COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Suzanne Weaver, interim director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami, steps down after less than five months. [The Art Newspaper]
“Barely a month in office, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has shelved a plan to turn the former Franklin School downtown into a contemporary art museum and has begun seeking other companies interested in redeveloping the building.” Local art collector Dani Levinas, who had proposed the project, which was approved by the previous mayor, is not pleased. [The Washington Post]
“Area woman not good enough artist to justify eccentricities.” [The Onion]
“Brittny Gastineau’s ex boyfriend”—aka the street artist Retna—“was hauled off in cuffs while doing his best Reese Witherspoon impression … after a fight with a photographer ended with a blast of pepper spray…” [TMZ]
On photographs of conflict zones. [The London Review of Books]
The Freer Gallery of Art, part of the Smithsonian, will close until the summer of 2017 for renovations. [The New York Times]
At the end of the 1970s, artist Ed Ruscha left an artwork – a fake rock – somewhere in the vast Mojave desert. French artist Pierre Bismuth has spent a decade trying to find it with the help of a private detective and a film crew. [The Guardian]
Italian police have seized more than 2,000 ancient artifacts in a nationwide sweep aimed at dissembling a criminal gang that had been operating throughout southern Italy and dealing in stolen archaeological treasures. [Reuters]