The symbolic implications of the UK leaving the European Union has hit the art world hard. But the deal will also have a concrete impact on the way the it does business. - Artnet
"At 84, the billionaire François Pinault will finally realise a 20-year plan to build a private museum for his contemporary art collection in Paris. France's third-richest man is poised to open the Bourse de Commerce-Pinault Collection just two blocks away from the Musée du Louvre on 23 January — as long as pandemic restrictions allow." - The Art Newspaper
"Commentators on pro-government television chatshows threatened to pull the statue down if it was erected, and compared it to putting up a monument to Adolf Hitler. Others laughed that it was an absurdity given there are few black people in Budapest. … Notably, most pro-government coverage neglected to note that the statue will only be a two-week installation, not a permanent addition to the city." - The Guardian
The goal is to assess the country’s landscape of public memory in a time when our shared identity as Americans feels strained, if not broken. Then we can begin to understand where we go from here, says Monument Lab cofounder and director Paul Farber. - Philadelphia Inquirer
Museums and galleries faced financial challenges that threatened their very existence, as Black Lives Matter uprisings forced a reckoning with the art world’s structural racism and controversial monuments that celebrate shameful histories around the globe. - Artnet
The place is Caral, estimated to be 5,000 years old and now a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Peruvian coastal desert about 125 miles north of Lima. Archaeologist Ruth Shady discovered the ruins in 1994. Over the past year, an extended family of squatters has made repeated invasions, claiming that the land — which has increased in value by a factor of ten in the past few years — was given to them by a military government in the 1970s. They've threatened the excavation crew and poisoned their beloved dog. - The Guardian
The long-financially-strapped school — which shut itself down last March, only to reverse that decision a month later after raising $3 million — has one valuable asset other than its campus that it could sell: a piece of meta-art by Rivera depicting workers painting and installing a Diego Rivera mural. And the creator of the Star Wars franchise wants it for his Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. - Artnet
The proposed new building, the NGV Contemporary in Melbourne, will be Australia’s largest gallery of contemporary art and design, says Tony Ellwood, the director of the National Gallery of Victoria. It will span 30,000 sq. m, one third of which will be exhibition space. - The Art Newspaper
As of Thursday, Dec. 31, the gallery phone was disconnected and the exterior banner as well as signage in the window had been removed. Mentions of the San Francisco location have also been stripped from the Gagosian website, which serves as an online hub for its myriad galleries. - San Francisco Chronicle
As always, Egypt was fruitful ground for archaeologists, with the discovery of the first ancient Egyptian funeral parlor, the world’s oldest Illustrated book, and a mummy buried with a secret painting gallery, among other finds. But the biggest news in Egyptian archaeology this year was undoubtedly the excavation of over 100 painted sarcophagi in Saqqara, an ancient burial ground south of Cairo. - Artnet
"On either side of the Atlantic, museums have teamed up with corporations in an effort to utilize their spaces—and collections—in order to reach new audiences and make a little extra dough." - Artnet
Today, one of the world’s largest collections of Nazi propaganda sits in a climate-controlled warehouse at Fort Belvoir, in northern Virginia. Much of it is virulent; most of it is never seen by the public. - The New Yorker
The small canvas depicting Christ carrying the cross and wearing the crown of thorns, owned by a private individual, was authenticated after two years of study by a team at the University of Lleida. - ARTnews
The board of governors of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad admitted that an international outcry prompted their decision to call off plans to demolish 14 of the school's 18 buildings designed by Kahn in the '60s and completed in 1974. But the buildings are still considered unsafe to use because of deterioration in their bricks and damage from a 2001 earthquake. - Dezeen
Regulators have long worried that the opacity of the antiquities trade, where buyers and sellers are seldom identified, even to the parties in a transaction, made it an easy way to shroud illicit transfers of money. The new legislation empowers federal regulators to design measures that would remove secrecy from transactions. - The New York Times
