The government appears to be meddling in free speech on university campuses - and now in national museum decisions. "This came to a head recently when it refused to reappoint Aminul Hoque, a distinguished academic at Goldsmiths, who had been on the board of the Royal Museums Greenwich since 2016. Because his work focused on issues of decolonisation, the...
Perhaps not a shocker, but in a 300-gallery survey, results painted "a portrait of an industry beset with income inequality." Assistants' top pay was about $35,000 a year, or $17 an hour - not a living wage in New York State. And that also means no overtime, no health benefits, no maternity leave, nothing that one might think galleries...
" sent in 250 National Guard troops and 60 police officers Monday to seize land next to the pre-Hispanic ruins of Teotihuacán where authorities have said bulldozers were destroying outlying parts of the archaeological site. … Officials reported last week that they had been trying since March to halt the private construction project, but work continued on what local...
"If that department comes to fruition, it would signify a break with the Louvre's president, Jean-Luc Martinez, who had deemed its formation unnecessary, and a willingness to expand the ways the museum presents religious art." - ARTnews
In replica form, that is. "Exact replicas of masterpieces from the Prado museum, including paintings by Goya, El Greco, and Fra Angelico, have been installed behind tree branches, inside airport security stations, on the sides of buildings, and along wrought-iron fences." - Artnet
In 2009, a pair of thieves got into the René Magritte Museum in the Brussels suburb of Jette, located in the artist's former home, and stole Olympia, a reclining nude portrait of his wife. The painting was returned two years later, after what amounted to a ransom payment by the museum's insurer. The assumption had been that the robbers...
"A huge burial mound holding the corpses of at least 30 warriors in Syria could be the oldest war memorial ever discovered, dating back at least 4,300 years at the now submerged site of Tell Banat, said a team of archaeologists. The memorial is also the first example of a particular type of monument described in ancient inscriptions from...
On culture wars as a symbol of democracy: "It’s not only democracy, it’s about art as symbols of our existence. You know, whenever we talk about democracy, we’re never talking about a perfect state, but rather continuous questioning and argument. are about us, about those questions, not about any authority." - The Observer (UK)
That is, welcoming to all, free, and more a central part of public life? There's a little problem with this idea, which former Queens Museum president and executive director Laura Raicovich pitches in a new book about politics and museums. "Museums lack 'public spirit' because museums are capitalist institutions," unlike public libraries. - The Nation
Zimbabwe-based photographer Tamary Kudita has her contemporary subjects pose in Victorian outfits - often made with contemporary fabric, by designers - to show links between present and past, to combine the two strands of her family's history, and to immense visual effect. She says, "There are collective identities and there are also individual and incredibly diverse stories. All these together...
A top-secret project made the Medici Chapel gleam anew: "In the months leading up to Italy’s Covid-19 epidemic and then in some of the darkest days of its second wave as the virus raged outside, restorers and scientists quietly unleashed microbes with good taste and an enormous appetite on the marbles, intentionally turning the chapel into a bacterial smorgasbord."...
It's not a simple no, however: "The port authority, which owns the site of the proposed museum, gave the green light but the council has objected on the grounds of location and fears the scheme will provide little value to local residents." - The Guardian (UK)
It takes extraordinary measures to deal with the thieves. "Looters have been plundering Italy’s cultural sites for decades, but since 2012 their trade has not been as fruitful, owing to an intensified crackdown by Italy’s art police. ... In 2020, the squad found 24 illegal digs, arrested 68 thieves and recuperated 17,503 archaeological artefacts. The unit carries out controls...
Yes, that's a weird confluence, but Cruella still makes it happen. "Cruella signposts something essential about punk: the power of reinvention. For the original punks, clothes weren’t just clothes but a ticket to a whole new you, cut to your own design." - The Guardian (UK)
And that goal is to decolonize itself. Museum director Bethany Montagano: "We felt a sense of urgency to do this because colonial systems of oppression were really rearing their ugly head in the wake of COVID ... especially as it relates to Asian Americans and the colonial brand of poison projected onto Asian Americans." - Los Angeles Times
