The artist Yayoi Kusama, best known around the world for her ‘infinity mirror room’ installations and psychedelic sculptures and paintings, has died at the age of 97. Kusama began making art as a child, when she experienced hallucinations of talking flowers and drew what was in her mind’s eye, and later studied the traditional technique of nihonga, in which finely-ground pigments mixed with glue are painted on to paper or silk. In 1958 she moved to New York and fell in with minimalists including Donald Judd and Frank Stella, and began work on her ‘infinity net’ paintings, in which hundreds of impasto polka dots cover the canvas. In the 1960s she staged performances on Wall Street and in front of the Statue of Liberty and MoMA, in which participants were naked except for painted polka dots to protest against the Vietnam War. In 1973, as her spectacles grew less effective in New York, and after the death of her close friend Joseph Cornell, Kusama moved back to Japan. Four years later, after decades of struggling with mental health, she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo, where she decided to spend the rest of her life making art. In the 21st century, public sculptures and the ‘mirror rooms’ earned her a new generation of fans. A statement released by her company, Yayoi Kusama Inc., said that she ‘continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush’.
The UK prime minister, Andy Burnham, has softened his stance on returning the Parthenon Marbles to Greece in an interview with the Financial Times this week. In 2023, when he was mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham said that the marbles should be sent back with ‘no strings attached’. To the FT, he said, ‘Ultimately it’s an issue for the British Museum, isn’t it?’, adding, ‘Legally, that’s where the issue rests, but I’m all in favour of using British cultural diplomacy.’ The British Museum Act of 1963 would in fact require a change in the law to allow the museum to part with the Parthenon Marbles or any other parts of its collection in this way.
The Trump administration has threatened to demolish the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. if its planned renovations do not go ahead. In a court filing made on 24 August, the Department of Justice said that without the work, estimated at $250m, the building would ‘deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down’. Although the renovation was blocked in May by US district judge Christopher Cooper, earlier this month the centre’s board voted to go ahead with a two-year closure for the works. Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court has allowed construction of the White House ballroom to continue for the time being, the BBC reports. The project was halted earlier this month after a federal appeals court ruled that changes to the building could not be made without congressional approval. The Supreme Court has yet to make a final ruling on the matter.
US officials have removed a painting by Kehinde Wiley from the American embassy in the Dominican Republic, the New York Times reports. Erin Scavino, who leads the government’s Art in Embassies programme, called Young Artists after Siamesas 1960 (2015) – which depicts four Dominican artists against a colourful floral background – ‘very woke’ and ‘aesthetically terrifying’. A senior government official told the Art Newspaper that the State Department, which commissioned the painting during the Obama administration, is looking into selling the work.
Bronze Age artefacts have been stolen from the Museo Villena in Alicante, the BBC reports. Thieves broke into the museum on 27 August and completed the heist in four minutes. The stolen objects, which include bracelets and bowls, are from a collection known as the Treasure of Villena, discovered in a sunken vessel in Villena in 1963. They are valued at some €1.7m, the Guardian reports. Fulgencio Cerdán, mayor of Villena, said, ‘We are absolutely devastated […] for those of us from Villena, this destroys us.’ The robbery follows a spate of museum heists across Europe, including the theft of four Renaissance paintings from the Museo Regionale di Messina last week.
The CEO of the Powerhouse Parramatta in Sydney has stepped down ten weeks before the museum is due to open on 7 November, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. Lisa Havilah’s departure comes as the government investigates ‘governance and procurement’ at the museum, prompted by a complaint from a whistleblower. NSW Government Architect Abbie Galvin has been appointed interim CEO.
Le Monde has obtained a report by the General Inspectorate of Cultural Affairs (IGAC) in France about why Pierre-Olivier Costa was suspended as president of the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (MUCEM) in Marseille. It lists allegations of sexual harassment, sexism, favouritism and psychological harassment and says that ‘beyond mere internal malaise, the institution itself is in jeopardy’ because of the breakdown in relations between management and staff. Marseille’s public prosecutor has also expanded the ongoing investigation into Costa’s behaviour.
