PIXABAY
Deaccessioning
La Salle University’s decision to sell 46 artworks from its museum’s collection to finance various academic initiatives has been criticized by several arts groups, but the president of the Philadelphia institution, Colleen Hanycz, is standing behind the decision. “No one likes to sell art,” she told Philadelphia magazine. “But if there is a higher purpose to better serve the students that we serve, we will.” The school hopes to raise in the realm of $5 million to $7 million through the sales. The works being parted with are by Ingres, Alex Katz, and others. [Philadelphia]
Raids
According to the New York Times, “investigators raided the office and the Manhattan home of the billionaire Michael H. Steinhardt on Friday afternoon, carrying off several ancient works that prosecutors say were looted from Greece and Italy.” Steinhardt, along with his wife, Judy, have been on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list since 1999, and reportedly have a private zoo in Bedford, New York. [The New York Times]
Politics
How have artists been reacting to the first year of the Trump administration? The Art Newspaper took a look. Fred Tomaselli told the paper that he “consumed record amounts of news through print, radio, internet, TV, late-night comedy and beyond. It’s a sickness and it’s making me less productive. Trump is the parasite that won’t stop sucking on my brain stem.” [The Art Newspaper]
Museum Action
Next week, the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at University of California, Davis will open a Wayne Thiebaud show, an event that Sactown Magazine has seized on as an opportunity to profile the famed painter, who is now 97. “Think how audacious you need to be to pick up a brush when you’ve got Rembrandt and Vermeer staring you in the face with their accomplishments,” he says. “That’s awful. All you want to do is contend with it, be part of it, however small.” [Sactown Macagaine]
Meanwhile, the Cleveland Museum of Art has a Dana Schutz show on tap for later this month, the Plain Dealer notes. “The exhibition highlights a compelling new group of paintings, and it celebrates an artist with deep ties to Cleveland,” William Griswold, the museum’s director said. (Schutz graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2000.) [The Plain Dealer]
Big news out of Cincinnati: WCPO shares word that the Taft Museum of Art has received a $5 million donation from the late philanthropist Sallie Robinson Wadsworth that will endow its chief curator position, which is now held by Lynne D. Ambrosini. [WCPO]
And the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Autry Museum of the American West, which is located in Los Angeles, have “entered a long-term partnership in which they will pool curatorial resources, create joint programming and share their art collections for exhibitions,” the Los Angeles Times reports. [Los Angeles Times]
Adorable Animals
This, too, is museum news, but it is so special that it requires its own category. The Boston Globe: “Riley, a Weimaraner puppy, was recently acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts on a volunteer basis to detect insects and other pests that might be hiding on existing or incoming collections at the gallery.” [Boston Globe]
Spot Paintings
The New York Times has a bit more on the upcoming show we mentioned yesterday morning of new Damien Hirst spot paintings, at Houghton House in Norfolk in England. “I originally wanted the Spots to look like they were painted by a human trying to paint like a machine,” Hirst said in a statement. The new show, he continued, is “going back to the human element, so instead you have the fallibility of the human hand in the drips and inconsistencies.” [The New York Times]
Flashback! Back in 2011, when Hirst staged shows of spot paintings at all 11 Gagosian galleries (crazy there were only 11 back then)—the artist told the Times in a comprehensive article on the series, “They are the last of my work to catch on.” [The New York Times]
The Talent
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum has tapped Mali Wu and Francesco Manacorda to be co-curators of the 11th Taipei Biennial in 2018. [Press Release/Taipei Fine Arts Museum]
The Rockport Center for the Arts in Texas, about 30 miles northeast of Corpus Christi, has named Elena Rodriguez to be its curator of exhibitions, Artforum reports. [Artforum]