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The Headlines
THE WAR IN UKRAINE. Arts Council England recommended that arts groups in the country suspend partnerships with Russian organizations in light of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, ArtReview reports. Museums in many countries have been rescinding loans to Russia in recent weeks. One new example: All 10 European entities contributing work to a show called “The Duel: From Trial by Combat to Noble Crime” at the Moscow Kremlin Museums have withdrawn that material, the Art Newspaper reports. Meanwhile, critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote about art and war, in relation to a new show, “As They Saw It: Artists Witnessing War,” at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. If artists “are honest about a phenomenon that makes a treason of honesty, they can at least disabuse us of naïve projections,” he writes.
INTERIOR SCENES. In Brandenburg, Germany, artist Danh Vo has turned a farmhouse into a kind of multifarious cultural incubator. For T: The New York Times Style Magazine, writer Gisela Williams visited the place, which is filled with art, and design, and an impressive wood-burning clay furnace. “This is what I prefer to buy instead of a fancy car,” Vo said of that appliance. In Paris, the sumptuous Hôtel de la Marine, which once housed the Royal Wardrobe, has been restored (for a cool $146 million) to its 18th-century glory. Reporter James Tarmy went inside for Bloomberg. And in Hidden Hills, California, painter and actor Sylvester Stallone has snapped up a home with 10,000 square feet of living space across four structures for $18 million.
The Digest
CINOA, the International Confederation of Art and Antiques Dealers’ Associations, called for an end to “wave after wave of damaging and unjust legislation” aimed at combating money laundering and terrorism financing in the art market. Multiple studies, the group said, show “the justification for urgent and wide scale measures is not there.” [The Art Newspaper]
Stefanie Hessler, the director of the Kunsthall Trondheim in Norway, has been tapped to lead the Swiss Institute in New York. Hessler takes the place of Simon Castets, now director of strategic initiatives at LUMA Arles in France and executive chair of SI. [ArtReview and Artforum]
The new La Prairie art award, which goes to Australian women, has been presented to Atong Atem, a Melbourne-based photographer of explosively colorful portraits. Through the prize, the Art Gallery of New South Wales will acquire her work for AU$50,000 (about US$36,000) and fund a AU$30,000 (US$21,600) residency in Zurich. [The Guardian]
The man accused of stabbing two employees at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on Saturday has also been accused of assaulting his former manager at the Broadway theater where he had worked as an usher and harassing a woman at a union that represents ushers. [New York Post]
A website called TrowelBlazers has been building an archive of pioneering women archaeologists, paleontologists, and geologists, who have been overlooked in histories of those fields. [All Things Considered/NPR/WNYC]
Art adviser Maria Brito, whose clients have included Sean “Diddy” Combs, has written a book, How Creativity Rules the World: The Art and Business of Turning Your Ideas into Gold. “Creativity isn’t one thing,” she said. “Many associate creativity with art, fashion, or design, but it’s really about anyone’s ability to come up with ideas of value.” [Penta]
The Kicker
REDECORATING. The design legend Gaetano Pesce is about to present an inflatable facade on the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado, which was designed by architect Shigeru Ban. The piece depicts a sun and snowy mountains, but Pesce told the Australian Financial Review not to read into that too much. “I must admit I don’t like nature very much, this was more about covering the ugly grid of the building itself,” he said. [AFR]