COURTESY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
Notre-Dame
After the heartbreaking fire at the Notre-Dame Cathedral, the French collector François Pinault and his son François-Henri Pinault pledged to put €100 million (about $113 million) toward rebuilding the Gothic structure. [ARTnews]
Collector Bernard Arnault pledged €200 million (around $226 million) to the same cause. [ARTnews]
Large paintings inside the cathedral, which “are believed to have sustained some smoke damage but are largely intact,” will be moved to the Louvre, likely on Friday. [The Guardian]
History
The New York Review of Books surveys Vincent van Gogh’s years in England. “Van Gogh’s spells living in South London, in the Thames-side suburb of Isleworth, and in Kent, at the Channel port of Ramsgate, belong to his prehistory as an artist. With a job secured through family connections, he came to work for the London branch of the leading print-dealers Goupil and Co., and stayed on after the firm fired him, to teach in small schools.” [The New York Review of Books]
“A new task force in France has been given a broader mandate to search for and return artwork that had been looted or sold under duress during the Nazi occupation, after years of criticism that its restitution efforts were not proactive enough.” [The New York Times]
The Washington Post likes “Empresses of China’s Forbidden City, 1644–1912” at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, a momentous exhibition that is the fruit of a collaboration with Beijing’s Palace Museum. “It’s a serious undertaking at every level: diplomatic, financial, scholarly, and artistic,” with objects including “large-scale portraits, painted screens, silk robes, festive headdresses, handscrolls, fans, hair ornaments, bracelets, furniture, and a heavy Buddhist stupa made from gold and silver.” [The Washington Post]
Issues
“A Michigan gallery”—Park West—“that has had a long and lucrative relationship with the pop artist Peter Max sued his studio on Monday, alleging breach of contract and misconduct in the sale of ‘several thousand works of art by Max for several million dollars.’” [The New York Times]
Check out the “obsessive collection of seminal fashion magazines” belonging to New Yorker photography critic Vince Aletti. [The New Yorker]
The Guardian reports on the homeless population living near New York’s glitzy new Hudson Yards. [The Guardian]
Misc.
See a survey of large art at Coachella in California: “Coachella’s full name is the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival for a reason: Visual art has, from the beginning, been a major part of the event.” [The New York Times]
Pitchfork likes the new album by Joshua Abrams/Natural Information Society, a Chicago-based group whose exploratory sound (jazz etc.) owes in part to Lisa Alvarado, an artist on the roster of Bridget Donahue gallery in New York. [Pitchfork]
See an amazing photo essay about a woman who disguises herself as a man to watch soccer matches in public in Iran. [The Guardian]