"A sterling 550-year-old portrait by the Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli that was the star lot of Sotheby's Old Masters sale has sold for $92.2 million, making it the second-most-expensive Old Master artwork to sell at auction, according to the company. The artwork, Young Man Holding a Roundel (circa 1444/5–1510), is one of only three portraits by Botticelli left in...
After years of planning, the long-awaited Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture of the Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, California, has finally received the green light from the city. - Artnet
"The complex will include a dozen buildings, including two separate museums — one for Ukrainians and Eastern European Jews killed in the Holocaust, and one specifically memorializing those who died at Babyn Yar. There will also be a church, a mosque, a synagogue, a multimedia center, a research center, and a conference building." The artistic director of the project...
Except in the countries where they aren't: the Uffizi in Florence welcomed all of 800 visitors when it reopened last week, and Belgium declared museums essential and let them keep operating. But the lockdown stretches on in Britain and Germany, and museum workers get more and more worried; in France, museums had to close again after opening in the...
If the owner is explicitly saying the business itself won’t survive, keeping the building around as a cultural monument raises additional questions about what culture, exactly, is being preserved. - Curbed
The V&A partnered with the Factum Foundation to create the high-resolution color, infrared and 3-D scans in 2019. And last year, in honor of the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death, the museum refurbished the cartoons’ gallery, known as the Raphael Court, by repainting the walls, replacing light fixtures and taking other steps to make the cartoons “more visible and...
"Leading stock photography company Shutterstock announced today that it has acquired TurboSquid, a digital media company that sells 3D assets, for $75 million. The move is both a talent and an IP acquisition, and it will give Shutterstock's two million customers … access to raw materials for making images from scratch." - Fast Company
"The Antiquarium, a museum located on the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii, fully reopened this week for the first time in more than 40 years. Home to some of the razed settlement's best-preserved artifacts, including protective amulets and plaster casts of Mount Vesuvius's victims, the museum will host a permanent display narrating Pompeii's history. - Smithsonian Magazine
After reporting in the Kansas City Star turned up evidence that William Rockhill Nelson, the Nelson in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art was a segregationist, the museum is reassessing being named after the real estate and newspaper magnate who helped found the museum. - Artnet
"On closer inspection, there is an asymmetric battle between a grassroots struggle to redistribute power, and those who place institutional preservation at the center. Ironically, Trump, by dint of his very nastiness, gave the upper hand to institutional preservationists, and not just by threats to defund sanctuary cities, which cast institutions as victims." - Hyperallergic
"The world's most visited museum — a record 10 million in 2019, mostly from overseas — is grappling with its longest closure since World War II, as pandemic restrictions keep its treasures under lock and key. But without crowds that can swell to as many as 40,000 people a day, museum officials are seizing a golden opportunity to finesse...
"'We no longer have a choice, the building is in distress,' Centre Pompidou president Serge Lasvignes told Le Figaro of the extensive upkeep needed for its Renzo Piano- and Richard Rogers-designed exterior of steel piping that was constructed in the 1970s." The museum will close for the €200 million project at the end of 2023 and should reopen in...
"The pandemic will have caused frustration to students everywhere and it must have been difficult for university authorities to react to the ever-shifting situation. However, this last year has highlighted the extent to which universities are now dependent upon the money generated by the numbers of students they have, and the willingness of those students to go into debt,...
"I would like to officially state that I’m thrilled that the museum has collected art by women, in 2020 and in any other year, and the selections named in the press release are fantastic additions. However, I am confused about how the museum defines “diversifying a collection,” why they didn’t collect a lot more art by women at lower...
The artists of the Place du Tetre are feeling squeezed out by restaurants, and then there's the emptiness. One of the artists: "It’s a hard time for everyone, but it’s especially depressing here. ... Usually, this place is better than a studio because you are in contact with people from all over the place and that’s the pleasure. But...
