Category: visual

While checking for structural damage inflicted by the 2017 earthquake, archaeologists with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) made a remarkable discovery: a temple located about six feet (two meters) below the top of the Teopanzolco pyramid, a structure the Aztecs dedicated to Tláloc, the Aztec rain god. It was not uncommon for ancient cultures to build upon older structures, but in this case, the archaeologists had no idea a temple was located within.

The parent nonprofit Dream Center Education Holdings, based in Los Angeles, cited declining enrollment as the reason for its decision. Dream Center purchased 31 Art Institute schools in early 2017 from Education Management Corp., a for-profit school operator in Pittsburgh, with the intention of converting all of the schools into nonprofits.

“Sometime in 1978 a huge piece by Robert Motherwell, the modernist painter, went missing from a Manhattan warehouse, one of dozens that were lost and thought stolen when Motherwell hired a moving company to help him switch his works from one storage site to another. On Thursday, four decades after it had disappeared, the 1967 work, ‘Untitled,’ now valued at $1 million, was returned to the foundation dedicated to preserving Motherwell’s legacy. It was found in a garage in upstate New York by the son of a man who used to work for the movers.”

“The Art Institute campuses in Durham and Charlotte are among more than 30 campuses across the country run by [Dream Center Educational Holdings]. Art Institutes offer classes in animation, design, film and audio production and fashion, as well as a culinary school. … The Art Institute schools were all acquired earlier this year by Dream Center Education Holdings, a California-based nonprofit, for $60 million … [from] Pittsburgh-based Education Management Corp., a for-profit school operator.”

In late January, the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation was shocked when the planning commission in the Charleston suburb of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, unanimously denied its Safdie-concieved proposal because it would exceed by 75 feet the elevation limit on land zoned for no more than 50 feet. The decision was forwarded to town council for review with a recommendation to disallow. Suddenly this picturesque community, defined by shrimp boats and sprawling marshes, was steeped in controversy over the fate of a hugely significant edifice with limitless potential as a tourist attraction.

On Friday, the court said that the state law conflicts with the federal copyright law’s first-sale doctrine that claims once a copyright owner sells work a first time, they lose control over future sales. “This quixotic action, which was based on an obviously unconstitutional statute, is finally nearing its end,” the auction house Sotheby’s said in an email statement. Christie’s said in a statement that it “is pleased with the court’s decision.”

In 1996, a mafia penitento (an informant) claimed that he had stolen the Caravaggio on the request of a high-ranking boss. In 2009, another penitentoasked about the Caravaggio and said that he’d heard, back in 1999, that the painting had been ruined during an earthquake while in storage in Sicily, and had subsequently been eaten by rats and pigs rooting through the rubble. The work still hovers at the top of the FBI’s Most Wanted Stolen Works of Art list, but it has since been labelled “missing, presumed destroyed.”

“In response to the demographic disparity of staff in museums, the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) has launched a paid internship programme aimed at giving undergraduate students from under-represented backgrounds an opportunity to work in the arts.”

“In his first interview since the fire, [Tom] Inns said: ‘We’re going to rebuild the Mackintosh building. There’s been a huge amount of speculation about what should happen with the site and quite rightly so, but from our point of view and that of the city of Glasgow, it is critically important that the building comes back as the Mackintosh building.'”