Hello. Since the last time we spoke, I have:
Seen Cirque Du Soleil for the first time and bore witness to the world’s most flexible man, allegedly….!
Attended Twyla Tharp Dance’s program at New York City Center, which featured Diabelli (1988), a long and often humorous piece set to Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, wherein dancers dressed in cheeky, sleeveless cater-waiter style vests and bowties move both pompously and frenetically in carefully controlled chaos and staggering, which allows the moments of physical comedy to fit seamlessly within the piece, instead of distracting from the fast and fluid movement. The piece did feel a bit long, especially compared to Tharp’s new piece, SLACKTIDE, which is set to Philip Glass’s wondrous and searching Aguas da Amazonia. SLACKTIDE adopts the same vocabulary as Diabelli, but translates it into a different dialect: one that has rounder edges and more moments of levity; the tone of this piece takes on a melancholic slant while Diabelli remains upbeat and wry. In both dances, Tharp choreographs through the music rather than on it, which makes the movement more challenging to execute and far riskier to pull off; the musicality of these dancers is something inherent, rather than something mathematically derived from their ability to find the beat. These are two master works performed by artists and the top of their game; I just wish that the timing of both pieces was more equitably split.
By the way, did you know that you can get $28 tickets to all New York City Center productions if you are under 40 and register for their Access Club?Watched Mickey 17 (2025). Very silly!
Now, the news.
It appears the Old Masters are falling out of favor, as Tefaf Maastricht, a 38-year-old international art fair that primarily sells pre-20th century artworks, has seen its audience of buyers shift away from collectors to museums, The Art Newspaper reports. “The connoisseurship isn’t there. It’s a lifestyle thing. People buy for decoration. If you have to explain that this picture is by a pupil of so-and-so, forget it,” Hugo Nathan, founding partner of the art advisory, Beaumont Nathan, told the publication.
It may sound a bit pretentious—people aren’t buying old art because they don’t know anything about it!—but this is a very real phenomenon. The Art Newspaper previously reported in February that auction houses Sotheby’s and Christies saw better year-over-year sales for their most recent Old Masters sales, they still “failed to live up to the pre-sale estimates set by the auction houses.”
For TAN, journalist Scott Reyburn points out the countless statistics about the humanities being in decline and how, under the Trump administration, support of the arts is only likely to get even worse. Museums continue to buy Old Masters because they are staffed with highly educated curators who can assess and explain the significance of these works of art, while the wealthy largely gravitate toward contemporary works. Dominique Savelkoul, director of Tefaf Maastricht, says that that art fair is investing in educational programming, like interviews and live talks, to better win over prospective buyers. That’s because, “with Old Masters,” Reyburn writes, “and most other categories of art, now unable to offer dependable financial returns, wealthy private buyers are having to make purchases because they too appreciate them as works of art, rather than as just a name and a number that always goes up.”
One could make the argument that the dominance of contemporary art in the market is a good thing, because the art world today is far more diverse and representative than it was in its highly cloistered past. But I am not sure that I would give the billionaire class all that much credit in suggesting that there is some push for artist equity in their purchasing decisions. I am not even sure I would fully give them the credit of suggesting that taste and visual preferences are driving their purchases of contemporary works rather than the prospect of eventual resale gains.
Instead, I do think it is world considering what a declining interest in and value of the past could say about the current state of the arts and humanities, and what danger that might suggest. Sure, this trend in the art markets is, on a literal level, a movement away from centuries-old art created by white men—but it’s also a signal of declining interest in historical context and the preservation of knowledge. Something, perhaps, to ponder.
Who does appreciates old art? Well that would be Paperless Post, the 15+ year-old digital invitation company, which last week released a very fun collaboration with London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. I interviewed co-founder James Hirschfeld about it for my full-time job—you can read that here.
At the Kennedy Center, JD Vance and his wife Usha were booed for “more than 30 seconds” while attending a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra. Nice. The concert also started 30 minutes late because of all the extra security required for the VP’s attendance, the Washington Post reported. Bewilderingly, Trump ally Richard Grenell, who serves as interim president of the Center, put out a statement saying that everyone should feel welcome at the arts institution and adding, “As President, I take diversity and inclusion very seriously. I have met with many of you, and I love that we are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, agnostic, gay, straight, black, white, Hispanic and absolutely different.” Hm…
We are likely to get more news about Trump’s vision for the Kennedy Center tomorrow, after he has a meeting with his newly assembled board, the New York Times reported. According to two anonymous sources and a copy of the meeting agenda obtained by the NYT, Trump is likely to seek more power in selecting the Kennedy Center’s annual honorees, which proves he has truly never gotten over those honorees protesting him back in 2017. Real loser energy.
We’ve spoken about the growing phenomenon of art restitution countless times now, and the Wall Street Journal recently highlighted the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its efforts in this domain. Mainly, the fact that the Met has started inquiries into the origins of many of its objects before another country requests that it do so; that’s how it recently discovered that a 7th century BCE bronze griffin head was more likely than not looted from a Greek museum and, accordingly, returned.
The Met has been successful in its efforts to return stolen art because it has built a team which focuses on this task entirely. Last year, it appointed former Sotheby’s exec Lucian Simmons to lead a team of 10 full-time researchers who investigate the origins and ownership of pieces already in the Met’s collection and those that are being acquired.
While there has been some debate at other institutions (ahem, British Museum) about the complexities of restitution and the question of accessibility (“If we give back this artifact will fewer people get to appreciate it?”), the Met’s process is evidence that restitution and proper tracking can actually help institutions form better relationships. For instance, when the museum was approached with a billionaire’s donation of Bronze Age artifacts from the Cycladic Islands, the Met worked with the Greek government and the Museum of Cycladic Art to establish a partnership; Greece will own the artifacts—as most Cycladic artifacts were looted from Greece—and the Met will display most of them for 25 years. The Museum of Cycladic Art will also loan additional artifacts to the Met. Proof that everyone can win.
How is the Louvre going to fund its €800 million renovation plan? In a new profile of museum director Laurence des Cars, Le Monde examines the museum’s strategy, which includes hosting a Met Gala-esque event hosted on March 4, which raised almost €1.5 million (a small fraction of its renovation budget), charging non-European visitors more for tickets (sacré bleu!), and undertaking various efforts to create a “more serene, more human, more accessible,” Louvre. De Cars is a fascinating character, who in the early 2000s expressed admiration for the V&A Museum’s DJ nights and similar efforts to make museum-going more exciting for young people. Curatorially, she’s also pushing boundaries; one of her many plans include a project that will link a less-visited gallery of Islamic art with a new one on eastern Christianity. “If we can get across the idea not only of communities living together, but even more so of meeting and crossing paths, we'll be sending out an interesting message to today's youth,” she told the French newspaper. There’s a lot to watch here.
A few more quick updates on the arts and humanities stateside: After the ACLU sued the National Endowment for the Arts for its new anti-“gender ideology” rule, the NEA has agreed to suspend that requirement for grant applicants and recipients, though the endowment has not removed that eligibility restriction from its website. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for March 18, ArtNews reports.
The Trump administration has also revealed plans to fire federal art preservation employees at the General Services Administration, who take care more “than 26,000 pieces owned by the U.S. government, including paintings and sculptures by renowned artists, some dating to the 1850s,” the Washington Post reported.
Shelly C. Lowe, the chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities—and the first Native American to hold that post—has left her role “at the direction of President Trump,” the New York Times reported.
A new executive order issued Friday night also calls for the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the nation’s only federal agency for America’s libraries.
In better news, Lincoln Center has received a $50 million gift—the largest it has ever received for programming initiatives—from philanthropists Lynne and Richard Pasculano to support its commissions and performances of contemporary dance. This will fund the Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance, which is too early to be truly defined; however, Lincoln Center has put together a committee that will help shape its direction, with members including Misty Copeland, Kyle Abraham, Ailey’s Alicia Graf Mack, and Ballet Hispanico’s Eduardo Vilaro, the New York Times reported.
There is a battle going on about the future of Hilma af Klint’s art, with her great-grandnephew Erik af Klint—who serves as chair the Hilma af Klint Foundation—arguing that his late great aunt’s work should be kept away from public viewership an only available to “spiritual seekers” via a private temple, ArtNews reported. The foundation’s trustees—and most of the art world it seems—do not agree with him, hence an ongoing legal battle.
The prop master of The White Lotus tells LitHub how he picks all of the books that end up in the show. Fun.
Oh to be the six-year-old child of N+1’s publisher living a culturally energetic life in New York City!
Would any wealthy patrons like to fund my year-long sabbatical embarking on this arts-focused Italian gap year program? ▲
Can’t believe I missed the met gala at rhe Louvre 😩 loved all these art world updates! Thank you!