Recourses

Shine bright: American Museum of Natural History unveils a years-long revamp of its prized gems and minerals hall

The American Museum of Natural History in New York unveils a dramatic renovation of its beloved gems and minerals galleries next week. The hall was “showing its wear and tear” after opening more than four decades ago, according to the curator George Harlow, a trained geologist who specialises in mineralogy and crystallography. It has been…

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Minneapolis Institute of Art announces over $19m in gifts, including funds for a diversity officer, Latin American curator and deputy director

Amid a continuing financial squeeze, the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) announced today that it had secured more than $19m in gifts for its endowment and operations, including $5m to create the position of a new chief diversity and inclusion officer who will advance a drive for equity at the museum. The gifts will also…

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Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, landscape architect known as the ‘Queen of Green’, has died, aged 99

The Canadian doyenne of landscape architecture, 99-year-old, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, was remembered on Monday in a ceremony at the Temple Sholom in Vancouver, amid a grove of cedars in a garden sanctuary of her own design. Affectionately known as the “Queen of Green,” Oberlander died on 22 May, just a month short of her centenary…

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Plywood boards used to shutter New York shops are transformed into canvases for local artists

When Black Lives Matter protests swept across New York City in June last year, businesses across the city shuttered their storefronts with plywood to brace for the civil unrest. The city “felt apocalyptic”, says Neil Hamamoto, the founder of Worthless Studios, a non-profit arts organisation that is repurposing the leftover plywood into art installations that…

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Black artist detained by police in his gallery residency in South Carolina

John Sims, a Black artist and activist whose work explores the symbols of white supremacy, became an allegory unto himself this week when he was detained and questioned by police officers in his apartment at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, South Carolina, where he is the artist in residence. His current multidisciplinary…

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Artist Khaled Jarrar is selling handfuls of soil from Palestinian farmland—and has turned them into NFTs

Earlier this month, as protests erupted over the forced expulsion of Palestinian families from the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, the artist Khaled Jarrar walked from his house in the Palestinian city of Ramallah to the nearby village of Kaubar to grab a handful of dry dirt. He then walked back home, placed the dirt…

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Hermitage Amsterdam close to reaching €1m in urgent crowdfunding appeal to survive Covid-19 crisis

Faced with a “dramatic” deficit after being closed for six months by stop-start pandemic restrictions, the Hermitage Amsterdam launched an unprecedented crowdfunding appeal on 25 March: “Keep the Hermitage Open”. The museum, an independent offshoot of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, is now close to reaching its ambitious €1m target after racking up more than…

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At an art school in Gaza, creation prevails amid destruction

A few hundred metres from the residential tower destroyed by an IDF bomb in Gaza City on Tuesday, a new art school is literally picking up the pieces. Students at the Dar al Kalima Training Centre, housed in a refurbished mid-century house with a courtyard garden, are collecting broken glass to make stained glass art in the shape of doves….

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Sotheby’s launches first auction dedicated to women artists—but why do we still need a segregated sale in 2021?

“Women artists. There is no such thing—or person,” the Surrealist artist Dorothea Tanning once said. “It’s just as much a contradiction in terms as ‘man artist’ or ‘elephant artist’. You may be a woman and you may be an artist, but the one is a given and the other is you.” One can only imagine…

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Giant painting of George Floyd murder displayed on Los Angeles billboard after being cancelled in Minneapolis

The advocacy group behind a public work depicting the death of George Floyd says they still hope to show the piece in the city of Minneapolis even though the plan was thwarted last year. Don Perlis’s painting, entitled Floyd (2020), was shown in Times Square in New York last October and is currently on show on a 16ft…

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