OLD NEWS

A GERMAN 15TH-CENTURY PALMESEL (PALM DONKEY)
t\he term refers to a statue of Jesus on a donkey on a wheeled platform,
part of Palm Sunday processions in Germany prior to the Reformation
<https://tinyurl.com/bdz6nwdp> _MichaelLobel

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MORE ON GETTY BUYS: GÉRARD/FRAGONARD & PIETER CLAESZ. by William Poundstone
<http://tiny.cc/aq91101>
The Getty Museum has acquired a scene of 18th-century love by Marguerite Gérard (1761–1837), assisted by her teacher and brother-in-law, Jean-Honoré Fragonard. It becomes the museum's first work by Gérard and only the second painting by Fragonard. The date is almost the same as the Getty's Fountain of Love <https://tinyurl.com/ybjyyh3m> by Fragonard, though the style is distinct. Dutch genre painting by Gerard ter Borch and Gabriel Metsu was undergoing a revival of popularity in 1780s France. Gérard and Fragonard produced a group of contemporary genre scenes with Leiden fine-painter precision and Rococo prurience. All are of modest dimensions (21-5/8 by 17-11/16 in. in the case of the Getty picture), like their 17th-century models.
I Was Thinking of You was in Russian collections from the early 19th century. The Bolsheviks seized it and sent it to the Hermitage, where it was later sold to raise cash for Stalin's Five Year Plan. Dealer Gurr Johns Ltd. sold the painting to the Getty.
<http://tiny.cc/lq91101>
The nature of Gérard and Fragonard's collaboration is speculative. Gérard was in her mid 20s and still learning her craft, while Fragonard was a 50-something ex-wunderkind yoked to an increasingly unfashionable style. In one work attributed to both artists, The Interesting Student, the young woman is holding a framed print of Fragonard's The Fountain of Love. The metal sphere at lower right reflects the studio, revealing four spectral figures. Two are presumed to be Gérard, seated at an easel, and Fragonard standing behind her.
According to the Getty site, the shimmering costumes of I Was Thinking About You are Gérard's work. Fragonard supplied the faces and the male figure's hand. The facial expressions are a complex carom shot: The elder chaperone stares daggers at the young suitor, who only has eyes for the young lady. The mademoiselle breaks the fourth wall, her eyes theatrically addressing us. From that you might infer that Fragonard painted or retouched the most demanding bits.
<http://tiny.cc/qq91101>
But Harvard has a pair of collaborative paintings in which Gérard is credited for the "refined brushwork of the mothers' faces," while Fragonard is said to have painted the background foliage and figures. Harvard dates its paintings "c. 1780-1785," no later than the Getty picture's date of about 1785–1787.
Gérard's paintings (with or without Fragonard's involvement) have become popular with museums seeking to show early women artists. The National Gallery of Art bought a pair of Gérards <http://tiny.cc/tq91101> last year. The Huntington has had one (The Kiss of Innocence, or The Swing) <http://tiny.cc/vq91101> since 1978. <http://tiny.cc/zq91101>
Also new to the Getty collection, and complementing the new de Heem <http://tiny.cc/6r91101> , is a Still Life with Assorted Fruit by Pieter Claesz. (1597–1661). This small panel painting (10-1/4 by 13-1/2 in.) was auctioned by Sotheby's as part of the Lester L. Weindling collection on Feb. 5, 2026. Getty was the high bidder at $1.636 million.
Still Life with Assorted Fruit is an early and relatively colorful work by Claesz., marking the beginning of the Haarlem still life tradition. The painting's original viewers would have been familiar with quinces (top), medlars (bottom foreground), and gooseberries (lower right). It's the grapes that would have been exotic imports.
<http://tiny.cc/cr91101>
Within a few years Claesz. was producing "monochrome" still lifes of disheveled tables in shades of brown and gray. There's a spectacular monochrome Claesz. at San Diego's Timken Museum. The healthy fruits of the Getty picture are replaced with beer, tobacco, and smoked herrings contorted into monsters. The searing light is inexplicable for a 17th-century interior.
<http://tiny.cc/jr91101>
In a 1647 painting in LACMA's Carter collection, Claesz.'s style is more painterly, the vibe is less weird, and the food looks edible—probably a response to the popularity of Jan Davidsz. de Heem's excess-maxxing still lifes.
Unlike de Heem, Claesz. struggled to make a living and was forgotten after his death. His name and oeuvre were reconstructed from the distinctive PC monogram he used to mark his paintings.
<http://tiny.cc/or91101> _LosAngelesCountyMuseumOnFire

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SAVE
<https://tinyurl.com/bdeft4jx> _DavidShrigley

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UNCONVENTUAL WOMEN IN THE HABSBURG LOW COUNTRIES, 1585–1794
This book examines the Court Beguinages, a fascinating group of semi-monastic female communities that were endemic to cities of the Southern Low Countries from the thirteenth century into the twentieth.
Their members, called Beguines, played fundamental social and religious roles in their communities, and they also became major patrons of art and architecture, building vast complexes and filling them with paintings, sculptures, prints, textiles, and all sorts of other decorative objects. As the first comprehensive and primary source-driven account of Court Beguinage visual culture, this study explores the historical importance of these institutions and reveals how the Beguines used buildings and images to support devotional practice, shape public perception, raise funds, and negotiate power relationships during the Counter Reformation.
<https://tinyurl.com/ms248ytz> _ArtHistoryNews

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THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/37ptwdmk> _LisaAnneAuerbach

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ISA USA W54 NYC by greg
<https://tinyurl.com/3bshba7j>
The Isa Genzken show has an archival feel interspersed with some bangers. It’s focused on Genzken’s public projects. Actually, no, it’s what it says on the label—Projects for Outside—and so it excludes public commissions like the U-bahn station she did with Richter. And yet there is the OG 1982 World Receiver. And a Kunstverein edition World Receiver<https://tinyurl.com/3k4kc27h> further in. And original documentation of her original 1987 World Receiver installation<https://tinyurl.com/46jan3m4> in a music store window. Which counts as a project for outside, I guess? I have to say, the World Receiver in the window of new space on 54th St is so close to the glass, the only way to photograph it is from outside. So yes. Also, yes, this was the Manolo Blahnik store.
<https://tinyurl.com/4bwmhytb>
The show is anchored by outdoor project maquettes Genzken made in 2015 for Okwui Enwezor’s Venice Biennale. [There are also two New Buildings for Berlin maquette/sculptures she made for Enwezor’s documenta in 2003.] A hyperlocal example is an unrealized installation planned for the 53rd St facade of MoMA during Genzken’s 2014 retrospective.
<https://tinyurl.com/5kf3e7xe>
The 2015 maquette feels so reasonable, I wondered for a second why this installation didn’t happen. The 2013 collage study next to it offers a possible answer: the Goodwin & Stone building’s sixth floor penthouse terrace was packed in ways that were probably dealbreakingly expensive.
Then I realized the installation did happen, closer in scope to the maquette, at the entrance to the retrospective.
<https://tinyurl.com/5n967pca>
I am simply too seated. Or I will be. First I have to figure out where to print my own bootleg poster for the Buchholz show, which features a 2000 collage of a view that doesn’t exist anymore of a project that never happened and makes no sense.
<https://tinyurl.com/3kcbzj7v>
Putting World Receiver antennas on Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building is perfect; making the proposal for the nazi architect’s building with a synagogue in the foreground is even better. Calling it Deutsche Bank Proposal, when Deutsche Bank had no discernible connection to the building, but did, at the time, happen to occupy a pink granite post-modern skyscraper two blocks away? Confusing as hell! Still, I want this. _greg.org

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NO DOOR GHENT, MN
<https://tinyurl.com/yzsxrrvx> _RuralIndexingProject

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65. PLAYBOY by Rainey Knudson
<https://tinyurl.com/5fxkasjc>
Well before the Summer of Love, Playboy was already reinventing American sexuality. As women began resisting the postwar stereotype of the happy housewife, Playboy upended the male counterpoint to that: the breadwinner and head of the household. The Playboy male was an urban consumer, hip and sophisticated, with jazz records, abstract art, and a fully stocked cocktail bar. But in breaking apart the 1950s nuclear-family fantasy, Playboy created a new oppressive ideal to conform to: an unattainably hip bachelor lifestyle with easy access to sweet, wholesome girls who wanted sex.
“Reading it for the articles” has been a punch line for fifty years, but it’s hard to argue with what is the greatest unintended archive of postwar American intellectual life. Hugh Hefner paid his writers triple what competitors offered, and the talent was staggering. Ray Bradbury serialized Fahrenheit 451 in early issues; James Baldwin published civil rights essays; contributors included Margaret Atwood, Roald Dahl, Joyce Carol Oates, and García Márquez. The magazine that teenagers hid under mattresses also ran Malcolm X’s first in-depth interview.
And of course, there was the flesh. The magazine’s tastefully lit centerfolds suggested that women—even the nice ones, even the single ones—enjoyed sex.1 It was a subversive claim in the postwar years. But in 1963, Gloria Steinem went undercover at the New York Playboy Club, emerging with an exposé documenting grueling physical demands and poverty wages. The casual harassment baked into the fantasy was a contradiction the magazine would spend decades failing to resolve. _TheImpatientReader

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RELATEDLY,
it's easy to overlook that Robert Rauschenberg
placed his iconic artwork "Monogram" on casters,
<https://tinyurl.com/5h6c5y9f>
an animal on a wheeled platform much like the German palm donkey.
Because of the platform's wide overhang the casters aren't visible in most photos,
but can be seen in Rauschenberg's sketches
<https://tinyurl.com/u6zp5mr3> _MichaelLobel

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REINA SOFÍA’S REFUSAL TO LOAN PICASSO’S GUERNICA OPENS OLD POLITICAL WOUNDS IN SPAIN
<https://tinyurl.com/jtxukvuc>
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid has refused the Guggenheim Bilbao’s request to borrow Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, evoking reminders of a painful political history in Spain, according to Italy’s Il Giornale dell’Arte. The Guggenheim, which is located in Basque Country, had hoped to borrow the 1937 masterpiece for nine months beginning this fall to mark the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the first Basque government and the bombing of Guernica by Franco-allied Nazi forces, both of which took place in 1937.
Picasso created the work, which depicts the assault on Guernica, in 1937 for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris Universal Exposition. He refused to allow it to be exhibited in Spain during Franco’s dictatorship. Beginning in 1939, the painting was housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; it was returned to Spain in 1981, following the country’s exit from fascist rule. Initially housed at the Casón del Buen Retiro and later at the Museo del Prado, it landed in 1992 at the Reina Sofía, where it has remained despite numerous loan requests.
Despite the Reina Sofía’s many refusals to lend the work to various institutions around the world, its rebuff of the Guggenheim’s request carries a particular sting because the Basque Country has long held that the painting belongs in the place where the depicted tragedy occurred. Too, though the Basque Country is today is fully integrated into Spain, while retaining a great deal of autonomy, as well as its unique language and culture, the region’s relationship with the Iberian nation is shadowed by its history as the home of terrorist organization ETA. The separatist group emerged in 1958 in resistance to Franco but gained notoriety for assassinations, bombings, and kidnappings before announcing an end to its armed activity in 2011 and its dissolution in 2018.
The Reina Sofía in a statement cited fears of damage to the painting as behind its refusal to loan it _Artforum

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JORIS HOEFNAGEL, TWO MICE
<https://tinyurl.com/5n75xkun> _JesseLocker

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A MUSEUM AND AN ART FAIR WALK INTO A BAR
This week, Frieze announced it will partner with several NYC institutions to present performances and exhibitions timed with its May fair. The Whitney Museum of American Art will show artist Jonathan González’s Body Configurations (2023­–25), a suite of works commissioned especially for the Whitney Biennial, while Dia Art Foundation will display David Lamelas’s video piece “To Pour Milk into a Glass” (1972) and other works. Is this a sign that the cozy ties between the institutional and commercial art worlds, an open secret once treated with the whisper of a taboo, are being increasingly touted as legitimate collaborations? A press release from the fair seems to suggest as much, stating with not a hint of irony that the initiative “extends Frieze New York beyond the fair aisles into major cultural institutions.” _Hyperallergic

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CHINA ORDERS NATIONWIDE MUSEUM AUDIT AFTER MISSING MASTERPIECES SCANDAL
China has ordered a sweeping, nationwide audit of its state-run museums after a scandal at one of its top institutions revealed that national treasures had quietly slipped into the private market,
The move follows months of fallout from the Nanjing Museum, where investigators uncovered decades of mismanagement and alleged corruption involving donated artworks that were never meant to leave public hands.
That work is one of a group of paintings donated in 1959 by the family of collector Pang Laichen. Intended for permanent institutional care, several of those works were instead transferred, sold, or simply lost over time. One of them, a Ming dynasty painting attributed to Qiu Ying, resurfaced at auction last year with an estimated value in the tens of millions, triggering outrage and a formal investigation.
What followed was less a one-off scandal than a slow unspooling of how things actually worked. Authorities say museum officials approved improper transfers in the 1990s, while intermediaries manipulated prices and resold works into private hands. By the time the case came to light, at least one painting was still missing, others had changed hands multiple times, and more than two dozen officials faced punishment or investigation.
The museum has since issued a public apology, admitting to “systemic problems” and a breach of trust with donors. Officials have since called for tighter controls, stricter oversight, and what they describe as a stronger “security defense line” around museum collections.
The fallout could ripple beyond China’s institutions and into the market itself. Works with gaps in their ownership history, especially those that passed through state collections in the 1980s and ’90s, might face closer scrutiny from auction houses and collectors. What once read like a routine provenance report could start to look like a liability, particularly if more cases emerge of objects leaving museums through informal or outright illegal channels. _ARTnews

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PRELUDE 1 ORANGE
<https://tinyurl.com/4d5cek9u> _ON&ON / Jeff Weiss

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STOLEN VAN GOGH BACK ON VIEW AT DUTCH MUSEUM AFTER DRAMATIC RESTORATION
<https://tinyurl.com/5dpz7c8f>
An early Vincent van Gogh painting that was stolen from a Dutch museum in 2020 has just returned to public display.
Six years ago, the Groninger Museum’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884) was on loan at the Singer Laren when a thief smashed through the museum’s glass door entrance in the early hours of the morning and departed with the Van Gogh. In 2023, following the exertions of Dutch police and the art sleuth Arthur Brand, the painting was returned to the Groninger Museum inside an Ikea bag and wrapped in an old pillowcase.
<https://tinyurl.com/3emma7cb>
As Richard Bronswijk, head of Dutch police’s art crime unit, told media at the time: “This is definitely the real one, there’s no doubt about it.” Transparency is a celebrated Dutch virtue and, true to form, the Groninger Museum initially displayed The Parsonage Garden—scars and all.
Even so, the painting was in need of restoration. That task fell to the conservator Marjan de Visser, who, over the course of several months, not only undid the effects of its stint outside the carefully controlled conditions of the museum, but also removed the work of earlier restorations. Today, the parsonage looks as it did when Van Gogh painted it more than 140 years ago.
<https://tinyurl.com/5bk78t5y>
Van Gogh made the oak panel painting while living with his parents in Nuenen, where his father had been appointed as the pastor of a small Reformed congregation. He depicts a woman walking across the garden of the parsonage where his family lived, an elongated scene of drab, inter-seasonal trees backgrounded by a church tower that the artist would include in more than 30 works (he lived in Nuenen from late 1883 to 1885).
Ahead of the work’s 1903 sale at a Rotterdam gallery, an amateur painter had added details to the woman’s face. The goal was to make the painting more attractive to would-be buyers of the Van Gogh, who was still relatively unknown at the time. De Visser removed such details and also discovered that Van Gogh’s original title referred to a winter garden.
<https://tinyurl.com/9bf7d8rc> _Richard Whiddington _artnet

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OK, THIS IS FAIRLY INTERESTING AND EVERYTHING
but I've fallen MADLY in love with the artistically censored preview photograph
<https://tinyurl.com/yp6s7yxr> _‪PeterHuestis‬

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‘A WOW MOMENT’: ANCIENT ROMANIAN GOLD HELMET RETURNED IN PLEA DEAL WITH THEFT SUSPECTS
<https://tinyurl.com/pa6ytntr>
‘A wow moment’: ancient Romanian gold helmet returned in plea deal with theft suspects
Prosecutors unveil artefact linked to lost Dacian civilisation after it was stolen from Dutch museum last year
Senay Boztas in Assen and Andrei Popoviciu
Thu 2 Apr 2026 12.46 EDT
Prefer the Guardian on Google
A priceless ancient gold helmet from Romania that was stolen last year from a museum in the Netherlands, has been recovered as part of a plea deal reached with the suspects.
Under the guard of balaclava-wearing police, prosecutors unveiled the 2,500-year-old Coțofenești helmet, which is considered a cultural icon of Romania, during a news conference on Thursday in the eastern Dutch city of Assen.
Linked to the lost Dacian civilisation and dating from around 450BC, the helmet was stolen together with three golden bracelets from the Drents Museum in January last year, shocking the art world.
Robert van Langh, the director of the museum, said on Thursday that the objects were of inestimable historical value and that the return of all but one bracelet was a “wow” moment.
“On the golden helmet of Coțofenești, as you can see, two eyes are depicted,” he said. “They are meant to protect both the wearer and the helmet itself against the evil eye, against misfortune. They have done so successfully for centuries, and even today they seem to prove their value.”
<https://tinyurl.com/3cuaxwya>
The stolen items had been on loan from the Romanian National History Museum in Bucharest. The theft made international headlines, led to diplomatic tensions between Romania and the Netherlands, and sparked an international treasure hunt.
Within days of the heist, Dutch police arrested three suspects who have largely remained silent in pre-trial hearings. Their trial is due to begin later this month.
Under huge pressure from Romania, Dutch authorities had made several attempts to convince the suspects to tell them where the treasures had been stashed. Police had offered to halve the sentence of one suspect if he revealed the location of the helmet. An undercover officer posing as a criminal mastermind reportedly offered another suspect €400,000 (£350,000) to tell him where the items had been hidden.
Corien Fahner, the chief public prosecutor in the Noord-Nederland region, said the helmet and two of the bracelets were recovered on 1 April as part of a plea deal. “If it was an April fool, it would have been a very bad joke,” she said.
<https://tinyurl.com/mwjv7nm7>
Arthur Brand, a Dutch art detective involved in recovering a stolen Van Gogh painting in 2023, described the recovery as “fantastic news for Romania and for the Netherlands”. He said: “We suspected that it had not been melted down because the suspects were arrested so quickly, within four days of the robbery.”
No written records remain from the Dacian civilisation, but Van Langh said the quality of the golden helmet spoke volumes. “These objects are 450 years before dating,” he said. “If you just look at the quality, the way that they have been manufactured with accuracy, detail, but also depicting what these objects must have meant for people at the time – I rest my case. They are extraordinary, from an extraordinary culture.”
Van Langh said there had been minor damage to the helmet, which could be fixed “in an hour” of restoration. A previous repair made with glue had been dislodged and there was a small dent. The bracelets were in perfect condition.
It is unclear what will happen about the €5.7m in compensation that was paid to Romania last September. At the time, the ministry said that if the artefacts were recovered, Romania would reimburse the insurance company in full or in part, depending on their condition and on whether all or only some of them were returned. _GuardianUK

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YOUNG WOMAN, OMAN, 1917-1919 BY FREDERICK SIMPICH SR.
<https://tinyurl.com/mrh4vcvt> _RabihAlameddine

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LEBANESE ARTIST ALI CHERRI FILES WAR CRIMES COMPLAINT AGAINST ISRAEL
Lebanese artist Ali Cherri, together with the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), has filed a civil complaint in France calling for an investigation into Israeli authorities’ bombing of a residential building in Beirut in November 2024, which killed seven civilians, including the artist’s mother and father.
The complaint, filed on April 2 with the French War Crimes Unit against unknown perpetrators, draws on a reconstruction and analysis of the attack by Forensic Architecture (FA) and Amnesty International. Reviewing footage of the aftermath, FA reported identifying remnants of GBU-39 munitions—extensively documented as used by the Israeli air force.
“As a son, a citizen, and a victim, it is my duty to ensure that this war crime committed by the Israeli army is recognised for what it is, so that it may be brought to justice—for my parents and for all the civilians killed that day. Cherri said in a statement shared by FIDH. “Justice cannot undo death, but seeking justice means refusing to let impunity lead to the destruction of other lives.” _ARTnews

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IN DOING AN ONLINE IMAGE SEARCH
I stumbled across this X-ray that conservators took
of Rauschenberg's "Monogram" in 2016,
and only now am I realizing how much I needed this image
<https://tinyurl.com/bvyep75h> _MichaelLobel