COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Museums in Crisis
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York—one of the world’s great museums—could be looking at a deficit of nearly $40 million. A former chairman of the prints department calls it “a great institution in decline.” [The New York Times]
The director of the Yale Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, will step down. [Yale News]
After an attack by a man thrashing a machete, the Louvre Museum in Paris has reopened.[France 24]
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is investigating the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. [The Art Newspaper]
Flooding damaged a railroad museum in Carson City, Nevada. [Nevada Appeal]
Super Bowl LI
Diplo, Big Sean, and Busta Rhymes performed at a party at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, where the Super Bowl was held this weekend. [Culture Map Houston]
And yet, even with the extra attention, Houston’s art institutions are mostly getting ignored. [Houston Chronicle]
The High Museum in Atlanta, home of the Falcons, took to Twitter to taunt the MFA Boston, the art institution in the home city of their opponents, the New England Patriots. Hilarity ensued! [Artnet News]
LACMA got into the sporting feeling as well, tweeting two paintings that portray patriots and falcons. [Twitter]
L.A. Goes to London
Los Angeles artist Alex Israel has once again teamed up with Los Angeles writer Bret Easton Ellis, this time for a show at one of Gagosian Gallery’s spaces in London. They were joined by Hans Ulrich Obrist for a memorable photo. [Instagram]
And Ellis said something controversial during the show, as he is wont to do: “I didn’t vote Trump, I’m just saying the hysteria is bothering me a lot more than the reality of what he’s doing.” [Irish Examiner]
Across the Nation
Lawmakers in Utah are considering making Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) the official state work of art. [KSL]
$100,000 will be distributed to arts organizations in Anchorage, Alaska. [KTUU]
The Clay Art Center in Port Chester, New York, has turned 60. [Connecticut Post]
There’s a new bar-slash-gallery in Los Angeles’s Koreatown. [LA Weekly]
Market Watch
A look the political work at the India Art Fair. [The Seattle Times]
How does one sell experiential works of art? [Art Market Monitor]
Bonus
Jason Farago on the Alfred Sisley show at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. [The New York Times]
A look at the last show at Chelsea’s Murray Guy, which closed Saturday after 18 years. [Contemporary Art Daily]