Museum of City of New York Plans Pandemic Exhibition—and More Art News – ARTnews.com

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Museums & Galleries

Amid layoffs at the Art Institute of Chicago, workers at the institution have issued an open letter demanding transparency and racial equity from museum leadership. [ARTnews]

Pace Gallery now represents the Berlin-based duo Elmgreen & Dragset, who are best known for their playful and witty sculptures. [ARTnews]

The Museum of the City of New York, whose staff faced layoffs, salary cuts, and furloughs during the pandemic, is preparing to reopen on July 23 and is organizing a coronavirus-focused exhibition for the fall. [The New York Times]

Here’s how some art institutions in the United Kingdom—including the Whitechapel Gallery and Victoria & Albert Museum in London—are gearing up to reopen this summer. [Financial Times]

A group of protesters took to the American Museum of Natural History in New York on Sunday to defend a contested statue of Theodore Roosevelt, which the institution has said it will remove from its entrance. [The New York Times]

The Market

Bloomberg has a report on why artist Rudolf Stingel’s works “are hard to sell” in the current moment. Dealer Jeremy Larner said, “Everyone wants out of their Stingels right now, but they can’t. They paid too much.” [Bloomberg]

Christie’s is merging its Impressionist and modern and postwar and contemporary art departments into a 20th- and 21st-centuries department. [The Art Newspaper]

Theft & Fraud

Six people have been arrested in France for the theft of a Bansky mural from the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in 2019. [The Guardian]

The stolen work by Banksy, which was created to honor the victims of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, was recovered in Italy in June. [ARTnews]

The French dealer who sold an allegedly looted sarcophagus to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2017 has been charged with money laundering and fraud. [The Art Newspaper]

Here is a handy guide to documentaries and news segments focused on famed art forgeries. [The Wall Street Journal]

Art & Artists

Roberta Smith writes on the life and work of the late artist Rosie Lee Tompkins, who created multifarious quilts: “A typical Tompkins quilt had an original, irresistible aliveness.” [The New York Times]

Here’s a conversation between poet and educator Quraysh Ali Lansana and Jerica Wortham, project manager for the Greenwood Art Project, about how art might address the history of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. [The New York Times]

Finally, an obituary for the pioneering designer Milton Glaser, who died at age 91 on Friday. [The Guardian]