The homepage illustration featured the lifelong New Yorker, who died in 2021, holding his Nikon camera, surrounded by various scenes of Asian Americans that he aimed his lens, often with a feeling of special care to a community that has historically been marginalized.

For some six decades, Lee’s photography became a record of the diversity and nuances of the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities as they evolved and grew in New York City and other cities in the United States. Born in Queens, Lee was self-taught as a photographer, but his documentation of protests, rallies, demonstrations, celebrations like Lunar New Year festivals, and other daily events were published in countless publications like Time magazine, the New York Times, the Village Voice, the New York Post, and the Associated Press.

One of Lee’s most notable photographs was when he capture young Chinese American Peter Yew being dragged away by police. In 1975, Yew had witnessed a 15-year-old being beaten by police officers for an alleged traffic violation; when he tried to intervene, he was subsequently severely beaten. Yew was also charged with resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. A week after the beating, thousands of Chinatown residents, spurred by Lee’s photograph, protested the growing police violence in their neighborhoods.

Lee’s community involvement also included his work through the Basement Workshop organization, the first Asian American political and arts organization in New York City that was active from 1970 to 1986.

In honor of Lee’s work as a photographer and activist, New York City Mayor David Dinkins declared May 7, 1993 as “Corky Lee Day.” Lee’s work has been the subject of two documentaries: Not on the Menu: Corky Lee’s Life and Work (2013) and Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story (2022).

Lee’s belief in the importance of capturing Asian Americans also included a re-creation of a famous photograph marking the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Summit in Utah in 1869. Lee noticed how Chinese laborers, who had built the railroad, had not been included in the image. In 2002, Lee gathered and organized Asian Americans and relatives of Chinese railroad workers from the 1860s, posing them in the same way as the 1869 photograph. He made another photograph in 2014, on the 145th anniversary of the original, and called it “photographic justice.”

Lee was also an active member of the New York chapter of the Asian American Journalists’ Association (AAJA), and actively mentored younger photographers and journalists. He also frequently donated framed prints of his work to AAJA’s annual fundraising auction during its national convention. Last year, AAJA’s New York chapter also set up a $5,000 photojournalism fellowship named in Lee’s honor.

The researcher Silvano Vincenti said the bridge was the Romito di Laterina, an Etruscan-Roman structure in the Italian province of Arezzo. Vincenti’s theory was based on historical documents, drone images, photographs of the area, and noticing the same number of arches, four, in Leonardo’s painting and the Romito.

Previous theories about the background of the 16th-century oil painting have identified the bridge as the Ponte Bobbio, in the northern city of Piacenza, as well as the Ponte Buriano, which is also in the Tuscan province of Arezzo. However, both of these bridges have six arches, compared to the Romito’s four.

According to the Guardian, only one arch remains at the Romito, which stretched across the Arno river, as well as the foundation of the bridge on the opposite riverbank.

Historical documents belonging to the Medici family in the state archives of Florence showed that the Romito bridge was functioning and busy between 1501 and 1503, Vincenti told reporters at a foreign press association in Rome. During this period, da Vinci was also in the area at the service of a cardinal from a noble family and then for a statesman from the Republic of Florence.

“The distinctive form of the Arno along that stretch of territory corresponds to what Leonardo portrayed in the landscape to the left of the noblewoman depicted in the famous painting,” Vinceti said.

The mayor of Laterina, Simona Neri, said Vinceti’s theory about the bridge was a source of excitement for many of the residents in her town of 3,500 people, with hopes for more tourism in the area from admirers of the Mona Lisa painting. “We need to try to protect what’s left of the bridge, which will require funding,” Neri said.

The three items had been recovered as part of the criminal investigation into private collector and Metropolitan Museum of Art trustee Shelby White. As a result of the investigation, 89 items from 10 different countries, valued at nearly $69 million, were seized from White. These included nine antiquities repatriated to Turkey last month and seizures of Roman and Greek antiquities that took place last December.

According to the Manhattan DA’s office, the three items were acquired by White from the Mansour Gallery in London; art dealer Robin Symes, who was later convicted of antiquities trafficking in 2005; and from a Christie’s auction in New York.

The first item of the three repatriated items, an alabaster ram, is a funerary object from the Hayd bin Aqeel necropolis in Shabwa, Yemen. The ram was looted in 1994 during the country’s civil war and dates back to the 5th century B.C.E. The second, an alabaster female figure, is also a funerary item depicting a female god. The figure dates back to the 2nd century B.C.E. The third, an inscribed silver vessel, dates back to 200 to 300 C.E. It features an inscription that allowed experts to identify its origin as the same looted location as the alabaster ram.

“This repatriation underscores how art and culture can serve as powerful symbols of hope,” District Attorney Bragg said in a statement. “Our investigation into the collector Shelby White has allowed dozens of antiquities that were ripped from their countries of origin to finally return home,”

Due to the ongoing civil war in Yemen, the three items will be temporarily displayed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The policy change was unanimously approved by Greece’s Central Archaeological Council. But pet owners shouldn’t rush to make plans, as the organization did not specify an implementation date for the new regulations.

Pets still won’t be allowed at popular sites like the Acropolis in Athens, Knossos in Crete, Olympia, and Delphi due to their large annual populations of visitors, as well as as ancient theaters, temples, graves and monuments with mosaic floors.

Currently, only guide dogs for disabled visitors are allowed into the country’s archaeological sites.

The decision is “a first, but important, step toward harmonizing the framework of accessibility to monuments and archaeological sites with the standards of other European countries, where entry rules for pets already apply,” Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said in a statement.

The new policy stipulates that dogs need to be on a leash no more than 3 feet long. The animals can also be carried by their owners in a pouch or a pet carrying case. Larger dogs will be required to wear a muzzle.

The culture ministry said pet owners will also be required to show health certificates for the accompanying animal and carry the supplies needed for picking up poop in order to be allowed entry into the archaeological sites.

For pet owners who change their minds about visiting these historical areas with their furry friends, the ministry said there will be cages installed at the entrances to more than 110 archaeological sites.

The news of the policy was first reported by the Associated Press.

The protest, which happened around 11 a.m., was aimed at bringing attention to the climate crisis. The protestors also demanded President Joe Biden declare a climate emergency as well as stop issuing new drilling permits and subsidies for fossil fuels. Two people were arrested.

Declare Emergency, the climate group behind the protest, identified the two people who smeared paint as Tim Martin, 54, from Raleigh, North Carolina, and Joanna Smith, 53, from Brooklyn.

“For our children, we are worried like most of Americans, about climate and about biodiversity crisis,” Martin said, according to the Washington Post. “And we need our leaders to step up, put their differences aside and simply be responsible.”

The museum’s director, Kaywin Feldman, issued a video statement on Twitter in response to the protest.

“The work has been taken off display so that our expert conservation team can assess potential damage. We unequivocally denounce this behavior and will continue to share information as it becomes available,” she said.

“We understand the value and importance of art in our society, and we also know that it and everything we love is at stake if we don’t tackle the climate emergency with the urgency that it deserves,” a spokesperson from Declare Emergency emailed ARTnews, emphasizing that the protest was driven by fear and concern about how children won’t receive the same climate protection as artworks at museums.

“We have to convey how dire this situation is, in whatever nonviolent way that we can,” the spokesperson said. “We need to engage with the climate emergency emotionally, and actions such as this one draw that out in us. They bring us to the emotional state that we need to be in to realize how bad things really are. Only after getting to that place will we find the motivation and the resolve to truly save ourselves.”

The protest at the National Gallery of Art follows several other climate protests from a variety of organizations across museums in Europe, Australia and Canada. The protestors frequently target high-profile art works, such as paintings by Vermeer, Goya, Monet, van Gogh, and Rubens.

Italian politicians have pushed for fines related to recent protests that involved public monuments, and two activists in Belgium were sentenced to two months in prison last November for targeting Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in the Hague.

The NGA’s review was prompted by a report from The Australian in early April alleging that white studio staff had been painting on the works attributed to residents of Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY), sparsely populated lands in remote South Australia home to more than 20 Aboriginal communities. The newspaper’s findings were the result of interviews with former gallery staff and Aboriginal artists about whether the work of white art assistants interfered with the artistic process.

“The aim of the Independent Review is to clarify whether the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) artists attributed as the creators of the paintings to be included in the Gallery’s upcoming Ngura Pulka exhibition exercised effective creative control over the creation of the paintings, and so can properly be described as the artists responsible for those works consistent with the National Gallery’s provenance policy,” museum director Dr Nick Mitzevich said in a statement Wednesday. 

The exhibition Ngura Pulka – Epic Country is described by the NGA as “one of the largest and most significant First Nations community-driven art projects to have ever been developed.”

“All parts of Ngura Pulka are being entirely conceived, created, directed, and determined by Aṉangu people,” the gallery said on its website. “Home to 2,500 people, the APY Lands, in remote South Australia, support a network of Aṉangu communities, including seven key art centres.”

The NGA’s independent review panel consists of lawyers Colin Golvan and Shane Simpson, as well as First Nations advisors Yhonnie Scarce and Maree Meredith. Golvan is an expert in copyright protection for Indigenous arts. Simpson is an expert in property and copyright laws in the areas of arts, entertainment and culture. Scarce is a Kokatha and Nukunu glass artist. Meredith is a Bidjara woman and vice-chancellor of Indigenous leadership at the University of Canberra.

The Australian‘s investigative report has also brought up serious questions around the ethics of the production and integrity of Aboriginal art in the country, especially since the APY includes the famous Ken Sisters, winners of the $50,000 Wynne Prize for landscape painting in 2016. Aboriginal artist Paul Andy told The Australian through a translator that Skye O’Meara, the general manager of the APY Art Centre Collective would contribute her ideas and painting to his works. O’Meara has consistently denied these claims.

Artworks by APY artists are also increasingly popular at auction, with some selling for thousands of dollars. The National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Art Gallery of South Australia also have “significant collections of work from the Anunga people of the APY Lands”, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The APY Art Centre Collective, which represents 500 artists and seven arts centres, issued its own statement strenuously denying “the over-arching narrative” from the reports about its artworks being compromised as reported in The Australian, calling the reports “disingenuous.”

The organization said it “does not hide the fact that art assistants assist in the underpainting process,” describing it as when “heavily diluted paint is poured, sprayed, or slopped onto the canvas, often with large painting brushes. Multiple layers are then applied by the artist only.”

The APYACC also called the allegations published by The Australian “infected by a paternalistic view of how indigenous art should be made, devoid of contemporary, professional practices which are not hidden from anyone wishing to observe them.”

The APYACC’s statement concluded by calling the newspaper’s allegations of non-Indigenous assistants completing unfinished artworks “false and seriously defamatory” and that it was taking legal advice on the issue.

The NGA said it expects to receive the findings of the independent review by May 31.

The state’s Community Affairs Committee, which is led by a Republican majority, backed bill SB 1096 on April 5, a piece of proposed legislation that would allow civilians to sue for three times the value of the repairs to damaged or displaced public items “dedicated to a historical person, entity, event or series of events and that honours or recounts the military service of any past or present military personnel or the past or present public service of a resident of the geographical area.”

While the bill does not specifically mention Confederate monuments and markers, opposing legislators have said it is clearly aimed at defending them by allowing civilians to take legal action against local governments.

The bill pushes back against growing public disdain against symbols celebrating the white men who died during the American Civil War while defending the Southern states, many of whom wanted to expand slavery into the western territories. In addition to statues, obelisks, arches, and fountains, the bill covers plaques, banners, and flags. It would allow civilians to sue local governments.

In 2020, Confederate monuments in the US and in Europe were the site of mass protests and national removal efforts after the murder of George Floyd. Demonstrators alleged the monuments promoted white supremacy by raising racist figures to hero status. On June 9, the city of Jacksonville removed a bronze topper honoring a division of the Confederacy known as the Jacksonville Light Infantry.

Lori Berman, one of the two senators who voted against the bill during a hearing of the Community Affairs Committee, told Hyperallergic, “I think this bill is absolutely a response to the removal of Confederate statues, no question.”

Opponents to the protests and removal efforts have said the Confederate monuments deserve safeguarding, and often argue that the statues and other items represent “cultural heritage.”

Under the Historical Monuments and Protection Act, the Florida bill would allow civilians to sue for three times the value of the repairs to any damaged or displaced monuments, following a term in US law known as “treble damages.”

Jonathan Martin, a Republican senator representing Fort Myers and sponsor of the bill, told the Miami Herald, “What I like about these memorials in public places is that everybody has the opportunity to see who we were…The older the monument, the more important it is, because it provides a starting point for what our country began as, who led our country.”

“We don’t build monuments around the sins of individuals, we build them because of something great that they did,” Martin added. “I want to teach my kids that despite your imperfections, you can still do something great.”

According to the Atlanta History Center, Confederate monuments were not erected with this idea in mind during the three main periods they were installed across the US. After funeral purposes, the second phase of monuments erected in the 1890s through the 1930s “coincided with the expansion of the white supremacist policies of the Jim Crow era,” including justification of the Confederate cause in favor of slavery.

The third phase of Confederate monuments occured when they were used as a rallying point for proponents of segregation after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the landmark case Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. In plain terms, they were erected in response to the Civil Rights movement, something Fort Lauderdale state senator Rosalind Osgood pointed out to the Miami Herald: “People that look like me really are offended by a lot of the Confederate monuments,” she said.

Prior to Community Affairs, the Florida Senate’s Governmental Rights and Accountability Committee also voted in favor of SB 1096. In order for the current version of the proposed bill to reach the floor of the Florida State Senate, it must also be approved by the Rules Committee.

On Friday, the Department of Justice announced that Angela Catherine Hamblin, 74, had be extradited from Germany to the U.S.

Hamblin had been charged with one count of mail fraud in 2007 after selling an estimate $410,000 in fake works on the online platform eBay and in private transactions that were attributed to the British artist Joseph Mallord William Turner, Spanish Cubist artist Juan Gris, as well as American abstract painters Milton Avery, and Franz Kline. Hamblin was facing a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for the charge.

Prosecutors said that Hamblin had been selling fake art works for years. “She continued her fraud relentlessly,” they told the Daily Mail. After discovering the paintings were fake, buyers would routinely demand their money back. On the few occasions Hamblin did refund money, she would re-sell the painting.”

Hamblin told the judge she turned to art fraud because of mortgage payments. After she plead guilty in 2009 to two counts of mail fraud and one of wire fraud, Hamblin was sentenced to one year and one day in prison as well as ordered to pay $65,000 in restitution to gallery owner Jeffrey Bergen of ACA Galleries. However, she failed to report to authorities and fled to the United Kingdom.

According to a press release from the Justice Department, Hamblin was re-arrested last May while changing flights at an airport in the German city of Frankfurt on her way home to Scotland from a trip to Vienna. She had been living in the Scottish village of St. Boswells with her husband.

“Hamblin went to great lengths to avoid accountability for her crimes, but this Office and the FBI have long memories and benefit greatly from our cooperation with international partners,” United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, recently said in a statement.

In a statement to Variety, creator Lee Sung Jin and stars Ali Wong and Steven Yeun, who also served as executive producers on the show, said the story was potentially hurtful while also defending Choe.

“The story David Choe fabricated nine years ago is undeniably hurtful and extremely disturbing,” they told Variety. “We do not condone this story in any way, and we understand why this has been so upsetting and triggering. We’re aware David has apologized in the past for making up this horrific story, and we’ve seen him put in the work to get the mental health support he needed over the last decade to better himself and learn from his mistakes.”

Video of Choe graphically describing raping a woman was removed online due to copyright claims after the footage of the episode of the podcast DVDASA went viral on Twitter last week.

The Los Angeles–based graffiti artist has received attention for his role on Beef as Isaac, the cousin of Yeun’s character Danny, as well as his title card artworks for the show. Jin told The Today Show that Choe was invited to audition after consulting Yeun and Wong, who are also friends of the artist.

Sometime around Beef’s debut earlier this month, Reveal reporter Aura Bogado posted a video of Choe speaking on the DVDASA podcast to Twitter. The tweet quickly went viral and Choe’s controversial comments received additional attention in Hannah Bae’s review of the show for the San Francisco Chronicle.

In the video, Choe tells co-host and porn actress Asa Akira about a massage with a masseuse he called “Rose” where he said he forced her to perform oral sex. At one point, Akira said, “You raped her.” Later in the episode, Choe appeared to jokingly call himself a “successful rapist.” A conversation during the podcast about “rapey behavior” vs “rape” ended with Choe stating “I just want to make it clear that I admit that that’s rapey behavior, but I am not a rapist.”

Several days after the podcast aired in 2014, Choe responded to allegations on the show’s website, stating that he was not a rapist and declared DVDASA to be “a complete extension of my art.”

“If I am guilty of anything, it’s bad storytelling in the style of douche,” he said, adding, “We create stories and tell tales. It’s not a news show. It’s not a representation of my reality. It’s not the place to come for reliable information about me or my life. It’s my version of reality, it’s art that sometimes offends people. I’m sorry if anyone believed that the stories were fact. They were not!”

Other instances of Choe telling stories about rape, first reported by Hyperallergic, include a 2009 magazine feature that included blog post excerpts from when the artist visited China for a solo exhibition. “I had so much jizz on my brain, I mentally skull fucked and raped every woman in sight, I didn’t [sic] know what to do,” Choe wrote.

In 2010, Choe starred in a Vice Media online series called How to Hitchhike Across America: Thumbs Up. In the first episode, Choe referred to his previous hitchhiking days by saying, “I only almost got raped twice, so hopefully that won’t happen.”

Prior to Beef, Choe’s comments on DVDASA prompted a backlash to a different artistic project in 2017, when he was commissioned by a real estate company for an outdoor mural in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. As a result of Choe’s involvement, the mural was tagged with the word “rapist, and a protest was organized at the site. In response, Choe wrote a long statement on Instagram, citing his mental illness for the comments on DVDASA.

Last fall, a young girl and member of a local amateur archaeology association found the coins in a field about five miles from the Viking castle Fyrkat, near the Danish town of Hobro. The coins were from two Viking treasures buried about 160 feet apart and could be dated back to the 980s during Harald Blåtand’s reign as king of Denmark and Norway.

The coins from this period featured a cross on one side and were only in circulation for a few decades before King Harald lost power to his son.

The two treasures included up to 300 pieces of silver such as jewelry, and approximately 50 coins. Archaeologists say the coins include Danish, Arab and Germanic ones and the pieces of jewelry are from Scotland or Ireland. According a statement on the discovery from The Historical Museum of North Jutland, jewelry was valued for its weight, rather than any fine artistic detail or esteemed prior ownership, and “probably used as a means of payment or remelted into new jewelry in the Scandinavian style.”

“A hoard like this is very rare,” museum director Lars Christian Norbach told the AFP. Norbach said the silver items were from the same period Fyrkat was built and would offer more insight into the history of the Scandinavian seafarers.

Archaeologist and museum inspector Torben Trier Christiansen called the location of the discovery of the silver items “incredibly exciting” because of the limited time the Viking fortress of Fyrkat was used and uncertainty around why King Haland’s ring castles were closed down.

“Perhaps the castles were not given up entirely voluntarily, and perhaps it happened in connection with the final showdown between Harald Blåtand and his son Svend Tveskæg,” Christiansen told the museum. “The Bramslev treasures were apparently buried around the same time or shortly after the castles were abandoned, and if there have been disturbances at Fyrkat, it makes good sense that the local magnate here at Bramslev has chosen to hide his valuables out of the way.”

Further archaeological work will continue in the area of the discovery in the fall, through approximately $59,000 (DKK 400,000) in support from the Danish Palaces and Culture Agency. They will focus on whether houses existed when the silver treasures were buried and “whether they are completely ordinary Viking houses.”

The coins and other silver items will be on display at the Aalborg Historical Museum starting in July.