— Poland Questions Provenance of Austria’s $77 Million Bruegel: Allegations have surfaced in Krakow, Poland that the 1559 Bruegel painting “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent,” which currently hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, was looted from Poland during World War II. Archival documents discovered by the director of the National Museum in Krakow tell that the wife of the city’s Nazi-era governor took several paintings from the Polish museum when she relocated back to Austria in 1942 — the Bruegel among them. Speaking to the significance of this discovery, Meredith Hale, a fellow in Netherlandish art at Cambridge, noted: “It is impossible to overstate the importance of this painting. If it was taken unlawfully from Krakow to Vienna it would be a huge story for the art world — as big as it gets.” [FT, Artnet]
— Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art to Loan Works in First Post-Thaw Deal: A major loan of 20th-century art acquired by the Shah’s regime in the 1970s has been negotiated for an exhibition by the State Museums Berlin and the Prussian Cultural Foundation next year. The collection, thought by some to be the finest of its period outside the West, includes works by Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and Claude Monet, but the details of the new loan remain unknown. Though works from the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art collection have been put on loan before, this is the first such deal since what has been termed the “Iranian thaw” — or nuclear agreement — came earlier this year. [TAN]
— Thomas Jefferson Statue Provokes Ire at Missouri University: A monument to founding father Thomas Jefferson at the University of Missouri in Columbia has incited aggressive debate on campus, with many students and social media commentators piqued that Jefferson, a slave owner, should have a memorial devoted to him at all. An online petition demands that the statue be removed from the university’s central quad area, while supporters of the Twitter hashtag #standwithJefferson have been making the opposite case. The university Republicans are blaming the row on an excess of political correctness and reminding observers of the “important moral and political” values that Jefferson stood for. [LAT]
— Swizz Beatz Joins Brooklyn Museum Board: Kasseem Dean (a.k.a. Swizz Beatz) and Barbara Vogelstein have joined the Brooklyn Museum’s “growing” board, the institution stated in a release last night. The board appointments, which bring the museum’s governing body to 33 members, are the first since Anne Pasternak assumed her directorship of the Brooklyn Museum on September 1. [Brooklyn Museum]
— Loic Gouzer Named Deputy Chairman of Post-War and Contemporary at Christie’s: The Swiss-born Christie’s executive has been promoted from senior vice president, though he told ARTnews he is “not really impressed by people’s titles.” Artworks’ titles, on the other hand, will do just fine: Gouzer was responsible for the record-setting $706 million “Looking Forward to the Past” sale at the auction house last May. [ARTnews]
— Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art Appoints CEO: Curator, writer, and administrator Chantal Pontbriand has joined the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto as CEO, a newly created position. Pontbriand has previously served as the commissioner of the Canadian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1990, among other appointments. [Globe and Mail]
— The Guardian offers a quiz on the architectural eccentricities of higher education institutions: how many Brutalist blocs and sculptural towers can you recognize? [Guardian]
— Carolina Miranda combs through the Yelp reviews for L.A.’s new Broad Art Museum and finds mixed reactions: “Much anger” over the long line for a 45-second appointment at Yayoi Kusama’s infinity room, but also general sentiments to the end of “ahhh-mazing.” [LAT]
— The 2015 W. Eugene Smith Grant has been awarded to photographer Matt Black, for documenting the rural poverty of California’s farming communities. [Artforum]
