Ah, of course. Of course. “Instead of being a unifying project, the vexed question of the restoration of the Notre Dame has become a metaphor for the battle between Macron’s modernising ‘startup nation’ vision of France, and the large number of French citizens who don’t want anything to do with it.” – The Guardian (UK)
Category: visual
The Iraq Museum, Once Looted And Then Partly Restored, Has Antiquities And Art That Can’t Be Found Elsewhere
The museum lost about 15,000 items – but its collection is huge, luminous, and important. “Art historians and archaeologists know how exceptional the collection is. But despite Baghdad’s relative safety today, neither the city nor the museum have yet to become a major destination for Iraqis, much less foreign tourists.” – The New York Times
Can Britain’s National Portrait Gallery Cut Its Ties To British Petroleum?
It doesn’t seem entirely likely, but artists, activists, and even a judge have asked the museum to try. “They accuse the central London gallery of helping to launder the oil industry’s image through its BP sponsorship deal and say the oil company is aggravating the climate crisis by extracting fossil fuels.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Art Of Protest In Putin’s Russia
To put it bluntly, Russia is terrible for activists and artists. Both? Wow. So, for the ones who haven’t fled the country, it’s necessary to find new, creative ways to protest the repression, preferably without becoming a martyr. – BBC
Cindy Sherman Has A Complex Relationship To Making Art That People Can Understand, And Buy
In short: “Hers is an art of shape-shifting and disguise, artifice and camouflage. It draws on high and low culture: European and Hollywood films, 1950s television sitcoms, art history, high society, fashion, forensic science, drag, pinups and pornography; the esoteric and the everyday, the glamorous and the grotesque.” – The Observer (UK)
Gaudi’s Unfinished ‘Sagrada Familia’ Finally Wins A Building Permit From Barcelona
It’s only been 137 years since the builders, who had no permit, apparently, broke ground for the massive, and massively complex, masterpiece cathedral. Will it be finished by the year the work permit runs out – 2026? Maybe! “Barcelona official Janet Sanz said the agreement between the city and the foundation had put an end to ‘a historical anomaly in our city.'” – The Guardian (UK) (Associated Press)
The Hand Of Native American Women, Visible At Last
“The role of women art-makers in Native communities has gone widely ignored. Now a bold museum show [at the Minneapolis Institute of Art], by and for these women, is shining a light on 1,000 years of their art.” – The New York Times
Los Angeles To Redesign La Brea Tar Pits
“Officials from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the entity that manages the site, announced the selection of three architectural firms that will develop separate proposals for a new master plan for the 12-acre site, which includes the tar pits, the George C. Page Museum and surrounding parkland — home to the iconic Los Angeles sight of a mammoth clinging to life along the edge of a tar lake.” – Los Angeles Times
T-Rex And Robots And Toons, Oh My! Smithsonian’s Fossil Hall Reopens After Five-Year Renovation
Yes, “the Nation’s T. rex” still has pride of place in the hall at the National Museum of Natural History. “But there’s much more here than one awe-inspiring dinosaur. The hall, restored to its Beaux-Arts glory, offers a fresh view of the fossil record and the evolution of life. It looks at the impact of climate change — caused both by man and by natural sources — and mass-extinction events. The exhibition demonstrates what scientists can learn from seemingly innocuous marks on a fossil, uses a cartoon of an ancient sea creature to show why your brain is located in your skull, and lets visitors get up close and personal with giant bronze insects.” – The Washington Post
Mona Lisa’s Smile? She Was Faking It, Say Researchers
“Our results indicate that happiness is expressed only on the left side. According to some influential theories of emotion neuropsychology, we here interpreted the Mona Lisa asymmetric smile as a non-genuine smile, also thought to occur when the subject lies,” the authors write in their study published recently in the April 2019 issue of the journal Cortex. – EurekAlert