Happy birthday! This newsletter is FIVE
maxwell museums is now half a decade old
Also in this edition: Heritage pleas to bankrupt Birmingham, British Museum’s call for help, York museum concrete closure, forgotten Gentileschi found, Deutsches Museum forgeries, Football Museum’s gender pledge, Sycamore Gap sorrow.
Happy Friday.
And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to…this newsletter! Yes, maxwell museums is officially five years old.
I first hit send on this project on 25 September 2018. Landing in the inbox of 42 people, those OG subscribers heard all about the news that Steve McQueen would be hosting a major exhibition at Tate Modern, that 27,000 people visited V&A Dundee in its first week of existence (yes, we were both ‘born’ at the same time), and that the Turner Prize had just opened (and most critics hated it, plus ça change).
I can’t quite believe how much this newsletter — a side hustle no-less — has grown in half a decade: there’s now nearly 3,000 readers from across the museum and culture landscape of the UK and around the world; I’ve interviewed many high profile names from artists to ex-ministers with plenty of current museum directors in between; and it’s been included on best newsletter lists from the Observer newspaper and Elephant magazine.
I am so grateful to you for reading it, and for all the kind words I receive about how much you enjoy it. It takes a lot of time and effort to put together 6 editions each month (my sums suggest that it’s the equivalent of about five working days for me) so to get that feedback means a lot.
In five years I haven’t turned on the paywall, and my aim is to keep it free so more people can read it. But that doesn’t mean that financial support isn’t hugely important to me. And so my ask here to you is: if you can afford it, please consider setting up a monthly donation of £5 to mark my 5 years of writing. Every penny is hugely valuable and SO gratefully received, and will ultimately allow me to put further resource into writing even better content and growing the newsletter further. (You can set up a monthly donation here, or via the button below.)
THANK YOU! And here’s to five more years!
Maxwell
Need To Know
Call for help
Sixty objects missing from the British Museum’s collection in the recently revealed ‘inside job’ scandal have been returned. 300 more are "identified and [are] due to be returned imminently." The news was announced by the museum as they launched a webpage and a callout to the public to help them try to recover the other 1,600 items still unaccounted for and thought to have been sold on eBay over many years.
All the stolen objects come from the museum’s Greek and Roman department and are mainly gems and jewellery. The new British Museum webpage does not record details of lost items but merely “the types of objects that are missing”, including photographs, in the hope that the public “will be better able to identify whether they might have come in contact of any stolen items”.
This development comes as the Art Newspaper reports that the scandal has meant (yet another) delay to the launch of the British Museum’s decades-long masterplan, which is now likely to happen next year rather than the autumn. (Read more)
Bankrupt Birmingham pleas
Following last week’s news that the bankruptcy of Birmingham’s council was threatening the city’s museums and heritage, three of England’s biggest arts organisations have issued a joint letter to urge the commissioners who are taking over the running of the council to ensure the city’s culture is “preserved and prioritised”.
Historic England, Arts Council England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund said that “local communities are rightly concerned about the fate of publicly owned historic places and buildings and arts and culture venues” and that “Birmingham’s financial reconstruction must not come at the cost of its priceless heritage.”
The letter stresses that rather than being seen as a drain on resources, cultural assets should be “key drivers of economic regeneration”. On Monday, councillors voted to approve spending control measures and an emergency budget is imminent. On Wednesday the mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, said land should be sold to raise funds but cultural institutions should be saved. (Read more)
Progress to make
The National Galleries Scotland have “a long way to go” to be accessible and inclusive, their outgoing director general has said on the eve of the opening of a multi-million pound expansion.
The £38.6 million Scottish Galleries at the National in Edinburgh will welcome visitors from tomorrow — four years later than first planned — and will show work by many of Scotland’s most famous artists across a suite of ten new galleries. Curators have brought works together that had been spread across the National Galleries’ various collections, held in storage and unseen for decades, or hung in other institutions.
Speaking to the Guardian ahead of the opening, Sir John Leighton, who is retiring in February after 17 years leading the gallery group, said they’ve made a start on widening access, but that he hopes “whoever comes after me will push even harder on the idea of equal access and inclusion.”
On the opening, Leighton said “Obviously, we’re sorry it has taken so long” but that “it feels almost sweeter for being hard won.” (Read more)
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News from the UK
More BM news | The British Museum has been accused of buying an Egyptian artefact from an antiques dealer with a smuggling conviction and without doing its due diligence. The dealer was convicted in 2012, with the museum purchasing a shabti from his gallery in 2017. In response to the allegations, first revealed in the National, the museum said it was co-operating with the US authorities on the matter, and have been since 2019. (Read more)
RAAC risk closure | York Castle Museum has been forced to partially close after the discovery of collapse-risk concrete in its roof. The use of RAAC concrete has also forced the closure of schools across the UK. The north side of the building will remain shut until inspections are carried out, and the museum is offering discounted tickets to visitors during this time. (Read more)
Tate’s experimental commission | Pioneering musician and producer Brian Eno will help Tate Modern pick a new commission of “experimental” work to be displayed in 2025. It will be the first of the new annual Infinities Commission which is (terribly) named to reflect “the boundless curiosity of contemporary artists.” Eno and the five-strong panel will select the artist next year, with the work going on display in Tate Modern’s Tanks. (Read more)
Palace’s forgotten painting | An incredible lost Artemisia Gentileschi painting has been uncovered, found languishing in a Hampton Court Palace storeroom. The work — Susanna and the Elders and once owned by Charles I — has now been restored and put on display at Windsor Castle by the Royal Collections Trust. It’s rediscovery came during attempts to trace all the paintings sold off after Charles I’s execution. (Read more)
Sycamore Gap sorrow | There’s (quite rightly) been horror and sorrow expressed across the UK after the seemingly deliberate felling of one of the world’s most iconic trees, in a gap in Hadrian’s wall. A 16 year-old male has been arrested. The National Trust — who looked after the tree — hope they might be able to grow new shoots from the trunk. Meanwhile, a man and woman have been arrested over a blaze that tore through the 18th century Crooked House pub in the West Midlands.
News from around the world
USA | San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum is suing the architects that built them a $38m extension because they say it was delivered late and that it “failed to meet even the minimum museum-quality standards.” Complaints include leaks and an “unusable” rooftop terrace. The museum says its privately-funded charitable foundation was forced to pay for repairs and aims to recuperate its spending losses. (Read more)
Netherlands | Pokémon has teamed up with Amsterdam’s Vincent van Gogh Museum (together at last the world screams!). There’s a display of paintings by artists from the Pokémon Company and inspired by van Gogh masterpieces, a museum trail, and lots of new merch. Museum Director Emilie Gordenker, said this “will allow the next generation to get to know Vincent van Gogh’s art and life story in a refreshing way”. (Read more)
Germany | A worker at the Deutsches Museum in Munich stole paintings from the collection, replaced them with rough forgeries, then sold the originals at auction to fund a luxury lifestyle. A court sentencing the man said he “shamelessly exploited the access to the storage rooms” and “sold valuable cultural assets in order to secure an exclusive standard of living for himself and to show off with it.” The alarm was raised when an in-house appraiser noticed the canvas on his workbench didn’t match a catalog entry. (Read more)
France | The near-entirety of an art collection belonging to French actor Gérard Depardieu went under the hammer this week, making 4 million euros and drawing huge crowds. Pieces sold included paintings by Alexander Calder and sculptures by Auguste Rodin, whom Depardieu played in the 1988 movie Camille Claudel. In an interview with the New York Times, the auctioneers noted that Depardieu normally refused to lend pieces for museum shows. (Read more)
Best of the rest
Young V&A website | The V&A have launched Mused, a new website aimed to nab the attention of Gen Alpha (or ‘teenagers’ to rest of us) and encourage engagement with art and design. A ‘trendspotter’ panel of young people identify content ideas. (More)
Arty boots | Fans of provocative surrealist artist Ithell Colquhoun can now wear her work on their feet, thanks to a new collaboration between Tate and Dr. Martens. Two Colquhoun paintings appear on the brand’s classic 1460 boot. (More)
Museum’s gender pledge | Manchester's National Football Museum has promised a 50/50 representation of men's and women's artefacts in the coming years as it teams up with the FA Women’s Super League to promote the women's game. (More)
Save suffragette medal | A military-style medal awarded to the first suffragette to go on hunger strike in Scotland is being auctioned, and Glasgow Women’s Library has launched an urgent fundraising appeal to buy the “humbling” item. (More)
Architecture of spite | A furious builder has got his revenge on the local council leader who blocked his proposed development, by erecting an unflattering giant stone gargoyle of the leader’s face on his building. (More)
Ruth Ellis lecture | What do images of the last woman hanged in Britain reveal about society's fascination with the ‘femme fatale’? This talk at the V&A explains. Use code 'maxwell' for £3 tickets.* (Book)
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