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  • The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo: Meihe Chen/Wikipedia Commons.
    October 17, 2022 at 1:49pm

    Philadelphia Museum of Art Strike Ends with Worker Victory

    Unionized employees of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) on October 14 ended a nineteen-day strike after reaching a tentative agreement with management that union members then ratified on October 16. The new contract, which the union spent two years actively negotiating for, raises the minimum wage for PMA workers to $16.75 from $15; provides for across-the-board raises of 14 percent, retroactive to July 1 and spanning the three years of the contract; awards workers four weeks of paid family leave; and decreases the price of the high-deductible health care plan under which most PMA staff are

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  • Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888.
    October 14, 2022 at 5:47pm

    Climate Activists Soak van Gogh’s Sunflowers in Tomato Soup

    Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, two young protesters affiliated with climate-change action group Just Stop Oil, raised the awareness of many and the blood pressure of some earlier today when they sloshed tomato soup across the front of Vincent van Gogh’s iconic Sunflowers at London’s National Gallery. Immediately thereafter, the pair, clad in shirts bearing the name of their organization, glued themselves to the wall immediately beneath the painting and addressed the stunned gallerygoers surrounding them.

    “What is worth more, art or life?”  cried Plummer. “Is it worth more than food? More than

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  • Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi, ca. 1500.
    October 14, 2022 at 4:46pm

    Saudi Arabia Reportedly Constructing Gallery for Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi

    Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, who in 2017 purchased Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi at auction for a record-breaking $450 million, is reported to be building a gallery to display the contested work in his home country. Well-known British art historian Martin Kemp, speaking at the UK’s Cheltenham Literary Festival on October 11, revealed that the prince had invited him to Saudi Arabia to view the painting. “It is in Saudi Arabia and the country is constructing an art gallery, which is to be finished in 2024, I think,” Kemp said, according to The Art Newspaper. “There

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  • Left: Lynn Goldsmith’s 1981 photo of Prince. Right: Andy Warhol’s 1984 work. Image: Supreme Court of the United States
    October 13, 2022 at 4:15pm

    Supreme Court Hears Landmark Copyright Case Pitting Prince Against Warhol

    The US Supreme Court on October 12 heard nearly two hours of discovery regarding the question of whether Andy Warhol’s use in his own work of a photo of Prince by Lynn Goldsmith constitutes fair use. The suit, originally launched by Goldsmith five years ago in New York State against the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Art, alleges that the late Pop artist, while on assignment for Vanity Fair, illegally used Goldsmith’s 1981 photo of the Royal Purple One to create his 1984 “Prince Series,” a series of sixteen screen prints featuring the diminutive rocker’s mug. According to Goldsmith, Warhol

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  • Striking workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo: Tim Tiebout/PMA Union.
    October 13, 2022 at 1:04pm

    Philadelphia Museum of Art Acknowledges Striking Workers

    Sasha Suda, the new director and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), on October 12 publicly acknowledged the roughly 180 unionized employees of the institution who since September 26 have been on strike in an effort to secure a fair contract. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Suda remarked on the situation during a press preview of the museum’s upcoming Matisse exhibition, speaking before an assembled audience of roughly one hundred media representatives.

    “For me, as you can imagine, this has been an intense period of observation, listening, and assessing what the future of the

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  • Ceremonial Head of a King. Photo: Franko Khoury/Smithsonian.
    October 13, 2022 at 12:20pm

    Smithsonian Returns 29 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria

    The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art on October 11 officially ceded ownership of twenty-nine Benin bronzes to the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria, in a ceremony taking place at the museum, during which the National Gallery of Art also returned its lone Benin bronze. The objects are part of a roughly 90,000-piece trove looted by British troops in 1897 from the Republic of Benin, as Nigeria was then known.

    “Not only was returning ownership of these magnificent artifacts to their rightful home the right thing to do, it also demonstrates how we all benefit from

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  • A work that belongs to Paul Chan’s “Breathers” series. Photo: Greene Naftali Gallery.
    October 12, 2022 at 7:09pm

    Paul Chan, Sky Hopinka, Tavares Strachan Named 2022 MacArthur Fellows

    Multimedia artist Paul Chan; filmmaker, video artist, and photographer Sky Hopinka; and conceptual artist Tavares Strachan have been named as among the 2022 class of MacArthur Fellows by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The trio join twenty-three other recipients of the so-called genius grants issued this year by the foundation and recognizing individuals in fields including sociology, computer science, history, and engineering. Each fellow receives an $800,000 stipend, with no strings attached.

    Chan received accolades for his wide-ranging practice, which “aims to enable viewers

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  • Norway’s Kunsthall Trondheim. Photo: Kjersti Lie/Wikipedia Commons.
    October 12, 2022 at 12:55pm

    Adam Kleinman Named Director of Kunsthall Trondheim

    The board of trustees of Norway’s Kunsthall Trondheim has announced Adam Kleinman as the museum’s new director. Kleinman, who arrives to the institution from the San Francisco– and Paris–based Kadist, where he was lead curator for North America, will step into his new role January 1, 2023. He replaces interim director Katrine Elise Agpalza Pedersen, who temporarily filled the position after Stefanie Hessler departed to lead the Swiss Institute in New York earlier this year. Kleinman is charged with elevating the kunsthall’s international profile and with educing engagement locally and nationally.

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  • Grace Glueck in 1982. Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.
    October 10, 2022 at 5:55pm

    Grace Glueck (1926–2022)

    Veteran art journalist Grace Glueck, who helped bring a 1974 sex-discrimination suit that kicked open the door of the New York Times for female reporters, died October 8 at her Manhattan home at the age of ninety-six. Glueck was known for her witty, revelatory, and seemingly effortless writing on art, which reached its pinnacle in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as the city’s art scene was exploding. Bringing the eye of a reporter, rather than that of the critic, to her stories, Glueck over a career that spanned sixty years set a standard for art writing at the New York Times that elevated the

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  • Silke Otto-Knapp. Photo: Coley Brown.
    October 10, 2022 at 2:15pm

    Silke Otto-Knapp (1970–2022)

    Silke Otto-Knapp, known for her emotionally resonant watercolor-blurred canvases depicting fleeting human forms and vague landscapes, died at her home in Pasadena, California, on October 9 at the age of fifty-two of ovarian cancer. News of her death was confirmed by Regen Projects, her Los Angeles gallery. Eschewing watercolor’s traditional ground of paper as too “illustrational,” Otto-Knapp instead embraced a process of addition and removal, drenching her canvases in the aqueous pigment and then washing away or adding paint to create lush, theatrical works that occupy a realm between figuration

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  • The Judd Foundation’s 101 Spring Street location in New York. Photo: trevor.patt/Flickr.
    October 07, 2022 at 5:38pm

    Judd Foundation Sues Galleries over Fingerprints Left on Work

    The Judd Foundation, which maintains the Marfa, Texas, and New York City studios of American Minimal artist Donald Judd (1928–1994) and has care of his legacy, is suing a pair of galleries over allegations that the dealers returned a loaned work in unsalable condition. According to the complaint, filed with the Manhattan Supreme Court, the New York–based Tina Kim Gallery and the Seoul- and Busan-based Kukje Gallery in 2015 accepted a Judd sculpture on consignment and in 2018 returned it damaged. The galleries, which are owned by members of the same family and are jointly operated, failed to

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  • The NMACC at the Jio World Centre in Mumbai. Photo: NMACC.
    October 06, 2022 at 3:45pm

    New Cultural Center Planned for Mumbai

    A massive new cultural center hosting art, performance, and fashion will open next March in Mumbai, courtesy of its founder, philanthropist Nita Ambani. The Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) will comprise roughly 16,000 feet of exhibition space and three theaters—one of which will seat 2,000 and feature a lotus-petal ceiling installation made of 8,400 Swarovski crystals—housed in a three-story building set within the Jio World Centre. The cultural and business hub, which occupies Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex neighborhood, is also funded by Ambani and encompasses two convention centers,

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