"When a wealthy donor agrees to support an institution in return for naming rights, the lawyers increasingly draw up contracts with carefully worded 'morals clauses'. Such clauses 'allow an institution to protect themselves in the event of a donor falling from grace.'" - The Art Newspaper
"Located in the Khashabiyeh Mountains …, the shrine features two large standing stones carved with anthropomorphic figures, as well as an altar and hearth. The team also found almost 150 marine fossils and a small-scale model of a 'desert kite' trap used to capture and slaughter wild gazelles." - Smithsonian Magazine
Certainly, if you consider what’s currently happening in visual arts, it appears that we are in a major Surrealist revival. The most prominent bellwether is the Venice Biennale, which opens to the public on April 23. - Toronto Star
The project is expected to cost $400 million, with $250 million to renovate the pyramid Redwood Park and the Mark Twain Street located on the block. - SF YIMBY
Kelmscott Manor "was a place of huge inspiration for an artist who dramatically influenced fashions and ideologies with fabrics and furniture, stained glass and wallpaper still produced today." - The Guardian (UK)
Mostly. "The Sackler name would remain on a list of donors to the museum’s Great Court, because the museum 'has always recognized the important relationships we have with each of our benefactors.'" - The New York Times
Two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, artist George Butler took flights, busses, and other paths "to Odesa in southern Ukraine, where he stayed for a few days before continuing on an overnight train to Kyiv, at the heart of the conflict." - The Guardian (UK)
They're part of a nonprofit that helps provide NY artists "with places where they can work, a signature need for artists in a real estate market that has long pushed them to live in cavernous, defunct industrial spaces." - The New York Times
Cash-poor museums to generate money by selling nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. Last year, NFTs, usually pegged to the high-flying but volatile Ethereum cryptocurrency, took the market for art and collectibles by storm, with sales estimated in the tens of billions. - The New York Times
For all intents and purposes, Rita and Jerry Alter were a totally normal couple living in the New Mexico suburbs—except for one thing. They had a stolen Willem de Kooning painting worth $160 million hanging behind their bedroom door. - Smithsonian
Funded by the US Embassy as part of the World Monuments Fund's 15-year Future of Babylon project, the current work includes stabilization and conservation of the Lion of Babylon statue, the Ninmakh Temple, and the famous Ishtar Gate, which will be completed this summer. - The Art Newspaper
"Schnabel's 23-painting show at the Centro de Arte Comporaneo (in Málaga) was expected to open on Friday, but it will no longer kick off as planned, since it became impossible for the museum to obtain all the works on time." - ARTnews
The paper argues that eye-catching elements in a Pompeiian home would have been important status symbols, with buildings designed to highlight some features while minimizing others. Using angled walls or building raised floors, for instance, would have made a home’s interior seem larger and more impressive. - Artnet
"A museum in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol dedicated to the 19th-century artist Arkhip Kuindzhi, whom both Russians and Ukrainians embrace as their own, was destroyed by an airstrike on Monday morning, Ukrainian media and the head of Ukraine's artists union reported." - The Art Newspaper
