To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.
The Headlines
A METICULOUS COPY OF MICHELANGELO’S STATUE OF DAVID will alight at the Dubai Expo 2021 in October, the AFP reports. Manufactured via 3D printing, the piece was commissioned by the Italian government to represent the country at the event. A firm called Hexagon Italia handled the job. “It’s a much more accurate reproduction than those made in the past, including the casts,” its marketing chief told the news agency. In other Michelangelo news (though this is stretching the definition of news a bit), the Vatican Museums have made the Belvedere Torso (which the Old Master loved) the focus of the first episode of a new video series looking at the institution’s “secrets, little-known stories, and curiosities,” the AFP reports elsewhere. The aim is reportedly to try to get some love for the 2,000-year-old Greek marble, which many miss while en route to the Sistine Chapel.
Related Articles
RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA HAS JOINED MEGA-GALLERY DAVID ZWIRNER, and will serve up one of his storied pad thai pieces in a group show at Zwirner’s Hong Kong location next month, Ocula reports. A solo show is scheduled there for 2022. Zwirner said it does not have an exclusive deal with the artist. Last year, Tiravanija joined the Gladstone Gallery when his longtime New York dealer, Gavin Brown, became a partner there after shuttering his gallery.
The Digest
An unnamed ship that capsized off the coast of Libya in 2015, killing more than 1,000 migrants, will become a human rights monument in Sicily. The Swiss artist Christoph Büchel displayed it at the 2019 Venice Biennale with the title Barca Nostra—Our Ship. [The Guardian]
Artists in Cuba are not optimistic that Miguel Díaz-Canel becoming the country’s leader will result in greater freedom of expression. “Nothing has changed nor does there seem to be a will for change within the new leadership,” the artist Julio Llopiz Casal said. [The Art Newspaper]
Architect John Rattenbury, who worked for Frank Lloyd Wright on projects like the Guggenheim Museum in New York, has died at 93. When Rattenbury was 6, his father was murdered in a notorious case that gripped England. [The Telegraph]
Toronto police are on the hunt for three suspects who made off with four pieces from a local gallery. The works are estimated to be worth some $200,000. [CP24]
Artist Azikiwe Mohammed’s “visual universe” is “a realm devoted to everyday heroes and small acts of care,” Siddhartha Mitter writes in a profile. “Home has always been a difficult idea for Black and brown folk,” said the artist, who has a show at the Yeh Art Gallery at St. John’s University in Queens. “I just want better things for our people.” [The New York Times]
Paris Hilton has really gotten into NFTs. Here’s a look at what she’s up to. [Jezebel]
The Kicker
SCIENTISTS AT PURDUE UNIVERSITY IN INDIANA have developed paint that they are billing as the “whitest on record,” according to the Art Newspaper. (In photographs, it does look pretty darn white, it must be said.) It apparently reflects 98 percent of light, and could be useful in cooling buildings. Speaking of extreme colors, some may recall that artist Anish Kapoor signed a deal to get exclusive access to what is said to be the blackest black in the world, VantaBlack. Buckle your seatbelts. Kapoor is planning to unveil work made with that secret sauce during the Venice Biennale next year. [The Art Newspaper]
Thank you for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.