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The Headlines
THE ART OF POLITICS. Today is the one-year anniversary of the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. In the Washington Post, Peggy McGlone looks at how the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., has worked to preserve artifacts like protest signs from that infamous day. “It will help future generations understand how fragile democracy is, and certainly was that day,” the museum’s director, Anthea Hartig, told the paper. Meanwhile, Italy is sending a fragment it owns of the Parthenon to Greece as part of a four-year exchange, which could keep the heat on Britain to return its Parthenon marbles, the Guardian reports. Though Italy has loaned its piece—held at an archaeological museum in Palermo—to Greece in the past, Sicily’s councilor for culture said that the loan could eventually become permanent. Late last year, Greece renewed its call for Britain to return the marbles. For more on the long-running controversy, ARTnews has a primer.
Related Articles
MUSEUM BULLETIN. A strong day for news from the museum sector! Let’s dive in. Tate Liverpool in England is looking for an architect for a £25 million (about $33.8 million) “major reimagining,” per Building Design. The Datong Art Museum in China, designed by Foster+Partners, is complete after nearly 10 years of construction , according to Designboom. (Despite the lengthy gestation, it still looks futuristic.) The Los Angeles Times carries word that the Orange County Museum of Art in California has a plan to acquire 60 works to toast its 60th anniversary, with an emphasis on women artists and artists of color. And the Louvre said that its attendance fell last year to its lowest level since 1986 , with just 2.8 million visitors, the Art Newspaper reports.
The Digest
A new Jean-Michel Basquiat biopic is in the works from Endeavor Content, with director Julius Onah at the helm and Kelvin Harrison Jr. staring as the painter. It is titled Samo Lives. [Variety]
The collector Hermann Gerlinger will sell about 1,000 works from his storied collection of German Expressionism via Munich’s Ketterer Kunst auction house to benefit charities. The pieces had been on permanent loan to museums in the country for three decades, an arrangement Gerlinger nixed last September. [The Art Newspaper]
The singer The Weeknd has listed his Los Angeles penthouse for $22.5 million (he just bought a $70 million Bel-Air mansion), and photographs for the property include quite a bit of art, including what appears to be material by KAWS, Keith Haring, and Hajime Sorayama. [New York Post]
Declan Long makes the case for a basic income for artists in a new essay, and highlights basic-income efforts in Finland, Ireland, and Canada. [ArtReview]
The nine inaugural winners of the Silvers-Dudley Prizes—which honor criticism and journalism—include art critics Ingrid Rowland, who’s based in Rome, and Jason Farago, of the New York Times. The awards are named for the late New York Review of Books editor Robert Silvers and his late partner, Lady Grace Dudley. [Associated Press/The Washington Post]
ON THE MOVE. After 20 years as director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London, Iwona Blazwick is stepping down, ARTnews reports. Across the pond, M’kina Tapscott, who has worked at Project Row Houses in Houston as director of education and programs, has been named director of the Artworks Trenton visual arts center in New Jersey, per NJ.com.
The Kicker
A COLLABORATION FOR THE AGES. The AFP has a rollicking interview with Elena Palumbo-Mosca, who helped create 20 or more of Yves Klein ‘s “Anthropometries” by slathering her body with paint and pressing it onto the surface of the works. A cabaret dancer in her student years, she went on to become a translator of European Union agencies, and told the news agency of her work with Klein, “It was clear that we were doing something that nobody had ever done.” It was not a simple project. She recalled, “As soon as we’d finished our work, we went to wash ourselves off off-stage—the paint, after all, was toxic.” [AFP/France24]