Category: visual

The highest paid executive in the most recent financial year, according to tax filings, was chief investment officer Lauren Meserve, whose total compensation package was worth $1.6 million, up 8.3 percent from 2017–18, when she made $1.47 million. The next best-paid exec is CEO Daniel Weiss, whose total pay package was worth $1.25 million in 2018–19, a 25 percent increase over the previous year, when he made $1 million. – Artnet

The Albertina Modern — housed in the newly-renovated 1868 Künstlerhaus on the Ringstrasse, the site of the Nazis’ notorious 1939 “Degenerate Art” exhibit — will focus on postwar Austrian art and its connections with modernism in other countries. (Of course, no one is actually allowed to go see it just now.) – The New York Times

TEFAF, held in the Dutch city of Maastricht and the world’s leading fair for art and antiques, opened last Saturday and closed Wednesday evening (four days early), just hours after an exhibitor was reported to have tested positive for COVID-19. – ARTnews

“Four North American museums” — the National Gallery of Canada, Seattle Art Museum, Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, and National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC — “have canceled plans to host a major touring exhibition of masterworks from Liechtenstein’s princely collections out of apparent concern over the royal family’s wartime … use of forced labour.” – The Art Newspaper

“The National Gallery of Art has postponed its much-anticipated exhibition A Superb Baroque: Art in Genoa, 1600–1750 because of the global coronavirus crisis.” The nationwide lockdown in Italy means that the more than 100 works in the show can’t be shipped from museums in Genoa and Rome. – The Washington Post

In Poland and other countries ruled by nationalist governments, far-right political parties are increasingly attempting to twist history to fit into their own narratives. And they’re going after cultural and educational institutions to do it. When the past doesn’t fit these governments’ political purposes, it has no place being remembered.  – HuffPost

Tate—a network of four museums including Tate Modern, which ranked as Britain’s top tourist attraction, with 5.9 million visitors in 2018—announced it would cut its carbon footprint by at least 10 percent by 2023. “Large public buildings, attracting millions of visitors from the U.K. and overseas, require energy,” reads a declaration issued in July, which saw the highest-ever temperature recorded in the U.K. and record-setting heat across Europe. “We see caring for and sharing a national art collection as a public good, but it also consumes resources. . . . That’s why we pledge to make our long-term commitment ambitious in scope. We will interrogate our systems, our values, and our programs, and look for ways to become more adaptive and responsible.” – ARTnews

The work, a photograph of a figure in a rock, had disappeared, “loaned out to curator Rebecca Ballenger for a traveling exhibition from 1983 to 1984, but allegedly not returned. A Georgia man, Edward Meringolo, allegedly bought the work from Ballenger last year before consigning it to Sotheby’s, according to court papers.” – The New York Post

“Four security guards employed at Dresden’s Royal Palace are under investigation over their alleged involvement in a huge theft of 18th-century jewellery, according to German prosecutors. Investigators have long suspected that the heist, the biggest since the Second World War, was carried out with accomplices working inside the museum.” – The Guardian

A nest built on top of a painting is probably younger than the painting, but a nest covered over with pigment is probably older than the painting. At one site, ancient people had painted a figure over the remains of one nest, and some time later, wasps built two more mud nests atop the painting. Radiocarbon dating those nests suggested that the painting is 11,300 to 13,000 years old. – Ars Technica