Category: visual

“Citing the rising cost of the tin-plate pieces and the flexibility of a new paper ticket system using detachable stickers, the Met will end the buttons’ 42-year run on Monday, the same time it switches to a seven-day-a-week schedule instead of being closed on Mondays.”

“Italy’s specialized art theft police force has recovered a trove of Etruscan objects described by officials as being ‘of inestimable economic and scientific value’.”

“There does appear to be a growing interest in African art, especially in the UK. African artists are becoming increasingly mobile and visible and exhibiting internationally.”

The Museums Association asked venues to “raise their ambitions” and “commit to improving [their] impact on society”. It cited projects with unemployed and homeless people, isolated older people and looked-after children. But critics fear a change in focus may come at the expense of preservation and research at a time when the numbers of specialist curators are in decline.

“When Adam D. Weinberg was planning a new home in the West Village for the Whitney Museum of American Art, he did not expect to have to worry about waterproofing walls or finding a hydro-engineering firm that makes watertight hatches for the United States Navy.”

“The Andy Warhol Foundation has reached a settlement with the Philadelphia Indemnity Insurance Company, ending a case that lasted more than two years. The company agreed to pay the ‘lion’s share’ of the foundation’s legal fees stemming from two lawsuits brought by the collectors Joe Simon and Susan Shaer in 2007.”

The city council is debating an “ordinance that could lift Los Angeles’ decade-old ban on virtually all original murals on private property and launch a permitting and registration system for creating new ones. … [Yet there are] concerns among some elected officials and neighborhood councils that [the law] could lead to a slew of new murals in residential neighborhoods that don’t want them.”

“It’s a very serious question,” said museum director (and Glaswegian) Neil MacGregor. “The British Museum is the first cultural evidence of the union. It was part of the response to [Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion] of 1745 – the first British thing created after that threat to the union – and it sent out a big statement.”

The long-shaky institution got a lifeline in October 2011 when its operation was taken over by the Museum of the City of New York, which expanded gallery space and presented 18 exhibitions. Then Sandy flooded the building and ruined its electrical systems. Now MCNY has pulled out, saying the Seaport Museum’s problems are simply more than it can handle.