Museum of the Home boycott
Plus: Liverpool vs UNESCO, and 2021's best museums
Today's edition is presented with Rebuilding Heritage
Happy Friday!
I start with news that the National Football Museum have acquired one of the stars of the England squad from Euro 2020.
Earlier this week I sent you my latest interview (you get two a month with this newsletter). It was with Sophie Brendel, Director of Audiences, Commercial and Digital at the V&A, and we chatted about their new BBC series Secrets of the Museum. I’m really pleased to say it’s become my most read post - and in just three days! It’s so great to see readership for this newsletter just grow and grow. If you missed it, you can catch up here.
Finally, I’ll be glued to all the action of Tokyo 2020 over the next two weeks. Good luck to Team GB and all the athletes competing at the Games. Bring on the gold rush.
Maxwell
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This week’s top story
UNESCO has officially stripped Liverpool of its World Heritage status. The UN committee found building developments - including a planned new massive Everton FC stadium - threatened the value of the city's historic waterfront. It’s only the third time a World Heritage site has been delisted. BBC News
It’s fair to say the news didn’t go down well on the Mersey. The decision was described as "incomprehensible" by Liverpool’s mayor, who said that UNESCO hadn’t even visited the city in a decade. The Sports Editor of the Liverpool Echo said that the body was “out of touch” and that World Heritage status “delivers very little” (perhaps no surprise given their beat they support the new football stadium). But writing in the Guardian, Olly Wainwright offers some damning context: the demolitions, the numerous “atrocious developments,” the ambition to replicate Shanghai, and the arrests made due to allegations of bribery, corruption and misconduct in public office. And anyone with eyes can see there are some shockingly awful buildings now on the waterfront.
This week’s other news
It’s that time again, as the shortlist for Art Fund Museum of the Year is revealed. It’s the world’s biggest museum prize with the winner getting a cool £100k. Vying for the title this year are: the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry/Londonderry, Experience Barnsley, Firstsite in Colchester, the Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds, Timespan in the Scottish Highlands. No repeat of last year’s joint winners please. BBC Arts
The row over the Museum of the Home retaining a statue of its founder, who profited from the slave trade, continues. Teachers from the Museum’s local boroughs have backed plans for a boycott until the statue is removed. Evening Standard
103 ‘lost’ drawings by Japanese artist Hokusai will go on public display for the very first time at the British Museum in September. Created in the 1840s when the artist was in his 80s, they were forgotten about for much of the 20th century, only resurfacing in 2019. Visitors to the exhibition will also be able to see Hokusai’s most famous work: the Great Wave. The Guardian
Sir Thomas Lawrence’s hugely famous ‘Red Boy’ painting - which Wordsworth once called “a wretched histrionic thing” - has been bought for the UK nation. The National Gallery is paying £9.3m and it will go on show next year. The Guardian
Museums and galleries in Manchester were today due to preserve some of the messages left on the vandalised mural of footballer Marcus Rashford, as heavy rain was forecast this weekend. But the weather beat them to it and many were destroyed in downpours yesterday. Manchester Evening News
Damien Hirst has claimed nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, will outlive physical galleries and that art collectors will just be “showing each other what we’ve recently bought on our phones.” And they call it progress. CNBC
A four-year-old girl discovered a 220 million-year-old fossilised dinosaur footprint on a beach in south Wales. It’s now gone on show at National Museum Cardiff in a display named after the little girl. The Mirror
After TWENTY YEARS and $825 million, the Humboldt Forum in Berlin has finally welcomed the first visitors through its doors. Conceived as Germany’s answer to the Louvre, its opened with an exhibition on ivory, despite ongoing concerns about the building’s technical problems. New York Times
Visitors to France’s museums and galleries must now show a vaccine passport to gain entry. Masks however are no longer legally required, but many venues still have them as mandatory. The Art Newspaper
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