The Headlines
PARIS MUSEUM HEIST. Thieves have made off with gold worth about 600,000 euros ($700,000) from the Natural History Museum in Paris’s Fifth Arrondissement, according to AFP and France 24. The robbery was detected on Tuesday morning. Police believe the intruders used an angle grinder and a blow torch to break into the museum during the night. The museum’s alarm and surveillance systems were disabled during a July cyberattack, but it’s unclear how that relates to this week’s theft. The museum’s mineralogy gallery, which is popular with families, closed yesterday; the incident marks one of several French museum heists in recent months.
PUSSY RIOT SENTENCING. Five members of the punk art collective Pussy Riot have been sentenced to prison in absentia by a court in Moscow, per the Art Newspaper. Maria (Masha) Alekhina, Olga Borisova, Diana Burkot, Alina Petrova, and Taso Pletner were sentenced to periods ranging from eight to 13 years for “spreading knowingly false information containing data about the deployment of the Russian Armed Forces,” according to the court. The artists are being targeted for a 2022 antiwar video that opens with the words, “the howls of Mariupol,” along with other anti-Kremlin performances. In 2022, Russia invaded Mariupol and then annexed as part of its ongoing attack on Ukraine. “I stand by every single word and my anti-war stance is clear,” Burkot said in a statement. “The paradox is that rapists and murderers in Russia get three to four years … Meanwhile, activists receive monstrous sentences for their opinions.” The news was first reported by the Russian state-owned media Tass on Monday.
The Digest
Scientists have used laser analysis to identify a mysterious blue color in a Jackson Pollockpainting. Thanks to the new study, we now know the Abstract Expressionist used manganese blue in one of his signature works, Number 1A, 1948. [The Associated Press]
Activists in the collective known as Everyone Hates Elon unfurled a giant photograph of President Donald Trump smiling alongside Jeffrey Epstein on the grounds of Windsor Castle on September 15, ahead of Trump’s arrival there today. The banner was later removed from the historic monument, but the group continues to display similar imagery around the UK. [Hyperallergic]
The Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, Florida, is adding some 80 artworks to its collection via a combination of promised gifts and acquisitions. Highlights include a Fred Eversley parabolic lens sculpture, a 1981 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, a Mary Cassatt drawing, and a trio of works by Rashid Johnson. [ARTnews]
On September 20, the Victoria and Albert Museum opens “Marie Antoinette Style,” Britain’s first show about the French queen, featuring 250 objects and exceptional loans never seen outside France and Versailles. The show is also sponsored by shoe designer Manolo Blahnik, who says the exhibit is an opportunity for “revenge” because it has “put Marie Antoinette where she belongs in the world.” [Women’s Wear Daily]
After five years in New York’s Chinatown neighborhood, Latitude Gallery is moving toa larger space in Tribeca. Founder Shihui Zhou said the gallery maintains its “community-centered approach” to the art world. [Observer]
The Kicker
CALDER COMES HOME. Adam Gopnik took an early tour of the much-anticipated Calder Gardens in Philadelphia for the New Yorker . The new institution honors three generations of Calder sculptors, all named Alexander. The last, informally known as “Sandy” Calder, is best remembered for his mobiles; he is also the focus of the institution’s new building designed by Herzog & de Meuron, with gardens by Piet Oudolf. Indeed, before the Calder Gardens, the modern artist’s work was not permanently exhibited anywhere in his hometown. Sandy Rower, a grandchild of Calder, offered this memorable description of the works on view: “Now, mobiles are not supposed to move, except when they do. They’re not mechanized. The poetry happens between the objects—the negative space is where the art happens. And they’re not motorized! They respond not to motors but to the presence of the people near them.”
