Arts news

• Louvre Considers Moving Mona Lisa To Underground Chamber To End ‘Public Disappointment’

  25-04-2024 20:19 via artnews.com
  
  When I took my mother back to Paris for her first visit in nearly five decades, there was no question we would go to the Louvre. I was more surprised that she wanted to stand in the long line to see Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (1503) for the few seconds we would get to take pictures and selfies with the famous painting.This experience is often annoying and disappointing for tourists, with one recent analysis of 18,000 reviews deeming the Renaissance portrait “the world’s most
  
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• Frank Stella, Trailblazing Artist Who Pushed Abstraction to Its Limits, Dies at 87

  04-05-2024 23:10 via artnews.com
  
  Frank Stella, an artist who brought abstraction into brave new directions, defining an era with his “Black Paintings” of the 1950s, died on Saturday at 87. The New York Times reported that he had been battling lymphoma.Stella was among the many artists who responded to the growth of Abstract Expressionism in the postwar years. His spare paintings, made as a riposte to that movement, were particularly challenging, since they contained no color at all and were not intended to provide v
  
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• Ancient Egyptian Pyramids, Sphinx Close to Public for Tech Billionaire’s Lavish Wedding

  03-05-2024 22:20 via artnews.com
  
  Ancient Egyptian pyramids and the Great Sphinx in Giza were briefly shuttered to the public this week because of a tech billionaire’s wedding.That billionaire, Ankur Jain, and fitness trainer Erika Hammond reportedly paid to have those sites closed down for their wedding, a week-long celebration that is estimated to have cost upward of $3 million. The event, which has since gone viral on TikTok, offered guests a private tour of the pyramids and the sphinx without interruption, as well as a
  
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• The Best Booths at NADA New York, From Sci-Fi Utopias to Remixed Folklore

  03-05-2024 22:04 via artnews.com
  
  Out of all the art fairs being held in New York this week, the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) fair may be your best bet for genuine discovery. The event centers emerging enterprises, and this year has 92 exhibitors, about half of which brought some truly intriguing wares. Percentage-wise, figurative painting ruled the fair, but the best works in that style bypassed camp and irony—the modes most commonly associated with it these days—for unaffected explorations of the self and our cu
  
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• Jan van Eyck’s ‘Arnolfini Portrait’ Gets a New Frame, Polarizing Social Media Users

  03-05-2024 20:08 via artnews.com
  
  The Arnolfini Portrait, a main attraction at London’s National Gallery, has received a new frame intended to reshape how viewers see the famed Jan van Eyck painting.It is normal for beloved artworks to get new frames every once in a while, and when they do, those frames tend not to receive much discourse. But when Peter Schade, head of the National Gallery’s framing department, posted news of the van Eyck painting’s makeover, users on the social media platform X were divided on
  
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• Original ‘Harry Potter’ Cover Art Heads to Auction, Where It May Break Records

  03-05-2024 19:50 via artnews.com
  
  Break out your wands (and wallets), Potter fans.Slated to hit the auction block at Sotheby’s New York this summer is the original watercolor that graced the cover of the first book in the “Harry Potter” series. The painting is anticipated to become the most expensive item related to the franchise ever sold at auction.The work was painted by Thomas Taylor when he was 23 years old. In 1997, it was featured on the first-edition covers of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s St
  
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• A Riotous, Edgy Alternative Fair About 1970s Art Returns to New York

  03-05-2024 17:47 via artnews.com
  
  For the second year in a row, far from Frieze New York in Hudson Yards, the SoHo art dealer Eric Firestone is hosting 18 New York galleries, all of whom are celebrating the 1970s.The fair is situated on the upper floors of Firestone’s gallery on Great Jones Street, where painter Jean-Michel Basquiat and jazz musician Charles Mingus once lived. (Basquiat’s former home now houses Angelina Jolie’s clothing store Atelier Jolie.)Up the broad, creaky wooden stairs, on the third
  
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• British Arts Center Apologizes for Canceling Palestinian Film Events

  03-05-2024 17:31 via artnews.com
  
  Arnolfini, an arts center in Bristol, England, apologized on Friday for a decision to cancel two events held as part of the Palestine Film Festival, a move that many artists and activists claimed was a form of censorship.Those events were a screening of Farha (2021), a film set during the Nakba, and a discussion between Palestinian writer and doctor Ghada Karmi and rapper and activist Lowkey. When it called off this programming in November, Arnolfini said that hosting the events might be “
  
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• $850,000 Ed Clark Painting Tops First-Day Sales at Frieze New York

  03-05-2024 15:32 via artnews.com
  
  The opening of the Frieze New York art fair this week brought six-figure sales and a bunch of celebrities. But whereas last year’s Frieze New York saw the sale of a $2.5 million Jack Whitten painting, no gallery reported any transaction quite so sizable this time around.Once again, Hauser & Wirth and White Cube, two blue-chip operations with galleries across multiple operations, were among those who reported big sales. (Because sales of artworks at fairs are self-reported by galleries,
  
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• EU Court Says Getty Should Return Ancient Greek Bronze to Italy, Kyiv ‘Derussifies’ Monument, Da Vinci Gets Biopic, and More: Morning Links for May 3, 2024

  03-05-2024 15:00 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.THE HEADLINESGETTY BRONZE DISPUTE. The European Court of Human Rights upheld a 2018 Italian judicial ruling that an ancient Greek statue at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles should be confiscated and returned to Italy, describing it as “an unlawfully exported piece of cultural heritage” in their Thursday announced decision. The Getty had appealed the
  
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• How Arlene Shechet Makes Her Recalcitrant Materials Come Alive

  03-05-2024 13:00 via artnews.com
  
  This spring, Storm King Art Center is getting a serious makeover. Since its founding in 1960, the 500-acre sculpture park in the Hudson Valley has been gradually populated by world-class works: the modernist abstractions of David Smith and Mark di Suvero; Louise Nevelson’s glowering black cabinetry; towering monoliths by Ursula von Rydingsvard; and, most recently, Martin Puryear’s Lookout, an elegant viewing chamber in vaulted brick. The collection is all the more impressive for its
  
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• Celebrate Spring With Terrific Tulips

  03-05-2024 13:00 via smithsonianmag.com
  
  These 15 Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest images give top billing to the beautiful blooms
  
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• The Best Booths at 1-54 New York, From Leaf Assemblages to Invented Archaeological Finds

  03-05-2024 00:44 via artnews.com
  
  The 2024 edition of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in New York opened to press on Wednesday afternoon at a new location, Chelsea’s Starrett-Lehigh building.While previous editions of the fair were held in Harlem, this year the fair moved to industry heavyweight neighborhood of Chelsea. More specifically, the Starrett-Lehigh, a massive near-century old Art Deco building that has been extensively renovated in the last decade and has lately become a magnet for fashion brands. The buil
  
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• Paul McCartney’s Rarely Seen Photography Gets a Big Museum Show in New York

  02-05-2024 22:42 via artnews.com
  
  During the early 1960s, at the height of “Beatlemania,” New York City was taken by storm as The Beatles kicked off their visit to the US. Tens of thousands of fans hurried to the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Fab Four, and band member Paul McCartney was ready to greet them. But McCartney did more than simply posing for pictures—he also shot photographs himself, using his Pentax 35mm film camera.Six decades later, McCartney has returned to New York, where he is now s
  
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• Leonardo da Vinci to Get the Hollywood Treatment from ‘All of Us Strangers’ Director

  02-05-2024 21:03 via artnews.com
  
  Leonardo da Vinci is coming soon to a movie theater near you. The Renaissance artist will become the latest artist to receive a biopic, Variety reports, in the form of a new film from Andrew Haigh, the director most famous for making last year’s All of Us Strangers.The film will be based on Walter Isaacson’s acclaimed Leonardo biography, though it remains unclear whether it will touch on just one aspect of the artist’s life or the whole thing. It seems likely, however, that Hai
  
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• In Collection Hangs, Major Museums Remix the Classics

  02-05-2024 20:53 via artnews.com
  
  Until it reopened in a $230 million new building this past June, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum was an anomaly among United States institutions: it held a world-class collection of modern and postwar art with nowhere to properly exhibit the bulk of it at once. Now, a 50,000-square-foot space allows masterpieces like Picasso’s 1906 La Toilette to return to view, along with showstoppers from the likes of Chaim Soutine, Andy Warhol, and a whole lot more.The way these pieces are displayed, however
  
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• Multimillion-Dollar Frank Auerbach to Be Sold by the UK’s National Crime Agency

  02-05-2024 20:35 via artnews.com
  
  A painting by the British artist Frank Auerbach from his lauded “Albert Street” series is slated to hit the auction block after having been recovered by UK authorities from money launderer Lenn Mayhew-Lewis, according to the Guardian.Mayhew-Lewis bought the picture, which the UK’s National Crime Agency says could be worth “millions of pounds,” in 2017 for £1.6 million. Later, another unidentified person used the work as collateral to secure a &p
  
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• Are We Supposed to Believe Maurizio Cattelan Is Sincere Now?

  02-05-2024 19:23 via artnews.com
  
  Maurizio Cattelan is usually “dismissed as a prankster,” per the press release for his new show at Gagosian in New York. That’s because he duct-taped a banana to a wall and sold it for $120,000, made a sculpture of an asteroid hitting the pope, and—for his last New York show, a 2011 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum—dangled his art from the rotunda’s ceiling, making it hard to get a good look and leaving viewers wanting more.The same press release insists
  
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• At Frieze New York, Young Galleries Reveal Untold Narratives and Spotlight Overlooked Talents

  02-05-2024 18:54 via artnews.com
  
  The most coveted commodity at an art fair, beside the wares themselves, is attention. At a blue-chip bazaar like Frieze New York, where the crowd churns ceaselessly, and every wall aspires to be a show-stopper, a curator can’t leave discovery to chance. You might fear that Focus, the section of Frieze dedicated to enterprises 12 years and younger and to emerging talent, would be swallowed by the din. You’d be wrong. The section, curated by Lumi Tan, is an intergenerational showc
  
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• Tao Siqi’s Baudelaire-Inspired Erotic Paintings Stun at Frieze New York

  02-05-2024 15:40 via artnews.com
  
  A common result of walking through any art fair is realizing that, after two hours, no more than a handful of works remain in your memory. And the ones that are on view at Capsule Shanghai’s Frieze New York booth are likely to be among that handful this time around. In the Focus section for young galleries, Capsule is showing work by Tao Siqi. Upon passing the booth, a double take is almost compulsory. Sensual, violent scenes—bondage, asphyxiation, and other kinky activities&mda
  
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• Asante ‘Crown Jewels’ Displayed, Biden Forgives $6.1 Billion Art Student Debt, Stolen Frank Auerbach Work to Auction, and More: Morning Links for May 2, 2024

  02-05-2024 14:39 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.THE HEADLINESGOLDEN DISPLAY. The Asante golden “crown jewels,” looted by British troops have gone on display in Ghana’s Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumasi, to jubilant celebrations, reports the BBC. The 32 items are on loan from London’s Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) and the British Museum to the Asante King Otumfuo Osei Tutu II for three
  
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• Asante ‘Crown Jewels’ Displayed, Biden Forgives $6.1 Billion Art Student Debt, and More: Morning Links for May 2, 2024

  02-05-2024 14:39 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.THE HEADLINESGOLDEN DISPLAY. The Asante golden “crown jewels,” looted by British troops have gone on display in Ghana’s Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumasi, to jubilant celebrations, reports the BBC. The 32 items are on loan from London’s Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) and the British Museum to the Asante King Otumfuo Osei Tutu II for three
  
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• Five Shows to See in Chelsea During Frieze New York 2024

  02-05-2024 14:13 via artnews.com
  
  After the frenzy of the Venice Biennale, the art world will now shift its attention to the Frieze art fair in New York, which opens its doors to VIPs today. It returns to the Shed in Hudson Yards, and will this year have 68 exhibitors.This location means Frieze attendees will be just a 10-minute walk away from the nearby galleries in Chelsea. While the area’s buzziest show might be the one at Gagosian for Maurizio Cattelan, who is fresh off of his participation in the Venice Biennale&rsquo
  
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• The Best Booths at Frieze New York, From a Pouncing Tiger to a Meta Reflection on Consumerism

  02-05-2024 05:10 via artnews.com
  
  For its 12th edition, Frieze New York has once again returned to the Shed, the arts center in Hudson Yards. With 68 exhibitors, the fair, which opened to VIPs on Wednesday morning, was the first held since Frieze acquired the Armory Show, its main New York competitor. That should have lent the event some extra excitement, but the preview felt a bit subdued—perhaps due to post–Venice Biennale fatigue has now made its way across the Atlantic. Still, there was a steady stream of visitor
  
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• Biden Administration Forgives $6.1 Billion in Debt of Former Art Institutes Students

  01-05-2024 23:32 via artnews.com
  
  President Biden announced on Wednesday that his administration will forgive $6.1 billion in debt owed by 317,000 students of the now-defunct Art Institutes.  The for-profit art school system, which had locations across the United States, shuttered last year. Students who were enrolled at any Art Institute branch from January 1, 2004 through Oct. 16, 2017, when the Education Management Corp. (EDMC) oversaw the organization, are eligible for debt forgiveness.  During this perio
  
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• Metropolitan Museum of Art Signs Cultural Agreement with Thailand

  01-05-2024 20:26 via artnews.com
  
  The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently signed a memoradum of understanding (MOU) with Thailandformalizing collaborative efforts to study and display Thai art.A signing ceremony took place on April 25 at the museum in New York with Phnombootra Chandrajoti, director-general of Thailand’s Fine Arts Department, and Max Hollein, the Metropolitan Museum’s director and CEO. Thailand’s consul general in New York, Somjai Taphaopong, and the Ministry of Culture’s executive directo
  
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• Nazi-Looted Monet Painting Held by FBI Expected to Be Returned to Owner’s Descendants

  01-05-2024 20:21 via artnews.com
  
  A small pastel drawing by Claude Monet that was seized by Nazis during World War II is expected to be returned to the descendants of its previous owners by the the FBI, the Times-Picayune reported last week.Monet’s Bord de Mer is currently in storage at the New Orleans Field Office of the FBI after being seized last June. The work was last sold by New Orleans-based antiquities dealer M.S. Rau. to Bridget Vita and now-deceased husband Kevin Schlamp in 2019. Schlamp died in March. The F
  
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• New York’s Newest Art Fair Feels Like a Place to Hang Out, Not Shop—and That’s a Good Thing

  01-05-2024 19:59 via artnews.com
  New York is hardly in need of another art fair, but that’s what we got this week in the form of Esther, which feels more like an ambitious group show than a selling event. That’s something to be thankful for, since the art market in this city tends to be pretty risk-averse. And, despite the fact that Esther is designed to peddle art, this show has character, which is more than you can say for all the other interchangeable fairs that pass through the Big Apple annually.For starters, t
  
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• A Look at the Financiers, Celebrities and Other Consignors Behind the May Auction Sales

  01-05-2024 15:45 via artnews.com
  
  Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.The annual May auction sales in New York are always an important indicator of the market’s health, and next month’s sales appear all the more notable after a year most art dealers would rather forget. And you can add to that more than a little pearl-clutching that the art market is
  
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• 25 Artworks Not to Miss at New York’s Museum of Modern Art

  01-05-2024 15:15 via artnews.com
  
  New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is the place to be if you want to learn about modern and contemporary art. For nearly a century, the museum has played a major role in the collection of modern architecture, design, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, film, and digital media.MoMA was founded by art patrons Lillie P. Bliss, Mary Quinn Sullivan, and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, who sought in the late 1920s to challenge the conservative policies of traditional museums and to establis
  
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