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The Headlines
PRIDE FLAG. Over the weekend, the Trump administration removed the rainbow Pride flag that flew from New York City’s Stonewall National Monument to gay rights, reports the Washington Post. The divisive move was traced to a January 21 federal order by the Interior Department, which states that National Park Service (NPS) property should only fly the US flag or flags with official government logos. Reactions have been swift as outrage grows. “They cannot erase our history,” said Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal (D) in a social media post. The memorial to the 1969 gay rights demonstrations at the Greenwich Village bar following a police raid became the country’s first national monument to the LGBTQ community when it was erected in 2016 under Obama. Last year, the NPS also removed references to transgender and queer activists on the park’s website. “New Yorkers are right to be outraged,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D), who represents New York. “But if there’s one thing I know about this latest attempt to rewrite history, stoke division and discrimination, and erase our community pride, it’s this: that flag will return.”
CULTURAL INCLUSION. Yesterday, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), Pierre Terjanian, responded at length to accusations that his institution disproportionately targeted people of color when it recently fired 33 employees. In an interview with Boston Public Radio, GBH News Terjanian once again denied any form of racial profiling or complicity with the Trump administration’s anti-DEI policies, and announced the creation of a new “People in Culture” position within the museum’s human resources department, designed to create a “sense of belonging, inclusion,” while enabling more upward mobility opportunities for staff. “I’m just here to tell the community that we’re not walking back on our values, we’re not walking back on our commitments, that we’re in an existential moment, in a bind, where we actually have to stabilize this museum,” he said. Terjanian, who is relatively new to the job, said he understood public frustration and noted that out of its 34 curators, the museum still has seven curators of color. “Is it enough? No,” he added, saying that overall, the museum has maintained the same percentage of minority hires. Terjanian also said the museum will soon reopen its Art of America galleries, showcasing Indigenous voices in a presentation that took three years of planning and hard work, including by the museum’s only Native American curator, Marina Tyquiengco, who was among the people just fired.
The Digest
According to new details from files released by the US DofJ, in 2013, New York Academy of Art board chair Eileen Guggenheim courted then-convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to support the school. He did so via a portrait scholarship to three students who had to produce a portrait for him, “as a tribute to [his] generosity,” wrote Guggenheim in her proposal for the initiative. [Artnet News]
TEFAF New York is returning to Park Avenue Armory with 88 exhibitors from 14 countries, presenting modern and contemporary art, design, jewelry, and antiquities from May 15 to 19, 2026. Check out the full list of participants, including nine newcomers, here. [ARTnews]
For the first time, Morocco will exhibit a national pavilion within the Venice Biennale’s Arsenale venue this spring. The exhibit located in the Salle des Artiglierie will feature a monumental installation by Amina Agueznay, centered on the theme of ritual weaving. [The Art Newspaper, France]
A quartet of masterpieces by Claude Monet, Paul Signac, Edgar Degas, and Fernand Léger will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in London this spring, as part of the house’s Modern and Contemporary evening sale on March 4. Their combined high estimate is £24 million ($32.86 million). [ARTnews]
The Kicker
50 SHADES OF RED. What’s “the key to a pricey painting?” asks the Financial Times’ Melanie Gerlis. “Just add red,” quips the headline. So goes the argument, citing works from JMW Turner to Joan Miró, backed by info from Artnet’s auction sales database. London art dealer Pilar Ordovas must have read the red memo, because from February 26 to April 24, the gallery is exhibiting 11 20th- and 21st-century artworks that explore the color’s seductive power. Sales aside, “it’s about where does the pigment come from, why was it used, what are the connotations. I don’t think there is any artist who would say that color was not important,” said Ordovas. Indeed, red is no less than “the color of life,” she added.
