The news of Butler’s appointment was first reported by the New York Times.

Butler is among the country’s most respected curators, having held top positions at several important institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, where she was chief curator of drawings from 2006 to 2014.

“Connie Butler is widely known and admired as a trailblazing curator and scholar, as well as a dedicated mentor to rising museum professionals,” MoMA director Glenn Lowry said in a statement. “With her close working relationships with artists, both established and emerging, and her long-standing connections to MoMA and New York, we know she will advance MoMA PS1 in all aspects of its ambitious program. I look forward to working with her again.”

During her tenure at the Hammer Museum, which began in 2013, she was key in significantly raising that institution’s profile, establishing it as one of the city’s most important museums and a place known internationally for mounting cutting-edge exhibitions.

Among her first exhibitions at the Hammer was the 2014 edition of the Made in L.A. biennial, which included a range of artists who are now well-established, including Wu Tsang, Samara Golden, Tala Madani, Clarissa Tossin, and A.L. Steiner. A major survey for Mark Bradford, his first institutional solo show in his hometown, followed. Other curatorial credits at the museum include solo outings for Marisa Merz, Lari Pittman, and Andrea Fraser, as well as a landmark retrospective for Adrian Piper, which was co-organized MoMA.

At MoMA, her two most important exhibitions were the first major US surveys for Lygia Clark (2014) and Marlene Dumas (2009–09), as well as “On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century” (2010). She served on the curatorial team of the 2010 edition of Greater New York at PS1.

Prior to joining MoMA, Butler was a longtime curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Her most well-known exhibition during her tenure there was 2007’s groundbreaking “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” which traveled to PS1 in 2008. That exhibition is widely credited with rewriting art history through a feminist lens, examining how activism helped shape the art-making of numerous women artists between 1965 and 1980. The exhibition’s catalogue, which includes short biographies for each of the 140 artists included, is now considered an essential text.

“MoMA PS1 has a remarkable and important history, a rich and exciting present-day community of staff, artists, and audiences, and a potential that seems unlimited,” Butler said in a statement. “I am honored to have been chosen to lead this institution, and I look forward to working with the Board and staff as we continue its mission serving the New York and Queens communities, as well as the broader international network of artists who represent MoMA PS1’s incredible past and future.”

In a statement, MoMA PS1 board chair Sarah Arison said, “Thanks to our in-depth search process, we welcome a new Director who deeply understands MoMA PS1 and our artist-centric DNA, and will ensure that we remain at the forefront of innovative programming that serves our communities locally and internationally.”

Butler fills a gap at PS1 that has been left open for nearly a year. Fowle, who recently joined Hauser & With as senior curatorial director, had been at the helm for fewer than three years when she left the museum. The details of her departure were not disclosed at the time.

According to court documents filed in the Southern District of New York, KAWS sent Leong and the companies a cease-and-desist letter in 2020. A lawsuit from KAWS followed in 2021.

The artist claimed that Leong and the companies had created hundreds of works that infringed on the his copyright, many of them featuring KAWS’s famous skull-faced Companion. These works, the artist said, had a collective retail value of more than $63 million.

Court documents revealed that one of the companies went as far as to boast about its ability to create “custom hand-reworked reproductions” of KAWS’s works and their price point, which is significantly lower than authentic figurines and sculptures designed by the artist. That public admission was enough for the court to find that Leong and his associates “knowingly intended to sell counterfeit KAWS goods.”

Kaws’s legal team, which includes the attorney Aaron Richard Golub, submitted 154 counterfeit works as evidence of copyright infringement to the court and noted that such works not only damage his reputation but also “chill the market for his original work because purchasers fear inadvertently acquiring a counterfeit”—a constant problem for the artist, who reportedly spends up to $40,000 a year on counterfeit identification.

According to Artnet News, which first reported the news, Golub and the KAWS legal team will follow up this ruling and seek a judgment against another defendant in the case, Jonathan Anand. Golub declined to comment on the judgment.

The Pillsbury Owl, a 12th- or 13th-century BCE bronze owl-shaped wine vessel, was at the entrance of the museum’s exhibition “Eternal Offerings: Chinese Ritual Bronzes” when the damage occurred on April 9. Shang-dynasty (ca. 1600–1046 BCE) aristocrats would have used the vessel in rituals offerings to honor their ancestors.

A museum spokesperson confirmed that the vessel has since been removed from the show for further assessment and conservation. The extent of the damage, as well as how long conservation efforts on the artwork will take, however, remains unclear.

No visitors or staff were harmed during the incident. The museum will “continue to monitor and enhance measures to prevent accidents”, according to spokesperson.

In the owl’s place now sits a set of bronze winged dragons from the 4th- or 5th-century BCE, which were already on view and moved from the second gallery of the exhibition.

According to AFP, three men were caught carrying out construction work on Mykonos despite a suspension on development. On the island of Rhodes, a tour operator was arrested for illegally occupying part of a beach with metal and wooden structures. The arrests were made amid a government crackdown on illicit tourism development on Greek islands home to imperiled fragile archaeological sites.

“The law will be enforced in Mykonos,” Kostas Skrekas, Greece’s environment minister, said in a statement. “No illegal plan will be legalized… there will be no loophole.”

In March, 58-year-old archaeologist Manolis Psarrosan, an employee at the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades, was assaulted in a suburb of Athens. According to the Washington Post, Psarrosan has been involved in several cases with alleged violations, including ones revolving around “illegal constructions” and “arbitrary building activities in areas of archaeological interest” on Mykonos. He has been called as a witness in related trials. 

Due to the abundance of archaeological sites in Greece, local organizations have the power to veto development plans. 

Later that month, state-employed archeologists staged a five-hour protest outside the Culture Ministry in Athens to protest Psarrosan’s attack of a colleague in a suburb of the Greek capital, an incident they say is linked to the “mafia-style” violence targeting those tasked with persevering the country’s ancient heritage.

“We are not working with Tom’s studio at this time and have no release dates planned,” a Nike representative told Complex. The comment signals that, at least for now, the brand is no longer working with Sachs, though it might not be the definitive end to their relationship.

The apparent decision by Nike followed a report by Curbed in March that alleged Sachs’s studio had a toxic work environment. Soon after the report was released, Nike representatives said the company was “deeply concerned” by reports of Sachs’s behavior, which allegedly included calling employees “autistic,” and “retarded,” throwing things at them, and other hazing behavior.

Nike and Sachs have long collaborated on sneaker design, in particular a project called Mars Yard, named after a rocky stretch of terrain in Pasadena, California, where engineers test out rovers that will explore the red planet. The Mars Yard 1.0 debuted in 2012, with features such as vectran fabric from the Mars Excursion Rover airbags, billed as a shoe for the modern rocket scientist. Mars Yard 2.0 came out in 2017 during an exhibition at Governor’s Island that, presciently enough, also showed a film that Sachs made with artist Van Neistat titled “The Hero’s Journey”. The film follows a Tom Sachs apprentice through an indoctrination process in his iconic SoHo studio.

At the time he told ARTnews of the film, “There is always humiliation and failure in the beginning, and we wanted The Hero’s Journey to accentuate that. No one who has had success hasn’t also had a humiliating beginning with lots of failure.”

Six years have passed since Mars Yard 2.0 was released and 3.0 was expected to debut sometime soon, with rumors swirling recently about a new release date. Sachs’s more accessible Nike collaboration, titled General Purpose, was due to come out in more colorways in April, yet this too has yet to happen.

The Headlines

TROUBLE IN PARIS. On Sunday, a Miriam Cahn painting that has been the subject of right-wing vitriol was vandalized in her current show at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Alex Greenberger reports in ARTnews. The alleged vandal sprayed purple paint onto the piece, which depicts a person with their hands tied performing a sex act on a taller person. Cahn, an acclaimed Swiss artist, has said she created the work after reading about human-rights abuses in Ukraine. Some conservative politicians and children’s-rights groups have claimed that the piece promotes pedophilia. The alleged culprit was apprehended by guards and turned over to police, the AFP reports. Per the artist’s wishes, the defaced work will remain in the show until it ends its run on Sunday.

ARTISTS CLOSE UP. In the Los Angeles Times, Carolina A. Miranda reports on infighting among members of the storied Chicano artist collective Asco over the authorship of some of their trailblazing pieces. The “disputes could now affect how Asco’s work is displayed and how its story is ultimately told,” she writes. ● Also in the L.A. Times, artist Max Hooper Schneider, who makes dense, frenetic, action-packed installations and sculptures, got the profile treatment from Leah Ollman. “I think of the studio as a gut, and I’m like a digestive enzyme, circulating through it,” said Hooper Schneider, who has a new show up at the François Ghebaly gallery in L.A.. ● And in the Financial Times, photographer Martin Parr discussed the work of six peers whom he admires, including Mohamed Bourouissa, Markéta Luskačová, and Rinko Kawauchi.

The Digest

Last year, material from Ann and Gordon Getty’s home in the S.F. neighborhood of Pacific Heights made more than $150 million at Christie’s. In June, art and design from their residence in nearby Berkeley, known as the Temple of Wings, will be offered by the auctioneer, with proceeds again going to charity. [Datebook]

Police in Greece arrested four on allegations of pursuing illegal construction projects on the islands of Mykonos and Rhodes. In March, a government archaeologist was beaten in an Athens suburb, an attack that authorities believe was related to his work evaluating projects near archaeological sites in those tourism hotspots. [AFP/Barron’s]

Artist Steve McQueen said that he has invited dozens of U.K. politicians to visit the Serpentine Gallery in London to view his new film about the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 72, but that most have not replied. “Their silence says a lot about what is happening in this country,” he said. [The Guardian]

The illustrator Bruce McCall, whose richly detailed satirical visions of American life graced more than 80 covers of the New Yorker, died on Friday at the age of 87. Graphic designer Michael Bierutonce termed McCall “our country’s greatest unacknowledged design visionary,” William Grimes writes in his obituary. [The New York Times]

Theatrical producer Jenna Segal has been building a collection of work by all 31 artists featured in an all-women show at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery in 1943. She is still looking for a Gypsy Rose Lee piece, and is presenting her holdings at her Midtown Manhattan offices later the month. [The New York Times]

Allegations are flying in a battle over the wealth and art collection of billionaire Hubert Neumann and his family. His second daughter, Belinda Neumann-Donnelly, has filed suit against him, saying that he has taken funds from trusts and engaged in other improper behavior. His lawyer rebutted the claims. [New York Post]

The Kicker

THE KEY TO LONGEVITY. In a recent op-ed for the Washington Post, the philosopher and poet Paul Woodruff talked about undertaking meaningful projects as the end of his life nears. “As I think of dying, I make each day a time for living, for having something to live for,” he wrote. A reader responded with a letter to editor, noting that that worldview matched that of the great artist Harry Liebermann, who died at 106. According to the letter’s author, Liebermann said, when he was already past 100, “The reason I am living so long is before I go to bed, I imagine what I will be painting the next day.” [The Washington Post]

The painting, titled fuck abstraction !, appears in a Cahn show set to finish its controversial run on May 14. Cahn and the museum had made clear that the work was a response to human rights abuses in Ukraine, but conservative politicians and children’s rights groups had claimed it promoted pedophilia.

In the work, Cahn represents a smaller figure whose hands are bound performing a sex act on a taller one. She said she had painted it after seeing reports of mass graves in Bucha and rapes by Russian soldiers in 2022. Certain politicians and organizations attempted to sue for its removal, though the French Council of State found that the painting could be exhibited on the basis that it did not represent pedophilia and that it qualified as freedom of expression.

According to the Agence France-Presse, on Sunday afternoon, a visitor that the Palais de Tokyo described as an “elderly person” sprayed purple paint on fuck abstraction ! The man was “unhappy with the sexual staging of a child and an adult represented, according to him,” the museum told AFP.

Following the vandalism, two rooms of the exhibition were closed off to the public.

Rima Abdul Malak, France’s culture minister, told Franceinfo, “It’s a direct attack on freedom of expression, which is quite serious.”

Franceinfo, which first reported the news, published a picture of what appeared to be fuck abstraction ! in its vandalized state. The painting seems to have been splashed with purple that now runs down portions of it. According to the publication, the man who vandalized the work had hidden the paint in a medicine bottle.

Guillaume Désanges, president of the Palais de Tokyo, told AFP that fuck abstraction ! would remain on view through the end of the show’s run in agreement with the artist. So far, 80,000 people have seen the exhibition.

On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron even weighed in on the situation, tweeting, “To attack a work is to attack our values. In France, art is always free and respect for cultural creation is guaranteed.”

Update, 5/8/23, 9:45 a.m.: A statement from Emmanuel Macron has been added to this article.

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.

Also known as Cullinan I, the Star of Africa is a 530-carat white diamond cut from the Cullinan diamond, a 3,100-carat stone that was mined near Pretoria. A smaller, sister stone was also cut from the massive Cullinan diamond and is set in the Imperial State Crown. Both the scepter and the crown are traditionally used by British monarchs during ceremonial occasions.

A Change.org petition calling for the stone to be returned to South Africa has already garnered over 8,200 signatures by Friday afternoon.

“The diamond needs to come to South Africa. It needs to be a sign of our pride, our heritage, and our culture,” Mothusi Kamanga, a lawyer and activist in Johannesburg, told Reuters. “I think generally the African people are starting to realize that to decolonize is not just to let people have certain freedoms, but it’s also to take back what has been expropriated from us.”

Not everyone agrees, however, that the stone should be returned.

“I don’t think it matters anymore. Things have changed, we’re evolving,” Johannesburg resident Dieketseng Nzhadzhaba told Reuters. “What mattered for them in the olden days about being superior… it doesn’t matter to us anymore.”

The scepter is one of more than 100 objects collectively known as “The Crown Jewels,” which date back to the 17th century, and, per a Town and Country report, “are traditionally a major part of the coronation ceremony when a new monarch officially takes the throne, because each has a special meaning connected to the monarch’s reign.”

The Sovereign’s Scepter with Cross, in which the Star of Africa is set, is “meant to represent the crown’s power and governance” and has been an integral part of coronations since it was created in 1661 for King Charles II’s coronation. It has been used in every coronation ceremony since and was last publicly seen last September when it was placed on the Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin during her state funeral.

The discourse around once great colonial powers repatriating works that they were given—or took with force—has been become increasingly heated. These calls for repatriation, however, have typically focused on artifacts like the Parthenon Marbles and the Benin Bronzes.

Last week, the International Council of Museums published a report from Sara Abdalla Khidir Saeed, director of the Sudan Natural History Museum, detailing the dire circumstances of numerous institutions.

“Museums are now without guard to protect them from looting and vandalism,” Saeed said. “In light of the daily deteriorating situation due to the lack of food and life resources, weak souls will be exploited to steal [artifacts from] important museums and smuggle them out of the country.”

Saeed singled out the Sudan National Museum, the Ethnographic Museum, the Republican Palace Museum, and the Sudan Natural History Museum, all located in the capital city of Khartoum, which is currently besieged by gunfire between army and rival paramilitary forces.

Reports surfaced at the end of April that the National Museum, a repository of thousands of years of human history, had suffered looting. It houses the world’s most wide-ranging Nubian archaeological collection, with some artifacts dating back to the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras.

Present-day Sudan was a significant crossroads centuries ago for early African kingdoms, and surviving artifacts are invaluable to constructing a comprehensive human history. Khalid Albaih, a Khartoum-based artist and journalist, recently told the Art Newspaper that the museum “has also become a battleground” and that “no one knows how much damage the [National Museum] took.”

The civil war in Sudan has raged since mid-April, when Sudan’s military ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the country’s deputy and head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, began vying for political power. The two men were allies during the 2019 popular uprising against Sudan’s longtime leader, Omar al-Bashir, and tentatively shared power following his ouster.

However, the alliance collapsed in 2021 when the power-sharing government was dissolved by the army, crushing civilian hopes for a peaceful transition into democracy. According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, at least 860,000 people have fled Sudan to neighboring countries. Those that remain face severe food, water, and fuel shortages, as well as limited transportation and communication.

Saeed shared that no one has been able to access the National Museum since the beginning of the war, leaving countless live specimens—endangered Nile crocodiles and monitors, rare birds, and more—to slowly die from thirst and starvation. “The [Museum] is located close to the Sudanese army’s headquarters, which means anyone walking around will be shot immediately as was the case with one of the university students.”

“The war in Sudan must be stopped immediately,” she said.