Category: visual

“A usually cheery online community of quilters has been ripped apart by a sewing challenge depicting a No. 2 pencil erasing the ‘in’ from the word injustice. Some members of the National Quilt Museum’s Block of the Month Club, which gives out quilting patterns from an array of artists, objected to the January block, claiming it introduced politics into the 13,400-person group. The design was created by the Social Justice Sewing Academy, a California nonprofit loosely tied to Black Lives Matter.” – The Washington Post

Doubts about the authenticity of the painting, which depicts the artist giving some serious side-eye, first arose in 1970. But research conducted jointly by the National Gallery of Norway (which owns the work) and the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has determined that the portrait is no forgery — and that it’s the only one van Gogh ever painted while hospitalized for psychosis. – Yahoo! (AFP)

Grain elevators were once an icon of Canada’s west: often painted a bright boxcar red, they stood in towns across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. As the tallest structures in the vast landscapes, they were visible from kilometers away and were known as “prairie castles” or “prairie cathedrals”. – The Guardian

By blurring out details from protest signs in an image of the 2017 Women’s March, including the name of President Trump and references to the female anatomy — a decision the Archives publicly apologized for on Saturday — it has damaged the faith many Americans, particularly women, may have had in its role as an impartial conservator of the nation’s records. – Washington Post

The Hecht Museum at the University of Haifa said that Saher Miahi’s identity did not fit with guidelines from its funders, the Hecht Foundation. The university rescheduled the talk for elsewhere. The artist said, “I was a student at this university and I’m still collaborating with it. Now, this museum is telling me that I don’t belong here.” The move was widely criticized by others on and off campus. – Hyperallergic

Newnan, Georgia, reacted to a neo-Nazi rally by putting up 17 large-scale banner portraits of people in the town – a diverse collection including African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Pakistani Americans. Not everyone dealt with that well, to put it mildly. – The New York Times

And the ultimate punishment to the art dealer, who may not actually go to jail as it’s his first offense: “The artwork is now property of the state and has been given to the Reina Sofia art museum in Madrid.” – BBC

The protestors are angry about the government’s proposed pension reforms, and they’ve shut down much of Paris on and off over the past six weeks. “‘Closing the Louvre to prevent tourists from visiting is very important because it’s the most visited museum in the world,’ said Christophe Benoit, 52, a protesting employee of France’s Culture Ministry, although he acknowledged that some visitors were’“very angry.'” – The New York Times

The whereabouts of “Portrait of a Lady” has been one of the art world’s biggest mysteries since the painting was stolen from the Ricci Oddi museum in 1997. – The New York Times