonprofit called the Restitution Study Group is asking a US federal court to undo the ownership transfer of the Smithsonian's 29 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, arguing that the repatriation "denies the descendants of enslaved people in America the chance to experience their heritage." - ARTnews

London’s National Gallery Cancels Exhibition With Pushkin Museum

Although it was never publicized, the two institutions were to have jointly presented next year’s exhibition After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art, but the arrangement was abruptly terminated following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. - The Art Newspaper

Pantone’s Color Of The Year Gets The Assessment It Deserves

The color company used AI to create an "endless new ecosystem to be explored, called 'the Magentaverse'."  Well.  As the subhed puts it, "Say hello to Viva Magenta, the color no one asked for, coming to a world where no one lives." - The New York Times

Woman Arrested For Spraying Fake Blood On Toulouse-Lautrec Painting in Berlin Museum

The incident was reminiscent of recent climate actions at European museums, however the prosecutor’s office announced on Tuesday that it has been deemed an isolated attack unconnected to any climate protection group. - ARTnews

The Climate-Protesting Art Vandals Threaten To Start Slashing Paintings If We Don’t All Do What They Say

Comparing their campaign to that of the suffragettes — one of whom attacked a Velázquez at London's National Gallery with a meat cleaver in 1914 — Just Stop Oil spokesperson Alex De Koning said, "If that's unfortunately what it needs to come to, then that's unfortunately what it needs to come to." - Artnet

Richard Serra’s Most Inaccessible Work (In A Remote Desert)

Who would put a piece of art by arguably the world’s greatest living sculptor in a place that you cannot access without a location finder, a very serious vehicle and a lot of spare time? The Qataris. - The Globe & Mail

How A Great Woman Critic And Publicist Made A Male Architect Famous

When Aline Louchheim took on Eero Saarinen, she "leveraged power dynamics and skirted journalistic ethics to get what she wanted: ... to champion Saarinen’s work and supercharge his career." - Hyperallergic

Pantone Embraces Its Color Of The Year Marketing And The Art World

"Viva Magenta has taken the shape of a massive immersive exhibition during Art Basel—that’s 10,000 square feet and two floors dedicated to a single color meant to symbolize the 'unconventional time' we’re living in." OK, sure. - Fast Company

Art Basel Miami Somehow Has No Spanish Anywhere

"Most of the fair workers I approached during my visit ... spoke Spanish, a jarring realization that makes me think the on-the-ground staff makeup of the fair is different from the audience it seeks to welcome." - Hyperallergic

Deal To Return The ‘Elgin’ Marbles May Be Coming Soon

According to Greek news sources, "British Museum chair George Osborne, the former chancellor, has been holding secret talks with the Greek prime minister." - BBC

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