OLD NEWS

CONSERVING ENERGY by Mary Holland
<https://tinyurl.com/2z6urjbt>
Mammals have different strategies for surviving winter in the Northeast. Jumping mice, woodchucks, and bats hibernate, drastically lowering their metabolism so that the fat they accumulate in the fall can sustain them until spring. Still others, including black bears, raccoons and skunks, go into a state of temporary torpor in an attempt to conserve energy.
The many mammals that stay active in winter have to be able to find a supply of food throughout the winter in order to survive. Some, like chipmunks, squirrels and beavers, store food in the fall for winter consumption, while others, including bobcats, fishers and foxes, must hunt for food continuously, occasionally caching any extra food they procure.
These active animals that haven’t a supply of stored food and are constantly on the move seek to conserve energy in any way possible, including taking advantage of a packed trail vs. breaking their own trail. Anyone who has snowshoed or cross-country skied knows the difference between the two – you can save over 50% of energy expended walking on packed snow. It is not unusual to see the tracks of one animal on top of those of another animal for this very reason.
Pictured are the tracks of an eastern coyote that discovered it was headed in the same direction that a beaver had previously traveled and took advantage of the packed trail. At the very top of the photograph you can see that their respective destinations differed; the beaver turned left while the coyote continued straight. _NaturallyCurious

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THINK
<https://tinyurl.com/4mr6afym> _DavidShrigley

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ALI EYAL OFFERS A NEW APPROACH.
Age: 31
Based In: Los Angeles
<https://tinyurl.com/2fvsjyez>
A standout in the latest Istanbul Biennial and the Hammer’s 2025 edition of “Made in L.A.,” Ali Eyal’s multidisciplinary practice meditates on the violence he and his family endured at the hands of the U.S. military during his upbringing in Baghdad in the ’90s and 2000s. Equally important to him is the legacy of that violence, which he calls “the after war.” The grotesque, cartoonish figures in his paintings render the absurdity and distortion of state violence more sharply than realism ever could.
Describe one work you’ve made that captures who you are as an artist.
My work is rooted in my family and the memory of our lost farm, using imagination to revisit places shaped by war and absence. In my video Tonight’s Programme, I made a farewell to my missing father through a video installation in a stormy hall in Baghdad.
Describe your work in three words.
Rotted. Hunting. Imagination.
Imagine someone gives you $150,000 to make anything you want—no strings. What are you making?
With that freedom, I would rebuild my father’s burned car as a large-scale sculptural installation. It was burned by Allied Forces shortly after his disappearance. The car was the most expensive possession we had; selling it would have kept us afloat as we sought to move. Rebuilding my father’s car would become a form of compensation through art for my mother, who carried the greatest losses after his disappearance and the destruction of the only hope she had to continue the journey.
What’s an artwork you didn’t make, but wish you had?
I wish I had made [William-Adolphe] Bouguereau’s Dante and Virgil. I saw it in Paris; it is a life-sized painting. The strong composition, powered by bodies and eyes, drew me in. Dante, Virgil, and a demon watch the struggle between two naked damned souls. One of the young men has his teeth in the throat of the other—in the front of the throat, right below the mouth. The circle of observers so close to the action is a recurrent theme in my work. The delicate erotic element is a theme I would like to explore in my own work.
What art-world trend would you like to see die out?
Prioritizing fame over the quality and depth of work.
Is there a studio rule you live by?
Embrace laziness. It’s in those quiet, slow moments that my work actually takes shape.
<https://tinyurl.com/3mpz936p> _CulturedMag

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THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/3uykfdeb> _LisaAnneAuerbach

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HALF OF JAPAN’S SAMURAI WERE WOMEN
A groundbreaking new exhibition at the British Museum reveals the untold history of Japan’s Samurai class, including the fact that half of them were women.
Samurai is the first exhibition to explore how the warrior order’s image and myth were manufactured and purports to challenge everything the public thinks they know about the Japanese icons.
The samurai emerged in the early medieval period in the 1100s to 1600 as wealthy households hired warriors for private security provision.
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The mercenary group developed into a rural gentry and by 1615 they had moved away from the battlefield to serve as government officials, scholars, and patrons of the arts.
It is here where half of the samurai class were women and although they did not tend to fight they were a vital part of the elite order, playing a key role both on and off the battlefield.
“It's a surprise that comes from a narrow use or a narrow understanding of the word samurai, because samurai doesn't mean warrior,”
According to the exhibition, the most celebrated female samurai was Tomoe Gozen who died in 1247, and whose exploits are the subject of The Tale of the Heike. She was reported to have ripped off the head of the samurai Uchida Saburo leyoshi who tried to capture her for ransom.
Later, as battles subsided, women dressed according to their rank within this class. High-ranking women wore long, trailing robes decorated with nature motifs and references to Japanese literature. Unmarried samurai wore long sleeves on their kimono to demonstrate their status.
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They were educated to prepare them for married life, running a household and raising children, the exhibition reveals. Appropriate behaviour, etiquette and the right cultural preparations were all part of an ongoing education in society.
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“There’s a distance in time and space and a popular understand that can be easily consumed, and a description that be easily understood is what spreads.
After the samurai stopped fighting in 1615 a rich and layered cultural landscape emerged.
“They’re not warriors in practice during this period,” she says. “They’re just warriors in name. They're kind of this standing army that never actually has to fight a battle because there's 250 years of peace. They're kind of this standing army that never actually has to fight a battle because there's 250 years of peace.
<https://tinyurl.com/4t5s2z49>
“So we show a samurai in normal everyday clothing like a business suit. We show them that there are women. Half of the samurai class were women, and there's a woman's robe and her daily hair regimen instruments, a dressing set and a hand mirror and a book of etiquette. There are lots of cultural pursuits in this section. Books that samurai published or artworks that they enjoyed.”
Samurai reveals that much of the myths around the group were shaped by politics, nostalgia and global pop culture, long after their age had passed.
In peacetime, particularly during the early 20th century that was a politically charged period for Japan as it engaged in colonial expansion, The samurai image was manipulated for the purposes of galvanising a national identity.
<https://tinyurl.com/mry8a7dt> _IndependentUK

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LOUISE BOURGEOIS, SELF-PORTRAIT, 2007
<https://tinyurl.com/34f243ww>
Louise Bourgeois, Champfleurette, the White Cat, 1993
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Louise Bourgeois, The Angry Cat, 1999
<https://tinyurl.com/yyhw3tmr> _MichaelLobel

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THE (UN)DAILY PIC by Blake Gopnik
<https://tinyurl.com/3j9uruur>
is “Elevage de Poussière (Dust Breeding),” a 1964 print of a photo that Man Ray took in 1920 of Marcel Duchamp’s “Large Glass,” after it had sat for years collecting dust in his New York studio. I saw it in the group show in New York, that’s very much about materiality — and that made me think about Duchamp’s dust more than his “Glass”. I wonder if, in 1920, that dirt got his attention because of America’s newfound obsession with hygiene, and Europe’s supposed “backwardness” on that front. That’s also a subtext for his famous urinal, whose exhibition as art had much more current content than is often claimed. It wasnt just a bratty gesture. _BlakeGopnik

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THIS-N-THAT
<https://tinyurl.com/ysx5nxrz>
Pansey, AL
<https://tinyurl.com/8cb95ms6> _RuralIndexingProject

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28. THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD by Rainey Knudson
<https://tinyurl.com/3sm33rny>
There are moments when all hope seems lost. We all know them—many of us feel we’re in one of those moments now, even as, in the darkest corners of our imagination, we fearfully understand: it could be so much worse. It could be so much worse in ourselves, in our families and friends, in our country, in our world.
In a famous passage from The Lord of the Rings, Frodo despairs to Gandalf at a dark moment in their quest:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Our most fundamental trait as a species, the only thing that sets us apart from the other animals, is storytelling. And in dark times, we need our stories the most. Our myths, fables, and—yes—movies give us courage when we are tempted to despair. They tell us, over and over in a million different ways—as in this children’s classic of the brave little engine who climbs the mountain when others are too busy, too grand for such lowly work, or simply too tired, too convinced of their own enervation—the stories tell us: We can. We are not too busy, grand, or tired. We can change the way we see the world, and we can change the world.
<https://tinyurl.com/fmbn5r5h> _TheImpatientReader

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LUCAS UPDATES WEBSITE
<http://tiny.cc/2ssy001>
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has updated its website <https://tinyurl.com/3m5cfb5u> with new photos of the essentially complete Ma Yansong building and campus. Also online are hi-res images of a selection of works in the collection.
<http://tiny.cc/9ssy001>
<http://tiny.cc/bssy001>
<http://tiny.cc/essy001>
Harlem Renaissance artist Jacob Lawrence produced a set of 23 black-and-white illustrations for a 1970 edition of Aesop's Fables published by Simon & Schuster. The original, large-format (29 by 23 in.) ink drawings were previously owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and lent to a 2013 show at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University. The drawings augment lithographs and a tempera painting by the artist in the Lucas collection. _LosAngelesCountyMuseumOnFire

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DRAMA AT THE PMA HEATS UP AND ITS GIVING RHONY DIVORCE VIBES
Things on this week’s edition of The Real Housewives of PMA are heating up again, and Daddy has been living for this institutional meltdown. Truly, if this doesn’t become a limited series on HBO or at least a deranged YouTube doc, I will be disappointed. What started as a deeply tacky rebrand flop has now escalated into full cast turnover drama.
It’s now being reported that Sasha Suda, the former museum director and CEO who was fired in November, will not be getting a public trial. Instead, it’s heading to private arbitration between her, the museum, and an arbitrator. Bless this mess. If you remember, Suda was fired “for cause” in the wake of the rebrand disaster, with the museum accusing her of misusing funds and even implying theft, which is very Shonda Rhimes–Inventing-Anna energy for a boardroom scandal. Suda sued, the institution clutched its pearls, and now here we are.
Then it somehow gets even messier. In a January interview with Philadelphia Magazine, Suda revealed that before she even officially started the job, the board tried to strip her of the CEO title. Before day one. That is Housewives behavior. That is inviting someone to the cast trip and then taking away their room. And then, less than a month after firing her “for cause,” the museum calmly wheels out Daniel H. Weiss, former Met CEO, as the new director and CEO, promising “stability” through at least 2028 like nothing happened. Daddy clocks this move immediately. When institutions panic, they don’t fix the mess, they swap in a familiar legacy man, talk about calm and continuity, and pray the audience forgets who flipped the table. It’s very RHONY reunion logic: new face on the couch, same chaos off-camera, and everyone insisting the season is over while the drama is very much still unfolding.
Now this, The Philadelphia Museum of Art has rebranded again, and it’s a mess. It’s giving Bethenny Frankel peak divorce era to a tee. Hyper-confident decision-making, money flying out the door, zero patience for dissent, and an absolute conviction that everyone else just doesn’t get it. The museum drops over a million dollars on a name change, rolls it out like a power move, and then four months later quietly walks it back after realizing literally no one in the room was on board. Very Bethenny insists she’s the smartest person at the table, bulldozing through resistance, then later reframing the implosion as “listening” and “growth.”
Keeping the griffin logo while reverting the name is classic divorce-era logic: the fight is over, the damage is done, but we’re not undoing everything. Institutions do this all the time. They mistake urgency for vision and spending for leadership, then act shocked when staff, trustees, members, and supporters don’t clap. Just like Bethenny, the move isn’t evil, it’s defensive. Pull back, save face, keep one thing, and pretend the cameras weren’t rolling. _Theartdaddy

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PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART’S CHIEF OF STAFF AND CFO HAVE RESIGNED
wo more Philadelphia Museum of Art senior staffers are departing as the museum continues to plot out its path after a period of institutional turmoil.
Maggie Fairs, who was promoted to chief of staff last year by former director and CEO Sasha Suda, will leave the museum at the end of the month. CFO Valarie McDuffie has also resigned, with her last day this Friday.
Previously, the museum parted ways with its marketing chief Paul Dien as of Feb. 1. Days later, the museum announced that it was reversing course on a renaming while keeping its new logo. Both changes were unveiled four months earlier in a rebranding overseen by Suda and Dien.
No other immediate departures are expected, though the museum is working on an “organizational review,” with more changes possible later, a spokesperson said.
Suda announced the arrival of both Fairs and McDuffie in May 2023, saying that “these two colleagues reflect the future of the institution.” Fairs was hired as vice president of communications after having worked in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. McDuffie had previously held several senior financial posts in secondary education.
Fairs was promoted by Suda to chief of staff in May 2025. A replacement will not be hired, as the museum is restructuring the director’s office without that position.
Suda was dismissed from the museum in November and subsequently filed a lawsuit alleging that her dismissal was “without a valid basis.” The matter is now headed to arbitration.
Director and CEO Daniel H. Weiss, who took over in December, said in January that the staff of the museum was “the heart and soul of the place and they need to be treasured and supported and also held accountable,” and that the museum needed “a senior management team that is available to them and transparent in its processes and also accountable.”
Asked at the time whether there would be a reorganization, he said:
“With our ambition and our mission, and as that evolves a little bit under each new leader, there needs to be careful review of how the organization serves the needs of the moment. So that’s underway.”
_PhiladelphiaInquirer

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GRETE STERN, DREAM 41: THE PHONE CALL. 1949(?).
Born in Germany in 1904, Stern fled in 1933 and ended up in Argentina. Her best-known works are surreal photomontages for the women's magazine Idilio, representing readers' dreams
<https://tinyurl.com/4xfjjd36>
Grete Stern, Sueño No. 1: Artículos eléctricos para el hogar (Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home). 1949.
<https://tinyurl.com/4wvaweha> _JesseLocker

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CHINA’S NANJING MUSEUM ARTWORK SCANDAL PROBE UNCOVERS HISTORIC CORRUPTION
<https://tinyurl.com/2t7dabex>
Chinese authorities say their investigation of a high-profile scandal at one of the country’s leading state-run museums has revealed systemic mismanagement and alleged corruption over decades that allowed national treasures to be funnelled into the private art market.
The scandal broke in late December when reports alleged that Nanjing Museum in eastern Jiangsu province had secretly sold donated paintings, prompting an investigation that focused on a former director accused of mishandling the artworks.
The controversy centres on five paintings among a 137-piece collection donated by the family of collector Pang Laichen in 1959 with the intention of being preserved within the museum. But they were found to be missing during a court-ordered inventory check last June following a request filed by Pang’s descendants.
<https://tinyurl.com/2n42vhes>
In early 2025, one of the works, the renowned Ming dynasty painting Spring in Jiangnan by Qiu Ying, surfaced at an auction with an estimated value of 88 million yuan (US$12.7 million). This prompted Pang’s great-granddaughter, Pang Shuling, to alert authorities and demand documentation from the museum on the artwork’s handling. The family’s protests led to the painting being withdrawn from sale.
The controversy, which hit the national headlines in December and sparked public mistrust in museum management, comes at a time when Beijing is trying to promote China as a cultural superpower. National and provincial authorities sent teams to investigate. _SouthChinaMorningPost

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GUIDO RENI ACQUIRED BY PALAZZO SPINOLA, GENOA
<https://tinyurl.com/wjbz8p56>
The Palazzo Spinola in Genoa will be unveiling their recently acquired Lucretia by Guido Reni The work, dated to c. 1638, has been identified in the collections of the Balbi family in the 17th century and descended with them until coming into the possession of 'its previous owner'. _ArtHistoryNews

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FRANCIS BACON HEAD, EPSTEIN FRIEND FOOT by greg
<https://tinyurl.com/fjv43sxu>
There’s a mention of a sprained foot in a boot in the Epstein files, but it’s from early 2013, a young woman of no fortune just moving to NYC from Miami and seeking a job, for which she had been creepily recruited. So she was not the seller in late 2013 of Francis Bacon’s Head III <https://tinyurl.com/4zdn2cr4> (1949) in London for 10.4 million pounds, and this is not her photo.
No, the exhibition catalogues on the coffee table are from 2014 (Polke Alibis, MoMA; Richter Pictures Series, Beyeler) and 2016 (Picasso Sculpture, MoMA). So this is the buyer of the Bacon, not the seller.
Yet none of these works—not the Bacon, nor the Fontana, nor the Giacometti—appear in the 48-page spreadsheet Epstein and Leon Black’s family office prepared, inventorying Black’s art collection for appraisal and collateralization. [And neither, for that matter, does the coffee table, though many furniture pieces actually by Giacometti do.]
But that document was dated 2017. And the Oasis in the City history of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden on the coffee table is from 2018. So either that is only a partial accounting of Black’s art purchases, or this is not the Blacks, and the Bacon was bought by someone else who not only gets courtesy catalogues from MoMA, but leaves them on display. And who was sending feet pics to Epstein while the disclosures of his Trumpian sweetheart plea deal were boiling, and just months before he was arrested again for sex trafficking minors. _greg.org

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JOHN PHELAN RODE ON JEFFREY EPSTEIN’S PRIVATE PLANE
John Phelan, a prominent art collector and the current Secretary of the Navy, is revealed to have flown on the private plane of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2006,. Flight logs note that he flew from London to New York on March 3 of that year.
The flight came four months before Epstein was first indicted in Florida for felony solicitation of prostitution.
Phelan and his wife Amy appeared on the 2025 ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list. The Phelans’ collection is focused on contemporary art and includes works by artists such as Andreas Gursky, Jenny Holzer, Marilyn Minter, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, and Lisa Yuskavage. The couple were also previously major patrons of the Aspen Art Museum, contributing funds for it to be admission-free in 2008 and hosting WineCrush in their home, timed to the museum’s annual ArtCrush gala, until 2019. _ARTnews

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NEW EMAIL SHOWS BARD’S PRESIDENT THANKED EPSTEIN FOR CARIBBEAN TRIP
<https://tinyurl.com/4u8m46cu>
The president of Bard College, Leon Botstein, has said he does not remember key details about a trip he had planned to Jeffrey Epstein’s island, after details emerged about the visit in 2012.
Dr. Botstein got very sick, his spokesman, David Wade, said in a statement last week, and stayed in a bungalow. He wasn’t sure whether the bungalow was on the island.
But a new email has surfaced showing that a day after the visit, on Dec. 23, 2012, Dr. Botstein emailed Mr. Epstein to say: “I had a great time. The place is great.”
On Monday, Mr. Wade said in a new statement that Dr. Botstein was referring to “the overall environment of St. Thomas, an area which was new to Dr. Botstein.” It is unclear from the emails whether he was present on the island.
Additional messages — part of a trove of documents released by the Justice Department on Jan. 30 — show that the Bard president struck a warm tone with Mr. Epstein. Dr. Botstein has said his relationship with Mr. Epstein was entirely about persuading a wealthy donor to give money to his institution. But the previously unreported messages show how the college president gave the convicted felon access to Bard’s orbit, suggesting deeper ties than Dr. Botstein has so far acknowledged. _NYTimes

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DRAWING BOOK PATTERN PRINTS. AFTER AGOSTINO CARRACCI,
<https://tinyurl.com/4n4c2y5n>
attributed to Luca Ciamberlano. 1600-1630
<https://tinyurl.com/4k69djsw> _RabihAlameddine

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FIRST CAPTURE AND GPS COLLAR OF SIERRA NEVADA RED FOX IN THE SOUTHERN SIERRA NEVADA
<https://tinyurl.com/87hr2t38>
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has reached a significant goal in conservation science by gaining the ability to study more closely the behavioral patterns of the Sierra Nevada red fox (Vulpes vulpes necator) in the southern Sierra Nevada Due to their rarity, Sierra Nevada red foxes in California are protected as a Threatened Species The January capture, which occurred near Mammoth Lakes, marks the first time the Department has captured, fitted with a GPS-tracking collar and released a Sierra Nevada red fox in the Sierra Nevada.
The foxes in the Sierra Nevada are isolated from their relatives in the Cascade Range, and the movements and behavior of this collared fox will offer scientists a rare opportunity to better understand the ecology and conservation needs of this remote group.
Although red foxes are common and widespread throughout North America and Eurasia, the Sierra Nevada red fox is a distinct lineage found only in the high elevation regions of California and Oregon. According to historical accounts, these alpine red foxes have always been exceedingly rare and elusive.
The Sierra Nevada population is estimated to be fewer than 50 individuals. The species is typically extremely wary of humans and inhabits barren, rugged terrain at high elevations. Cautious behavior, remote habitat and low-density populations make them extremely difficult to find and capture, making this a noteworthy event. _CDFWNews