COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
A self-portrait by Van Dyck that was long thought to be a copy has been reconfirmed as original work, and currently hangs in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. It was lent to the museum by a US collector based on the West Coast. [The Art Newspaper]
Perm-36 museum, the only Russian museum of Stalin-era political oppression and a candidate to become a Unesco World Heritage Site, said in a statement on their website on March 2 that they are closing the institution. This announcement comes after a yearlong battle between the museum and regional authorities. [The Art Newspaper]
Having received a £300,000 government grant from the UK Department for Culture, Media, and Sport’s Wolfson Museum and Galleries Improvement Fund, the Liverpool World Museum plans to expand its ancient Egyptian galleries to include a “mummy room.” They will also be displaying an animated Book of the Dead, and will restore a gallery space that will host 12 mummies, double the number on view at present. [The Art Newspaper]
This year’s Venice Biennale will feature a record number of Australian artists (40). Biennale artistic director Okwui Enwezor picked seven Australians for his exhibition, “All the World’s Futures” — seven more than the last two years, which didn’t include any Australians in the central exhibitions. [The Art Newspaper]
3D pavement illustrations are all the rage at the Dubai Canvas Festival, which runs from March 1-7. [Al Arabiya]
Art historian and professor Andrew Lear is launching a series of tours in April that reclaim the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s gay history. [The Daily Beast]
NYMag’s art critic Jerry Saltz has been suspended from Facebook for posting “pornographic images” of art. [The New York Times]
The red pigments in Vincent van Gogh’s paintings have been turning white, baffling everyone until now. Belgian researchers have finally identified a rare lead mineral in his paint as the culprit. [Hyperallergic]