OLD NEWS

MORE ACORNS = MORE TICKS by Mary Holland
<https://tinyurl.com/3hnk9u6f>
Over the past 30 years, ticks, mice, deer, and weather have been tracked in a location with significant Lyme disease by the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and Bard College. This research shows that counting acorns, not deer, is a more reliable predictor of the severity of future Lyme disease.
Lyme disease is transmitted to humans by Black-legged Ticks (Ixodes scapularis), also known as deer ticks. But while White-tailed Deer often carry many adult ticks, more deer doesn’t mean more Lyme risk. The accepted theory has been that when deer are abundant, more female ticks are able to feed and lay eggs on them. That would lead to more larval ticks the following summer and, in turn, more nymphal ticks two years later. (Black-legged Ticks have a two-year life cycle.) Nymphal-stage ticks are responsible for most human infections in North America. But after observing more than a sixfold variation in deer abundance over the course of the study, the researchers found no relationship between the number of deer and the density of nymphs.
It turns out that the size of the White-footed Mouse population, not the White-tailed Deer population, is a strong predictor of the number of nymphal ticks. A strong mouse year was associated with approximately 40% more nymphs the following year. White-footed Mice carry the Borrelia burgdorferi bacterium that causes Lyme disease in their blood without getting sick. Immature ticks (larvae and nymphs) feed on infected White-footed Mice and pick up the bacteria.
White-footed Mice feed on Red Oak acorns. When a large number of oak trees drop their acorns at the same time, it creates an endless supply of food for mice. This results in a large increase in the mouse population the following year and, in turn, the number of nymphal ticks the year after that. Acorns are therefore both a driver and a leading indicator of Lyme disease risk (two years hence) in regions where oaks are abundant. _NaturallyCurious

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HATE
<https://tinyurl.com/cdvzcrsa> _DavidShrigley

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AN AMALGAMATION OF ANGELENOS by William Poundstone
<http://tiny.cc/356c101>
The Hammer is showing a bronze statue by London artist Thomas J Price. It's a smaller (9-ft high) version of a 5-meter (16.5 ft) statue recently installed outside the V&A East, London. According to the Hammer label, Price traveled to Los Angeles in 2023 to recruit volunteers for a new work called A Place Beyond. He used 3D scanning to create a composite of multiple subjects in everyday clothes, holding a phone.
Ben Eastham, writing in The Guardian, called the London bronze "the quintessence of East London youth." He says it was based on "local people," as in Londoners. But it's clearly the same figure that the Hammer label is calling "an amalgamation of various Angelenos." The Hammer label doesn't even mention the London statue.
<http://tiny.cc/856c101>
<http://tiny.cc/956c101>
By the way, what has happened to the Hammer's sculpture terrace on Wilshire? It's been vacant since March. Though the Price is over-life-sized, it's probably too small to work well on the terrace. The terrace's inaugural loan, of Sanford Biggers' bronze Oracle, <http://tiny.cc/d56c101> was a 25-ft-high bronze. It was followed by an AR (virtual) sculpture by Nancy Baker Cahill <http://tiny.cc/g56c101> and an inflatable by Alake Shilling, <http://tiny.cc/h56c101> made of data and air, respectively. It's looking like there aren't too many movable sculptures of appropriate scale. _LosAngelesCountyMuseumOnFire

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V&A EAST COLLECTION
Outside the V&A’s new outpost in east London, a nondescript young person stares blankly out across the old Olympic Park. This five-metre-tall sculpture is generic by design, an amalgam of “images, 3D scans and observations” of local people. It is easy to see why Thomas J Price’s idea appealed to a museum eager to engage with the area’s diverse communities – here is the quintessence of east London youth, executed at the scale of Michelangelo’s David – but by smoothing out the differences between individuals it sends out a confusing message.
To aggregate data and identify common denominators is, after all, the logic of the algorithm. So the worry is that this museum will likewise second-guess the desires of its audience based on predictive models, guiding visitors towards things they are predisposed to “like” and away from opinions they are presumed not to share. So it is a relief to find, on entering the building, a vision of how people make and cultures meet that is infinitely richer, more heterogeneous and more open-ended than those first impressions suggest. _GuardianUK

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THE MOUNT WASHINGTON POST
<https://tinyurl.com/3z3xb7uu> _LisaAnneAuerbach

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THE SECRET JFK MEMORIAL HAT WREATH by greg
<https://tinyurl.com/34rkvc5a>
An absolutely fascinating story about a lost JFK memorial sculpture unfolded in 2022-24 at the otherwise serene enclave of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, the former estate of Bunny Mellon.
It seems to have unfolded twice, or at least to be recounted twice. So far. And I am enthralled by both accounts, which art historian Andrew Wasserman just laid before me. Except now I must repent of some of my judgments of Mrs. Paul Mellon, or at least allow her more grace.
The basics are that Jackie Kennedy asked Bunny Mellon to be responsible for the design of her husband’s grave site—and to represent her and her family’s wishes for it. This Mellon did, quite publicly. JFK was reinterred from his original grave to the Eternal Flame site in 1967, which had been cut from New England granite by Mellon’s stone carvers at Oak Spring, or Rokeby Farm, in Upperville, Virginia.
<https://tinyurl.com/3smbhbmn>
But it turns out Bunny and Jackie were also involved in a secret design project, of a bronze memorial wreath which would encircle the Eternal Flame. It referenced a ring of hats left spontaneously by JFK’s military pallbearers, and was designed by Mellon’s friend and collaborator, jeweler Jean Schlumberger. It was then realized by Schlumberger’s collaborator, silversmith and sculptor Louis Féron. The project extended into the 1970s, when a replica of JFK’s grave was constructed at Oak Spring to test out the wreath. And then it all disappeared, except for the stone mockup.
Poking around during the pandemic, OSGF staffers pieced the story of this lost sculpture together—they found a photo of it, or a maquette of it, on eBay, a remnant of Féron’s wife’s estate. And they commissioned Gretchen Erstner Henderson to write it up. Henderson’s 2022 essay, with a public plea for new leads, was about to go to print in Ploughshares in early 2024, when the wreath was found, in never-opened crates, at the JFK Library.
In between that discovery and Ellen Wexler’s retelling and updating of the mystery in Smithsonian Magazine in October 2024, Oak Springs had unboxed some of the wreath, and presented their findings to some of the folks involved, including one of JFK’s soldier pallbearers, whose hat had been incorporated into the wreath, and the Mellons’ stone mason, who’d laid the replica grave as a teenager. _greg.org

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ARTIST BEAUFORD DELANEY, WRITING IN HIS JOURNAL IN 1962:
"Is this the last day of my life?
How does one tally the score?
Love is all and that I give the world.
Painting only now begins to explore all that I have felt and suffered."
<https://tinyurl.com/5ab4pzy7>
James Baldwin and Beauford Delaney together in Paris, c. 1960.
The two had a longtime, nurturing friendship;
Baldwin wrote, "I learned about light from Beauford Delaney,
the light contained in every thing, in every surface, in every face."
<https://tinyurl.com/4s55acn6>
Beauford Delaney, James Baldwin, c. 1945-50.
A scintillating portrait of the acclaimed writer,
vibrant with joyful color
<https://tinyurl.com/4z28n9de> _MichaelLobel

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197. AA BIG BOOK by Rainey Knudson
<https://tinyurl.com/t6xsjmrf>
It seems implausible that sitting around listening to other people talk about their problems might help you with your own. And yet that ancient convention of oral storytelling in a small group is the heart of Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s what makes it work.
AA emerged partly from the Oxford Group, a movement of the 1920s and 30s that described itself as “not a religion” because it had “no hierarchy, no temple, no endowments.” The core practice of the Oxford Group was sharing—talking with other people candidly about one’s personal struggles, confessing and surrendering to God, in pursuit of spiritual healing. It became a model for AA meetings, where the stories told, and retold, help speakers and listeners alike.
When AA co-founder Bill W. gathered stories of alcoholics in what became known as the Big Book, he described a kind of formula: “What we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.” Past-crisis-present is a simple and powerful way to organize a narrative—not just a story that happened once upon a time, but a commitment that extends into this moment. The formula is similar to Lincoln’s organization of the Gettysburg Address—this is where we were, this is the turning point, and this is the appeal for present action. For Lincoln, it was a new birth of freedom. For the alcoholic, it’s life in recovery, one day at a time. Telling the story is part of sustaining the work. _TheImpatientReader

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CHERYL'S DINER - 2
<https://tinyurl.com/4sfwfx5y> _ON&ON/Jeff Weiss

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BONAMI NAMED ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF RUSSIAN BILLIONAIRE’S ART COMPLEX by Alex Greenberger
Francesco Bonami, a widely regarded curator whose achievements include curating the 2003 edition of the Venice Biennale, has been named artistic director of the GES-2 House of Culture, the Moscow art space sited across a river from the Kremlin.
Opened in 2021, not long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the 440,000-square-foot GES-2 House of Culture is run by the V-A-C Foundation, which was established by the Russian-Israeli billionaire collector Leonid Mikhelson. The owner of one of the largest natural gas providers in Russia not managed by the state, Mikhelson became one the first individuals to be sanctioned in the UK shortly after the war’s onset.
Even before the conflict began, the GES-2 House of Culture faced controversy. Teresa Iarocci Mavica, the museum’s cofounder, resigned at the end of 2021 for reasons that were unclear at the time. Some speculated that Mikhelson was personally unhappy with a monumental Urs Fischer sculpture sited outside the museum. Others drew attention to the fact that Mavica had personally toured Vladimir Putin around the cultural complex, whose official reasoning was that the V-A-C’s Venice space required greater attention ahead of the 2022 Biennale.
Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ragnar Kjartansson canceled performances of a new work staged at GES-2, saying, “It is not possible to have this work continue as this horror begins.”
Mavica, an Italian curator who gained Russian citizenship in 2019, was replaced by Alisa Prudnikova, the founder of the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art. Prudnikova will now step aside for Bonami to take up the mantle, though she will continue to do curatorial work for the museum.
Bonami, who was born in Italy and holds US citizenship, is well-known internationally. In 1993, he organized the Venice Biennale’s “Aperto” section for emerging artists; a decade later, he organized the art festival’s entire main exhibition. He previously served in high-ranking posts at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and has done editions of Manifesta, the Whitney Biennial, and the SITE Santa Fe International. (He previously wrote a column called “Ask a Curator” for ARTnews.)
He has previously done work for the V-A-C Foundation, organizing such shows as 2024’s “Square and Space: From Malevich to GES-2,” which he organized with Zelfira Tregulova, director of the Tretyakov Gallery.
Responding to the notion that Western curators should abstain from involvement in Russia’s art scene, Bonami told in 2024, “Sorry, but the ethics of curating is a bullshit concept that I don’t indulge in. I could write a list of my colleagues who are collaborating with, to the say the least, ethically questionable people—but this is not the point … Sanctions are economic, not cultural. To sanction culture is a white crime that kills people’s souls.”
Of his future work for GES-2, Bonami said in a statement, “In my understanding, the role of Artistic Director is to catalyse artistic energy. Our common goal is to search for the best projects for GES-2. My experience should help with this.” _ARTnews

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ELEVATED DOOR LOMAX, IL
<https://tinyurl.com/4hr2wej4> _RuralIndexingProject

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CENTRE POMPIDOU’S BRAZIL SATELLITE DELAYED UNTIL 2029
The creation of a Centre Pompidou in Foz do Iguaçu, a city in the Brazilian state of Paraná, was initially slated to open in November 2027, then rescheduled for 2028. Now, the project has been pushed back again, until 2029.
The new museum will be designed by Paraguayan architect Solano Benítez, but the bidding process for the construction has yet to begin. A spokesperson for the Pompidou told that the projects is “in the technical preparatory stages for the bidding process” but no date has been confirmed. _Artforum

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GEORGE OSBORNE PERSONALLY BROKERED BRITISH MUSEUM TAPESTRY DEAL
British Museum chair George Osborne approved negotiations with billionaire Igor Tulchinsky over his sponsorship of the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition less than 90 minutes after receiving an internal due diligence report containing a section headed ‘Key Due Diligence Flags’, newly released emails show.
The correspondence, obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation and published by the campaign group Culture Unstained, also reveals that Osborne personally introduced Tulchinsky to the museum.
The billionaire hedge fund manager has since become the tapestry's most prominent benefactors, reportedly contributing £5 million towards its exhibition in London, despite scrutiny of his financial links to Israeli military technology and settlements in the occupied West Bank.
In October 2025, internal emails show that Charlotte Appleyard, Director of Development at the British Museum, sought Osborne’s approval to proceed with negotiations, sharing an internal assessment that included a section titled ‘Key Due Diligence Flags’. Osborne responded within 90 minutes, writing simply that he was ‘happy to proceed’.
British Museum chair George Osborne approved negotiations with billionaire Igor Tulchinsky over his sponsorship of the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition less than 90 minutes after receiving an internal due diligence report containing a section headed ‘Key Due Diligence Flags’, newly released emails show.
The correspondence, obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation and published by the campaign group Culture Unstained, also reveals that Osborne personally introduced Tulchinsky to the museum.
The billionaire hedge fund manager has since become the tapestry's most prominent benefactors, reportedly contributing £5 million towards its exhibition in London, despite scrutiny of his financial links to Israeli military technology and settlements in the occupied West Bank.
In October 2025, internal emails show that Charlotte Appleyard, Director of Development at the British Museum, sought Osborne’s approval to proceed with negotiations, sharing an internal assessment that included a section titled ‘Key Due Diligence Flags’. Osborne responded within 90 minutes, writing simply that he was ‘happy to proceed’.
In response to the FOI request, the museum redacted the contents of the ‘Key Due Diligence Flags’ section before releasing the documents, leaving the nature of any concerns identified in its assessment unknown. The released correspondence does not establish whether the findings were shared with the museum’s other trustees, leaving unanswered questions about the extent of the board’s oversight.
The following month, on 24 November, Appleyard informed Osborne that Tulchinsky had agreed to sponsor the exhibition. ‘Really good news and thank you so much for the introduction,’ she wrote.
The correspondence places Osborne at both ends of the sponsorship process: first introducing Tulchinsky to the museum, then approving negotiations over his donation. It raises questions about the separation between fundraising and oversight at an institution increasingly reliant on major private benefactors. While the documents establish Osborne’s involvement, they do not, on their own, demonstrate that the museum breached its sponsorship policies. _TheArtJournal

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CHICART BAILLY, PENDANT TO A ROSARY OR CHAPLET (TWO SIDES), PARIS(?), 1500–30,
<https://tinyurl.com/4jsbyth6> _JesseLocker

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MIAMI ART DEALER SENTENCED TO NEARLY FOUR YEARS IN PRISON FOR SELLING FAKE WARHOLS
A Miami art dealer received a 46-month federal prison sentence on Thursday in a long-running case centered around his efforts to sell fake Andy Warhol works.
Leslie Roberts is now facing his second prison sentence since he opened his Miami Fine Art Gallery in 1997. In 2015, he received a 22-month sentence for a case involving faked Romero Britto and Peter Max paintings. He was given three years of supervised release, but the agreement was voided in 2018, after he was accused of trying to negotiate the sale of a faked Basquiat painting, and he returned to prison.
This time around, a family claimed in a 2024 lawsuit that they had spent $6 million on Warhols that Roberts had sold them. These works featured images of people who had recurred across the Pop artist’s oeuvre: the actress Marilyn Monroe and Blondie singer Debbie Harry, among others.
But the family said that it began to doubt they possessed actual Warhols, and they noticed, upon reviewing email correspondence, that they had been messaging with email accounts that ended with @andywarholfoundation.co addresses. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the organization that manages the artist’s legacy, uses a .org address.
Roberts insisted that the works were real and that the the Warhol Foundation had said as much to him. But the Warhol Foundation has not had an authentication committee since 2011, the year that it disbanded amid legal pressure.
Thursday’s release about the sentencing from the Federal Bureau of Investigation referred to Roberts’s “fraudulent invoices, fabricated authentication documents, and counterfeit stamps,” and alleged that he had even undertaken efforts to make the forgeries appear genuine, placing faux identification numbers from the Warhol Foundation on the back of the works. _Alex Greenberger_ARTnews

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HAVE FASHION FOLK RUINED THE FRIEZE LONDON EXPERIENCE?
<https://tinyurl.com/3yma92tw> _ARTnews

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CASE AGAINST LEON BLACK DISMISSED
<https://tinyurl.com/y5e6n6bu>
A federal judge has agreed to dismiss a lawsuit brought against Leon Black after the plaintiff in the case, who had accused the private equity billionaire of rape, said she was “medically incapable of continuing” and at risk of “acute psychiatric crisis”, including suicide.
The woman known only as “Jane Doe”, who claimed in a lawsuit that was first filed in July 2023 that she had been “handed off” to Black by his associate Jeffrey Epstein and then sexually assaulted by him, had been acting without a lawyer in the case. Doe has alleged that the assault occurred in 2002, when she was a teenager.
“My request [to dismiss the case with prejudice] is not a concession concerning the truth of my allegations, a retraction of my statements, or an acceptance of defendant’s disputed positions; it reflects only the medical reality that I can no longer safely pursue this litigation,” Doe wrote in a legal filing submitted to the court on 12 October.
An attorney for Black, who has strongly denied Doe’s allegations, said his team was pleased that the judge had dismissed the lawsuit.
Susan Estrich, Black’s lawyer, said in a statement that the lawsuit should never have been brought in the first place and repeated earlier claims that Doe’s complaint was a “work of fiction” filled with lies and fabrications. In a legal filing, Black’s lawyer Michael Carlinsky said Doe’s request to dismiss the case – which Black did not oppose – “has been made voluntarily by Ms Doe without any settlement, compromise, or inducement by Mr Black”. _GuardianUK

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I'M ALWAYS UP FOR SOME FAYOUM MUMMY PORTRAIT NEWS
because the paintings are consistently so beautiful and shockingly realistic.
I wasn't aware there was a twofer:
<https://tinyurl.com/2r5t7et9> _PeterHuestis

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‘SHOCKING AND SOBERING’
<https://tinyurl.com/56juvxt2>
Wild bird populations in the UK have fallen to their lowest level since records began, figures show, with nearly half of species in decline.
Figures produced by leading nature conservation bodies for the government show that average populations across 132 native breeding species fell by 19% between 1970 and 2025, with farmland birds and seabirds the worst hit in recent years.
<https://tinyurl.com/r3nwf9cr>
Prof Richard Gregory, the head of monitoring at the RSPB, called the overall findings “shocking and sobering”.
“Birds are indicators of the way we’re looking after the countryside and the world around us,” he said. “We’re losing the birds that people are so emotionally connected to and want to protect.”
<https://tinyurl.com/bddwfh72> _GuardianUK