COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
News
Martin Puryear will represent the United States at the 2019 Venice Biennale, a reliable source has told ARTnews. A rep for the U.S. Department of State, which is involved in picking artists to show in the U.S. pavilion, said that “the grant is still in process and we expect to be able to announce the recipient organization and featured artist soon. Until the grant is finalized, no selection of an artist can be made.” [ARTnews]
An investigation by German officials into the financial management of Documenta 14, which was staged in Kassel, Germany, and Athens last year, has been dropped. The exhibition reportedly had a budget shortfall of more than $6 million. [The Art Newspaper]
Museums
The British Museum returned eight objects taken from the site of the Sumerian city of Girsu to Iraqi officials. The pieces, which will be displayed at the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad, range from 2,000 to 5,000 years old. [The New York Times]
CBS Sunday Morning reported on the life and career of Georg Baselitz, who currently has a retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.Asked about his practice of painting upside-down works, Baselitz said, “There’s some sort of irritation, the view of them, and that’s intentional. When you’re irritated, you pay closer attention.” [CBS News]
In September,the Art Gallery of Ontario will lend a Peter Paul Rubens painting, The Massacre of the Innocents, to the Rubenshuis, the artist’s onetime home and studio in Antwerp. The work’s exhibition there will coincide with the Antwerp Baroque fair, and the piece will remain on view in the Belgian city until April 2019. [The Art Newspaper]
Market
Dealer Steve Lazarides will put on a selling exhibition of work by the storied musician and artist Rammellzee in London this fall. [Artnet News]
Design
Take a look at the wooden barn—and surrounding farm—where London-based architectural firm Feilden Fowles is headquartered. There are pigs. [The Guardian]
Read about how Zaryadye Park, the first new green space to open in Moscow in 50 years, came to be. Architect Elizabeth Diller, who worked on the project, said, “Cities actually have the most opportunity to change the lives of citizens. I think one has to think beyond the regimes.” [The New York Times]
Behold some of the artful maps that will be featured in the North American Cartographic Information Society’s 2018 Atlas of Design, a book of new and noteworthy cartography that has been released by the nonprofit every two years since 2012. [Atlas Obscura]