“Long before the burglar Vjeran Tomic became the talk of Paris, he honed his skills in Père Lachaise, the city’s largest cemetery … Tomic and his friends turned the cemetery into a parkour playground, leaping from the roof of one mausoleum to the next, daring one another to take ever-bolder risks.” — The New Yorker
Category: visual
It’s Official: Met Museum Had Record 7.36M Visitors In 2018
The 5% increase over last year seems to indicate that the museum’s adoption of a mandatory $25 admission charge for out-of-state visitors didn’t discourage attendance. Even revenue from New York state residents, who may pay whatever they wish, is up by around 15%. — Crain’s New York Business
There Are Two Golden Tractor Tires On The Grand Staircase At The Paris Opera
The gilded pieces of farm equipment, perched like two glowing wreaths, are part of an installation titled Les Saturnelles by artist Claude Lévêque. Some irked onlookers are comparing the piece to Jeff Koons’s widely reviled Bouquet de Tulipes and Paul McCarthy’s notorious sculpture Tree. — The Art Newspaper
Increasing Number Of Fakes Of African-American Art
“It’s a whole generation: you could go from A to Z through the list, from Charles Alston to Charles White. I am seeing fakes attributed to all of them,” Rosenfeld says. Propelling the fakes market is the fact that many of these artists were overlooked or undervalued in their lifetimes, so scholarship and expertise in their work is limited.” – The Art Newspaper
1,700-Year-Old Roman Busts Uncovered By Rain
After several dry winters in Israel, the earth in the old Roman cemetery in Beit She’an, near the Sea of Galilee, was dusty and loose. So this year’s rains washed some of that earth away, and the sculptures were noticed by a passerby. — Haaretz (Israel)
The British Museum Thought This Was An Ancient Sumerian Vase. Turns Out It Was A Deadly Weapon
After years of displaying this 4,400-year-old object face-down, thinking it was a vessel for flowers, curators realized that was actually a vessel of grievous bodily harm: the head of a mace. — The Art Newspaper
The Next Big Thing In British Art: Research Architecture?
“Where the Young British Artists were about ego and in-your-face art, with its sharks and suggestive arrangements of kebabs and fried eggs, this is collaborative, research based and politically committed, spanning architecture, journalism, law and science. As with all the most interesting movements, there’s controversy over whether it’s even art.” – The Guardian
How The Prado Museum Revitalized Itself
Central to this shift was the Prado’s hard-won independence from government interference. Once, directors came and went with each political quarrel, creating uncertainty and malaise. “The Prado was sometimes a weapon used by one political party against the other”. – The Art Newspaper
“How My Cat Destroyed The Painting I was Restoring”
“I bought it in 2015 for £5,250. I probably spent the same again cleaning and reframing it. And as I stood back to admire my handiwork, up jumped our cat, landing forcefully in the centre of the painting with a crunch. Disaster.” – The Telegraph (UK)
This Artist Was Arrested As Soon As He Left The One – Yes, One – Corner Where It’s Legal To Protest In Singapore
Seelan Palay’s Singapore isn’t the overwhelmingly rich, lush fantasy of 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians. Instead, it’s a place where protest, including performance art protest, is limited to one place, Speaker’s Corner. Step out of there? Hm. Palay: “I took a few of the objects used in the performance: the book, mirror, drawings, and banner that I used at Speakers’ Corner. I showed them to the arresting officer and asked him what meaning he derived from the objects. He admitted that he didn’t understand what they were trying to say.” – Los Angeles Review of Books