Charles Desmarais: “As important as the Arnautoff murals are, as art and as American history, the issues raised by the attempt to destroy or obscure them are larger than this single controversy. They have to do with what I think of as a kind of cultural duty of care — with the avoidance of negligence or harm to works of art maintained by an organization for the public good. – San Francisco Chronicle

Alvin Baltrop only had a few shows while he was alive, one of which was at a gay nightclub. Now that he’s getting more attention, we can see some of the “real” New York of the 1970s and 1980s – the impoverished city that couldn’t rebuild a collapsed West Side highway, the piers where the Whitney Museum now stands, the cruising that happened under those piers, the time between Stonewall and the AIDS crisis. (Oh, and they tell a lot of architectural history, too.) – The Guardian (UK)

Work stopped entirely on July 25 to ensure that tests were done and the workers were safe, because many tons of lead burned or melted when the spire fell in the fire in April. But work will resume Monday, and “after reassuring measurements on air quality, the debate focused on the concentration of lead on soils around Notre-Dame and in some schools on the left bank.” – Le Monde (France)

Bodies have changed – we’re bigger, with a lot more markings – and times have changed: It’s actually less legal to be nude on national beaches now than it was during the summer that saw both Woodstock and Altamont, though women can legally go topless now in a lot more states. – The New York Times

How long can this last? “This market brings together two groups who normally don’t socialize: critics and collectors. There are the exotic-seeming rich people, as any reader of Henry James would know well; once at dinner, asking one collector where he lived, I got a listing of his homes: the Park Avenue apartment, the ranch in Ireland, the winter place in Florida, and so on. Art dealers, too, are fascinating because they sell to collectors expensive artifacts that satisfy no immediate need.” – Hyperallergic

Whoops, forgetting (or neglecting to worry about) maintenance isn’t going to cut it anymore, or at least not in this case. “The five judges on a Roman court overseeing the use of public funds ruled on Aug. 6 that Santiago Calatrava, the Spanish-Swiss architect globally renowned for his sleek and elegantly curved designs, had committed ‘macroscopic negligence’ in constructing the glass-and-steel bridge that opened near Venice’s train station in 2008. They fined him 78,000 euros.” – The New York Times

Magdalene Odundo, a Kenya-born British ceramicist who hand-builds her work, says clay is a natural substance for creating bodies and other shapes. And no, she doesn’t find the word “craft” offensive – but: “Crafting work is a term that means you are making work, you are actually crafting a piece of work. There is nothing wrong in making craft; I actually think it’s a very apt word for making, but it’s not helpful when it classifies certain work as not being of equal status to art.” – The Observer (UK)

In Brisbane, the Trace show is taking art to bakeries, luggage repair shops, and mechanic shops. The point? To “democratize” the art. – The Guardian (UK)

“What mobile AR adds is the ability to changefocus by actively moving around a simulated object in real space. The technology wants you to do that. So it may just not be the ideal way to experience anything that requires any degree of sustained focus, like a poem or a performance.” – Artnet

“Artist studios get filled up pretty quickly,” he said. “And people are getting priced out.” – Artsy

The person who gave that quote actually meant it. Tim Jonze talks to three professional figure models about the worst and best parts of their jobs. – The Guardian

“Why Leonardo abandoned this first composition still remains a mystery. Handprints resulting from patting down the priming on the panel to create an even layer of more or less uniform thickness can also be seen, probably the work of an assistant – but perhaps even by Leonardo himself.” – The Guardian

“It took seeing the museum’s powerful survey of Bill Viola’s rich, deep and deeply moving video work to fully understand what is so hollow and dispiriting about the main galleries of the collection, which hold an invaluable collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art assembled in the first half of the previous century.” – Washington Post

Here’s a look at the some of the design features — often touted as amenities — that keep people from lingering, stretching out, or even sitting down in various public (or should that be “public”) spaces in New York City. – Gothamist

Among the items imported from the People’s Republic that will be subject to import duties as of Sept. 1 are “paintings, drawings, engraving, prints and lithographs, sculptures and statuary of any material and antiquities more than 100 years old, as well as stamps and collectors’ pieces of archaeological interest.” And that will include Chinese items purchased from third countries. – The Art Newspaper

Reflecting on the contretemps over the Life of Washington murals at a San Francisco high school as well as the decision by one small Northern California museum to sell much of its art and another to end an exhibition program, Charles Desmarais considers “what I think of as a kind of cultural duty of care — with the avoidance of negligence or harm to works of art maintained by an organization for the public good.” – San Francisco Chronicle

“Mark [Rosewater, head designer,] explains how, once he and his team come up with the creative concept for a particular Magic set, there are lots of other things to think about. They have to figure out not only how that deck works on its own, but also how it fits into a game that has tens of thousands of cards already out there — not to mention all the various ways the massive fan base can play with those cards. The calculations are so complex that they even have a full-time economist on staff.” (podcast) – Slate

In designing such new homes, these heavy hitters — Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner and Pace, which is consolidating its spaces on the Upper East Side and West 25th Street — are redefining what it means to be a gallery, shifting their emphasis from selling and showing art to a more full-service visitor experience that offers food, performance spaces, research libraries and open storage. – The New York Times

“You’re collecting an idea and the documentation, if the artist has stipulated, but sometimes they prefer it to be fleeting and ephemeral and totally experiential,” says Amanda Hunt, director of education and senior curator of programs at MOCA. – Los Angeles Times

The grand-scale operation, code-named Pandora III, was coordinated by the Spanish Civil Guard (Guardia Civil) and supported by The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), Interpol, and the World Customs Organization (WCO). Since October 2018, these authorities assigned thousands of Police and Customs officers to the investigation, which included a special focus on illicit online trafficking of cultural goods. – Hyperallergic

It’s part of “a new initiative by Apple called [AR]T — a curation of augmented reality art, featured in a series of guided walks. Apple worked with the New Museum to select the artists: Nick Cave, Nathalie Djurberg, Hans Berg, Cao Fei, Carsten Höller, Pipilotti Rist and John Giorno. Each created an augmented reality work that’s been choreographed into the landscape of the tour, playing with the canvas of public space.” – The New York Times

There are two questions surrounding artists and their archives. Why do artists keep them? And what is worth keeping? – The New York Times

“Among the goods seized in the multinational operation, which was dubbed Pandora III and organised by Europol, were an ancient Mesopotamian crystal cylinder seal, a 15th-century bible that had been stolen in Germany over 25 years ago and 109 ancient coins.” – The Art Newspaper

Now that Warren Kanders (“the tear-gas CEO”) has been chased off the Whitney’s board, “which institution might wind up in the crosshairs next? We looked at the makeup of various museums and ranked whose ties make them likely targets of outrage.” – New York Magazine

“A French street art association is the unexpected beneficiary in the years-long legal battle brought by the French schoolteacher Frédéric Durand-Baïssas against Facebook over censorship claims. The Paris-based group Le MUR (The WALL), which works with artists including A1One and BK Foxx, is due to receive an undisclosed amount from the social media giant.” – The Art Newspaper

“The exponential expansion of the culture sector rests entirely on a quite narrow demographic of white, middle class, educated staff and visitors who have signed a social contract on what and who constitutes value in the field of visual art. Until there’s radical change in the makeup of institutional bureaucracies and boards, that’s unlikely to change.” – Artnet