— French Culture Head Quits: French Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti, who has been an active and highly visible arts advocate since she was promoted to the position in 2012, publicly resigned in an open letter published yesterday. Filippetti is a casualty of the current crisis in the French cabinet. She addressed a lack of arts funding in her departure letter: “I held on with the same loyalty when I had to endure an unprecedented drop in the budget of the ministry of culture… for two consecutive years.” [TAN]
— NYRB Critic Retracts Zaha Hadid Criticism: New York Review of Books critic Martin Filler has made a statement on the publication’s website saying that he regrets the error he made in a recent article about Zaha Hadid that led the architect to file a libel suit in New York State Supreme Court. On Monday night, the NYRB appended a letter of correction to the article, wherein Filler had called out Hadid, quoting remarks she made in London in February, for being dismissive over construction worker deaths in Qatar. Filler had written that "an estimated one thousand laborers...have perished while constructing" Hadid's World Cup Al Wakhrah Stadium, but in fact, as the correction acknowledges, work on the stadium had not begun at the time of Hadid’s London statements, and actual construction won’t begin until 2015. (The estimate Filler cited, from an article in The Guardian, referred to worker deaths on other projects in Qatar.) [NYT, Guardian]
— First Superman Comic Fetches $3.2M: A copy of Action Comics No. 1 — the first comic to feature Superman — was sold on eBay last Sunday night for $3.2 million, in an auction organized by Pristine Comics. A copy of Action Comics #1 in similarly near-perfect condition, which had been owned by actor Nicolas Cage, was sold in 2011 for $2.1 million. The new sale tops the price record for a single comic book, according to Art Daily. [NYT]
— Posthumous Weston Prints For Sale: On September 30, Sotheby’s is set to auction off 548 posthumously printed Edward Weston photos in a single lot that they expect to bring $3 million. [NYT]
— Aspen Finally Removes Tortoises: Animals rights people have been protesting the use of iPad-toting tortoises in Cai Guo-Qiang’s Aspen Art Museum piece since July and the museum has finally relented to remove the slow-moving creatures. [Aspen Daily News]
—Artist Gnomes for Children: Author James Frey is writing a children’s book based on Elliott Arkin’s garden gnome sculptures of famous artists. [TAN]
— Claire Messud, author of “The Woman Upstairs,” profiled artist Marlene Dumas for T Magazine. [T Magazine]
— Sam Hunter, art historian and founding director of two Brandeis University art institutions, has passed away. [NYT]
— Two big appointments this morning: the Perez Art Museum Miami has chosen Jeff Krinsky to serve as president of its board of trustees, and Thomas Welsh is the Cleveland Museum of Art’s new director of performing arts. [Art Daily, Cleveland.com]
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