In 1975, Penny Wolin took photos of everything at the St. Francis residential hotel, "from an American man in his 70s and his new French-born girlfriend, to the empty room that had belonged to a stuntman until he died the night before Wolin was due to photograph him." - NPR
"The new report by the Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW) identified 108 medieval and early modern Armenian monasteries, churches, and cemeteries in Nakhichevan that were completely destroyed between 1997 and 2011 — an eradication." - Hyperallergic
Shocker: Ninety-one percent of emoji users "like to employ them to 'lighten the mood of a conversation.' ... The presence of a little smiley face helps soften our tenth request that someone take out the trash that’s been sitting by the front door for two days 😉." - Hyperallergic
The artists believed factories were the future. "Diagonal lines hint at stained glass—and at the notion, widespread at the time, ... that industrial structures were the cathedrals of the machine age." - The Millions
Fly into Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second and most charming city, and vast empty patches scar the landscape. Most of its southern districts and much of its centre have gone. - The Economist
Poland will formally ask Russia to return seven paintings now in a leading Moscow museum that were looted during World War II by the Soviet Red Army, the Polish culture minister said Wednesday. - AP
In the mid-1930s, Mussolini's minister of agriculture(!), Edmondo Rossoni, worked to turn his home village, marooned in the marshes of Emilia-Romagna, into a model town that could be replicated across Italy. "In Tresigallo, Rossoni envisaged a utopia based around people, with everything geared towards improving their lives." - Atlas Obscura
Although momentum behind AI-generated art has been building for a while, the release of Stable Diffusion might be the moment the technology really takes off. It’s free to use, easy to build on, and puts fewer barriers in the way of what users can generate. That makes what happens next difficult to predict. - The Verge
Management says that the museum will remain open to the public despite the walkout and picket line, which the union is staging to press for some progress in bogged-down contract negotiations that have dragged on for two years. - The Philadelphia Inquirer
Each museum that pledges to surrender some or all of its African collection intensifies the pressure on the holdout institutions to follow. But each of these pledges also intensifies the uncertainty about what exactly is being pledged. What does it mean to return an object “to Nigeria”? - The Atlantic
When the city commissioned a permanent version of Wesley Wofford's traveling Tubman statue, objectors demanded the commission go to a Philadelphia artist of color instead. But the city's new RFP calls for a statue of Tubman "or another African American's contribution to our nation's history." - The Philadelphia Inquirer
Museums must be disentangled from national and corporate interests that guide narratives and reproduce dominant social norms. Structural transformation is needed which involves more diverse staff, especially in senior and executive positions. - The Conversation
The movement’s prominence has led to fierce debate in art circles, with some arguing that it creates an “ethical and copyright black hole,” given that A.I.s are trained on databases of real art, i.e., hand-drawn and illustrated works made by humans. - Artnet
While the dream that was Instagram did once serve artists, many artists have spent years struggling against not just Instagram’s algorithm, but for access across the internet. The rise of moralism online is pushing some artists and creators not just to the sidelines but offline altogether. - Hyperallergic
