— President Obama Apologizes to Art Historian in Hand-Written Note: President Obama penned a handwritten note to art historian Ann Collins Johns, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, apologizing for the “off-the-cuff remarks” he made on January 30 about the value of an art history degree. Obama made the comment at a Wisconsin General Electric plant where he spoke about education and employment in the U.S. “I was making a point about the jobs market, not the value of art history,” Obama wrote in his note to Johns. “As it so happens, art history was one of my favorite subjects in high school, and it has helped me take in a great deal of joy in my life that I might otherwise have missed.” [Hyperallergic]
— Banksy’s “Kissing Coppers” Sells at Miami Auction for $575,000: “Kissing Coppers,” a black-and-white stencil work by British street artist Banksy showing two police officers kissing and embracing, sold to an anonymous buyer at a Miami auction for $575,000. The work, which was taken from a wall of a U.K. pub in 2005, was featured along with other works of street art at Fine Art Auctions Miami’s “Major Street Art Auction.” “The potential of this market is incredible,” said Frederic Thut, the director of FAAM. “I was at the first sales of pop art and it was exactly the same people coming from nowhere and buying immediately.” [Reuters]
— Vase-Smashing Artist Says His Act Was “In Solidarity” With Ai Weiwei: 51-year-old artist Maximo Caminero, who was captured on video smashing a green vase by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei at the Perez Art Museum Miami, said Tuesday that he had shattered the vase in “an act of solidarity with Mr. Ai” to bring attention to Ai’s situation with Chinese authorities. “When I saw the installation,” said Caminero, “what I saw was a cry for help from Mr. Ai.” [NYT]
— An appraiser, considering the “power of red” at last week’s auctions in London where Gerhard Richter’s very red painting “Wand (Wall)” sold at Sotheby’s for $28.7 million, explores why red-colored art is big right now. [Forbes]
— After a five-year renovation and a $71 million refurbishment, Paris’s Picasso museum, which houses one of the most comprehensive collections of the artist’s work, is scheduled to open in June with an added 40,000-square-feet of exhibition space. [GMA News]
— Metropolitan Museum of Art chairman Daniel Brodsky and his wife, art historian Estrellita B. Brodsky, have established an endowment for two significant curatorships in the Modern and Contemporary Art department. The new positions will support expanded programming in the Fifth Avenue building as well as the Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue, which the Met will take over after the Whitney departs in 2015. [Artdaily]
— Filmmaker and healthcare advocate Julie Sokolow documents how the lives of over 40 Pittsburgh artists are affected by horrific medical debt in a new online video series “Healthy Artists.” [NYT]
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