Huge Rothko retrospective coming
Paris's Fondation Louis Vuitton will stage massive career-spanning survey
Also in this edition: pay deal at British Museum, Stonehenge tunnel gets green light, artwork arson in Naples, Dot Cotton’s coat to go on display
Happy Friday.
How are you getting on with Threads? We’re a week into the shiny-new platform and there’s definitely been a dampening down of excitement. It was always going to be the way. But the app still is a pleasant space to spend time in, with some museums and cultural organisations already standing out for their excellent Thread work. National Archives I’m looking at you. Yet still some of England’s national museums are absent, including the British Museum and Wallace Collection. And still I think Tate are the world’s most followed museum, with 225,000 followers, and even though they only posted for a second time today. Don’t keep us hanging guys!
Now onto the news!
Maxwell
Need To Know
Museum winners
The Burrell Collection in Glasgow has been named Art Fund Museum of the Year 2023. It won out over four other nominees to claim the world’s biggest museum prize and its £120,000 reward. The winner was announced by artist Sir Grayson Perry at a ceremony at the British Museum on Wednesday (and in a sightly weird moment by Emily Blunt and Matt Damon on The One Show).
Managed by the charity Glasgow Life, the museum was officially reopened by King Charles III in October 2022 after it had enjoyed a five-year £68.25m refurbishment. Jenny Waldman, Director of Art Fund and chair of the judges said the Burrell was “extraordinary” and that “the sensitive renovation and collection redisplay invite exploration and delight.” Fellow judge Dame Mary Beard said the collection was "a treasure trove of objects." (Read more)
The Burrell’s crowning comes as Glasgow Life tries to axe a third of jobs in the city’s museum service, including the conservators that helped reopen the Burrell. It wants to slash £7 million from its budget. Trade Union Unison has said the city’s museums and community outreach programmes are being “hammered” by these cuts. And Waldman told the Sunday Times last month that Scotland’s museums are being starved of money. Hopefully the award can shine a light on some of these worrying issues?
Welcome back USA
The USA has officially rejoined UNESCO. It had been absent for the past five years and the move is being hailed as a hugely important financial and political moment for the global heritage protection body.
President Trump withdrew the country from UNESCO at the end of 2018. And the country hadn’t actually paid its dues into it for seven years prior to that. The renewed membership is the result of years of negotiations which came to ahead last month when 132 member states voted in favour of America’s return. 12 voted against.
The Biden administration has pledged to pay $150 million in 2024 and to ask Congress for a similar annual sum for the coming years. The move is being seen as a huge financial shot in the arm for UNESCO’s coffers. And America will now be able to rebalance power relations with China, which has taken advantage of the US’s absence to reinforce its own global influence. (Read more)
Rothko retrospective
A major Mark Rothko exhibition is to open at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris this October.
115 works from over 35 global institutions and collections — including the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and Tate — will go on show in the career-spanning survey which is billed as the biggest Rothko show in France in nearly 25 years. Tate is lending nine of its works to the show.
The exhibition, titled simply Mark Rothko, will trace the artist’s career from his early landscapes and lesser-known figurative paintings to his iconic colour-field works. The retrospective will also highlight Rothko’s vibrant later works, displayed in the tallest room of the Frank Gehry-designed building. Sculptures by Alberto Giacometti, originally planned for a UNESCO commission with Rothko, will accompany them. Cannot. Wait. (Read more)
News from the UK
Strikes off | A week-long strike at the British Museum was called off at the eleventh hour after a new pay offer. The museum has promised a cost-of-living payment of more than £1,500 for most staff, a pay rise above the civil service remit guidance of 4.5-5%, and that everyone will receive the London Living Wage. The new offer amounts to a 14% pay rise for the lowest paid staff the PCS Union said. (Read more)
Remarkable rediscovery | A "masterpiece" portrait by 18th-Century artist Thomas Gainsborough has been found in storage, Royal Museums Greenwich has revealed. The 1762 painting of Captain Frederick Cornewall had been misattributed in the collection of the National Maritime Museum for 60 years. Officials have now launched a £60,000 crowdfunding campaign to restore the work. (Read more)
Tunnel approved | The hugely controversial plan to build a road tunnel near Stonehenge has been approved (again). The UK’s Department for Transport has given it the green light, despite warnings that it would cause "permanent, irreversible harm" to the ancient site, and despite an original approval being successfully challenged in court. Historian Tom Holland called today’s decision “an act of vandalism that shames Britain”. (Read more)
First outing | A mystery painting found to be “undoubtedly” by Raphael is to go on public display for the first time in Bradford. The de Brécy Tondo has been the subject of debate for 40 years due to its resemblance to Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. New analysis using AI facial recognition shows the faces in both are identical. The work will be on display at the city’s Cartwright Hall Art Gallery for two months. (Read more)
News from around the world
Italy | A man has been detained in connection with an arson attack on the monumental Venus of the Rags sculpture by Michelangelo Pistoletto. It had been inaugurated in a square in front of Naples’ City Hall two weeks ago, and is seen as a seminal work by the hugely famous Italian artist. A local councillor said the attack has “done tremendous damage to the image of Naples,” while the Mayor vowed the work would be remade. (Read more)
Greece | The Acropolis in Athens is being shut for parts of the day to protect visitors from the extreme heatwave gripping southern Europe. Tourists have been barred from the site from 12:00 to 17:00 as the Greek capital swelters in temperatures of over 40C. It comes after the attraction revealed it was adopting crowd-control measures to try to cope with the up-to-17,000 daily visitors. (Read more)
USA | New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art has raised its admissions prices. It now matches the Met as the city’s most expensive museum. Adults will now pay $30 (up from $25 — and it’s £23 or €27). It’s the first price increase for the venue since 2016, and is blamed on “inflation, rising costs, and still-recovering attendance” by the museum. (Read more)
France | Louvre Director Laurence des Cars has told a French newspaper she believes “works of doubtful provenance are a stain on the collections” of the Museum. She made the statement in response to a demand from the Italian government for the restitution of seven antiquities which it believes were looted and trafficked to France before being sold to the Louvre in the 1980s and 90s. An investigation is underway. (Read more)
Australia | A museum named by Australia’s National Trust as the “birthplace of the nation” is to close because the local authority say they can no longer afford it. The Sir Henry Parkes Memorial School of Arts is the site of famous 1889 Tenterfield speech where the first direct appeal to the public for an Australian nation-state was made. The local council is millions of dollars in deficit and says it can’t keep ‘nice-to-have’ services like museums running. (Read more)
Best of the rest
🔗 After 20 years, the Simon Lee Gallery in London has gone bust and is now in administration. The news follows recent tax woes and artist Sonia Boyce’s sudden departure.
🔗 Reports suggest auction house Sotheby’s is shedding senior staff amid a softening of the market. They’ve also axed half their NFT-related workforce.
🔗 The Dutch national photography museum — Nederlands Fotomuseum — is moving to a huge new eight-storey home in Rotterdam. It’ll open in 2025.
🔗 EastEnder Dot Cotton’s iconic Tweed coat will be displayed alongside one of Princess Diana's own in a Museum of London Dockland’s exhibition honouring Jewish designers in London.
🔗 A fee has been introduced to enter Rome’s Pantheon. And its first week has seen the attraction net €200,000.
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