To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.
Good morning!
- A new parliamentary report says the UK government lacks leadership and has a “hands-off” approach to how it funds and cares for national museums.
- The German conceptual artist and painter Rune Mields, who designed her own grave, has died at age 91.
- Skulptur Projekte Münster nhas revealed some of the first details for its 2027 edition.
The Headlines
SHOW ME THE MONEY. A new report by a UK parliamentary committee accuses the government of having “taken an almost hands-off approach” to the challenges facing national museums, which range from cyber security to the physical preservation of collections, reports the Art Newspaper. The Public Accounts Committee has unveiled a report titled “Financial Resilience of government-sponsored museums and galleries,” which concerns 15 of England’s public museums it says are being left vulnerable due to the government’s “reactive, rather than strategic approach.” It is also unclear whether public money granted to these arts institutions is being valuably spent, said the report, which alleges that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), led by UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, doesn’t seem to have the answer to that question either. Over the year 2024 to 2025, the DCMS allotted £484 million ($640 million) in funding to 15 national institutions, but did not monitor its spending, in a demonstration of a “lack of leadership,” according to the report.
IN MEMORIAM. The feminist, self-taught German conceptual artist and painter Rune Mields, who designed her own grave decades ago, has died at age 91, reports dpa. “We have lost an artist who vehemently advocated for raising awareness and strengthening the role of women in art in what was then a male-dominated art world,” her gallerist Judith Andreae said. Mields participated in Documenta 6 in 1997, won the Gabriele Münter Prize, and was celebrated at the Bonn Art Museum with a dedicated solo gallery exhibition coinciding with her 90th birthday. A double exhibition of her works is planned for next year, at the Morsbroich Museum in Leverkusen and the Gießen Art Gallery. Per her wishes, Mields will be buried in the “artists’ cemetery” in Kassel, Germany, the home of Documenta.
The Digest
Skulptur Projekte Münster, the decennial exhibition that brings major artist commissions to the titular German town, has revealed some of the first details of its 2027 edition, the first staged without the leadership of its founder Kasper König died in 2024. [ARTnews]
A rare broadside print of the American Declaration of Independence, printed by a British loyalist, known as the Goodspeed-Sang-Streeter copy, is being sold at Goldin Auctions until July 8, with bidding having reached $1.2 million. [Observer]
Artist Bae Young-whan, who participated in the Korean Pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale, has died at age 57. [K-Artnow]
The Musée d’Orsay is celebrating its 40th anniversary this December, with events leading up to it, including a light projection by artist Jenny Holzer on the museum façade from October 18 to 22, and a Mary Cassatt retrospective opening the same month. [press release]
A privately funded, “artistic creation” around the Statue of Liberty, made by an unnamed French artist and organized by the French consulate in New York, will be broadcast July 3rd on ABC, in celebration of America’s 250th anniversary. [Le Figaro]
The Kicker
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. When reporter Judd Tully was tipped off about curiously affordable artworks by famous Chicago Imagists Jim Nutt and Christina Ramberg sold on the dantegallery eBay store, he decided to go deep. For Artnet News, he writes about how he and a friend acquired two works by the artists, for which bidding opened at $99, and then the real sleuthing began. Those gallery labels on the back of the framed works? All fakes. They cross-checked them with experts and people who worked at the galleries themselves (Phyllis Kind Gallery and Jean Albano Gallery). So it comes as little surprise that the artworks themselves were copies, and poor ones at that. But Tully doesn’t stop there. He and his friend hopped in a car, and drove to the return address on the FedEx package, in which the fake works had been shipped. They came upon a certain eBay sender named Katarzyna Ozimek, in Walton, New York, with whom they left a handwritten note. Some time afterwards, they received a response: “I received your note regarding Artnet story. There is really no story…” went the blatant denial. But soon after that message, the dantegallery eBay site came up empty.
