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News
Museum directors in France, Germany, Italy, Austria, and Poland talk about their strategies to reopen their museums after they were shuttered temporarily by the pandemic. [The Art Newspaper]
Kelly Crow has a deep dive into how the world’s top auction houses have shifted their tactics to keep selling millions worth of art during a pandemic. [The Wall Street Journal]
The musician Grimes will have her first art exhibitions, online beginning today, through Gallery Platform Los Angeles and Maccarone. One work involves a buyer purchases a percentage of her soul. [Bloomberg]
Related Articles
Galleries across the country are struggling to pay their rent because of the pandemic. Though some have tried to negotiate with their landlords, they may still be forced to close their doors permanently. [ARTnews]
Artists
As part of the paper’s ongoing series “The Big Ideas: Why Does Art Matter?,” Judy Chicago ponders what art has to do with the coronavirus. She writes, “Obviously, there is a great deal of art that doesn’t matter.” [The New York Times]
Ai Weiwei has printed 10,000 face masks, which will be sold on eBay to benefit various humanitarian charities, including the Human Rights Watch and Refugees International. [The Guardian]
The Light and Space artist Peter Alexander, who is best known for his winsome sculptures that enlisted industrial materials toward transcendent means, has died at 81. [ARTnews]
Nancy Stark Smith, who was one of the founders of the artful and athletic dance movement called contact improvisation, has died at 68. [The New York Times]
Misc.
Nina Siegal spoke with Octave Durham, who stole two van Gogh paintings in 2002, about what one does with a stolen painting. He called the recent Singer Laren Museum theft of a van Gogh “the easiest art heist I’ve ever seen.” [The New York Times]
The Japanese press has reportedly accused the top art collector Yusaku Maezawa of tax evasion. He responded on Twitter, ““I will not run or hide, and I will spare no effort in paying my taxes if you explain how they should be handled.” [Artnet News]