One of the new signs on the façade of the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery that have irked preservationists. (photo by Ron Cogswell/Flickr)
Art Movements is a weekly collection of news, developments, and stirrings in the art world.
The nonprofit Townhouse Gallery and its performance space Rawabet Theater in downtown Cairo were raided and shut down by officials from Egypt’s Censorship Authority, Tax Authority, National Security Agency, and the local office of the Ministry of Manpower.
South Korean photographer Ahn Se Hong won a lawsuit against Nikon over a 2012 exhibition of Ahn’s work that the photo company abruptly canceled. The images in the show featured Korean women who were essentially sex slaves in brothels for the Japanese military during World War II. A court in Tokyo ruled that Nikon must pay Ahn about $9,150 in damages.
The National Park Service, National Capital Planning Commission, and US Commission of Fine Arts allege that, by adding bright neon signs to the façade of the historical Renwick Gallery, the Smithsonian Institution has violated preservation laws.
Ai Weiwei visited the Greek island of Lesbos to meet with some of the migrants and refugees who have landed there in their efforts to reach the European mainland.
A tip that the perpetrators of the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist had hidden the 13 stolen masterpieces at Suffolk Downs did not turn up the missing artworks, as the FBI’s search of the Boston racetrack came up empty.
The Museion in the northern Italian city of Bolzano turned off its free wifi service because it was attracting too many migrants.
Jacopo Pontormo, “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap” (courtesy The Department of Culture, Media, and Sport, via Flickr) (click to enlarge)
British Culture Minister Ed Vaizey placed a temporary export ban on Jacopo Pontormo’s “Portrait of a Young Man in Red Cap,” one of only 15 remaining paintings by the Florentine Mannerist. Arts Council England will spearhead efforts to raise the £30,618,987 (~$45 million) needed to keep it from leaving the UK.
The €105-million (~$114 million) Great Pompeii Project, which was originally due to be completed by the end of 2015 or Europe would withdraw its portion of the funding (€78 million, or ~$85 million), will likely be extended through 2016 and 2017.
Two 17-year-old British boys face up to 10 years in prison for stealing items from the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Siyuan Zhao, who was arrested for stabbing a woman with an X-acto knife at Art Basel Miami Beach in early December, pleaded not guilty to a charge of first-degree attempted murder.
Three artists arrested by Tunisian authorities in November and accused of partaking in terrorist activities have been released due to lack of evidence.
The grandchildren of Robert W. Johnson, who is credited with helping to desegregate tennis by training African American champions including Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson, want to turn his home and the adjacent tennis court in Lynchburg, Virginia, into a museum.
Inside sources revealed that the main concourse of the $4-billion World Trade Center Transportation Hub designed by Santiago Calatrava will open to the public in March.
Roughly two thirds of the management staff at the Illinois State Museum have retired or found other jobs since state funding issues forced the museum to close on October 1.
A new, 97,000-square-foot outpost of Taipei’s National Palace Museum opened in the city of Chiayi in southern Taiwan.
The art and culture magazine Bidoun has made its entire archive of artworks and articles available online.
The UK’s Royal Mail unveiled several new stamp designs for 2016, including one that commemorates the 100th anniversary of Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic journey.
Paris’s Grand Palais, a museum and event space that hosts many blockbuster exhibitions and art fairs, will close for renovations in 2019.
The Grand Palais, seen here during the recent Paris Photo art fair, will close in 2019 for renovations. (photo by ninara/Flickr)
The New York Art, Antique, and Jewelry Show will not take place at the Park Avenue Armory next year, as in years past, because the venue’s growing calendar of performances and large-scale art installations won’t allow it.
A six-and-a-half feet tall sculpture by Antony Gormley installed on a rocky and wave-battered beach in Kimmeridge Bay on England’s south coast is unlikely to be reinstalled after toppling a second time. It fell the first time in September.
A custom-engraved powder horn from 1773 that belonged to Alexander Hamilton will go up for auction at Sterling Associates in New Jersey on January 11.
The architecture firm SOM recently completed the Kathleen Grimm School for Leadership and Sustainability, on Staten Island, making it the first school in New York City that generates as much energy as it consumes.
The British Library is a quarter of the way through a project to recatalogue, conserve, and digitize a quarter of King George III’s collection of 50,000 maps.
The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture successfully met the December 31 deadline to raise $2 million and become independent from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
A museum devoted to former NBA star Stephon Marbury — who, since joining the Beijing Ducks in 2010, has led his team to three CBA championships — opened in Beijing.
Transactions
Desk and bookcase, (mid-18th century, Mexico), inlaid woods and incised and painted bone, maque, gold and polychrome paint, metal hardware; Ann and Gordon Getty Collection (photos courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; gif by the author for Hyperallergic) (click to enlarge)
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston acquired an ornate, mid-18th century bookcase and desk that was made in Puebla de los Ángeles, Mexico. It is currently on view in the museum’s exhibition Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia.
The Morgan Library and Museum acquired Jacopo Zucchi’s 1565 drawing “The Foundation of Cosmopoli” and a 1591 copy of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.
The Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston received an unrestricted $1-million bequest — its largest ever — from the late philanthropist Jane Dale Owen, who died in 2014.
The Bridget Riley Art Foundation is funding an initiative that will support two curatorial positions in the British Museum’s department of prints and drawings, as well as an exhibition of its drawings that will tour outside London.
The philanthropist Iris Cantor gave New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts $10 million to build a new theater.
Transitions
Brooklyn’s Pierogi Gallery will close its longtime space on North 9th Street in Williamsburg and open a storefront space on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in February. It will continue to operate its large project space The Boiler, also in Williamsburg.
Susie Lingham stepped down from her job as director of the Singapore Art Museum, a role she took on a little over two years ago.
Longtime Chelsea gallery Alexander & Bonin revealed plans to leave the neighborhood for Tribeca in the summer of 2016.
The Boise Art Museum hired Nicole Herden to be its new curator of art.
Daniel Stetson, formerly the executive director of the Hunter Museum of American Art, will be the LSU Museum of Art’s new executive director.
Accolades
The sculptor Phyllida Barlow was made a CBE in recognition of her services to art.
Obituaries
Ellsworth Kelly, “Austin” (2015), 60 ft. by 73 ft. by 26 ft. 4 in., Blanton Museum of Art, the University of Texas at Austin, gift of the artist with funding generously provided by Jeanne and Michael Klein, Suzanne Deal Booth and David G. Booth, the Scurlock Foundation, Leslie and Jack S. Blanton, Jr., Elizabeth and Peter Wareing, and Kelli and Eddy S. Blanton (© 2015 Ellsworth Kelly)
Ogwyn Davies (1925–2015), artist.
Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015), artist.
Andrew Noren (1943–2015), avant-garde filmmaker.
Haskell Wexler (1922–2015), cinematographer.