New Orleans Advocate)” width=”640″ height=”426″ srcset=”https://hyperallergic-newspack.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/08/Black-lives-matter_photo-by-Eliot-Kamenitz.png 640w, https://hyperallergic-newspack.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/08/Black-lives-matter_photo-by-Eliot-Kamenitz-270×180.png 270w” sizes=”(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px”>A statue of Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard spray painted with the slogan “Black Lives Matter,” New Orleans, Louisiana (photo by Eliot Kamenitz, via New Orleans Advocate)
Art Movements is a weekly collection of news, developments, and stirrings in the art world.
Carol Bebelle, the director of the Ashé Cultural Centre and co-chair of the New Orleans Mayor’s committee for racial reconciliation told The Art Newspaper that artists may be invited to appropriate the city’s confederate monuments. “We have unedited monuments and we’re looking at a range of things we can do to essentially alter the power the monuments have, existing the way they do.”
Kenjiro Sano, the designer whose studio was accused of plagiarizing its design for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games logo, is facing more accusations of plagiarism. Nagoya Zoo, a client of Sano’s studio, called for an investigation after discovering that a design for its logo is similar to one used by the National Museum of Costa Rica.
The Palace of Versailles will convert part of its grounds into a luxury hotel.
The Vatican Museums launched Patrum, a crowdfunding app that encourages users to donate money toward specific restoration projects.
Slovenian avant-garde band Laibach became the first western group to perform in North Korea. The BBC published a detailed list of the songs that the band covered.
Thousands of people are struggling to buy tickets to Banksy’s Dismaland theme park in Weston-super-Mare. The ticket site crashed after reportedly receiving over six million hits in a single day. Hyperallergic’s preview of the exhibition can be read here.
(via @fatfeistyfemme/Twitter)
The National Gallery of Australia removed a collection of 13 deity sculptures from public view. The artifacts were purchased from New York antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor, who is currently serving a 14-year prison sentence in India.
The British Museum plans to request a loan of the golden rhinoceros of Mapungubwe, a potent symbol of South Africa’s precolonial history. The South African government rejected a previous loan request in 2001.
As a consequence of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Amsterdam’s Allard Pierson Museum is awaiting a court decision to determine where it should return some 565 loans of Crimean artifacts.
Two tipsters claimed to have discovered a Nazi-era train carrying gold, gems, and art in an underground tunnel in Poland.
A woman purchased a Picasso vase at auction and discovered that it was the very same vase that had been stolen from her two years before.
A sculpture installed on Skid Row in Los Angeles was burned to the ground. The work, by street artist Wild Life, was entitled “Our Lady of Gentrification.”
Daniel Buren is considering legal action against the French city of Lyon over the disrepair of his monumental installation in the city’s main square.
The Staten Island Museum will open its new site at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center on September 19.
The Rubin Museum of Art plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign for the construction and expansion of its Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room.
Lorenzo Bartolini, “The Campbell Sisters Dancing a Waltz” (c. 1821) (courtesy The Art Fund) (click to enlarge)
Lorenzo Bartolini‘s sculpture “The Campbell Sisters Dancing a Waltz” (c. 1821) will remain in the UK after a group of art organizations raised the £500,000 (~$785,000) required to match the sale price of a foreign bidder at auction.
Collector and hedge fund manager Bruce Berkowitz’s proposal for a building in Miami to house works by Richard Serra, James Turrell, and others from his collection is back on track following stalled negotiations with city officials.
A group of researchers used state of the art technology to prove that an ancient rock painting in Utah’s Black Dragon Canyon does not resemble a pterodactyl, as some creationists previously claimed.
Charles Pétillon will fill the interior of London’s Convent Garden Market with 100,000 glowing white balloons — the artist’s first installation outside of France.
The UK government placed an export bar on a 1762 watercolor of Niagara Falls. Painted by Captain Thomas Davies, the work is the first eyewitness rendition of the natural landmark.
Plans to restore artist Henry Varnum Poor’s “Crow House” in Clarkstown, New York, have stalled. Local officials claim that they do not currently possess the funds to transform the home into a cultural center.
Mosaic craftsman Stephen Miotto restored the Max Spivak mural that was discovered during construction work at 5 Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan last March.
Tourists visit Beast Jesus in Borja, Spain (photo by @virmorcar/Instagram) (click to enlarge)
Rehearsals began on a comic opera inspired by Cecilia Giménez and her famous “restoration” of an icon of Christ at her local church — aka “Beast Jesus” — at the Sanctuary of Mercy in Borja, Spain.
The Delaware Art Museum reinstalled a set of nine recently conserved wall panels by artist Howard Pyle (1853–1911).
A group of New Jerseyans are campaigning for the restoration of the William Carlos Williams Center for the Arts.
The Jewish Museum and the Tolerance Centre in Moscow plans to build a pavilion for temporary exhibitions. The museum also announced that it will exhibit Steven Spielberg’s film interviews with Holocaust survivors.
The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation launched a new fund for projects dedicated to arts activism, community arts, and social justice.
The Anchorage Museum announced a $17.5-million expansion plan.
The Wall Street Journal published a photo essay of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s softball team, the Whitney Houstons, in action.
Transactions
Jean-Baptiste Singry, Portrait of the actor Antoine Michaut (undated) (photo by Linn Ahlgren, courtesy Nationalmuseum) (click to enlarge)
Sweden’s Nationalmuseum acquired a miniature by French painter Jean-Baptiste Singry (1782–1824).
An anonymous donor gave the Kansas City Art Institute $25 million.
The Museum of the Bible, which is currently under construction in Washington, DC, entered into an alliance with the Israel Antiquities Authority, paving the way for the museum to display artifacts from the Authority’s collection.
The Robert D.L. Gardiner Foundation donated $100,000 toward the Parrish Art Museum’s Jane Freilicher and Jane Wilson: Seen And Unseen exhibition.
Transitions
As part of a major managerial shake up of Italian museums, Eike Schmidt was appointed director of the Uffizi Gallery and Martina Bagnoli was appointed director of the Estense Gallery in Moderna.
Lucía Sanromán was appointed director of visual arts at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Eric Crosby was appointed curator of modern and contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Jerry N. Smith was appointed chief curator of the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg.
Gilbert Vicario was appointed chief curator of the Phoenix Art Museum. Vicario’s appointment follows in the wake of over a dozen recent resignations and firings at the museum.
Rebecca Schoenthal was appointed curator of the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia.
Heather Shannon was appointed assistant curator of the photography department at George Eastman House.
Philippe Pirotte will curate the 2016 edition of La Biennale de Montréal.
Ken Tan was appointed a director of the Marc Straus Gallery.
New York gallery Longhouse Projects will close its doors at the end of the month.
The exterior of Longhouse Projects, New York (via Facebook)
Accolades
Daniel Boyd was awarded the Melbourne Art Foundation’s inaugural Young Artist Award.
Veronika Horlik was awarded the 2015 RBC Emerging Artist People’s Choice Award.
Herzog + de Meuron were named the winners of the 2015 RIBA Jencks Award.
Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, will receive the 2015 Leo Award from Independent Curators International during its 40th anniversary benefit in November.
Obituaries
Palmyra, Syria (photo via yeowatzup/Flickr)
Khaled al-Asaad (1934–2015), archaeologist. Former director general of the Palmyra Directorate of Antiquities and Museums.
Melva Bucksbaum (1933–2015), collector and curator.
Rolon Bert Garner (1940–2015), artist.
Tony Gleaton (1948–2015), photographer.
Jack Gold (1930–2015), film director.
Susanne Hilberry (1943–2015), gallerist.
Peter Schaufler (1940–2015), collector.
Karen Sinsheimer (1942–2015), curator of photography at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
