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The Headlines
STOLEN ART.Ukrainian officials allegethat Russian forces have have confiscated artworks and artifacts from collections in the country. In Mariupol,more than 2,000 pieceswere stolen from three museums, according to the city council, theWashington Postreports. Those items are said to include examples by artistsArkhip KuindzhiandIvan Aivazovsky. Meanwhile, in the city of Melitopol, Russian officials havetaken gold artifactsthat date back to the Scythian empire more than 2,000 years ago, theNew York Timesreports. Workers at theMelitopol Museum of Local Historysaid that they had tried to hide the pieces in cardboard boxes in a basement area. The Russian military has namedEvgeny Gorlachevthe director of the museum, and he said on Russian TV that the objects “are of great cultural value for the entire former Soviet Union.”
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DAMAGED ART.A painting by the Danish artistAsger Jornwasvandalized on Fridayat theMuseum Jornin Silkeborg, Denmark, which some are viewing as a right-wing protest,Alex Greenbergerreports inARTnews.ArtistIbi-Pippi Orup Hedegaardsaid he is behind thedefacement, which involved signing his name and placing a sticker on the piece.Uwe Max Jensen, an artist who appears to have been present, and who has shared right-wing views online, compared the event to a recent anti-colonial protest by artistKatrine Dirckinck-Holmfeldthat involved tossing the bust of an 18th-century Danish king into a river. The museum is looking into restoring the picture. Ibi-Pippi (he goes by his first name) was arrested and may face criminal charges.
The Digest
GUSTON RETURNS.ThePhilip Gustonretrospective that four museums postponed following the murder ofGeorge Floydhas now opened at theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston.It includes a pamphlet from a trauma specialist, and a path to avoid the artist’s works featuring Ku Klux Klan imagery.[The New York Times]
ArtistJustin Green, an underground comics legend, died late last month of colon cancer at the age of 76. His venturesome, autobiographical volumeBinky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary(1972) inspired peers likeArt Spiegelman, who said, “Out of a group of idiosyncratic people, he was the most idiosyncratic.”[The New York Times]
The new chief curator of theCranbrook Art MuseumisLaura Mott, who came aboard the Metro Detroit institution in 2013 as senior curator of contemporary art and design. Mott’s credits at the museum include exhibitions of work byNick CaveandMaya Stovall.[Artforum]
Billionaire philanthropistDavid Rubensteingave $15 million to theU.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has now exceeded—one year early—a $1 billion fundraising goal it had set.[The Washington Post]
There are major modern and contemporary art auctions in New York this week and next (watch this space!), but that is not all that is hitting the block.Christie’sannounced it will sell a dinosaur skeleton—aDeinonychus antirrhopus—on May 12 with a $6 million top estimate.[The New York Times]
PROFILES . . .DealerMariane Ibrahimspoke withCNN. ArtistKyle Manningchatted withW. And musician and artistLonnie Holleyis in the pages of theGuardian.
The Kicker
YOU CAN’T SPELL RESTAURANT WITHOUT A, R, AND T.ArtistCarsten Höller, theking of slides, has just opened a restaurant in Stockholm calledBrutalisten(“The Brutalist,” for non-Swedish speakers), and journalistLaura Rysmanwas there for the star-studded first night (Miuccia Prada,Precious Okoyomon). Something of an art piece in its own right, the resto has a 13-point manifesto that emphasizes inventive, medium-specific cooking (and eating). As one of those points reads: “If you’re going to eat chicken, why not eat chicken brain?”[The New York Times]
