Google Cultural Institute launches fashion history initiative

Google Cultural Institute launches fashion history initiative | Google’s Cultural Institute, in collaboration with over 180 cultural institutions, has launched ‘We Wear Culture’, a new online initiative, in collaboration with 180 cultural institutions, exploring the history of fashion. The platform, which grew out of Google’s work digitising museum collections, provides digital access to 30,000 fashion pieces and hundreds of articles, online exhibitions and immersive museum walkthroughs. The project was launched yesterday on the Google Arts & Culture platform, at an event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, one of the project’s biggest partners.

UK’s Creative Industries Federation renews call for soft Brexit | The news that the UK general election has led to a hung parliament has prompted the Creative Industries Federation to issue a statement calling for a ‘soft’ Brexit. CIF chief executive John Kampfner said this morning that the election result, which saw the Conservative party lose its overall majority in parliament, demonstrates ‘that there is no clear mandate for the government to negotiate a hard Brexit.’ According to Kampfner’s statement, 96 per cent of CFI members had been in favour of remaining in the EU before the June 2016 referendum.

William Krisel (1924–2017) | William Krisel, a modernist architect known for his pioneering contributions to the landscape of mid-century Southern California, died on Monday. While most of his designs were for affordable domestic housing, Krisel was also the architect behind the lavish, futuristic ‘House of Tomorrow’ – where Elvis and Priscilla Presley spent their honeymoon – in Palm Springs. Read his LA Times obituary here.

Royal Academy keeper Eileen Cooper to step down | Eileen Cooper, painter and keeper of the Royal Academy Schools, is stepping down as keeper. Her successor in September will be Rebecca Salter. Cooper’s 10-year tenure marks the first time that a woman has filled the role of keeper in the history of the oldest art school in Britain.

Hauser & Wirth now represents Fondazione Piero Manzoni | The estate of Italian artist Piero Manzoni is now represented by Hauser & Wirth gallery. Manzoni, perhaps best known for his 1961 ‘Artist’s Shit’ (Merda d’artista) series of excrement-filled tin cans, died in 1963 aged only 29; his estate has since been overseen by the family-run Fondazione Piero Manzoni, based in Milan.