“Dozens of breast-feeding women plan to descend on the Hirshhorn Museum on Saturday for a ‘nurse-in’ to highlight their federally protected right to nourish their babies in public.”
Category: visual
German Town Fights To Save Its Leaning Tower
“Bad Frankenhausen is proud of its church tower, which slants more than the Tower of Pisa. But the church seems destined to be torn down because it is no longer in use. Now the local mayor has launched a desperate campaign to save the building, which has had an unenviably turbulent history.”
The Earliest Portrait In History?
An Egyptian family sit proudly for the artist – I nearly wrote, for the camera. But the lifelike portrayal of the Dwarf Seneb and his Family, one of the most captivating things in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, right at the heart of the revolution on Tahrir Square, was carved and painted at least 4,000 years before the invention of photography. It is one of the earliest works of art in history to which it seems fitting to give the title “portrait.”
Sotheby’s Sued for Covering Up Damage to Jacobean Painting
“Sotheby’s, the auction house, has been accused of forging a document to cover up the fact that it damaged a painting of the Jacobean spymaster Robert Cecil, a senior aide to both James I and Elizabeth I.”
The Late Soviet Union’s Oddest Architecture
The USSR’s final two decades saw “an extraordinary collection of buildings that drew on an extraordinary collection of styles: as well as the Soviet schools of suprematism (a controlled explosion of geometric forms) and constructivism (wild projections, provocative angles), there was a strong western undercurrent, with echoes of everything from Alvar Aalto and Antoni Gaudi to Oscar Niemeyer. And running through all this was a thrilling element of Soviet over-reaching, a hint of sputniks, space rockets and flying saucers.”
Struggle and Projection: When Artists Photograph Their Own Families
“It turns out that this kind of artistic but consensual family photograph has its own fascination. Here the interest isn’t so much in looking at truly private moments but rather in seeing what kind of bargain has been struck between a photographer trying to expose a family secret and a subject resisting. … [These images] are basically self-portraits, whether or not they include the photographer.”
Why the Mapplethorpe Collection Belongs in L.A.
“There’s a good reason that Robert Mapplethorpe’s trove of photographs and archives deserve a place at LACMA and the Getty: His sly take on straight photography turned convention on its head and gave an important artistic touchstone in Southern California a new form.”
Italian Museum Director Requests Asylum in Germany
“An Italian museum director told AFP he is asking for asylum in Germany, saying he is fed up with mafia threats and a government that is failing to protect Italy’s rich cultural heritage.” The would-be refugee is Antonio Manfredi, director of the Contemporary Art Museum in Casoria, near Naples.
Damaged Egyptian Antiquities Will Be Quickly Restored
“The damage was caused by about six people who broke into the museum through its windowed ceiling using ropes. According to Zahi Hawass, the thieves were “ignorant” people who took out the objects from their showcase and dropped them on the floor when they realized that they were not made of gold.”
Getty Trust and LACMA Jointly Acquire Mapplethorpe Archive
“The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust … [have] jointly acquired a huge collection of the prints, negatives and letters of Robert Mapplethorpe … The acquisition is the first time the two institutions have collected works of art to share.”