OLD NEWS

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME ACQUIRED BY MISSISSIPPI MUSEUM
<https://tinyurl.com/2vb25fvc>
A midcentury home in Jackson, Mississippi—one of only four Frank Lloyd Wright homes in the state—has a new owner. The residence has been acquired by the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA) The institution aims to preserve the home and make it accessible to the public as part of its community outreach efforts.
“This strategic acquisition is not only about preserving a culturally and historically important site—it is also a forward-thinking investment in the museum’s vision for the future, “Like Eudora Welty’s House and Garden and the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home, Fountainhead will become a must-see destination and unique experience for residents of and visitors to Jackson.”
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In the 1940s, when oilman J. Willis Hughes wrote to Wright to enlist his services, the odds of him securing the architect were slim. At this point, the 81-year-old Wright had under his belt a host of iconic buildings—from the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo to the Guggenheim Museum in New York, then in progress—and was being showered with late-career honors. Would the famed architect deign to design Hughes a private residence in Jackson, Mississippi?
Why, yes, he would. By 1954, Hughes had his home: a sprawling abode with a low-pitched roof designed by Wright in his signature Usonian style. Just outside the bedroom wing was installed a pool with a fountain—a feature that would give the home its name, Fountainhead (also a reference to Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel, centered on an architect). Today, of the four Wright designs in Mississippi, it is the only one logged on the National Register of Historic Places.
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The building spans 3,558 sq. ft, with three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and two partial bathrooms. It was devised by Wright to fit the unique contours of the site. The architect used a grid of parallelograms to determine its design from the dimensions of various spaces to the placement of walls and the parallelogram motif is scored into the home’s terracotta-colored floors.
<https://tinyurl.com/n3r6nvzy>
The building’s Modern design otherwise bears out Wright’s Usonian principles. It deployed simple materials (only concrete, glass, copper, and red cypress wood were used), sits on a flexible floor plan, and boasts a flat roof and large windows to welcome copious amounts of natural light. Typical of a Wright creation, the building harmonizes with its lush environs.
<https://tinyurl.com/64mvvm2r> _artnet

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LIKES
<https://tinyurl.com/5fsehftm> _DavidShrigley

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RIP KEN-CHAN
<https://tinyurl.com/2npjy9k4>
Sadly, Japan has bid farewell to a beloved cat. Ken-chan, the local feline whose epic battle with a security guard at the Onomichi Museum of Art in Hiroshima became a fixture, passed away in September.
<https://tinyurl.com/2m6kz4wy>
Ken-chan’s story begins in 2017 when the Onomichi Museum of Art was hosting an exhibition of cat-themed artwork. Ken-chan, the cat of a local cafe, was understandably curious about the artwork and took it upon himself to enter the museum.
However, the museum security guard would not allow it. Ken-chan was stubborn though, and continued to return, trying to make his way inside the halls of the museum. One day he even made it past the main entrance, but was swiftly captured and carried out. The “offense and defense” of cat vs guard was captured on camera by museum staff and posted to the museum’s social media network, where it spread across Japan and beyond.
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Ken-chan became somewhat of a fixture at the museum and the exchange was so popular that the museum even created a line of merchandise inspired by it. This tote bag was one of our favorites.
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Over time, however, Ken-chan became less-interested in entering the museum and, instead, developed a fondness for the security guard. He would begin showing up just to see his buddy. And when the guard had days off, Ken-chan wouldn’t even show his face.
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Sadly, the museum announced recently that Ken-chan had passed away in September. He will certainly be missed, but not forgotten.
<https://tinyurl.com/yc7af3hh> _Spoon&Tamago

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THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/2fa93x3z> _LisaAnneAuerbach

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AMAZA LEE MEREDITH AT CAAM by William Poundstone
<http://tiny.cc/0iiw001>
The California African American Museum has two shows built around creative Black women. One concerns science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, who's seemingly everywhere lately. The other, larger exhibition foregrounds a pioneering architect who is not so well known: Amaza Lee Meredith (1895–1984). "Dear Mazie," a traveling show organized by the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, displays the work of 11 artists, some better known than Meredith herself, responding to the architect's life and legacy.
Meredith is described as the first Black (mixed race) and queer woman to work as an architect in the U.S. She was a generation younger than Julia Morgan (who was white, came from money, and "never married"). Meredith, who had no formal training as an architect, lived openly with her partner, Dr. Edna Meade Colson, and built a Virginia home for the couple called Azurest South. It's a Streamline Moderne-inspired structure that wouldn't have been out of place in the Hollywood Hills.
There's an Azurest North too, in Sag Harbor. Meredith and her sister developed that Hamptons-adjacent enclave as a summer place for middle-class Blacks.
<http://tiny.cc/6iiw001>
Solange Knowles, Beyoncé's sister, recently published a book on Meredith. Between that and the exhibition, Amaza is trending. But in view of the likelihood that she will be unknown to most museum visitors, a more systematic presentation of her biography and work would be welcome. I would have liked to see more documentary photographs of Meredith's buildings and a selection of her paintings, which look interesting in reproduction.
<http://tiny.cc/diiw001>
<http://tiny.cc/hiiw001>
Cauleen Smith's video installation is an immersive two-channel video incorporating video from Sag Harbor and live feeds from objects on a table. The mineral specimens include the blue stone azurite, and the braids were inspired by the hairstyle of the architect in a photo, lounging on the beach. For Meredith Azurest was a place where "the deep blue sky of hope meets the space of comfort."
<http://tiny.cc/jiiw001>
Tschabalala Self created an cartoon avatar of Meredith via 3D printing. The houndstooth-trimmed outfit is based on a 1973 photograph of the architect and Edna Colson.
<http://tiny.cc/liiw001>
Meredith founded Virginia State University's art department. Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo draws on Meredith's rarely-seen paintings. The installation has five framed works by Branfman-Verissimo hung on a blown-up mural detail of a painting by Meredith.
<http://tiny.cc/piiw001>
<http://tiny.cc/riiw001> _LosAngelesCountyMuseumOnFire

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WHERE IS GADDAFI’S VW BEETLE?
The National Museum of Libya, home to Africa’s most significant collection of classical antiquities and housed within Tripoli’s historic Red Castle, reopened on Monday after nearly 14 years of closure, the Daily Sabah reports. It shut following the civil war that erupted after Muammar Gaddafi’s fall. _ARTnews

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LIBYA REOPENS NATIONAL MUSEUM, SHOWCASES ANCIENT TREASURES
<https://tinyurl.com/yt7twdfr>
the Red Castle, has reopened in Tripoli, allowing the public access to some of the country's finest historical treasures for the first time since the revolt that toppled Moammar Gadhafi.
The museum, Libya's largest, was closed in 2011 during a NATO-backed uprising against longtime ruler Gaddafi, who appeared on the castle's ramparts to deliver a fiery speech.
<https://tinyurl.com/an9p7jkv>
Renovations were started in March 2023 by the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU), which came to power in 2021 in a U.N.-backed political process.
"The reopening of the National Museum is not just a cultural moment but a live testimony that Libya is building its institutions," GNU Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbiebah said at a reopening ceremony on Friday.
Built in the 1980s, the museum's 10,000 square meters of gallery space features mosaics and murals, sculptures, coins and artefacts dating back to prehistoric times and stretching through Libya's Roman, Greek and Islamic periods.
The collection also includes millennia-old mummies from the ancient settlements of Uan Muhuggiag in Libya's deep south and Jaghbub near its eastern border with Egypt.
"The current program focuses on enabling schools to visit the museum during this period, until it is officially opened to the public at the beginning of the year," museum director Fatima Abdullah Ahmed told <https://tinyurl.com/5yjvzsja>
Libya has since recovered 21 artefacts that were smuggled out of the country after Gaddafi's fall, notably from France, Switzerland and the United States, the chairperson of the board of directors of the antiquities department Mohamed Farj Shakshoki told Reuters ahead of the opening.
Shakshoki said that talks are ongoing to recover more than two dozen artefacts from Spain and others from Austria.
In 2022, Libya received nine artefacts, including funerary stone heads, urns and pottery from the U.S.
Libya houses five UNESCO World Heritage sites, which it said in 2016 were all endangered due to instability and conflict.
In July, Libya's delegation to UNESCO said the ancient city of Ghadames, one of the sites, had been removed from the list as the security situation had improved. _DailySabah

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LATE NIGHT AT THE MET.
<https://tinyurl.com/4d3t76sx> _artnet

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‘AI SLOP’: SFO MUSEUM CRITICIZED FOR AI-GENERATED ART EXHIBIT
<https://tinyurl.com/kcz45we7>
The San Francisco International Airport is facing criticism online for exhibiting art created by artificial intelligence in a time when machines are readily replacing human artists and workers.
The SFO Museum’s “Women of Afrofuturism” exhibit, which has been on display at the airport since mid-May, features a number of pieces by Boston-based artist Nettrice Gaskins. The digital artist and academic specializes in “generative art,” which she defines as an “output of a system, like a computer, that makes its own decisions about a piece of work rather than a human.”
“This is just the beginning, AI slop is spewing over everything,” user commented.
“As an African American, I too am outraged by that AI slop,” another wrote.
The “Women of Afrofuturism” exhibit“ explores the Black experience through a combination of science fiction, magical realism, mythology, history, and technology in genres ranging from literature and music to fashion, film, and visual arts,” the SFO Museum’s website reads. “Afrofuturism may incorporate a range of components — from outer space to the natural world and popular culture.”
Although many of the users expressed disappointment with AI-generated art taking the place of more traditional artwork, Director and Chief Curator of the SFO Museum Jennifer McCabe told that the museum has received overwhelmingly positive feedback for the exhibit. _KRON4

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VINCENT VAN GOGH, LANDSCAPE WITH SNOW, 1888.
Van Gogh painted this scene in late February of 1888,
soon after he arrived in Arles in the South of France.
While that region is generally known as a sunny clime,
Van Gogh arrived during a record cold spell
<https://tinyurl.com/5n7h459s> _MichaelLobel

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ENGINEER KAREN LEADLAY WORKING ON THE ANALOG COMPUTERS 1964
<https://tinyurl.com/4cnjk779> _RabihAlameddine

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AFTER A MARKET SHAKE UP IN 2025, IT'S TIME TO CREATE A RIGHT-SIZED ART TRADE by Tim Schneider
You could be forgiven for thinking at various points in the past year that it might be the end times for the global art industry. An ongoing wave of gallery closures, long stretches of lacklustre auction results, art fairs “pausing” or cancelling their forthcoming editions—it has all felt a bit grim, and it’s only human to worry that the grimness will never end.
After 20 years in this business, I’m confident things will recover. But can the machine rev back up to the levels it had reached before it started sputtering early in 2023? Maybe so, but the better question to ask is: should it?
Several experts I’ve talked to agree that the answer to the second question is no. There is another way of looking at the shake-ups and shutdowns that have defined the art trade in 2025. Instead of a collapse, the process might better be thought of as the right-sizing of an industry where collectors were not alone in making big speculative bets on enormous growth that simply did not materialise—at least, not on the timeline needed for them to pay off. With sympathy to the people who fell on hard times as a result, the industry overall may be wiser and better equipped after the pain.
Bigger is not always better
Philip Hoffman, the founder and chair of the Fine Art Group, one of the leading art advisory firms, points to a contrast between the expansion-rich years preceding 2023 and now. “What we saw is a massive ramping up of old models when the business was good in anticipation that the sky would go on forever,” he says. “The last three years have shown that’s not true at all.”
Hoffman’s new venture looks to respond to the art-market landscape as it is, not as he wishes it would be. He is a co-founder of , an advisory firm launched earlier this year by five veteran power players with complementary client lists and regional expertise. One of the group’s chief goals is to be global without being gargantuan.
“I realised that probably 60% of the market is purchased and sold by less than 250 clients,” Hoffman says. Noting that the auction houses have thousands of staff combined, he advocates a different scale, adding: “We can access the bulk of the market with the five of us plus the infrastructure, which is less than 100 staff.” To him and his colleagues, this is a model purpose-built for the realities of a shifting industry.
Adapt or else
Oppressive as the pressure on the trade has felt in 2025, it has also propelled several art businesses to evolve in ways often discussed but much less often acted upon in the past several years.
Multiple duos or trios of dealers in New York, for instance, have embarked on plans to share exhibition space in an ongoing capacity. These range from smaller consortiums in Tribeca, as well as galleries on the Lower East Side—to at least one blue-chip outfit, periodically giving over one floor of its headquarters to for exhibitions until autumn 2026.
Asked about the motivations to team up “everyone is looking for some kind of stability and security—and there is this expectation that galleries are steadfast and should offer a kind of permanence”. Among her core principles for her programme, she adds, is that “provocative thought should drive everything, and this isn’t something I can or want to do alone. There is strength in collective efforts and idea-sharing”.
Other dealers have found ways to expand thoughtfully amid the downturn. The Los Angeles gallerist and the New York dealer merged their businesses into a new entity, with bicoastal reach. Two spaces in London, will launch its first international location in January 2026—not in a classic art-trade hub but in Bologna, Italy.
Although a co-founder cites Bologna’s “strong collecting tradition” as part of the thinking behind the decision, she says the “main motivation” for the move was “to create a new venue and context for our artists to develop exhibitions, both architecturally and in terms of the local cultural landscape”.
In other words, rethinking the geography of an art business goes hand in hand with rethinking its scale. And as the industry turns the corner into the new year, the right conclusion on both fronts may look very different than the picture of success painted before the Covid-19 pandemic. _ArtNewspaper

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BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO COFFEYVILLE, KS
<https://tinyurl.com/2s4k9h4y> _RuralIndexingProject

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SOMERSET’S UNLIKELY ART SCENE.
Knocking back fine wine, fermented potato brioche, and smoked eel in a Michelin-starred restaurant is not a traditional West Country endeavor—nor is wandering around a mega-gallery. But recently visited Hauser & Wirth Somerset in the town of Bruton, where a reporter dined on a bellyful of Osip’s tasting menu and viewed Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely’s joint exhibition, “Myths & Machines.” Tinguely’s scrapyard sculptures were juxtaposed with de Saint Phalle’s bold, colorful visions. In one work from 1988, La Grande Tête, the late couple’s practices fuse into a tangle of iron, wood, an electric motor, bungee cord, and lightbulbs. Around a decade ago, visitors likely would have been confronted by hay bales instead of high art. The gallery occupies an old farm on the edge of town, and its transformation is emblematic of Somerset’s unlikely metamorphosis into a contemporary art hotspot.
“Somerset has a rich history of writers, musicians, designers, and artists who have been drawn to the area for generations. It’s encouraging to see more artist-led initiatives, workshops, and creative events developing across Somerset,” Dea Vanagan, senior director of the gallery’s Somerset outpost, told ARTnews. “This reflects the gallery’s ambition from the outset to increase access to great art outside of traditional city centres.” _ARTnews

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HANUKKAH IN KIEL, GERMANY, 1931, PHOTOGRAPH BY RACHEL POSNER.
Inscribed on back:
“Chanukah 5692 (1931): 'Juda verrecke' die Fahne spricht 'Juda lebt ewig' erwidert das Licht" ("'Death to Judah' so the flag says 'Judah will live forever' so the light answers")
<https://tinyurl.com/32vxrf35> _JesseLocker

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‘LIKE A MINI LOUVRE’: TWO GENERATIONS OF ROTHSCHILDS FIGHT
<https://tinyurl.com/5vks4xvs>
After three generations of genteel discretion bordering on secrecy, the international banking family the Rothschilds has been riven by rival claims to a vast collection of masterpieces that are part of the family’s multibillion-euro fortune.
The battle now playing out in the courts and media has pitched the 93-year-old senior baroness, Nadine de Rothschild – widow of Edmond de Rothschild, the late scion of the French-Swiss branch of the family – against her daughter-in-law, Ariane de Rothschild, the current baroness.
The lawsuits centre on the family’s extensive collection of furniture, priceless historic objects and paintings held at the baronial domain, the Chateau de Pregny in Switzerland, which one visitor described as a “mini Louvre”.
The Rothschild family maintains a code of silence over the exact contents of the chateau overlooking Lake Geneva – where photographers and nosy visitors are banned – but they reportedly include treasures including Louis XVI furniture and works by Goya, Rembrandt, Fragonard, El Greco and Boucher.
Nadine claims that her husband, who died in 1997, bequeathed her a substantial part of this collection, which she wants to put in a new museum in Geneva, dedicated to displaying the collection of the Edmond and Nadine de Rothschild Foundation she has created.
Ariane – who was married to Edmond and Nadine’s only child, Benjamin, who died in 2021 – insists the collection must remain intact and in the chateau.
In court documents, Ariane, 60, has accused the elder baroness of being influenced by her advisers, drawing a parallel with the late L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt. In 2011, Bettencourt’s daughter sought to have her declared of unsound mind after she lavished an estimated €1bn in gifts on a young photographer friend.
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Speaking from her home in the Swiss countryside, Nadine, who used to appear regularly on television chatshows talking about manners and etiquette, told the Guardian: “I knew Liliane and I can tell you she was absolutely not a woman you could make do anything she didn’t want. And neither am I under anyone’s influence. You can tell from my voice and answers that it would be hard to influence me.
“I am the last Rothschild baroness of my generation. All the others have died. To end my life with a major legal battle like this of course upsets me.
“In the beginning I opened my arms to my daughter-in-law; there are photos of us together, I was generous in my personal gifts to her.”
<https://tinyurl.com/zjz44m5s>
The senior baroness has known harder times. Born Nadine Lhopitalier, she grew up in a communist-supporting family and left home at 14. Two years later, she was sewing poppers on Peugeot sunroofs and working as an artists’ model. Later, she took the stage name Nadine Tallier and played in music halls and small film roles.
In the early 1960s, she met Edmond de Rothschild. She later recalled their first meeting, saying: “He looked at my ring and he said, ‘It’s lovely, but unfortunately the diamond is fake.’”
The couple married in 1963. From then on, all the jewels were real.
<https://tinyurl.com/4mbfvtnp>
As the wife of the wealthiest member of the banking family, Nadine oversaw the running of their 14 properties, where, over several decades, they received the beau monde – including the Kennedys, Audrey Hepburn, Maria Callas, Princess Diana, Romy Schneider and Greta Garbo.
Nadine admits that she was an absent mother to Benjamin, who was brought up by nannies. He claimed she treated him as “an heir” and not a son. She insists she welcomed his wife, Ariane, into the family in 1999 and moved out of the 1,126sq metre Chateau de Pregny into a pavilion in the 18-hectare (44-acre) grounds, leaving the family home to the young couple, who had four daughters.
Nadine says that relations between the two baronesses became “irreparable” after Benjamin’s death. She has since left the estate and lives “comfortably” in the countryside outside Geneva.
<https://tinyurl.com/2nhxnssf> _GuardianUK

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EXCUSE ME, ALEXANDER CALDER, BUT I DON'T THINK THAT IS HOW COWS WORK
<https://tinyurl.com/bdhjches> _‪PeterHuestis‬

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ENDANGERED FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME FACES UNCERTAIN FUTURE AFTER FORECLOSURE
<https://tinyurl.com/2sw4atrj>
The fate of a 120-year-old Frank Lloyd Wright house in the west Chicago neighborhood of Austin remains precarious after the building’s ownership was transferred to a mortgage company, which has offered no public statements about the property or its plans to provide much-needed repairs.
The Walser House, one of only five remaining Wright-designed Prairie structures in Chicago, has been unoccupied and unmaintained since 2019. It was placed on a list of the city’s most endangered historic buildings back in March. Walser House’s financial troubles worsened in the late 1990s when its then owner, Anne Teague, took out a reverse mortgage on the property (a loan borrowed against the equity of a property). After accruing interest for 25 years, a foreclosure action was begun in 2023 and the house’s mortgage was assigned to the New Jersey-based PHH Mortgage a year later.
It was hoped a foreclosure sale on December 1 would place the property in the hands of a steward keen to preserve Walser House. But with the minimum bid set at $240,000—well above its appraised value of $65,000—local preservation advocates were priced out and the lender received the property.
The potential rescuers were Austin Coming Together, a community revitalization non-profit, and Ansco Construction, a property developer with a track record of restoring endangered properties in Chicago. Both attended the foreclosure sale, but with the high minimum and future restoration estimated to cost north of $2 million, neither was willing to match the lender’s bid.
<https://tinyurl.com/k2chs27c> _artnet