Resources

What role does art play in protest?

While some artists may intentionally create works that respond to political circumstances, others may do so by default. Protesting policy, war, or social norms, artists challenge the status quo and give voice to a movement. An artist and activist, LaToya Ruby Frazier, employs and upends documentary traditions as a means to disrupt media stereotypes. Interrogating how…

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Art historians try to identify enslaved Black child in an 18th-century portrait

The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) took a major step toward interrogating a controversial 18th-century group portrait in its collection centering on an early benefactor to the university, Elihu Yale. Responding to criticism of the painting’s subject from students and others, the YCBA removed the work from a gallery wall and replaced it with…

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France returns 26 looted artifacts and artworks to Benin

Twenty-six works of art seized by French colonial soldiers in 1892 returned to Benin on Wednesday, November 10, 2021, a landmark in the long fight by African countries to recover looted artifacts. The works, which include the doors of the Palace of Abomey, royal thrones and warrior dance staffs, were formally welcomed back to Benin…

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Major museum casts fresh doubt over the authenticity of $450M ‘Salvator Mundi’

The “Salvator Mundi,” which sold for $450 million at Christie’s auction house as a fully authenticated Leonardo da Vinci, has been downgraded by curators at the Prado national museum in Madrid, Spain. It was bought in November 2017 by the Saudi culture minister, Prince Badr bin Abdullah, apparently for the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The downgrading…

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Can AI Truly Give Us a Glimpse of Lost Masterpieces?

Recent projects used machine learning to resurrect paintings by Klimt and Rembrandt. They raise questions about what computers can understand about art.   In 1945, fire claimed three of Gustav Klimt’s most controversial paintings. Commissioned in 1894 for the University of Vienna, “the Faculty Paintings”—as they became known—were unlike any of the Austrian symbolist’s previous…

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Can Clubhouse recreate those art world conversations we are all missing?

I’ve been on Clubhouse—the invitation-only social media app gaining members even faster than it amasses bad press for privacy invasions—for about three weeks now, just long enough to get myself into trouble. I keep clicking on friends’ names without realising I am creating a new “room” to welcome them to the app. And when I…

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The Nez Perce Tribe Paid More Than $600,000 for Their Own Artifacts. Now They’ve Been Repaid

In the 1990s, the Ohio Historical Connection, previously known as the Ohio Historical Society, gave the Nez Perce an ultimatum: either the tribe would purchase tribal artifacts owned by the Society, or the artifacts would need to be permanently returned after their 20-year loan agreement expired. The tribe scrambled to come up with the $608,000…

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‘Too Often, BIPOC Candidates Are Asked to Come with Capes on for Rescue Missions’: Museum Directors Reflect on an Evolving Profession

Perhaps the most pressing topic in the world of art and culture in the United States these days is the question of who will run the country’s museums. Between the financial constraints brought on by the pandemic and urgent matters of social justice, museums are in a tough spot: struggling to stay alive at the…

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The Defining Artworks of 2021

After a tumultuous 2020 that involved the beginnings of a pandemic and worldwide upheaval, the art world began to slowly go back to a form of normal in 2021. Along with that shift came a number of developments that brought art-making in new and unexpected developments. There was the rise of a new medium, and…

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‘A vast underwater museum’: Greece plans to open shipwrecks and other submerged heritage sites for visitors to explore

Submerged ancient cities, rows of amphorae from the fifth century BC, anchors from Byzantine shipwrecks, Second World War aircrafts: Greek seas harbour a unique heritage that is gradually becoming accessible to the public, experienced divers and casual bathers alike. In March, the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports announced plans to open 91 shipwrecks—dating from…

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