Category: visual

“The successful candidate will be tasked with overseeing the museum’s vast collection of indigenous American artifacts, including the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of more than 116 objects hailing from 50 different Native American cultures from the 2nd century to the early 20th century,” and will oversee expanded programming on indigenous work. – Artnet

The flames aren’t raging only in Brazil: there have been major wildfires in lowland Bolivia for weeks, and they have damaged and destroyed ancient paintings that date back as for as 1500 BC in and around the town of Roboré in the Santa Cruz region. – Artnet

The award-winning French architect Jean Nouvel as well as historians and town planners wrote an open letter to Le Monde saying the €600m (£540m) renovation plan to create a glass structure – with tens of thousands of square metres of shops, walkways, split-levels and 105 escalators – was a “serious urban error” that would deform the historic building, fail Parisians and befuddle travellers. – The Guardian

His grandparents were Iraqi Jews who fled Baghdad in 1941, and much of his work is inspired by their experiences. He’s most famous for his replica, placed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2018, of an Assyrian lamassu (a winged bull with a human head) that was destroyed by ISIS. – The Dallas Morning News

“Many of the artifacts that will be on display in the Humboldt Forum, a huge new museum under construction in a rebuilt Berlin palace, had for years been stored in less-than-ideal conditions. [A] report featured searing depictions of flooded storage rooms and depots choked with toxic dust.” – The New York Times

The exhibition at La Villette in northeastern Paris features the largest collection of artifacts connected with the young pharaoh ever to leave Cairo. More than 1.3 million people have attended the show since its March 23 opening, and it has been extended by a week, to September 22, to meet demand. – Yahoo! (AFP)

With the permission of the Flood Protection Authority and funding from the Walmart Corp., the artist embarked on the first 400 feet of a historical mural that will depict major moments in New Orleans’ three centuries. If all goes as planned, the painting could eventually stretch a full mile. – NOLA.com

Georg Friedrich Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia — the current head of the Hohenzollern family, which ruled in Berlin for two centuries, until Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated at the end of World War I — “says that his family has, since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, insisted on getting back what it had been granted in the immediate post-WWI agreement. At stake are the right to reside at Cecilienhof [palace in Berlin] and many other properties, as well as the restitution of thousands of paintings, sculptures, furniture, books and coins.” (The German public is not amused.) – Yahoo! (AFP)

“Our intention is to inaugurate a part of the reconstructed palace in 2022 with expositions that let us celebrate the bicentennial of Brazil’s independence,” said an official. And while early reports last year said that 90% of the museum’s collection had been lost in the fire, that figure turns out to be only 46%. – Artnet

“In August 2015, the then Italian culture minister, Dario Franceschini, announced the first 20 ‘super directors’ of national museums, granting those institutions fiscal autonomy for the first time and, in theory at least, far greater managerial independence.” With many of those directors’ initial contracts running out, and with the government possibly undoing the reforms, did they make a difference? Politically, probably not; practically, yes, in some ways. – Apollo