– MoMA Will Demolish Folk Art Museum: The Museum of Modern Art will raze the Tod Williams and Billie Tsien-designed building it bought from the American Folk Art Museum in 2011 to replace it with an extension that will connect the existing MoMA galleries to a forthcoming Jean Nouvel-designed skyscraper, whose bottom floors will house still more exhibition spaces for the Modern. "We feel really disappointed," Tsien said. "There are of course the personal feelings — your buildings are like your children, and this is a particular, for us, beloved small child. But there is also the feeling that it’s a kind of loss for architecture, because it’s a special building, a kind of small building that’s crafted, that’s particular and thoughtful at a time when so many buildings are about bigness." Construction on the 86-story Nouvel tower and the expansion to replace the AFAM building will begin next year. [NYT]
– MOCA Board Replenished: After the widely publicized departures of all its artist board members, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) has recruited three new trustees: longtime Eli Broad buddy and convicted felon Bruce Karatz, investor Stanley Gold, and lawyer Orna Amir Wolens, who is also a major collector. New MOCA board members pay a $250,000 induction fee, and are committed to contributing at least $75,000 every year. [LATimes]
– Gagosian Gives Show to Pratt Students Who Lost Work in Fire: Mega-dealer Larry Gagosian has arranged for an exhibition of works by the 44 Pratt Institute seniors whose work burned in a blaze at the Brooklyn art school in February. The show will be curated by Brooklyn Museum curator Eugenie Tsai and will take place next month in the Seagram Building. "The students wanted a show in Manhattan, and this is like a dream come true," said Pratt president Thomas F. Schutte. The show, titled "Flameproof," runs May 9-14. [NYT]
– White House Requests Smithsonian Boost: The Obama administration's request for the Smithsonian Institute's 2014 budget includes a $59 million increase to help advance one of the president's education programs and to speed construction of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is due to open in 2015. The Smithsonian's budget has been fixed at $810 million since last year, though this year it suffered a $41 million cut as a result of the March 1 sequester. The budget request includes an extra $3 million boost to provide the Smithsonian's 4,400 federal employees a 1 percent cost-of-living pay increase, something it hasn't been able to do for the past three years. [Washington Post]
– Venice's Sideshows Revealed: Details of the 48 auxiliary events and exhibitions that will surround the official programming at this year's Venice Biennale have been revealed, including the Lawrence Weiner text piece "THE GRACE OF A GESTURE" (2010) to be installed on Venice's vaporetti boats, Ai Weiwei's installation of steel bars from a quake-ravaged school at Zuecca Project Space, and an exhibition by the roving outsider artist institution the Museum of Everything. Among the projects is a plethora of presentations by Asian non-profit organizations, like Korea's National Museum of Contemporary Art, the M+ Museum for Visual Culture, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chengdu. [AiA]
– Pompidou Needs New Director: Do you or anyone you know have the necessary skills to run one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the world? If so, the Centre Pompidou is about to post a job listing on its website for a new director, as its chief of 13 years Alfred Pacquement prepares to retire on his 65th birthday, December 27, 2013. Early contenders for the job include two insiders — Pompidou adjunct directors Catherine Grenier and Didier Ottinger— as well as Documenta 13 curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. [AFP]
– Art Restorers Hijack Airport Scanners: According to research presented at the 2013 edition of the National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society, scientists have harnessed the technology used in those invasive and unpleasant full-body airport scanners as a tool for conservation that can allow art historians to scan frescoes for works hidden beneath their surfaces. A group of researchers applied the teraherz scanning technology to a 19th-century fresco at the Louvre, "Three Men Armed With Lances," and discovered a much older Roman fresco hidden beneath it. "We could not believe our eyes as the image materialized on the screen," said one of the researchers, J. Bianca Jackson. "Underneath the top painting of the folds of a man’s tunic, we saw an eye, a nose and then a mouth appear. We were seeing what likely was part of an ancient Roman fresco, thousands of years old." [Co.Exist]
– Qatar Buys Blue Period Picasso From Britain: The latest blockbuster art purchase by Qatar is Pablo Picasso's 1901 painting "Child With a Dove," which the country has reportedly acquired for £50 million through a private sale brokered by Christie's. Despite an export ban placed on the painting by the government of the U.K., where it has been since 1924 and is currently on view at London's Courtauld Institute of Art, no British museum has come up with a campaign to keep the work in the country. [TAN]
– Christie's Preps Major Pollock Drip Painting for Spring Sale: Christie's has pegged a $25-$35 million estimate on Jackson Pollock's "Number 19" (1948), a drip painting rendered in splashy streaks of black, white, and silver, and speckled with a few drops of vivid red, to hit the block in its contemporary art evening sale May 15. "If Pollock’s drip paintings are among the best-known paintings of the 20th century, the sale of Number 19 this spring in New York is an exceptional and unique opportunity for collectors and institutions to acquire this iconic masterpiece," said Christie's chairman Brett Gorvy. "Innumerable layers of delicate dripped paint reveal the captivating circular movement of Pollock’s hand. Number 19 is one of those paintings you get lost in." [Artdaily]
– Obama Budget Boosts NEA: Under the federal budget for 2014 proposed by President Barack Obama, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) would each receive a modest increase of $200,000 to their $154.5-million endowment's budgets — though the $7 million hit that each took as a result of sequestration would not be remedied. "With this funding," an NEH statement said, "we believe that NEH can make a credible investment in a range of humanities activities that will yield both immediate and long-term returns to the nation." [Chronicle of Higher Education]
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