Tag: Museums

Empty Frames and Other Oddities From the Unsolved Gardner Museum Heist

In the pre-dawn hours of March 18, 1990, following a festive St. Patrick’s Day in Boston, two men dressed as police officers walked into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and walked off with an estimated $500 million in art treasures. Despite efforts by the local police, federal agents, amateur sleuths and not a few journalists, […]

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In Whitney Biennial Artwork, a Message Reveals Itself: ‘Free Palestine’

Throughout its history, the Whitney Biennial has often reflected the heated discourse of the art world, welcoming provocative work that might ruffle feathers. But museum officials and curators said they were taken by surprise by a message that revealed itself in the flickering lights of a neon installation. On Wednesday evening the Whitney Museum of […]

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Heirs Awarded Nazi-Looted Art Are Still Waiting, 17 Years Later

In a museum storage depot in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, a 17th-century painting by a Dutch old master is packed away, unseen and unappreciated. Once the property of an elderly British-Jewish couple living in France, it was seized by Nazi collaborators during World War II and sold to Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second in command. Because of […]

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Art Review: Three Critics on the Whitney Biennial 2024

The Whitney Biennial, New York’s most prominent showcase of new American (or American-ish) art, thrives on argument: in print, in comment threads, in barrooms and sometimes in the galleries themselves. Its 81st edition opens Thursday to museum members and to the public on March 20, and it introduces a “dissonant chorus” — in the phrase […]

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Four Years After Covid-19 Shutdown, Are Audiences Back?

It was four years ago — on March 12, 2020 — that the coronavirus brought the curtain down on Broadway for what was initially supposed to be a monthlong shutdown, but which wound up lasting a year and a half. The pandemic brought live events and big gatherings to a halt, silencing orchestras, shutting museums […]

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Activists Deface Portrait of Balfour, Who Supported Jewish Homeland

A pro-Palestinian group slashed and spray-painted a century-old portrait of Arthur James Balfour at the University of Cambridge on Friday, defacing a painting of the British official whose pledge of support in 1917 for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” helped pave the way to Israel’s founding three decades […]

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‘Decolonizing’ Ukrainian Art, One Name-and-Shame Post at a Time

Hiding for days in the basement of a kindergarten in Bucha, the Kyiv suburb that became synonymous with Russian war crimes, Oksana Semenik had time to think. Outside, Russian troops were rampaging through the town, killing civilians who ventured into the streets. Knowing she might not make it out, Ms. Semenik, an art historian, mulled […]

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Nations Agree to Refine Pact That Guides the Return of Nazi-Looted Art

Twenty-five years after 44 countries endorsed the landmark Washington Principles on returning Nazi-looted art, a smaller group of nations led by the United States has signed an agreement designed to reinforce those guidelines by clarifying ambiguities that have allowed for differing interpretations and spurred disputes. The new agreement, called “Best Practices for the Washington Principles […]

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With a New Holocaust Museum, the Netherlands Faces Its Past

Three faces stare blankly from sepia-toned passport photos, haphazardly pasted onto a card to an unknown recipient. They are probably two parents and their son, but we’ll never know for sure. Under their pictures are the handwritten words: “Don’t forget us!” It’s unclear when this card was sent. But its plea has helped shape the […]

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Cuban Artist Ana Mendieta’s Family Fights to Tell Her Story

It was an evening in late January, and Raquel Cecilia Mendieta was dining at the Parador, the 12th-century monastery-turned-hotel where she was staying while she installed artwork for a new survey of Ana Mendieta, the famous Cuban-born performance artist — and Ms. Mendieta’s maternal aunt — at a nearby museum. It had been a long […]

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He’s Probably in Your House, Lurking on Your Bookshelf

It appears on book covers by everyone from Jane Austen to William Faulkner to Martin Amis, but naming specific examples is a silly exercise. Walk into any bookshop and you’ll find that a good number of book covers feature Bodoni, a typeface created by Giambattista Bodoni in the late 18th century. Few other type families […]

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Surrealism Is 100. The World’s Still Surreal.

This is not an article. It’s a fish in the shape of a piano, floating in a clear blue sky, seen through a keyhole. Surrealism, the art movement that gave us disembodied eyeballs, melting clocks and animals with mismatched parts, was born in 1924 when the French poet André Breton published a treatise decrying the […]

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West Virginia GOP Passes Deranged Bill That Could Put Librarians in Jail

But the opinion also quotes the Bible as reasoning for functionally killing IVF access within the aggressively pro-life state, turning to an eyebrow-raising verse from Jeremiah 1:5 for guidance before deciding to make it harder for Alabamans to have a family. “We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in […]

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The Met Museum Aims to Get Harlem Right, Second Time Around

Notoriously, in the winter of 1969 the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its first exhibition devoted to African American culture, but with a show devoid of art. Called “Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900—1968,” it was a photomural-with-texts affair of a kind found in ethnology museums. As a student in town […]

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5 Presidential Libraries That Offer Culture, History and ‘Labs of Democracy’

As repositories of valuable historical documents and other records, U.S. presidential libraries have long been important destinations for scholars. But you don’t have to be an academic or even a history buff to appreciate these destinations, as many increasingly offer museums, special exhibitions and unique programming — ranging from interactive situation room experiences to musical […]

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Quietly, After a $4 Million Fee, MoMA Returns a Chagall With a Nazi Taint

For years, “Over Vitebsk” occupied a central place in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, which spoke of Marc Chagall’s painting of his hometown in the Russian empire as an important part of its holdings. The work, by a Jewish artist, with a Jewish theme, had been previously owned by a gallery run […]

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No Deposits This Year at Love Bank, a Museum of Affection Hit by Fire

For romantics looking to display their passion and devotion, the Love Bank in Slovakia has plenty of room in its Love Vault where 7,000 people have already deposited their keepsakes and symbols of affection, whether reciprocated or unrequited. But this Valentine’s Day, the bank will be closed. Its medieval building, once home to the muse […]

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Review: Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys Show ‘Giants’ in Brooklyn

Right in the middle of the exhibition “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys,” which opens Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum, is Kehinde Wiley’s 25-foot-long 2008 painting “Femme Piquée par un Serpent.” Showing a Black man in snappy but casual dress reclined in a distinctively twisted position, with a background […]

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Rome’s Ancient Grandeur Towers Anew With a Copy of a Colossus

It may not be authentic, exactly, or very old at all. But the colossal statue of a fourth-century emperor, Constantine the Great, is a newly erected monument to Rome if nothing else: a homage to the ancient city’s grandeur, and of its endless capacity to remake itself. In this case, the remaking was literal. Towering […]

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Mighty Shiva Was Never Meant to Live in Manhattan

“What if museums give back so much art that they have nothing left to display?” As a scholar of the debates about returning cultural objects to the countries from which they were stolen, I have, over the years, heard many variations of that question. “Museums have lots and lots of stuff,” I usually answer, fighting […]

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Amid a Fraught Process, Penn Museum Entombs Remains of 19 Black People

There was very little that could be said about the 19 people who were eulogized on Saturday morning in a service at the University of Pennsylvania. Their names were lost, and not much about their lives was known beyond the barest facts: an old age spent in the poorhouse, a problem with cavities. They were […]

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Rubin Museum, Haven for Asian Art, to Close After 20 Years

The Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan will shutter after two decades of championing its prized collection of art from Himalayan Asia, with leaders saying on Wednesday that they wanted to envision a modern museum without walls. But the museum, which will sell its building, was also facing financial challenges and had become a focal […]

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Man Who Stole Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers Thought the Rubies Were Real

Nearly two decades after he broke into the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minn., and stole a pair of Dorothy’s ruby slippers used in “The Wizard of Oz,” the man who committed the theft has revealed why: He believed the slippers were adorned with real rubies. Terry Martin, now 76, had never seen “The […]

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Protesters at the Louvre Hurl Soup at the Mona Lisa

Two protesters from an environmental group hurled pumpkin-colored soup on the Mona Lisa at the Louvre museum in Paris on Sunday, splashing the bulletproof glass that protects the most famous painting in the world, but not apparently damaging the work itself. As the customary crowd around the 16th-century painting by Leonardo da Vinci gasped in […]

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Leading Museums Remove Native Displays Amid New Federal Rules

The American Museum of Natural History will close two major halls exhibiting Native American objects, its leaders said on Friday, in a dramatic response to new federal regulations that require museums to obtain consent from tribes before displaying or performing research on cultural items. “The halls we are closing are artifacts of an era when […]

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One Hope From Changes at This Holocaust Museum: Fewer Nazi Selfies

Students on school trips to a Holocaust museum outside Detroit would stand riveted at one stark display: a Nazi officer’s black uniform with a red swastika armband, guns and a whip. Some couldn’t resist snapping selfies. Now, however, the exhibit, at the Zekelman Holocaust Center in Farmington Hills, Mich., has been redone as part of […]

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Institutions Are (Quietly) Taking Sackler Money

When arts organizations began shunning the Sackler family over its role in the U.S. opioid crisis, it wasn’t just American institutions that cut ties. Museums in Britain that had accepted Sackler largess were among the first to take action. After the National Portrait Gallery in London canceled a $1.3 million Sackler donation in 2019, the […]

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MoMA Sued by Artist Who Performed Nude in Marina Abramovic Work

A performance artist has sued the Museum of Modern Art, saying that officials neglected to take corrective action after several visitors groped him during a nude performance for the 2010 retrospective “Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present.” The allegations were submitted this week in New York Supreme Court, with the artist, John Bonafede, seeking compensation […]

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What I Felt When I Saw an Artefact Stolen From My People

Onias Landveld with the staff. Still from Jongsma en O’Neill’s documentary, courtesy of the interviewees. This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands. In January 2022, the Mauritiushuis museum in The Hague had a unique wooden staff on show. Topped by a carved figure of a woman with a small smiling mouth, the staff was likely […]

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After Fake Basquiats, Orlando Museum Faces ‘Severe Financial Crisis’

It was just days before Christmas, but Cathryn Mattson, the executive director of the Orlando Museum of Art, sounded anything but festive. During a specially called meeting, she addressed several trustees and influential donors, confronting the fallout from the institution’s last 18 months. “We are in a severe financial crisis,” she explained, according to a […]

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