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The Headlines
BAILEY’S BEQUEST. The Intuit Art Museum (IAM) in Chicago, one of the country’s top museums dedicated to self-taught artists, has been gifted 61 works through two donations, reports The Art Newspaper. The largest of the two, numbering 47 pieces, comes from the estate of late Chicago collector and founding supporter of the museum, Jan Petry (1939-2024). The second comes from the Los Angeles-based scholar and African American art collector Gordon W. Bailey. The gifts will help the museum’s goal to exhibit more works by women artists of color, and “bring new artists’ stories into our galleries,” said Debra Kerr, president and chief executive of the museum. Emery Blagdon, James Castle, Ulysses Davis, Sybil Gibson, and Mose Tolliver are just some the artists whose works will be added to the museum’s collection.
LADDER TO LIBERTY. The Merchant’s House Museum in New York’s NoHo neighborhood has been hiding a secret for centuries, writes ARTnews. The preserved, historic Manhattan home appears to have once served as a refuge for fleeing slaves. The discovery came during an inspection of a built-in dresser in a second-floor hallway. When archaeologists examined the area beneath its drawers, they found a small, rectangular opening cut into the floorboards. The opening led to a concealed space, complete with a ladder to the ground floor. Could it have functioned as a “safe house” on the Underground Railroad? “We knew it was here, but didn’t really know what we were looking at,” said Camille Czerkowicz, the museum’s curator, speaking to NY1.
The Digest
The Centre Pompidou in Paris has filed a legal complaint after a hidden camera was found in the women’s restroom of the museum’s administrative HQ in Paris, located next to the museum, which is currently closed for renovations. A suspect has been identified, and the offices have been searched for similar devices. [Le Figaro]
The World Monuments Fund (WMF) has announced it will commit $7 million to support 21 new preservation projects this year, ranging from the Church of Saint-Eustache in Paris to the gardens at Safdar Jang’s Tomb in New Delhi. [ARTnews]
In a bid to counter artists being priced out of the city, San Franciscans are implementing programs that remove housing from the broader market and instead offer it to artists at affordable rates. [The New York Times]
In yet another disturbing twist, we’ve learned that visitors to convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico home were greeted by the famous but disturbing image of The Massacre of the Innocents, copied from the 1591 original painting by Dutch Master Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem. The painting’s biblical subject portrays Roman soldiers killing baby boys on orders from King Herod. [Artnet News]
Fiona Pardington will represent the Aotearoa New ZealandPavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale this spring. The artist of Māori and Scottish decent will exhibit a project titled “Taharaki Skyuside,” which explores the subject of native, endangered birds venerated by Māori culture. [ArtAsiaPacific]
The Kicker
A-HEAD OF HIS TIME. By 1985, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a star; three years later, he was gone at 27. Yet more than 1,000 drawings, many of heads, remained largely unseen in his studio until after his death. Their sheer volume suggests a near-obsessive fascination, rendered in jolting, varied visions. Now “Basquiat – Headstrong,” on view through May 17 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen as Artsy reports, focuses exclusively on these head portraits, including a trove of drawings. Departing from his iconography-heavy paintings, the show invites fresh interpretation. As curator Anders Kold suggests, the heads may reflect Basquiat himself, or even the art world he inhabited.
