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A portrait by Jean-Michel Moreau of Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who proposed using the device that now bears his name to carry out executions during the French Revolution. It is on view here at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris.
DADEROT/WIKIMEDIA
Politics
The United States House of Representatives voted down an amendment that would have cut the budgets for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities by 15 percent. Glenn Grothman, the Republican rep from Wisconsin who proposed it, said that he wanted to make a “small dent” in federal spending. [Variety]
Members of the Green Party in Germany stated that the right-wing governments in power in Austria, Hungary, and Poland are “trying to direct the creative scene toward their own ends with a policy of national isolation.” The politicians have launched an online petition calling for freedom in the arts. [The Art Newspaper]
The Law
The Boston Globe and WBUR, a Boston public radio station, are collaborating on a 10-part podcast about the infamous theft of 13 works, including works by Vermeer and Manet, from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. It will launch in September. [The Boston Globe]
A legal battle is brewing over the estate, and legacy, of artist Robert Indiana, who died in May at the age of 89. [The Art Newspaper]
A U.S. appeals court is likely to rule soon on a case that pits the Paris-based Enrico Navarra gallery against the New York–based Marlborough. The rather complicated tussle concerns contracts that the parties had to produce and sell work by artist Chu Teh-Chun, who died in 2014. [Artnet News]
Artists
Photographer and director Matthew Rolston has been taking photographs of the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo in Sicily, where bodies were placed upright, he explains, “so they were already raised up for the day of Resurrection.” [Vice]
Artist Chen Dongfan is painting a mural directly on the roadway of historic Doyers Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Closing off the street for the creation of the work has generated some controversy. [Gothamist]
Collectors
Sebastian Smee previews the forthcoming expansion of Glenstone, the private museum started by Mitchell and Emily Rales in Potomac, Maryland. Said Emily on their collecting approach: “We don’t collect an artist unless he or she has been actively exhibiting their work for at least 15 years. That eliminates all the 20-somethings who are doing really interesting work. But we feel we need a track record that’s longer so we can assess where the arc of the career is going and whether it really fits with the ethos of our collection.” [The Washington Post]
A French businessman and collector, Christophe Février, whose interests include “rare pieces of art and racecars with exceptional track records,” purchased a (never-used) guillotine for €8,000 (about $9,280) at auction this month. Part of his interest in the device is that it is “a historic symbol tied to the common heritage of humanity,” explained Février, who is also in the market for a car owned by drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. [The New York Times]
The Talent
Vladimir von Tsurikov, who has been director of the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis since 2014, will step down at the end of August. [MinnPost]
Criticism
Artist and writer Roger White reviewed Adrian Piper’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. [n+1]
Martha Schwendener on the Raul Guerrero show at Ortuzar Projects in New York: “Seeing his work for the first time now, when we need to be reminded about the fluidity of borders, history and cultures, is especially instructive and gratifying.” [The New York Times]
R.I.P.
Radiation oncologist Luther W. Brady, who was an expert on tumors of the eye, and who was a board member of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and chair of its executive committee, died on Friday at 92. [The Philadelphia Inquirer]
And More
Here are images of Johann Arens’s new film project at P/////AKT in Amsterdam. [Art Viewer]
And here are images of the Puppies Puppies show at What Pipeline in Detroit. [Contemporary Art Daily]
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