The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner once said: “A bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture.” For much of their history, football stadiums used to be more bike shed than cathedral but their time has now spectacularly come. - The Guardian
“Showing in real life that democracy is melting away before our very eyes, I think it’s a powerful symbol that helps express the feelings and the sadness and the horror of Americans." - Washington Post
A Tulane anthropologist was clearing out underbrush when she came upon a stone slab inscribed with Latin text. She called an archaeologist colleague, who investigated and learned that it was a first-century tombstone for a sailor in the Roman navy and had been missing from an Italian museum for decades. - Smithsonian Magazine
"I have yet to meet someone who really believes that there will be less digital or AI in the world 10 years from now than there is today. It’s not a question of if, but when." - ARTnews
Using augmented reality (AR), the artists intervened in the gallery’s 19th-century paintings—generic and imagined landscapes, portraits of affluent settlers and grandiose historical scenes—digitally superimposing cosmological figures, pow-wow dancers and suffocating layers of ivy. - The Art Newspaper
This fall alone, the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the UC Irvine Orange County Museum of Art have exhibitions curated by students ranging from high-schoolers to grade-schoolers. Professional staff assisted, but they put the kids through their paces. - The New York Times
Excessive deterioration due to deferred maintenance is the reason city officials have given for their (controversial) decision to demolish the (controversial) Brutalist artwork. However, newly rediscovered documents indicate that the city has not been the party responsible for the fountain’s upkeep. - Artnet
“About 150 original bronzes have been returned to Nigeria over the last five years. … Their public display inside the $25m state-of-the-art museum in the city of Benin … was to be the crowning moment of an almost century-long effort to reclaim Africa’s stolen art.” An uplifting story — the reality is messier. - The Guardian
That’s not to say, mind you, that the moai walked by themselves. A new paper published by two archaeologists lays out, through observation and experiment, how the Rapa Nui people likely rigged up the moai and walked them from the quarry to their platforms. - Artnet
An estimated one-third of Navajo Nation members make and sell art for a living, and in Zuni Pueblo, as many as 85 percent of households include a working artist. Yet for more than a century, Native artists have been subject to a marketplace that undervalues their work and rips off their designs. - Mother Jones
The Smithsonian manages 21 museums around Washington, DC, and in New York, as well as the National Zoo and 14 research facilities. It had previously said it could rely on remaining funds from past fiscal years to remain open, originally for “at least” five days past the 1 October shutdown. - The Art Newspaper
The actor “had a very genuine passion for historic preservation, not only for the buildings or the cultural landscapes, but for what they mean to people and what they would mean in the future.” - Variety
“Monuments are supposed to be collective tributes to shared ideals. Like Confederate statues, would function as the opposite — broadcasting a one-way message.” - Aesthetic Insecurity
“Destroying the Vaillancourt Fountain, its supporters say, would be erasing history and modern architecture, and counter to the city’s reputation for being weird.” But wow, has the city neglected it for years. (The city says it just sort of aged out. Yup.) - The New York Times
