Category: visual

“Less than two years after an acquisition, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that it had handed over a first-century BC gilded coffin to the Manhattan district attorney for return to the Egyptian government after discovering that it had been looted in 2011.” – The Art Newspaper

Among the items found are meteorites, bones of an ancient human and dinosaurs, gemstones and minerals, and pre-Columbian artifacts. (Curators warn, however, that some of the 2,000 items may be fragments of the same object.) – Smithsonian Magazine

According to new research, assets owned by artist-endowed foundations more than doubled in the five-year period between 2011 and 2015, rising 120 percent to $7.66 billion from $3.48 billion. In comparison, the assets of all foundations nationally grew 40 percent during the same period. – Artnet

“I confirm the Musée du Louvre has asked for the loan of the Salvator Mundi for its October exhibition and truly wishes to exhibit the artwork,” a spokeswoman for the institution tells The Art Newspaper. The museum has requested the work’s loan from its owner but “the owner has not given his answer yet,” the Louvre spokeswoman says. – The Art Newspaper

The alternative? The artist yanks her “prestigious new exhibition of work.” Goldin said, “What is the museum for? Art is transcendent and that makes it very, very dirty if they take the money; it’s failing the whole idea of a museum as a place to show art.” – The Observer (UK)

The style – “five over one – five stories of apartments over a ground-floor ‘podium’ of parking and/or retail” – is dependent on what’s called stick construction, a method begun in 1830s boomtown Chicago. Builders can find cheap material, and cheap, non-union labor, everywhere. Alert, though: “There’s a reason why stick wasn’t the default for big apartment buildings until recently, and why these buildings are limited in height: Sticks burn.” – Bloomberg Businessweek

Everyone’s looking, in a city like London. Also, “it takes a special kind of confidence to blow millions on a flat with a swanky glass exterior – one that is positioned a stone’s throw from one of London’s most popular tourist attractions – and subsequently try to eradicate all visible human life within a 150ft radius.” – The Guardian (UK)

The Garden Bridge, somewhat, one might say, like Brexit, has so far not appeared (and the bridge, at least, never will). “An itemised bill for its failure has just arrived: £53m in total, of which £2.76m(including VAT) went to the designer Thomas Heatherwick; £12.7m to the engineers Arup; £2.3m to lawyers; and £1.7m went on the salaries of the executives who didn’t in the end execute the project. It cost £1.3m to survey the riverbed and look for unexploded wartime bombs. The project’s adequate but unexceptional website cost £161,000.” – The Guardian (UK)

So many things could have gone wrong. For instance: “As ideally situated as it seems today, many officials charged with building the Memorial did not want to locate it at West Potomac Park, the once-marshy fringe of Washington’s National Mall. Bizarre alternative proposals included Virginia’s Arlington Cemetery—in the former Confederacy.” Then let’s talk about the statue. – The Wall Street Journal