– Marc Quinn Brings Pregnant Nudes to Venice: The YBA Marc Quinn, known for making popsicle self-portraits from his own blood and for giving the British Museum a golden statue of Kate Moss, has not one but two new works at the Venice Biennale featuring nude, pregnant women. The first is a large painting of the reclining and very preggers model Lara Stone against a shimmering red backdrop; the other is an inflatable sculpture portraying the artist Alison Lapper sans arms, in the style of a classical statue, which is parked outside the church of St. Giorgio Maggiore. [Telegraph, NYT]
– V&A Presses Start on Game Designer Residency: The 160-year-old Victoria and Albert Museum is powering up its new media art program with a new game designer in residence program whose first resident is Sophia George. The 22-year-old designer, who beat out some 100 applicants, will have full access to the museum's design collections spanning the 16th to the 20th century for inspiration for a new game. "I don't want to make it too 'schooley,'" George said. "But it might be a nice idea to develop something that can go inside the museum." [Independent]
– Iraq Hopes Restored Arch Will Encourage Tourism: In hopes of promoting tourism just south of Baghdad, Iraqi authorities have hired a Czech company to begin a restoration on the Arch of Ctesiphon, the crumbling and last remaining structure from the ancient Persian capital Ctesiphon. While this was a once-popular site for visitors, tourism hit a steep decline after the town of Madain was suspected of housing a biological weapons research facility under Saddam Hussein and then later became an Al-Qaeda stronghold. [AFP]
– Finnair Folk Art Grounded: Finnair, Finland's leading airline, has agreed to remove artwork from the fuselage of one of its planes after it was found to have been plagiarized from Maria Primatshenko, the celebrated Ukrainian folk artist. Similarities between the plane paint job and "Metsanvaki" by Primatshenko, who died in 1997, were first spotted by the Finnish news site Helsingin Sanomat. [LATimes]
– Aby Rosen Loves to Party: In his extensive New York Times profile, "party-boy" mega-collector Aby Rosen details his view on life ("I wake up every morning and I think, ‘You know what, I’m a lucky bastard,’"), his feud with Tom Wolfe ("He will go on wearing more white suits. I will go on having a good time"), and features Damien Hirst’s appraisal of the guy: "You have lots of people who buy art because they don’t have a personality, but they want to be able to hang out and be part of a scene and have friends. Aby’s not like that, because he’s already got all that." [NYT]
– Duchamp Scholar Teaches Ai Weiwei To Play Chess: New York art dealer and Marcel Duchamp expert Francis Naumann recently had his dream birthday wish realized: to teach artist Ai Weiwei to play chess. "On April 25 — as luck would have it, on the occasion of my 65th birthday — my long-delayed session with him finally took place in Beijing, on a beautiful sunny spring afternoon in the garden outside of his studio," Naumann said. The game had apparently been long delayed due to Ai's detention, but he was a quick learner. "To facilitate the learning process, I played both sides of the board," Naumann said. "When I then decided to take one side, it was already too late for that side, the position I assumed being too weak to defend. So, although it's not technically correct, you could say that he beat me in our very first game." [AiA]
– Huge Donation for Huntington Museum: Los Angeles's Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Garden has received a $32-million donation from octogenarian businessman Charles Munger, which will go to funding the museum's new visitor center and new education facilities, which are scheduled to open in two years. Munger is the lead donor towards the expansion project, which is already underway, and for which the Huntington hopes to raise $60 million. [LATimes]
– Roberta Smith Was Donald Judd's Secretary: In her feature on the just-renovated former home and studio of Minimalist artist Donald Judd, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith recalls meeting Judd during her semester in the Whitney Museum's independent study program in 1968, befriending his family, and eventually working as his secretary and then on his catalogue raisonné. "Once or twice I went with him to 101 Spring Street — in what was then called the Cast-Iron District — which he had just purchased," Smith recalls. "As the building was being cleared out, he was moving things in. I remember standing in the building’s filthy basement unrolling his paintings from the 1950s, which seemed like ancient history." [NYT]
– T.S. Eliot’s Widow Auctions Art Collection: The art collection of Valerie Eliot, T.S. Eliot’s recently deceased widow, is up for sale at a Christie’s London auction this November and on view in New York starting June 1. Royalties from the musical "Cats," based on Eliot’s "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats,” turned out to be more lucrative than his poetry and enabled Eliot’s widow to purchase the collection, valued at $7.6 million. Included are works by J.M.W. Turner, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Thomas Gainsborough, David Hockney, John Constable, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill—all the great Brits! [AP]
– Faberge Museum Stocking Back Up After Divorce: After losing a huge chunk of its collection, nearly 600 items, to a divorce settlement between owner Alexander Ivanov and his now ex-wife, the Faberge Museum is stocking back up with a new acquisitions plan. The museum has already acquired 50 items this year and plans to collect a total of 300 by the end of 2013, according to Ivanov."Every great collection has its ups and downs, and we will continue to grow the collection in quality and quantity," he said. "In addition to Faberge, I actively grow my new collection of ancient gold jewelry." [Artdaily]
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