– Groundhogs Plague Crystal Bridges: Arkansas’s Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is having some serious problems fighting off the groundhogs that have burrowed into the building’s green roof. According to grounds manager Clay Bakker, the groundhogs are attracted to the porous soil of the green roof as northwest Arkansas typically has a rocky dirt. "We tried to foresee a lot of things," Bakker said. "But what we just really didn't anticipate was groundhogs." [AP]
– Pussy Riot Doc an Oscar Favorite: The documentary "Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer" — about the Russian punk collective Pussy Riot, whose last two remaining imprisoned members were recently freed — is one of the films shortlisted for nomination in the Academy Awards' best documentary category. Nevertheless, the film has been banned in Russia. "The ban didn't surprise me too much, but we are not sure what we will do next," the film's producer and co-director, Mike Lerner, said. "Perhaps we will set up some private screenings there." [BBC]
– Denver Museum Returns Kenyan Totems: The Denver Museum of Nature and Science will return some 30 memorial totems from East Africa that were donated to the institution in 1990 by actor Gene Hackman and Hollywood producer Art Linson, to the National Museums of Kenya, which will decide whether to exhibit the artifacts, seek out their rightful owners, or allow them to deteriorate as was their creators' intentions. "The process is often complicated, expensive and never straightforward," the curator of anthropology at the Denver museum, Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, said. "But just because a museum is not legally required to return cultural property does not mean it lacks an ethical obligation to do so." [NYT]
– Soviet Art Hits Sotheby’s: Russian banking billionaire and Socialist Realism art collector Alexey Ananiev currently has a non-selling show of 35 Soviet propaganda paintings (from a collection of about 6,000 works) at Sotheby’s London. [WSJ]
– Breakfast With Nicholas Penny: The director of the U.K.'s National Gallery, Nicholas Penny— who has been at the helm of the museum since 2008 — has a soft spot for overlooked artists and thinks contemporary art is snagging too much of the spotlight. The scholar and former Renaissance painting curator refuses to pay attention to attendance records and hopes his museum will become more of a center for scholars. "I don’t believe art up to the present should be taught at university," Penny said. "Because of consumer demand, the explosion of teaching of contemporary art now is colossal — and it is achieved at the expense of older art. We at the National Gallery should do more to become a magnet for scholarship." [FT]
– Christie’s Interviews Double Feature: Christie’s auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen discussed how to see the glint in a buyer’s eye and CEO Steven Murphy talked about breaking into the Indian market. [NYT, Forbes India]
– Swiss philosopher Alain de Botton and British art historian John Armstrong are teaming up for "Art as Therapy," a project for which they will write wall text for 150 works in the Rijksmuseum's permanent collection. [TAN]
– As one of eight guest curators of an upcoming exhibition at the Washington Project for the Arts and Marianne Boesky Gallery, collector Mera Rubell spent a marathon 36 hours doing 37 studio visits in Baltimore. [Baltimore Sun]
– Thomas Struth's new show at Marian Goodman Gallery features five large-scale photos he took during a visit to Disneyland. [WSJ]
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REVIEW: "New Jersey as Non-Site" at Princeton University Art Museum
Rhapsodies on Color and Cultural History in "Blue Mythologies"
Warhol Museum and Polaroid Plot Vegas Show
NYC Museum Debuts Historic Graffiti Collection
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