Samantha Bee slapped the Sackler name on yet another art institution. To draw attention to Purdue Pharma’s alleged role in the opioid crisis, Bee enshrined the family behind the company in “The Sackler Museum of Stupid S—t the Sacklers Bought with Their Blood Money” on Wednesday’s “Full Frontal.” The museum presentation is a nod to…
In 1938 when the Germans annexed Austria, the art world suffered a major blow. Modernists like Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt had their work labeled degenerate. Jewish artists were forced to flee and many more were unable to. One more casualty of the Anschluss is often overlooked — the many women sculptors and painters whose…
Following a new complaint against Purdue Pharma brought by the State of Massachusetts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is reviewing its gift acceptance policy. The court filing, reported on by The New York Times last week, alleges that the Sackler family, the founders of Purdue Pharma and longtime donors to the Met, directed a misinformation…
In the art world, forgeries are an unfortunate inevitability; painters, sculptors and photographers are copied for their work’s cachet, artistic merit and monetary value. But it’s more rare for an artist to be imitated not for their talent, but for their extreme notoriety. Yet on January 24, police arrived at the Kloss auction house in…
Albert Speer, Hitler’s armaments minister and main architect, was known as “the Nazi who said sorry” for acknowledging his complicity in Nazi war crimes at the Nuremberg trials. While Speer maintained he never knew about the Holocaust, his daughter, Hilde Schramm, is spreading awareness of the genocide, and doing much more than apologizing for it….
On the face of it, there’s not much that’s Jewish about Highpoint II. The pre-World War II apartment complex, located in the Highgate suburb of London, is a sequel of sorts to architect Berthold Lubetkin’s groundbreaking Highpoint I from 1935. The first building was the apogee of modernist architecture with its white concrete, flat roof,…
There is no one way to grieve or process a tragedy of an unimaginable scale. Still, few displays of grief are as curious as that favored by the 92-year-old Israeli artist Dov Or-Ner, a Holocaust survivor who appears in public dressed as Adolf Hitler. Or-Ner, a veteran sculptor and painter whose parents died in the…
I’m not sure what to make of the title of the Martha Rosler retrospective at the Jewish Museum, “Irrespective.” According to the wall text, it’s supposed to be a portmanteau, “a clever play on terms that lie somewhere between the words ‘retrospective’ and ‘irreverent.’” The exhibition, we’re promised, will be no mere shrine to its…
Following this August’s far-right rallies in Chemnitz, Germany, many participants got off easy. Of the estimated 7,000 attendees, many of whom were caught using illegal Nazi salutes and accosting immigrants, nearly all evaded arrest and, crucially, identification. Now, The Daily Beast reports that an effort by the German leftist art group the Center for Political…
The National Rifle Association has removed an image of Anish Kapoor’s sculpture, “Cloud Gate” from an advertisement that, according to the Genesis Award-winning artist, “perverts everything that ‘Cloud Gate’ — and America — stands for.” The removal follows a legal battle that began this summer The Guardian reports. The one-minute ad titled “The Clenched Fist…
The trouble with museums is they tend to stay in one place. While any museum’s permanent collection makes up the bulk of the institution’s bragging rights, those of us who don’t live near the Louvre, MOMA or the Art Institute of Chicago don’t have ready access to the masterpieces on display. Luckily for us, that…
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