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Cooper Union Occupation Ends, Greek Billionaire Ransacks Own Biennale, and More

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Cooper Union Occupation Ends, Greek Billionaire Ransacks Own Biennale, and More

Cooper Union Occupation Ends: The 11 Cooper Union students who had been occupying a room in the university's Peter Cooper Foundation Building left yesterday, ending a week-long protest plans set in motion by administrators and the school's new president Jamshed Bharucha to begin charging tuition for the first time in the past 110 years of the college's history. "Jamshed Bharucha’s absence and lack of direct communication over the past week has made it clear that he is a liability to this institution," the students said in a statement. "We can declare without hesitation that Jamshed Bharucha is no longer our president." [AnimalNY]

Billionaire Behind Biennale Bails: The Greek entrepreneur Kikos Papadopoulos, who launched the inaugural Santorini Biennale in an effort to bring tourists to the depressed Aegean Sea island, has gone missing along with many of the works featured in the exhibition, leaving curators and rents unpaid. "I was interested in where the money was coming from, given the economic situation, but he just waved his hand. ‘It is all secured,’ he told me," said British artist Tomas Poblete, who Papadopoulos hired as a curator for the project. "He gave us every reason to believe." [Independent]

Will Smith Shopped ABMB With Seven Bodyguards: Reports of celebrity shopping sprees at last week's Miami fairs continue to pour in, including Floridian rapper Rick Ross buying a Richard Mosse photograph from Jack Shainman— the same booth that was shut down when Will Smith strolled in with his seven (7!) bodyguards. Former New York Giants tight end Jeremy Shockey dropped $200,000 on a pair of tiger sculptures by Domingo Zapata, while Jay-Z joined his wife Beyoncé in browsing the ABMB booths, and bought a $20,000 painting by Chicago-based artist Hebru Brantley titled "Everyone's Scared." [Page Six]

Zurich Lost Over 5,000 Artworks: Taking full inventory of its 35,000-piece art collection for the first time in nearly a century, the Swiss city discovered that 5,176 — roughly 15 percent — are missing. Among them are 1,400 unique works, including a Le Corbusier painting that the city purchased for 80,000 Swiss Francs ($85,800). The other artworks that have been lost were insured for a total of 1 million Swiss Francs ($1.07 million). The city's entire collection is valued at approximately 121 million Swiss Francs ($129.8 million). [AFP]

Holocaust Museum Takes National Tour: To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. is taking its show on the road. The museum will host events in four cities, including Los Angeles and Chicago. It's also waging a national marketing campaign with in-your-face ads, such as one that asks, "What if Hitler had access to the Internet?" Notes Lorna Miles, the museum's marketing officer: "Hate on the Internet is on the rise, anti-Semitism is on the rise, Holocaust denial is on the rise... the relevance and importance of the museum has never been greater." [NYT]

New York + Math Museum = Opening Soon: New York City's new Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) will open its doors on Saturday with interactive exhibits devoted to making concepts like topology and number theory more tangible. Its Enigma Café will serve puzzles in place of coffee, and a 3D printer-equipped design studio dubbed the Mathenaeum will be open to visitors. The museum's founders see it as a corrective for conventional math education. "It's like teaching kids to read music, and never even telling them that instruments exist," says co-founder Cindy Lawrence. "You don't fix that by more testing. You do it with a cultural institution that can change the norms and perceptions about math — we want to be that place." [NewScientist]

Surrealist Collection Languishes While Berlin Searches for Space: Collectors Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch set off a furor in Berlin earlier this year when it became public that their planned donation of Surrealist artwork to the city's Gemäldegalerie would displace the museum's Old Masters collection. The gift is now on hold due to space constraints and will likely force Berlin to set a timetable for constructing an Old Masters museum, which would clear the Gemäldegalerie for 20th-century art. "If they don’t find a space, we will withdraw our offer, but I don’t think that will happen," said Heiner Pietzsch. [Bloomberg]

Arts Donors Are Up — But Should They Be?: The number of philanthropic donations to arts and culture organizations in the U.K. has grown in the last five years, according to the latest Coutts Million Pound Donor Report, but their overall value has fallen. The development may not please philosopher Peter Singer, who, in a recent article on year-end giving, called philanthropy for cultural activities "morally dubious." [The Stage, NYT]

ACE Suffers Additional Budget Cut: Arts Council England, an organization that distributes grants to cultural groups across the country, will have its own funding cut by £11.6 million before 2015. The belt-tightening follows a 30-percent budget reduction announced last year. "We must now look closely at the figures and decide how we will pass these cuts on," said ACE chief Alan Davey. "Some organisations are also having to deal with local authority cuts and so the situation is extremely challenging." [BBC]

Texas Biennial Announces 2013 Curators: Artist K8 HardyNasher Sculpture Center director Jeremy Strick, and art critic David Pagel are among the 13 curators selected to organize next year's Texas Biennial, which kicks off September 5. The fifth annual event will extend across the state, with programming in Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Marfa. Curators will make their selections from an open call to artists living and working in Texas. [Press Release]

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