A decade ago, an employee stole 25 priceless documents from the Netherlands’ National Archives in the Hague. The trove included 16th-century records of clandestine government affairs, a 15th-century letter from a knight and documents from the Dutch East India Company. - Smithsonian
Shamim M. Momin is, most recently director of curatorial affairs at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle and co-founder of Los Angeles Nomadic Division, succeeds Klaudio Rodriguez, who left his executive director post last August. - The New York Times
Created to house the museum’s permanent art collection, the David Geffen Galleries increase the total museum space from 130,000 square feet to 220,000 square feet. - Los Angeles Magazine
Sure, why not just take that fragile tapestry to the south coast and “reserve at least 1,066 tickets to the exhibition for people from Hastings.” - The Guardian (UK)
“When you have surgery to look like your best self as shown on a flat screen, the results in three-dimensional reality can be very odd indeed.” - The Guardian (UK)
I wondered what it meant if the Greek water jar I had been so moved by, depicting a woman who may have been Sappho bent over a scroll, had in fact been a worthless copy. Did that make the experience any less real? - The Guardian
The shift in tone may seem stark, but the Bayeux Museum said it had carried out tests – including a dress rehearsal with a model – that persuaded its experts that the tapestry could be sent to the UK without excessive damage. - The Guardian
According to the museum, officers told staff that they were there in an attempt to assess places where undocumented immigrants might enter and leave the museum at upcoming events. - Artnet
“Billed as a ‘financial trust fall,’ the project” — a sculpture of an infant, built to be taken apart and divided, which the collective MSCHF has titled King Solomon’s Baby — “invites collectors to take the plunge (and buy a piece), hoping others will follow suit in a reverse pyramid scheme that’s artfully self-aware.” - ARTnews
These decades-old guidelines determine the temperature and relative humidity at which museums maintain their collections, but implementing them comes with high energy costs and carbon footprints. - The Art Newspaper
The surge comes as many young adults grapple with fears about the impacts of artificial intelligence, a sense of internet overload and a desire to reconnect with the physical world. - Gothamist
“The former prime minister Liz Truss and a hard-right lobby group have been accused of stoking culture wars after reportedly writing a letter claiming they would take legal action over alleged ‘covert’ plans to return the Parthenon marbles to Greece.” - The Guardian
“Some have wondered if the group show is fated to die out altogether. But in talking to dealers and advisers, it seems less like the once-ubiquitous summer group show is not quite disappearing. Instead, galleries have simply become more clear-eyed about the true purpose of these shows.” - ARTnews
Arriving at art museums after four or five hours on these roads, day after day, is reliably uplifting. Everything is reversed. You’re in a huge building, with high ceilings and no predetermined path. You meander through different centuries and cultures, encountering different ideas of beauty, different understandings of power and mortality, different ways of living. - Washington Post
Art historian Linda Neagley has argued that pre-Renaissance people interacted with art visually, kinaesthetically (sensory perception through bodily movement) and physically. The Bayeux tapestry would have been hung at eye level to enable this. - The Conversation
