Category: visual

Salary and benefits constitute more than 65% of the Met’s annual budget. In addition to the layoffs, the museum announced today, April 22, that its top executives will be taking salary reductions. That includes 20% pay cuts for director Max Hollein and president and CEO Daniel H. Weiss and 10% for 11 other museum officers. – Hyperallergic

In Germany, it’s a state-by-state process: small museums in Brandenburg are reopening this week, with Thuringia next week, Saxony and Berlin in early May and the rest of the country following. Austria’s museums will open their doors in mid-May, though larger ones such as the Belvedere may wait as late as July. Distancing procedures and other safety measures are being developed with Teutonic thoroughness. – ARTnews

Adrian Searle: “On the page, I am the mildest, most humane and dare I say sympathetic of writers, while the one who is doing the writing is an incoherent monster, if not an absolute swine. But it isn’t always like this. Life would be intolerable if it were. Often protesting that I am only as good as my material, give me an artist I admire and work that I can identify with and it can all be plain sailing.” – The Guardian

“Although its museums have been closed since February, commercial galleries were allowed to remain open. Several have done so, some throughout the crisis, putting South Korea alongside Taiwan and Hong Kong as one of the few places to have an art scene still running, or at least limping, throughout this extraordinary spring.” – The Art Newspaper

Folium, an ink with hues ranging from blue to purple that was used extensively to illuminate manuscripts, was derived from the small fruits of an unassuming weed native to southern Portugal. But folium had fallen out of use, so the recipe had been lost, along with the exact identity of the plant. Researchers have now found both, and conservators will be able to use it when manuscripts need restoration. – Smithsonian Magazine

A quarter of the respondents, nine of 35, said they are facing the permanent closure of their spaces in 2020 if the situation doesn’t improve quickly. An additional five galleries, or 14%, say closure is a possibility. The numbers are in keeping with a far more comprehensive study issued by the Comité Professionnel des Galeries d’Art, a French trade organization, which estimates that one-third of French galleries could shut down before the end of the year because of the steep losses in revenue. – Los Angeles Times

Tim Schneider: “An art market justifiably paranoid about frequent international travel is an art market incentivized to fracture into regional and local interests. Short distances won’t just be advantageous on the other side of this mess because of convenience. They’ll also appeal because of the greater protection they afford. It’s the same calculus driving distributors in so many other industries to consider restructuring from largely global supply chains to ones centered closer to their actual end consumers.” – Artnet

The library is a bit jarring in real life. It’s more like the Space Age tower headquarters of the police, only with hundreds of sunkissed students pouring in, out, and around it. – The Daily Beast

Are blockbusters over? Can galleries survive, and, if they do, will they be more important than museums? And can art-world social media come back from the thirsty ferret tweet? – The Guardian (UK)