Apollo

Kanye West donates $10m for James Turrell crater in Arizona

Kanye West photographed in December 2018.

Art news daily: 15 January

The freedom Gainsborough found in painting his family

Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist’s Daughters (c. 1774), Thomas Gainsborough

The artist’s portraits of his household are more spontaneous than his commercial work

Christians protest against McJesus sculpture in Haifa

Haifa Museum of Art, Israel

Art news daily: 14 January

Warren MacKenzie’s commitment to craft

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Installation view of ‘A Master’s Hand’ exhibition at Driscoll Babcock Galleries, New York, 2017.

The renowned American potter believed simplicity, beauty, and affordability were of paramount importance

What can museums do to ensure collectors follow through on promised gifts?

Seattle Art Museum, with Hammering Man (1991) by Jonathan Borofsky at its entrance.

With no contracts or value exchanges, announced gifts can easily be revoked. But there are ways to firm up loose agreements

The photoshop fails of your favourite politicians

The Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has joined the ranks of politicians who have tried to airbrush themselves into history

Pyotr Pavlensky has been sentenced for his Paris fire ‘performance’

Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky poses after setting fire to the doors of the headquarters of the FSB security service, the successor to the KGB, in central Moscow early on November 9, 2015. Photo by NIGINA BEROEVA/AFP via Getty Images

Art news daily: 11 January

Acquisitions of the month: December 2018

Progress (The Advance of Civilization) (1853), Asher B. Durand. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

A Midwestern epic painting and minimalist marvels were among the top works to enter museum collections last month

Beyond the blockbusters – five more shows to catch in 2019

Figure (19th–20th century), Togo/Ewe or Fon (river Mono?).

Highlights include a celebration of Cosimo de’ Medici at the Uffizi and ceramics from Africa at the Design Museum in Munich

Poetry and pessimism at the 12th Shanghai Biennale

Shooting an Elephant and The Leader (2018), Arin Rungjang.

Grand narratives of progress are undermined in a surprisingly understated edition of the Chinese biennial

Egypt questions National Museum of Scotland’s right to Giza pyramid stone

Daniel Potter, assistant curator at National Museum of Scotland, with a casing stone from the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Art news daily: 10 January

The Apollo 40 under 40 podcast: Erika Balsom

Erika Balsom

Gabrielle Schwarz talks to the critic and scholar Erika Balsom about her experience working between the worlds of art and cinema

Rachel Whiteread wins the Whitechapel Gallery’s Art Icon award

Rachel Whiteread

Art news daily: 9 January

The modern painters who were mad about Frans Hals

Portrait of a Woman (1888), William Merritt Chase. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford Connecticut

Van Gogh, Whistler, Sargent and Manet were just some of the major artists who made pilgrimages to Haarlem to see Hals’s work

Cutting criticism – a tale of Bendor Grosvenor’s cat

Photo: Ishbel MacDonald/BBC

Plus: Salvador Dalí among the drug lords and how Jeremy Deller made his mother proud

Marc-Olivier Wahler resigns as director of MSU Broad Art Museum

Marc-Olivier Wahler

Art news daily: 8 January

Close encounters with the gods in court paintings from north India

Devi in the Form of Bhadrakali Adored by the Gods (detail; c. 1660–70), folio from a dispersed Tantric Devi series, attributed to the Master of the Early Rasamanjari

Painters at the Pahari courts found new ways to represent the Hindu gods in the 17th and 18th centuries

Temple of ‘Flayed Lord’ discovered in Mexico

Stone carvings discovered in the Popoloca ruins in Puebla state, photo: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico

Art news daily: 7 January

The cosmopolitan art of Anglo-Saxon England

The Book of Durrow (detail; f. 86r) (c. 700), probably Durrow, Co. Offaly, or Iona. Trinity College Dublin

The British Library demonstrates that Anglo-Saxon culture looked to Europe and beyond

Las Vegas casino buys 60-foot-high sculpture by Damien Hirst

Installation view of Damien Hirst’s Demon with Bowl in ‘Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable’ at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 2017.

Art news daily: 4 January

The endless inventions of Bruce Nauman

Installation view of ‘Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts’ at MoMA PS1, New York, 2018.

Drawing, video, sculpture and performance – no medium is out of bounds for the titan of American art

Hans Ulrich Obrist as you’ve never seen him before

Visiting Harald Szeemann with the Flu (2018), Francesco Bonami

Plus: Prince Charles, Leonard Cohen and Salvador Dalí, and the artistic tastes of Drake

Where next for virtual reality art?

Some seem beguiled by VR technology but others are using it to confront our faith in digital progress

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