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THE HEADLINES
IRAN AND ISRAEL have taken steps to protect artworks and heritage sites amid an escalating conflict between both nations, as they exchange missile strikes. ArtDependence reported Iran’s Cultural Heritage Organization has moved museum artifacts to secure storage locations and closed museums and heritage sites until further notice. Meanwhile, in Israel, several museums have transferred artworks to protected storage, reported the Times of Israel. “We’re used to this,” said Suzanne Landau, director of Jerusalem’s Israel Museum.
TRUMP ILLEGALLY SLASHED IMLS FUNDS. A government watchdog and arm of Congress has found President Donald Trump’s administration broke the law when it withheld funding to the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), reports the New York Times. On Monday, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office concluded that the IMLS “ceased performing” its functions after the president’s executive order to sharply reduce the library agency staff and funding earlier this year. This, despite lawmakers previously approving its budget and mission. A 1970’s law prohibits the president to defy Congress on spending, and the watchdog has found Trump’s actions effectively amount to such an illegal impoundment. The White House has insisted these legal restrictions on his power are unconstitutional, in a standoff that is being played out in various court cases. The Government Accountability Office’s latest decision is the second within the last two months to fault Trump’s actions, bringing the nation closer to a legal reckoning over the president’s power to radically reshape the federal budget.
THE DIGEST
“The United States of America today feels like the Russia of 2012,” said artist Nadya Tolokonnikova, co-founder of the dissident Russian artist collective, Pussy Riot, in an interview. She urged action against what she views as President Donald Trump’s authoritarianism and is currently showing her performance titled POLICE STATE at MOCA Los Angeles. [Zeit]
Several monasteries and churches in northern Greece were damaged over the weekend by an earthquake, stated the country’s ministry of culture. The domed, 10th to 14th-century monuments also contained frescoes that were damaged and are being monitored by experts to determine the extent of repairs needed. [Le Figaro]
The Studio Museum in Harlem has announced further details about their exhibitions, artist commissions and installations that will inaugurate its new building when it opens in the fall this year. They include new works by more than 115 alumni of the institution’s artist-in-residence program, a presentation of archival photographs and ephemera from the museum’s 57-year history, a rotating installation of works from the permanent collection, a major presentation of work by artist Tom Lloyd, and site-specific commissions from Camille Norment, Christopher Myers, and Kapwani Kiwanga. [press release]
TEFAF made a cameo in the latest season of And Just Like That, and fair regulars are in a tither. Apollo Magazine broke down where the show gets it right, and where they indulged in some entertaining fiction. In one example, a client comes to Charlotte’s booth to buy an artwork she saw in the “Pre-TEFAF show.” Could pre-fair shows be the next step up from pdf previews? We hope not… [Apollo Magazine]
An eight-foot-wide figurative charcoal drawing on paper by Jenny Saville, titled Mirror (2011-12), is heading to auction at Sotheby’s on June 24, at an estimated £800,000 to £1.2 million, and is considered by some her best work on paper to appear on the market. [press release]
THE KICKER
HENRY ORLIK GETS HIS DUE. The Surrealist paintings of Henry Orlik (b. 1947) were virtually unknown during the near entirety of his lifetime, but now, as he remains bed-bound by a stroke, the art world is finally paying attention, reports the New Yorker in a profile. Though not without the critical help of Grant Ford, a dealer in the UK’s Marlborough. “I never felt anybody really understood my work,” said Orlik from his hospital bed. “So it’s always been lonely.” The artist has a signature style of curling brushstrokes, which he calls “excitations,” about which he says: “That’s my work, not the visual shapes but the actual movement, the marks I made.” When asked to describe the feeling of being lost in the act of painting, he answered: “It’s something very deep, which you may not understand,” he said. “It is more real than real life.”
