– Nic Cage's Art for Sale: Film blogger Jordan Morris snagged a prized item at actor Nicolas Cage's recent estate sale: a small abstract artwork in bright hues of yellow, red, and blue, with a triangular form surrounded by a circle at its center. According to Morris, who was photographed with the zen artwork in the actor's dining room, the work's title is "Sacred Geometric Art for Meditation." [Filmdrunk, Jordan Morris]
– Art Keeps Pinault Young: During a tour of the solo show by Rudolf Stingel that he's presenting at the Palazzo Grassi— his Tadao Ando-renovated Venetian palazzo — to coincide with the Venice Biennale, the French businessman and super-collector François Pinault discussed the impetus for his immersion in the art world relatively late in life. "I'm very tormented by the passing of time and by death, because it's something we can't control," Pinault said. "Art and the relationship with artists could be a way to stay younger in my mind for as long as possible. There's a disconnection between physical and mental age. Sure, I'm not 30 anymore, but I reason as if I'm 30." [WSJ]
– Pope Francis's First Statue: The first public sculpture portraying new Pope Francis has been installed in a potato field outside Naples, a symbolic venue given that the Argentine pontiff is descended from northern Italian farmers. The stylized, figurative sculpture was financed by the Italian actor Barbato De Stefano, who will present it to Pope Francis next month. [AFP]
– Riverside Museum is Europe's Best: The Zaha Hadid-designed Riverside Museum in Glasgow, which has greeted more than two million visitors since it opened in June 2011, has been named the European Museum of the Year by the Council of Europe, becoming the first Scottish museum to receive the honor. "The Riverside Museum demonstrates brilliantly how a specialist transport collection can renew its relevance through active engagement with wider social and universal issues," the judges said. "The EMYA 2013 Judging Panel agreed unanimously that the museum fulfills the EMYA criteria of 'public quality' at the highest level." [BBC]
– Met's Medieval Curators Shuffle: The Metropolitan Museum's Department of Medieval Art and its Upper Manhattan outpost the Cloisters are rejiggering their curatorial staff, with current curator in charge Peter Barnet moving into the new role of senior curator, while C. Griffith Mann, at the moment the chief curator and deputy director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, will take over as curator in charge. The new appointments take effect on September 1. [Press Release]
– Free Museum Admission for Military Personnel: Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Department of Defense, and the non-profit Blue Star Families will offer free admission to some 2,000 museums nationwide for active duty military personal and their families. Participants in the annual initiative include the Corcoran Gallery, MoMA, LACMA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and, for the first time, the Getty Museum. [Washington Post]
– Egypt's Ancient Roman City Pilfered: The ancient Roman site of Antinopolis, which was built by emperor Hadrian in the second century CE, has fallen prey to plunderers and is being demolished by development projects, farmland, and a neighboring town's cemetery. Researchers at the site met with the Egyptian minister of antiquities, Mohammed Ibrahim, but to no avail. "This is a disgrace, it’s a real tragedy," said Raymond Johnson, the director of the University of Chicago at Luxor's archaeological mission to the site. "After the meeting with the minister they increased the number of guards, but many of them are from the same families as those that pillage the site." [TAN]
– Timbuktu Takes Stock of its Manuscripts: Following the end of the occupation of the Malian city, al-Qaida-affiliated Islamists set fire to manuscripts as they fled French forces. But the guardians of the country's ancient texts managed to ferry most of the 45,000 housed at the Ahmed Baba Institute to Bamako by car and boat. "It was a dangerous thing to do, we would have been punished if we had been caught," said Abdoulaye Cissé, the Institute's interim director. "But people really came together to help us. Every time we told them what they were carrying, they all kept it secret and kept them hidden until they left the occupied area… We want to digitally secure all the manuscripts before they are brought back to Timbuktu… But then they must be brought back. The manuscripts are meaningless if they're not in Timbuktu." [Guardian]
– Artists' Mini-Golf Gets Grant: Blue Ox Mini Golf, a project to install an 18-hole course at the forthcoming Schmidt Artists Lofts in St. Paul, Minnesota — with a different artist designing each hole — received a $350,000 ArtPlace America grant. The Blue Ox crew hopes to begin construction on the course by the fall, with the first art golfers expected to tee off in May 2014. [Star Tribune]
– Martian Meteor Crashes Auction: A large chunk of a meteorite from Mars is expected to be the top lot in Heritage Auctions's "Nature and Science" sale on June 2 in Dallas, with a pre-sale estimate of $160,000 or more for the crystal-packed meteor. Fewer than 300 pounds of Martian meteorite are thought to exist on Earth — the one headlining Heritage's sale weighs in at 1.37 pounds and separated from Mars's surface when the planet was hit by an asteroid. [Artdaily]
VIDEO OF THE DAY
Zaha Hadid's Riverside Museum in Glasgow
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