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• Why Is the UK Spending £46 M. on a Statue of Queen Elizabeth When the Culture Sector Is on Its Knees?

  02-01-2025 21:44 via artnews.com
  
  The UK government is calling on artists, architects, and engineers to submit design proposals for a memorial commemorating the late Queen Elizabeth II, and the winning submission will be erected in London’s St. James’s Park near Buckingham Palace. The budget is between £23 million–£46 million—paid for using public funds.The first of the competition’s two phases launched in December and closes January 20. Five shortlisted competitors will then battle it o
  
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• Trump Axes Holocaust Museum Board Members, San Fran’s Pier 29 to Become Exhibition Space, Germany’s New Culture Minister Slated: Morning Links for April 30, 2025

  30-04-2025 17:40 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.The HeadlinesTRUMP AXES HOLOCAUST MUSEUM BOARD MEMBERS. The Trump administration has fired US Holocaust Memorial Museum board members nominated by former president Joe Biden, including former second gentleman Doug Emhoff, reports the Washington Post. The White House said it plans to replace them “with steadfast supporters of the State of Israel.”
  
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• At Storm King, Kevin Beasley’s Acoustic Mirror Reflects Sounds of the Seasons

  30-04-2025 17:33 via artnews.com
  
  Word of mouth stands to take palpable form this season at the Storm King Art Center, when the idyllic upstate New York sculpture park plays home to an acoustic mirror created by the sculptor and sound artist Kevin Beasley. Measuring 11 feet tall and 100 feet wide, the four-part work was inspired by World War I–era defense structures that, in curved and reflective fashion, amplified distant sounds and dispersed sonic signals of encroaching enemies. Related ArticlesDisembodied Basketbal
  
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• Los Angeles Lakers Player Luka Dončić Quietly Funds Restoration of Vandalized Kobe and Gigi Bryant Mural

  30-04-2025 15:45 via artnews.com
  
  Luka Dončić may be new to Los Angeles, but he’s already acting like a local.The Lakers’ newest star stepped in to cover the full cost of restoring a mural of Kobe and Gigi Bryant that was recently defaced in downtown L.A. On Tuesday, according to The Guardian, Dončić donated $5,000 to a GoFundMe set up by artist Louie Palsino, who painted the piece Mambas Forever at 14th and Main Streets.“It was always important to give back to the community,” Donč
  
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• Amalia Ulman Describes Leaving an Abusive Art World for Film

  30-04-2025 11:00 via artnews.com
  
  Amalia Ulman broke the internet in 2014 when she started an Instagram account for posting images of her beauty routine. There, she thanked followers for supporting her as she underwent plastic surgery and solicited opinions on her hair color and outfits. It was all a performance, soon titled Excellences and Perfections, designed to draw out revealing reactions and highlight the way that social media can frame women as yours to look at.Amalia Ulman: Excellences & Perfections (Instagram Update
  
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• Child Scratches Mark Rothko Work in Dutch Museum

  29-04-2025 21:34 via artnews.com
  A prized painting by Mark Rothko on display in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam was damaged by a child who made “small scratches” on its surface. The work, titled Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8 (1960), is housed in the Depot, a storage facility that is open to the public and located next to the main building.The incident occurred during an “unguarded moment,” the museum told the Dutch news outlet Algemeen Dagblad, which said the painting was worth as muc
  
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• Mellon Foundation Gives $15 M. in Emergency Funding to State Councils to Remedy NEH Cuts

  29-04-2025 21:31 via artnews.com
  The Mellon Foundation, the largest funder of the arts and humanities in the US, said it would give $15 million in emergency funding to the Federation of State Humanities Councils (FSHC). The funds will be disbursed to state councils in all 50 states and six jurisdictions.The news comes almost a month after the Trump administration said that it would cut $65 million from the budget of the National Endowment of the Humanities, which was earmarked for the funding of these state councils as well as
  
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• Barnes Foundation, Moderna Museet, and More, Awarded Conservation Grants

  29-04-2025 21:17 via artnews.com
  This year’s Bank of America Art Conservation Project grants have been awarded to sixteen cultural institutions, including the Rothko Chapel in Houston, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and Sainte Chapelle in Paris.The conservation project began in 2010 in an effort to help preserve notable works of art, architecture, and archaeological works. Since its founding, more than 275 grants have been awarded in 40 countries to conserve paintings, sculptures, works on paper, manuscr
  
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• The Dubai Collection Tests the Limits of What an ‘Institutional Collection’ Actually Is

  29-04-2025 20:57 via artnews.com
  Earlier this month, attendees of this year’s Art Dubai fair wandering the Madinat Jumeirah resort likely came across an entirely different window into the art of the region, the Dubai Collection.Billed as the emirate’s first institutional collection of modern and contemporary art, the Dubai Collection launched in 2021 under the patronage of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and the ruler of Dubai. The term collection is being used l
  
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• Kennedy Center Cancels Pride Month Schedule as Organizers ‘Proactively’ Relocate Events

  29-04-2025 20:29 via artnews.com
  The Kennedy Center’s war on the performing arts continues to wage on under the Trump administration as a series of events planned around Pride Month have quietly been canceled or relocated.According to The Associated Press, artists involved with the Kennedy Center’s Tapestry of Pride — scheduled for June 5 to 8 during Washington, D.C.’s World Pride Festival — have been informed that the events have either been canceled entirely or moved to other
  
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• Top US Universities Form Collective Against Trump Administration

  29-04-2025 19:58 via artnews.com
  Leaders from America’s top universities have formed a private collective in defense against the Trump administration’s attacks on academic independence and research funding, the Wall Street Journal reported.Operating behind the scenes, the collective consists of figureheads such as individual trustees and presidents from roughly 10 ivy league and preeminent private research universities, primarily located in Democrat states.Issues like relinquishing academic independence, including a
  
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• Nike Hit by $5 M. Class Action Lawsuit by Users of Shuttered NFT Platform RTFKT

  29-04-2025 19:15 via artnews.com
  Nike is being hit with a class action lawsuit demanding over $5 million in damages after shutting down its Web3 NFT platformRTFKT in January.A group of RTFKT users filed the lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York on April 25, claiming that they suffered “significant damages” after Nike touted its sneaker-themed NFTs to win investors, before pulling the plug on the platform.Founded in 2020, RTFKT offered shoes and collectibles that could be used by various avatars and application
  
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• ‘Physically Suffering’ Life Models in Florence Are Threatening Legal Action Over Working Conditions

  29-04-2025 17:55 via artnews.com
  Life models in Florence are threatening court action against the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze in a bid to improve working conditions. They have also said they might protest naked in public.Nude models at the fine arts academy, which was founded in 1784, complained to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera about their “exhausting” work. They want more breaks and argue that their renewable annual contracts, which offer 500 hours over 11 months, do not compensate for the mental and
  
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• Minne Atairu Reimagines Looted Artworks Using AI

  29-04-2025 16:53 via artnews.com
  Minne Atairu’s Deshrined Ancestors (2024) is a work of augmented reality, an animated 3D rendering of an ivory bust that oscillates between recognizable features and amorphic forms. Is it alien or human? It’s hard to tell. The virtual sculpture appears smooth and rubberlike. Its primary face has cowrie shells for eyes and ram’s-horn handles on each side of its head. The back of the sculpture features a petite totem of two baby doll heads crowned by a strand of red ribbon and ad
  
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• Dutch Municipality Accidentally Disposes of Andy Warhol Print During Town Hall Renovation

  29-04-2025 16:11 via artnews.com
  In a bureaucratic blunder that is as funny as it is tragic, the Dutch municipality of Maashorst appears to have accidentally thrown out a valuable Andy Warhol silk-screen print — along with nearly 50 other artworks.According to an independent investigation commissioned by the municipality first reported by the New York Times, the pieces likely disappeared during a recent town hall renovation. Officials acknowledged the error last week in a letter to the council, though they admitted the in
  
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• Jeff Koons Returns to Gagosian for Frieze New York 2025, Hulk in Tow

  29-04-2025 14:00 via artnews.com
  
  Jeff Koons will reunite with Gagosian for a solo presentation at this year’s edition of Frieze New York, less than four years after his closely watched departure from the gallery. The booth will feature three sculptures from his Hulk Elvis series—Hulk (Organ) (2004–14), Hulk (Tubas) (2004–18), and Hulk (Dragon and Turtle) (2004–21)—staged against a custom vinyl backdrop derived from his 2007 painting Triple Hulk Elvis II
  
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• A Ruth Asawa Retrospective Finds the Fun in Her Game-Changing Art

  29-04-2025 11:00 via artnews.com
  
  In 1973, during the opening of her first San Francisco Museum of Modern Art retrospective, Ruth Asawa held what she called a “dough-in,” a communal experience that was part baking, part art, and part fun. Asawa’s recipe for a batch of baker’s clay, a white nonedible substance, went something like this: measure out 4 cups of flour and 1 cup of salt, then combine it with 1½ cups of water and hand it over to a group of kids to do the mixing. Some 1,000 parents and chi
  
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• Black Artists in Postwar Paris Get a Blockbuster at the Centre Pompidou

  29-04-2025 10:00 via artnews.com
  
  At the Centre Pompidou hangs a dense, colorful ink painting on cotton in which two figures with white faces and blue skin hold court in a lush thicket of flora and fauna. According to the work’s title, they are Delirium and Peace. Measuring 7.4 by 9.7 feet, Délire et paix (1954) by Georges Coran still packs a punch more than 70 years later.The artist’s daughter, Claude Coran, had lent the work to the Pompidou for the blockbuster exhibition “Paris Noir: Artistic circulati
  
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• One Gallery Represents Four Artists with New York Museum Surveys This Season. That’s a Problem.

  28-04-2025 20:55 via artnews.com
  Museums may tout themselves as being separate from the market, but the reality is more complicated. As others have observed, in today’s art world, sales lead to fame, fame leads to retrospectives, and retrospectives lead to more sales. There often aren’t price tags attached to what’s held within museum walls, but institutional offerings can be capitalized all the same.You don’t need to be an expert to notice the trend. But even for those well aware of it, it is notable th
  
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• Vatican Museums, Including Sistine Chapel, Closed Indefinitely for Conclave to Elect the Next Pope

  28-04-2025 19:37 via artnews.com
  The Vatican Museums, which includes the Sistine Chapel, has been closed to the public as Vatican City prepares for the gathering of cardinals who will vote to elect a new pope following the death of Pope Francis on April 28.The Vatican has not announced a date that the tourist attractions will reopen, as there is no fixed time limit for the election, which is officially known as a conclave. Some conclaves have lasted weeks—the longest in palpal history lasted almost three years—thoug
  
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• Trump Administration Threatens Wikipedia’s Non-Profit Status

  28-04-2025 18:30 via washingtonpost.com
  “Wikipedia is permitting information manipulation on its platform, including the rewriting of key, historical events and biographical information of current and previous American leaders, as well as other matters implicating the national security and the interests of the United States.” – Washington Post
  
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• Suki Seokyeong Kang, Fast-Rising Sculptor Who Remixed Korean Art History, Dies at 48

  28-04-2025 18:29 via artnews.com
  Suki Seokyeong Kang, a Korean sculptor who inventively revisited traditional Korean artistic styles and gained a worldwide following for it, died on Sunday at 48. Seoul’s Kukje Gallery announced her passing on Monday. Tina Kim Gallery, her New York representative, said in a statement that she died after a years-long battle with cancer.Kang repeatedly took up centuries-old art forms—Joseon Dynasty–era painting, 600-year-old forms of musical notation, and more—and then used
  
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• Julia Ball obituary

  28-04-2025 18:15
  My friend Julia Ball, who has died aged 94, was an artist and art teacher.An outstanding abstract landscape painter, she exhibited in London, Brighton, Norwich, Liverpool, King’s Lynn, Bury St Edmunds, and many times at the beautiful Old Fire Engine House in Ely. She also held an annual open event at her studio for 50 years running. Continue reading...
  
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• Netflix CEO: Movie Theatres Are Outdated

  28-04-2025 18:02 via variety.com
   What is the consumer trying to tell us? That they’d like to watch movies at home, thank you. The studios and the theaters are duking it out over trying to preserve this 45-day window that is completely out of step with the consumer experience of just loving a movie.” – Variety
  
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• Medieval Shipwreck Unearthed Beneath Barcelona’s Mercat del Peix

  28-04-2025 17:52 via artnews.com
  Construction work in Barcelona’s Ciutadella district has revealed a remarkably preserved medieval shipwreck, provisionally named Ciutadella I. The vessel, believed to date from the 15th or 16th century, was uncovered five meters below ground during excavations for a new biomedicine center, according to the Jerusalem Post.Measuring ten meters long and three meters wide, the ship was built using skeleton construction typical of late medieval Mediterranean vessels, with curved woode
  
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• Smithsonian Is Removing Artifacts From The African American Museum

  28-04-2025 17:44 via dcnewsnow.com
  It comes a month after President Trump’s executive order to remove what he calls “improper ideology” from Smithsonian museums. – DCNewsNow
  
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• Remembering Maio Vargas Llosa

  28-04-2025 17:31 via nytimes.com
  Vargas Llosa “has replaced Gabriel García Márquez” as the South American novelist North American readers must catch up on, Updike wrote in 1986, four years after García Márquez received the Nobel Prize in Literature and 24 years before Vargas Llosa himself would. – The New York Times
  
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• Fort Worth Police Spent $7 K. Visiting New York for Sally Mann Investigation

  28-04-2025 17:29 via artnews.com
  The Fort Worth Police Department spent almost $7,000 to send five police officers to four New York art institutions to investigate child pornography allegations against artist Sally Mann, whose photographs were on display in a group exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth earlier this year.In February, officers took a four-day trip to New York to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art—all of
  
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• Art Institute of Chicago’s Jacques Schuhmacher on the Future of Provenance Research

  28-04-2025 17:26 via artnews.com
  Editor’s Note: This story is part of Newsmakers, a new ARTnews series where we interview the movers and shakers who are making change in the art world.Provenance research is a cornerstone of museum practices driven by a responsibility to research the objects in its collection and to share this knowledge with its audience. Tracing an object’s history can unlock the details and histories of single collectors or even provide better understanding of entire civilizatio
  
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• How AI Has Changed The Ways I Explore The World

  28-04-2025 17:15 via newyorker.com
  I can hold a tailored conversation on any of the topics I care about with a system that has effectively achieved Ph.D.-level competence across all of them. I can construct the “book” I want in real time—responsive to my questions, customized to my focus, tuned to the spirit of my inquiry. – The New Yorker
  
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