Hello. Since the last time we spoke, I have:
Finished Alba de Céspedes’s There’s No Turning Back and read Natalia Ginzburg’s The Dry Heart.
Saw the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Moby-Dick, which featured some of the best (read: used selectively and in moderation) video effects in a performance I’d seen in a while. The set design was also something to behold, and I found the overall narrative structure compelling and comprehensive. The final show on Saturday is sold out but you can try to go last minute on Tuesday.
Saw Cooper Hewitt’s current exhibit, the Smithsonian’s Design Triennial, Making Home.
Now, the news—a shorter roundup this week that I will makeup for next.
Maybe you saw a viral video of the FBI allegedly confiscating a Rembrandt painting from a Chelsea art gallery this week. This was, of course, a stunt. (We know the federal government is up to far stupider things these days).
The Observer undertook quite the investigation to get to the bottom of this viral moment and found that the stunt was planned to promote the film Any Day Now, which presents a fictionalized version of the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist, a still-unsolved mystery that led 13 pieces, valued at $500 million, to go missing. One of those pieces is Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee—the fake version of which is seen in the videos of the FBI stunt. Writer and director Eric Aronson told the Observer that he “was looking for an inventive way to get Any Day Now to market” before the film’s limited release on March 21. Guess some people still care about the Old Masters after all.
A new study commissioned by the nonprofit Cave Canem investigates how Black American arts organizations have grown and survived over the past 140 years since the Reconstruction era, LitHub reported. The more than 50-page report, “Magnitude and Bond: A Field Study on Black Literary Arts and Service Organizations,” had some interesting findings about how these arts organizations can be better supported and organized for longevity: one thing to note is that philanthropic donations for “general operations” go a long way (versus for specific initiatives), though small grants that can help smaller organizations secure office or performances spaces can also be a major level-up for them.
The San Francisco Ballet is finding great commercial success with its production of Liam Scarlett’s “Frankenstein,” although the ballet, which premiered eight years ago, hasn’t historically gotten a lot of love from critics. The San Francisco Chronicle decided to publish a conversation between dance critic Rachel Howard and “Frankenstein” fan, dancer David Bertlin. It’s a fun take on a review structure that leaves us with such gems as this quote from Howard to Bertlin: “I think I’m destined to remain a purveyor of unpopular opinions, but I greatly respect yours.”
Lapham’s Quarterly, which paused print production in 2023, will relaunch later this year. The magazine of “history and ideas” will operate “under the stewardship of Bard College and its Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities,” a partnership that founder/editor Lewis Lapham endorsed before his death in the summer of 2024.
The British Museum was the most-visited attraction in the U.K. last year for the second year in a row, the BBC reported. Good job Nicholas Cullinan. Meanwhile the museum just brought on five new trustees, including historian Tiffany Jenkins, who has strong feelings about the museum keeping the Elgin Marbles in Britain. Hmm…
Doctors in Switzerland is prescribing museum visits for patients as a part of a two-year pilot program. Medical professionals in the city of Neuchatel (pop. 46,000) have so far prescribed about 500 visits to four different local museums; the city has a budget just north of $10k to cover admissions fees, the AP reported. City council member Julie Courcier Delafontaine says that the program could eventually roll out to cover theater or dance. She hopes, too, that the Swiss healthcare system might eventually cover “culture as a means of therapy.” Unrelated does anyone know how to procure a Swiss visa?
Of course there is more nonsense going on in the United States. Trump recently told his board members at the Kennedy Center that he had a childhood aptitude for music that his parents discouraged, the New York Times reported, which sounds like a story we’ve heard before at some time in history…
At the board meeting, he also floated the idea of hosting the Kennedy Center honors himself, calling himself the “the king of ratings.” He also complained about Hamilton and expressed his excitement about an upcoming production of Les Miserables, in addition to suggesting Luciano Pavarotti and Elvis Presley could receive posthumous honors. As we know, the already-dead cannot protest the president.
Anyway. Remember last week when Trump signed an executive order dismantling the Institute of Museum and Library Services? Well, ArtNews reported that he just appointed a new head of that agency, Keith E. Sonderling, who was also just confirmed as deputy secretary of the Department of Labor. The executive order doesn’t completely eliminate IMLS—instead, it requires it to scale back to the legal bare minimum of its work. It remains unclear what this will look like.
Did you know that both Flannery O’Connor and Victor Hugo were also visual artists? Both currently have art on display, at the Georgia College & State University and London’s Royal Academy of Arts, respectively.
Do you guys think the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal got the same pitch about the Met museum’s proactive art restitution efforts? I think so. ▲