Category: visual

“[It’s] the greatest art scam in Canadian history,” says art dealer Don Robinson, who suffered a stroke because of the stress he endured in his campaign against a market awash with forgeries. “The more you dive into a pool of garbage, the more you get to know the garbage within it,” says Ritchie Sinclair, Norval Morrisseau’s former assistant and another key figure in exposing the scandal. – The Art Newspaper

While overall crime in the city fell in March compared with a year earlier, commercial and residential burglaries rose 26% to 942, according to a New York City Police report. The sometimes elaborate security systems put in place could soon be put to the test. – Bloomberg

“Projecting a shortfall in revenue of at least $7 million by the end of this fiscal year, New York City’s Whitney Museum has laid off 76 staff members. In an email sent Thursday afternoon, museum director Adam Weinberg told staff that all of the affected employees have been at the Whitney for two years or less and would receive five to six weeks’ pay dating from the museum’s closure.” – Hyperallergic

Jerry Saltz: “Even an art-lover lifer like me has to admit much of the art world infrastructure feels like it’s already in the balance. Some of it may be gone even now. In three months, or six months, or — God forbid — 12 or 18 (there has never been a vaccine for a coronavirus)? There will be galleries on the other side of this chasm, and museums, and artists making work, of course. But I worry that such a sundering will only exacerbate the inequalities that more and more dominate this universe, with megagalleries and art stars surviving and the gap between them and everyone else only widening, rendering the scrappier artists and galleries something close to invisible.” – New York Magazine

The fact that all 28 Van Gogh paintings, from six separate thefts, were eventually recovered should offer hope that The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring will eventually return to its home in Groningen. – The Art Newspaper

Why? “He recommends everyone drawing with open eyes. ‘I would suggest they really look hard at something and think about what they are really seeing.'” – The Guardian (UK)

That’s right, it’s not a portrait: It’s a doortrait. – The Guardian (UK)

And now it wants to win over its critics by being honest about how many of its artifacts had tainted histories – or were entirely fake. – The New York Times

Via this year’s deeply reimagined Sydney Biennale, now called NIRIN: “The impact of COVID-19 is both a significant challenge and a threshold for new beginnings. An international art world that has called persistently for radical socioeconomic change is now faced with just that in large measure, albeit in ways that it is not in a position to readily absorb.” – Hyperallergic

The email was grim, and employees who had done all of the prep work for April tours aren’t being paid for that work. On the other side of things for educators – though not for 76 other staff members who were laid off – “MoMA’s email to educators came only days before New York City’s Whitney Museum sent its own freelance education staff a hopeful message: it hopes to launch a new online teaching initiative that could keep them employed.” – Hyperallergic