METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.
Government
Commerce Secretary and noted Magritte collector Wilbur Ross, who is on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list, is scheduled to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in Washington, D.C., today, to answer questions about his attempt to add a citizenship question to the upcoming census. Federal judges have blocked the move. [NPR]
Vanessa H. Larson and Victoria Stapley-Brown totaled the costs of the recent U.S. government shutdown, in terms of revenue, attendance numbers, and more. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., “lost an estimated $1.2 million in gross revenue from its shops, restaurants, and ice rink,” according to its spokesperson. [The Art Newspaper]
Brian Boucher looked at the state of the arts community in Venezuela as turmoil continues to grip the country. [Artnet News]
Public Art
Frieze’s planned show at Rockefeller Center in New York, which is being curated by Noguchi Museum director Brett Littman, includes pieces by Ibrahim Mahama, Goshka Macuga, Walter De Maria, and more. It opens April 25. [The New York Times]
Artists
Annie Leibovitz shot photos of presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke for a cover story in the new Vanity Fair. In the article, O’Rourke discussed his admiration for musician Ian MacKaye, of Minor Threat, Fugazi, and Dischord. [Vanity Fair]
Can you differentiate between the writing of O’Rourke and Karl Ove Knausgaard? A 14-question quiz offers precisely that challenge. [The Cut]
Austin Lee spoke about his new painting show at Jeffrey Deitch in New York with Scott Indrisek. Lee’s been conceiving his paintings by drawing in a V.R. environment, wearing a headset. He’ll work for “four or five hours at a time,” he said. “I’ll take it off and feel crazy. I really like it—but it does make me nauseous.” [Garage]
Ian Cheng, who was just tapped for this year’s Venice Biennale, talked with Charlotte Burns for her In Other Words podcast. [In Other Words]
Pigcasso, who has appeared in these pages before, got the profile treatment, revealing that the pig artist’s paintings can go for almost $4,000—proceeds go to charity. [KXAN]
David Lynch is currently the subject of a retrospective at the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, the Netherlands. “I love to work,” the artist and director said. [The New York Times]
Flashback: Alex Greenberger interviewed Lynch for ARTnews last year. [ARTnews]
Theater director Joe Mantello and painter Stanley Whitney sat down to discuss their work. “What I envy about your work is that you always know when you’re looking at a Stanley Whitney painting,” Mantello said. [T: The New York Times Style Magazine]
Flashback: Here’s Aruna D’Souza’s profile of Whitney from the Summer 2017 issue of ARTnews. [ARTnews]
The Talent
El Museo del Barrio in New York has hired Rodrigo Moura as its chief curator. He was most recently associate curator of Brazilian art at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo. [ARTnews]
The winners of Artadia’s annual Los Angeles awards are Carmen Argote, Ron Athey, and Diedrick Brackens. The first two will take home $10,000 each, and the latter $25,000 through the inaugural Marciano Artadia Award. [ARTnews]
Museum Openings
On Sunday, the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson will show a Willem de Kooning painting that was stolen from its collection in 1985 and rediscovered by a New Mexico antiques dealer in 2017. Next month, it will head to the Getty Center in Los Angeles for extensive restoration work. [The New York Times]
Brad Pitt visited Thomas Houseago’s opening at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris in “an all-black ensemble of trousers, a fluffy jumper and a tailored coat . . . a white T-shirt underneath.” [Daily Mail]
And More
Here’s a look at the growing art collection of former football linebacker Keith Rivers, which includes pieces by Kerry James Marshall, Jon Rafman, Barbara Kruger, and Kara Walker. [The New York Times]
After a long outage, Instagram and Facebook appear to be working again. [Boston Globe]