Category: visual

“The newly unveiled coffin is one of 59 sealed sarcophagi unearthed at the Saqqara necropolis — a sprawling ancient cemetery located south of Cairo — in recent months. Found stacked on top of each other in three burial shafts of differing depths (between 32 and 39 feet each), the coffins date to Egypt’s 26th Dynasty, which spanned 664 to 525 B.C.” – Smithsonian Magazine

In recent years, the Museum of the Year winner has received £100,000, with four other shortlisted institutions getting £10,000 each. This year, the five winners will pocket £40,000 each. The Art Fund said the shake-up was a response to the “unprecedented challenges that all museums face this year”. – BBC

“The real estate company that whitewashed graffiti works at 5Pointz in Queens will still have to pay millions in damages to the affected artists, the United States Supreme Court decided on Monday, October 5. … The [justices] declined G&M Realty’s petition to review the case, upholding a 2018 federal court ruling that awarded $6.7 million in damages to 21 artists at the site.” – Hyperallergic

In a year marred by forced shutdowns, decreased revenue, deaccessioned artworks, staff cutbacks and canceled exhibitions, many art institutions have been rocked by a national moment of reckoning and increasingly vocal calls to acknowledge their racist histories and adopt anti-racist practices. Some activists have even suggested completely dismantling museums, echoing demands to defund or abolish the police. – Washington Post

From architecture firms that demand their employees log into webcams at 8:30 am and not log off until 10 pm to firms that fired pregnant workers and those who didn’t want to be exploited, architecture is starting to face a reckoning. “The pandemic has finally pushed it into the kind of extreme, exploitative territory where we must all stand up together and say enough is enough.” – The Guardian (UK)

It’s more intense than any spy novel: “Martin ‘the Viper’ Foley, a well-known convicted criminal who has operated on the fringes of gangland political violence in Ireland for half a century, has suddenly dropped out of negotiations, according to Charles Hill, a leading art sleuth. And Foley’s promise to reunite the public with these great works, including Vermeer’s The Concert, the most valuable missing artwork in the world, has vanished with him.” – The Observer (UK)

A museum curator used to seeing the damage is brought up short by museumgoers’ questions: Indeed, why are so many Egyptian statues missing their noses? There’s power, divinity, and the breaking of empires in the answer. “Attacking a human image was a deeply entrenched ancient Egyptian method for dealing with an enemy.” (And it’s not as though this practice is over.) – Hyperallergic

When a fire hit the New York Chinatow museum and the staff worried priceless archives were lost, that wasn’t the only issue facing the institution: The coronavirus shutdown and anti-Asian harassment were ever present threats as well. Now the Ford Foundation has stepped up to help stabilize the institution, which is small but vital to the history of New York. – The New York Times

They’re tired of tokenism and ready for actual progress, so they’re joining together to become a stronger force. “Often the only Black people on the boards of major museums, these trustees are pooling their efforts to help institutions identify new talent and insist on diverse perspectives to better reflect the communities they serve.” – The New York Times

Portland’s Barry Johnson has some musings about the Elk, statues of Robert E. Lee, and all of art history. “Art is emancipatory. … It can lead me almost anywhere, even to thoughts about the intent of the artist, the times the artist lived in, the artist’s relationship to those times, the times and art and artists that followed and preceded the art+artist+times I’m focusing on.” – Oregon ArtsWatch