Category: visual

In an escalation of what has reportedly been a long feud, staffers of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities “arrived at their offices in Southeast before the holiday weekend to find that the badges that grant them access to the agency’s art collection no longer worked.” The locks had been changed on the order of the office of Mayor Muriel Bowser, and access was not restored until the middle of the following week. – Washington City Paper

Known to some as the “Earlier Mona Lisa,” the painting has spent much of the past five decades hidden in a Swiss bank vault. Acquired by a secretive consortium in 2008, the painting has since been shown in a number of galleries, most notably in Singapore in 2014 and Shanghai two years later. – CNN

“But what’s the purpose of Central Park? What’s the purpose of the High Line? What’s the purpose? The whole point of a recreation space – what’s precious – is that it doesn’t tell you what you’re supposed to do. So it’s a different form of public space where you can do what you want.” – dezeen

Sources say that Michael Kors, Vera Wang and the Academy of Art University were all slated to show their collections at the sleek, $475 million venue but have pulled out. Rag & Bone publicly nixed the space, which opened in April, right after news broke of Ross’ Aug. 9 Trump fundraiser in the Hamptons. – New York Post

“I was being erased from the history of Southern California art and it really upset me,” says the artist (who now lives in New Mexico). But the launch of the Pacific Standard Time series of exhibitions in 2011 helped resurface some of her early work. “It began the process of my larger body of work emerging from the shadow of ‘The Dinner Party.’” – Los Angeles Times

Nobody was  injured and the Art Museum says no artworks were damaged. 6 chairs and a table were lost. It says engineers examined the third floor room and the rest of the Mark Building and found no structural safety issues. – KXL

Sometimes, but not always, because Instagram is filled with artists and designers. One architect recalls something she learned in the early days of the app. “‘You came, you saw, you stood there, you took your picture. … That was my first realization how status can be brought through a photograph.’ It is like bagging a seven-point Instagram buck.” – The New York Times

In Bradford, “a city that became home to so many German Jews in the 19th century that the warehouse district they created is still called Little Germany,” the 2011 census showed fewer than 300 Jewish residents left. The photographer is a single mother who can’t afford her own camera, but her documents of the final synagogue, which has an unusual Moorish style, are going up as an exhibit. “‘There are fewer and fewer Jewish people left,’ she says. ‘It’s this declining population and disappearing culture that I wanted to document.'” – The Guardian (UK)

Though the 6-year-old French boy still can’t speak or move a month after the trauma, he’s responding to his family by smiling and possibly, they say, laughing. “The family has raised more than $83,000 so far to help his recuperation. He was visiting London with his family and was on the museum’s 10th-floor viewing platform when he was thrown off, falling around 100 feet and landing on a fifth-floor roof.” – The New York Times

But … they do. The theme: Flamin’ Haute. Why, though? “To be a brand in 2019 isn’t to be just a brand. Everything, our individual selves included, is now so online. Brands must be personas, asserting themselves on every social media platform for clout and relevance, and brands must stand out through experiences and ‘activations,’ like hosting a fashion show or providing themed makeovers. The reward is exposure and attention as the economy of influencers churns on.” – Vice