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Rep. Joyce Beatty Asks Judge to Make ‘Crystal Clear’ Trump Cannot Demolish Kennedy Center in Wake of Viral Photo

When Getty photographer Brendan Smialowski captured a photo on Wednesday night of Air Force One after landing at Joint Base Andrews, outside Washington, D.C., it showed president Donald Trump in a red baseball cap reading a placard that seems to read “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.” This led to an emergency Thursday filing by Joyce Beatty, Democratic US Representative for Ohio’s Third Congressional District and an ex officio trustee of the Center, asking the federal judge in the ongoing Kennedy Center case “to make crystal clear that its order prohibits demolishing the structure.” On Wednesday, Trump said , “For me to go and fix it and subsidize it, I think the Trump administration should have recognition. If we don’t do that, it’s going to close and get ripped down.” “It goes without saying that demolishing the Kennedy Center’s main building would violate the Court’s preliminary injunction: Closure is both a prelude to and the necessary consequence of demol...
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New Discoveries at Ancient Egyptian Fort Include Ceremonial Burial of a Horse

New archaeological discoveries at Tell Al-Abqain in Beheira are revealing details about life within the ancient Egyptian fortress, the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced on Wednesday. According to the ministry, they also underscore Tell Al-Abqain’s importance as a military stronghold during the New Kingdom period (1570–1069 BCE), when it was established to protect Egypt against incursions by Libyan tribes. The finds, made by an Egyptian archaeological mission, include a residential complex, stelae, and, most intriguingly, the possibly ceremonial burial of a horse. In a statement, Egypt’s minister of tourism and antiquities Sherif Fathy emphasized that the discoveries not only shed light on the fortress’s military function but on the daily lives of its inhabitants. Chief among the discoveries is a large mudbrick housing complex connected to the southern entrance of the fortress. In its northern section excavators found a main street ru...
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Stockholm’s Moderna Museet Appoints Cédric Fauq as Curator of Contemporary International Art

The Moderna Museet in Stockholm named Cédric Fauq as its next curator of contemporary international art, to start in the role on December 1. He is currently the chief curator and head of programs and collections at Capc Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, and he worked previously as a curator at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo and Nottingham Contemporary in England. Credits of Fauq’s in Bordeaux include the group exhibition “Blackground: murmures des mornes,” “Rammellzee Alphabeta Sigma (Side B),” and Trevor Yeung’s “Garden of the Nine Suns.” He was a member of the Turner Prize jury in 2023 and teaches at HEAD in Geneva and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. In a statement, Moderna Museet director Tone Hansen said, “Cédric joins us at a pivotal moment as the museum prepares for its next chapter, where art, public art, architecture, and design come together. His experience, curiosity, and engagement with key artistic questions of our time will be a true asse...
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Hirshhorn Museum to Install ‘Eternally Unswimmable’ Pool by Elmgreen & Dragset in Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

When it reopens in a redesigned state at the end of October, the Hirshhorn Museum’s Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., will be home to a curious new work by the Berlin-based Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset—in the form of a vacant swimming pool. “Upended, empty, and eternally unswimmable, the 28-foot-tall sculpture emblematizes the artists’ mastery of displacement—excerpting familiar objects from people’s surroundings and presenting them as new and strange,” reads a press release announcing the museum’s new acquisition. The outdoor sculpture—“cast in stainless steel with a lacquered cyan interior, and furnished with a diving board, ladder, and lights”—is titled Eight and counts as the fourth such swimming pool in a series that Elmgreen & Dragset has installed in other locations including Miami and New York. The Hirshhorn has deemed it “a crowning installation” for its Sculpture Garden, which is scheduled to reopen October 31 after a ...
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Sharif Bey Wins Inaugural Spector Craft Prize

The newly launched Spector Craft Prize has announced its inaugural winner: Sharif Bey, an artist and educator based in Syracuse, New York. The Spector Craft Prize was established last year by the Spector Family Foundation to “reinforce American craft as a vital and enduring art form while creating new pathways for artists at every stage of their careers,” according to a release. It is being awarded in collaboration with Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Arkansas. Curator and craft scholar Glenn Adamson served as an adviser on the prize. “It is encouraging that there is now a prestigious award dedicated to the impact of American craft, and I am honored to be [the] inaugural winner of the Spector Craft Prize,” Bey told ARTnews by email. “While contemporary craft is not always distinct from the evocative works we encounter in the world of contemporary art, innovative works grounded in material histories, as well as traditions of making and using objects, can ...
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Plaintiffs in Ongoing Kennedy Center Lawsuit Call for Leadership to Step Aside or for Judge to Appoint Receivership

The group of eight preservation groups that currently have a lawsuit pending to prevent changes at the Kennedy Center without congressional approval have called for the institution’s leadership to step aside or for the court to take the drastic step of putting the cultural organization into receivership, citing the leadership’s fiduciary duty to steward the Center. The eight plaintiffs are the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, the DC Preservation League, the Docomomo US, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Society of Architectural Historians, and the Cultural Landscape Foundation. (Their legal suit is separate from the one filed by Representative Joyce Beatty, who is a Kennedy Center trustee.) A press release announcing these plans characterized the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees as “fiduciaries, not owners.” In a joint statement, the plaintiffs...
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A New Digital Platform, Documenting the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi and Its Masterpieces by Giotto and Cimabue, Has Launched

Today, in honor of the 800th anniversary of Saint Francis of Assisi’s death, a new digital platform dedicated to the eponymous basilica was launched by Haltadefinizione, part of the Gruppo Panini Cultura, in collaboration with the General Custody of the Sacred Convent of Saint Francis. The platform, called Preserving Assisi , is free to access and digitally preserves the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi’s architecture, as well as its masterpieces by Giotto, Cimabue, Simone Martini, and Pietro Lorenzetti. It was created by a team of specialists who mapped the Basilica’s interior and exterior spaces and its major decorative schemes using ultra-high-resolution gigapixel photography and three-dimensional surveys. This allows users to virtually explore the Basilica, while also establishing a detailed record of its architecture, paintings, and state of conservation that will be used to support research, documentation, monitoring, and conservation over time a...
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