Art Movements
This week in art news: Reward offered for the return of two rare stamps, Met Opera layoffs, criticism of the Brooklyn Public Library's Brooklyn Heights redevelopment, and more.
Art Movements is a weekly collection of news, developments, and stirrings in the art world.
The group Citizens Defending Libraries have criticized the Brooklyn Public Library’s decision to approve a $52 million development of its Brooklyn Heights site. The new building, which is designed by Marvel Architects, will halve the current size of the library, and add additional apartments and retail spaces.
Artist Robert Irwin is creating a major work for the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. The installation will take over a year to complete.
The Metropolitan Opera cut 22 administrative positions from its non-union payroll.
Yto Barrada was awarded the 2015 Abraaj Group Art Prize. The shortlist included Sarnath Banerjee, Setareh Shahbazi, and Mounira Al Solh.
Rhizome announced the Prix Net Art shortlist. The winner will receive a $10,000 prize.
A French court will decide today on the amount payable by art dealer Guy Wildenstein, director of Wildenstein & Co., should he be found guilty of tax evasion. Wildenstein is alleged to have evaded inheritance tax payments following the death of his father, Daniel Wildenstein, in 2001.
The art collective “Not an Alternative” will publish a letter next month encouraging museums to refuse funding from known climate change deniers. The signatories include Nobel Peace Prize–winning psychiatrist Eric Chivian, and Nasa’s former head climatologist James Hansen.
The Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia is set to lose its collection of material by illustrator and author Maurice Sendak. Sendak, who is best known for Where the Wild Things Are (1963), stored his collection at the Rosenbach, but had not formally gifted it to the museum. Around 10,200 items are to be returned to the artist’s estate.
California artist David William Noll pleaded guilty to defacing two Banksy murals in Park City, Utah. Prosecutors have stated that they will not seek jail time if Noll pays $13,000 in restoration costs before his sentencing hearing in November.
Two American tourists were caught with a 30kg artifact taken from Pompeii. Staff at the Fiumicino airport in Rome found the artifact in the tourists’ luggage.
A five-thousand year old lunar crescent–shaped stone monument was identified in Israel.
German state prosecutors charged two men believed to be the leaders of an international art forgery ring. The prosecutors claim the two men sold eleven forgeries for around $4 million.
Riva Castleman, art historian and former director of the Museum of Modern Art’s prints and illustrated books department, passed away at the age of 84. Castleman is widely credited with anticipating and enhancing the public’s interest in artists’ prints.
562,000 people visited the Tate’s Matisse Exhibition, Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, a record for the museum. The previous record was held by the Tate’s Damien Hirst retrospective in 2012.
The Mystic Stamp Company is offering a $100,000 reward for the return of two rare stamps stolen from the collection of philatelist Ethel B. Stewart McCoy in 1955. The stamps, known as “Inverted Jennies” are a rare misprint of a 1918 series celebrating the Curtiss JN-4 Biplane (image at top of post).
Over 60 prominent architects and artists penned an open letter to Russia’s Minister of Culture, Vladimir Medinsky. The signatories oppose plans to turn Moscow’s Melnikov House, an iconic work of avant-garde architecture, into a museum. Konstantin Melnikov’s great grandaughter, Yekaterina Karinskaya, was evicted along with her family in a raid by security forces last month.
The Google Cultural Institute digitized Marc Chagall’s ceiling painting of renowned opera scenes from the Palais Garnier in Paris. The result can be found here.
