Should We Bother Restoring Old Castles And Palaces?
Castles, in particular, were instruments of war and occupying or levelling them was the goal of invading armies. In many cases, the castles were then taken over by the victors and re-purposed, but many were dismantled, particularly when the structure…
This Museum Handles One Of The World’s Touchiest Subjects
“How do you memorialize a holocaust that even now, seven decades after it took place, may still not be entirely safe to talk about?” India’s Partition Museum, which opened in 2017 in Amritsar, in Punjab state and hard by the border with Pakistan, uses documents, photographs, and eyewitness testimony — carefully — to do the […]
How To Think About SFMoMA Selling A Rothko To Fund Better Collection Diversity?
Charles Desmarais: “SFMOMA’s new collection initiative is hardly in the vanguard of such efforts, but it may keep the museum from falling further behind. And we, the public to whom the museum owes a more holistic, and thus more accurate, pictur…
Thomas Krens Says Museums Should Be More Like Theme Parks (Seriously)
In a speech in North Adams, Mass., which he wants to transform into “the number one cultural destination in the country,” the man who tried to plant Guggenheims all over the globe argued that museums should become experience destinations with “a for-profit model based on private investment; integrated use of technology like digital modeling and […]
Europe’s Famous Serial Art Thief Has Been At It Again
“Stéphane Breitwieser, the serial art thief who raided museums around France, Switzerland, Germany and other countries on the continent from 2004 to 2011, has been arrested again in his native region of Alsace. He had been under surveillance sin…
Looking At Nudes In The #MeToo Era
Museums and galleries – especially those representing a canonical European art tradition – burst with images of women disrobed and displayed for the delectation of men. Of course, there is nothing new about recognising the extent to which the spectacularisation of the female body has been part of a structure of oppression of women by […]
Countries File Claims Against UK Museums For Return Of Artifacts
A series of high-profile restitution claims have been received by institutions including the British Museum and the Natural History Museum in recent months. They include a call from the government of Gibraltar for the return of Neanderthal remains, including the first adult skull to be discovered by scientists, and a request from Chile for the repatriation of […]
