THE HEADLINES

SCRAPPED POMPIDOU X JERSEY MUSEUM. On Saturday New Jersey politicians pulled funding for the Centre Pompidou’s planned Jersey City museum, reports Alex Greenberger for ARTnews. The institution formally dubbed Centre Pompidou x Jersey City would have been the first North American satellite run by the Paris-based modern art museum. Others are already open in China and Belgium. Earlier this year, state entities began raising concerns about costs of running the center, in addition to the $50 million in taxpayer’s funds to open it, out of a total $200 million. “We have decided to pause this project indefinitely,” wrote Tim Sullivan, chief executive of the state’s Economic Development Authority, in a letter obtained by the New Jersey Monitor. His reasons included, “the ongoing impact of COVID and multiple global conflicts on the supply chain, rising costs, an irreconcilable operating gap, and the corresponding financial burdens it will create for New Jersey’s taxpayers.” The Jersey City Redevelopment Agency also said the Centre Pompidou must return $6 million in funding it already received.

GUERRILA ADS COMPETE AT WIMBLEDON. Artwork mimicking Barclay’s ads for the Wimbledon tennis tournament, which it sponsors, have been appearing around the club in a protest against the bank’s ties to fossil fuels and Israeli arms manufacturers, reports The Guardian. The group Brandalism has led the guerrilla action, displaying hundreds of spoof ads over commercial billboards, and posters in subways and bus stops. One piece by Anarcha Art shows two hands meeting, one of a tennis player and the other of a banker, with the caption: “Partners in climate crime and genocide.” Another one puns: “Balls deep in climate chaos.”

THE DIGEST

Theodore Roosevelt’s stolen, prized silver pocket watch has been returned to his former home, the national historic site, Sagamore Hill, in Long Island, New York. The watch given to Roosevelt by his sister and her husband was stolen in 1987 from an unlocked case at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site in Buffalo, where it was on loan. The Park Service and FBI did not release information on who stole the keepsake, and how. [Associated Press]

An unnamed, “mystery tax defaulter” in Spain’s Basque Country has settled a large chunk of their debt by forking over some 200 Francisco de Goya engravings, and 87 other art pieces, included Aurelio Arteta’s Triptych of War, all of which are estimated to be worth over $4.3 million. The art reportedly came from the private Juan Celaya Letamendia Foundation. [El Pais]

French auteur filmmakers Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon were taken into police custody today, following accusations of sexual violence made against them by French actresses, including Judith Godrèche. [Le Monde and AFP]  

Praz-Delavallade gallery will shutter. The French gallery opened in 2010  in Paris, and opened spaces in Los Angeles, and briefly in Berlin and Brussels. Gallery owners René Julien Praz and Bruno Delavallade cited health reasons but also the challenges which “intermediary, independent” galleries face today. [Le Quotidien de l’Art]

Artists are among the 83 people Canada’s Governor General Mary Simon has named to the Order of Canada, one of the country’s top honors. They include artist and Aids activist Joe Average; artist and activist Christi Marlen Belcourt, and the poet, painter and musician Bill Bissett. [CBC and The Art Newspaper]

Qatar Museums and the city of Venice have signed a five-year agreement, which includes developing projects to restore monuments and structures around the water-bound city. Experts have warned that Venice must urgently address the problem of rising sea levels, which the city’s leading conservation architect says threatens its structural integrity. [The Art Newspaper]

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of an intricately decorated, 1,500-year-old ivory box known as a “pyx,” in an ancient settlement in an early Christian church located on the Burgbichl hill in southern Austria. The rare pyx, which depicts Biblical figures, is believed to have been used to hold the remains of saints. [Artnet News]

THE KICKER

MONUMENT SCRUTINY. The newly opened Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center in Greenwich Village, in time for Pride Week, attempts to commemorate the 1969 L.G.B.T. uprising against decades of police persecution. However, The New York Times’  Holland Cotter is left disappointed by the initiative and its reportedly mostly bland design, which he says fails to illustrate how fragile gay rights are today, giving the impression “the Stonewall rebellion and what it stood for is old history.” However, writes Cotter, “we can’t afford such softness in the present malignantly transphobic ‘Don’t Say Gay’ moment, when rightward politics is dragging us back, bill by legislative bill to the pre-Stonewall 1950’s.”

The institution, one of several international satellites run by the Paris-based modern art museum, was first due to begin welcoming visitors in 2024 before its opening date was pushed back a couple years.

Formally called the Centre Pompidou x Jersey City, the 58,000-square-foot museum would be the first Centre Pompidou satellite to open in North America. Others are already open in China and Belgium.

The total cost of the Centre Pompidou’s Jersey City institution has been a matter of debate, but one year ago, Republican politicians in the state began to suggest it could take more than $200 million to open it, with more than $50 million coming out of taxpayers’ pockets. Then, earlier this year, state entities began to raise concerns about the recurring costs of keeping the museum open.

On Saturday, the New Jersey Monitor reported that the state’s Economic Development Authority had formally written to the Centre Pompidou, saying that it would no longer fund the Jersey City museum, which chief executive officer Tim Sullivan declared defunct.

“While we are honored that Jersey City was selected as the first North American location for a Centre Pompidou facility, we have decided to pause this project indefinitely,” Sullivan wrote, in a letter obtained by the New Jersey Monitor. “Due to the ongoing impact of COVID and multiple global conflicts on the supply chain, rising costs, an irreconcilable operating gap, and the corresponding financial burdens it will create for New Jersey’s taxpayers, the Legislature has rescinded financial support, leaving us to determine that this project is unfortunately no longer feasible.”

Also on Saturday, the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency said it would no longer provide $18 million toward the museum. The agency called on the Centre Pompidou to return $6 million in state funding it had already received.

“The Centre Pompidou acknowledges the State of New Jersey’s decision,” a museum spokesperson said. “It remains committed to ongoing discussions with the Mayor of Jersey City to jointly determine the project’s future direction.”

Update, 7/1/24, 11:50 a.m.: This article has been updated to include a statement from the Centre Pompidou.

The museum, which will open in 2026, was once expected to receive roughly $58 million in state funding, with $34 million from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) and $24 million from the Department of State. But the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency (JCRA), which coordinates funding and support for projects like this one, told NJEDA in March that it is anticipating annual revenue of around $4 million. Recurring expenses will total more than $23 million, the agency said, and this means that the new museum outpost could operate at a $19 million annual deficit.

In April, NJEDA wrote a letter to the JCRA about the potential budget deficit, according to a report by NJBIZ. In that letter, NJEDA spoke of a “lack of an operating plan,” warning that it would potentially drop its funding for the museum.

“It is evident that strides have been made in identifying funding sources, including substantial state appropriations and potential tax credits under the recently enacted Cultural Arts Incentives Program,” Tim Sullivan, NJEDA chief executive, said in the April letter. “However, it is also apparent that the persistent operating gap continues to pose a substantial challenge.”

NJEDA also questioned the funding of the museum’s construction and its economic impact on the community.

Governor Phil Murphy told Artnet News that the funding remains intact for now.

Diana Jeffrey, executive director of the JCRA, wrote in response that it would consider the letter an “honest willingness” by the state to continue its funding of the project, noting that the costs of construction and operating costs are “in line” with comparable museums and institutions.

“For example, the original plan put forth by the state, and evidenced in our first state budget appropriation, dedicated such initial $24 million of state grant funding from the Council on the Arts to offset operational costs,” Jeffrey wrote. “At the time of the first state budget appropriation, the proposed annual operating budget for the [Centre Pompidou x Jersey City] after earned income was approximately $22.5 million. We worked diligently to decrease that amount, so that today that amount is now $19 million, and likely lower.”

The project is further complicated by collaborations with foreign governments and multiple stakeholders. Concerns about timing also loom large because, as Sullivan stated, the funding “has a federal clock attached to it.”

Two draft economic impact reports obtained by the Jersey Journal, however, indicate that the satellite museum could be “an expensive burden for nearby property owners, yielding higher taxes without much direct benefit.”

With a projected annual attendance between 100,000 to 250,000 visitors, the report estimates a generated revenue of $5.5 million to $14.1 million in spending across dining, retail, hotel, and transportation. Property taxes, however, are slated to increase to an annual addition of $11.8 million.

The state authority is currently reviewing JCRA’s updated revenue model.

The Centre Pompidou has not responded to an ARTnews request for comment.

The museum, designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano in 1977, will be in the hands of Moreau Kusunoki, a French office founded by Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki, with Mexico City–based Frida Escobedo Studio as associate designer, the Architect’s Newspaper reported.

The firms won a competition to modernize the building at a cost of $280 million. The museum won’t reopen until 2030.

Additionally, Moreau Kusunoki and Escobedo plan to collaborate with French engineering firm AIA Life Designers, and to consult Piano, who was also on the competition jury.

As part of the renovation, there will be ADA improvements to spaces like the library and rooftop, and asbestos removal, as well as added floor space and increased natural light. According to the museum, the structure has weathered significant damage since it was first built in the ’70s.

The renovation also includes the move of the Atelier Brancusi, the former studio of the modernist sculptor into “the heart of the main building,” according to the announcement, as well as a collection rehang.

As Paris’s top museum for Modern and contemporary art, the Centre Pompidou is known for its innovative steel and glass building, with its structural and HVAC systems visible from the exterior.

Outside of Paris, the Centre Pompidou has expanded to include such locations as Malaga in Spain, and Shanghai in China, as well as those coming soon, Jersey City in the United States and Seoul in South Korea.

The mysterious British graffiti artist had stenciled a masked rat holding a box cutter on the back of a Paris parking sign, near the Centre Pompidou, in 2018. The 38-year-old musician Mejdi R. admitted to using an angle grinder to remove the painted part of the sign.

The man claimed to be a friend of Banksy and said he’d been called to retrieve the artwork, along with a “team” of people who had already returned to England with the rat.

The defendant went on to say that the artist wanted to stop others from making money from the street art of “no value”, and to “denounce the hypocrisy of a capitalist system that decides which art had value and which does not”, the National News reported Thursday.

According to the prosecutor, a Banksy representative has denied these claims.

As part of his sentencing, Mejdi R. was also ordered to pay a fine of €30,000 ($32,000). More than €6,500 ($6,950) must be paid in damages to the Centre Pompidou, as it was deemed the custodian of the stolen work.

In response, Mejdi R has said that he was only “degrading a metal plate” not stealing a cultural asset.

The artwork remains missing. In 2018, Banksy created murals across the French capital city. He authenticated the rat with the box cutter on his Instagram page.

FLORIDA SLASHES ARTS BUDGET. Governor Ron DeSantis has vetoed over $32 million in arts and culture grants that had already been approved by the state legislature for next year’s budget, according to the Tampa Bay Times. The cuts to two arts grants programs that support nonprofits throughout the state were part of nearly $1 billion in overall cuts for next year; DeSantis formally signed off on those cuts last week. In one case, the Tampa Museum of Art was set to receive $500,000 from state grants to build an expansion project, and another $70,500 for programming. That funding is no more. “It’s a huge disappointment and a quandary,” said the museum’s director, Michael Tomor.

POMPIDOU RENOVATIONS. On Thursday, the Centre Pompidou in Paris presented plans for its much-debated renovation project, which will see the museum progressively close starting in March before entirely shuttering in September. The museum won’t reopen until 2030. One final exhibition will be devoted to photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, the museum announced at a press conference that was attended by ARTnews. Tillmans’s show will be held in the museum’s beloved public library after it has been emptied for renovations. Pompidou president Laurent Le Bon responded emotionally to criticisms of the renovation pproject, explaining that any partial closure would require staff to work in uncomfortable—and even unsafe—conditions. “It’s a terrible moment for the institution,” he said, “but I will not play with the lives of people, to please a few. I have a criminal liability.” The renovation will include the removal of asbestos, upgrading fire safety, disability access, and general repairs. Architects Moreau Kusunoki and Frida Escobedo will lead the project.

The Digest

Climate activists from the group Just Stop Oil sprayed orange paint on what they believed was Taylor Swift’s private jet at the UK’s Stanstead Airport, but it later came to light that her jet wasn’t there. Two people were arrested for vandalizing the other jets present. [Los Angeles Times]

The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (AAG) is launching a new triennial exhibition in New Zealand in partnership with the iwi (tribe) Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei this July. Titled “Aotearoa Contemporary,” it will feature 27 artists, including Sung Hwan Bobby Park, the collective The Killing, and the duo Qianye and Qianhe Lin. [ArtAsiaPacific]

French designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac has been chosen to create the clerical outfits for the reopening of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral in December. This is not his first foray into ceremonial Catholic garb: in 1997, he designed rainbow garments for the Church’s World Youth Day celebration. [WWD]

The oldest known bottle of wine in the world appears not to be from Germany, as previously thought, but from Spain. The newly found bottle, which is more than 2,000 years old, was discovered in a Roman necropolis in Carmona, Andalusia. That means that the Speyer wine bottle in Germany’s Historical Museum of Pfalz, dated to between 325 CE and 350 CE, is no longer the reigning champion. [El Pais]

French artists and cultural workers are unsure of how to respond to the country’s populist shift to the right and the prospect of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) gaining a majority in upcoming legislative elections. [Le Monde]

The Kicker

MELONI’S CULTURE REVOLUTION. For the New York Review of Books, Rachel Donadio reports on Italian far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s attempts to shape the country, and whether her party’s fascist roots can be felt in the government’s policies. One area where Meloni has been most effective is the cultural realm, where she has been busy replacing leaders of arts institutions. Donadio spoke to several new leading right-wing figures in Italy’s arts scene, and while their positions may vary, they tend to share a more sympathetic view of the country’s fascist past and other darker chapters of Italian history. Censorship is an ongoing issue, per Donadio, particularly when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues and immigration. Djarah Kan, an Italian author and journalist whose parents are from Ghana, summed it up: “This country is a badly run museum.”

THE HEADLINES

RECORD CHARDIN. A Jean Siméon Chardin still-life painting The Sliced Melon sold to a European collector for a record $28.7 million (€26.7 million), more than twice its high $12.9 million estimate (€12 million) estimate at Christie’s on Wednesday, according to French reports. The painting was shown at France’s official Salon in 1761, the same year as another much-talked-about Chardin painting of a basket of strawberries, which sold two years ago for $26 million with fees, and is now in the Louvre’s collection, thanks to a public funding campaign and private donations.

SOTHEBY’S DOWNGRADE. The S&P has downgraded Sotheby’s debt to B-minus from B, due to a 22 percent revenue drop and higher costs in the first quarter of 2024, reports The Wall Street Journal. The company’s bond prices have dropped about 8 percent in a month, as concerns mount over whether it can refinance loans by 2026. Revenue fell as Sotheby’s launched a new fee structure to boost margins, just as costs rose as larger consignor advances and sales exhibition expenses raised costs. “Despite the hit to both its top and bottom lines, Sotheby’s continues to pay shareholder dividends, doling out $8.5 million in the first quarter and $90 million last year, according to S&P,” reports the WSJ.

THE DIGEST

The newly launched Artists & Mothers grants aims to help New York–based artists with their childcare needs. The inaugural winner is Carissa Rodriguez, who last month opened her first institutional solo exhibition in Europe. [ARTnews]

Ukrainian artist and musician Artur Snitkus, 36, was killed in combat near Donetsk. His death comes amid intense fighting in eastern Ukraine against the Russian military offensive. Snitkus was described as an “icon of [the] Ukrainian queer underground,” by arts worker Natalia Martynenko. [The Art Newspaper]

British actor Stephen Fry compared the removal of the Parthenon marbles from Greece to the hypothetical scenario of the Nazis stealing the Arc de Triomphe while they occupied France. Speaking on Australian TV, he said it would be “classy” for the British Museum to return the sculptures. [The Guardian]

Influential figures in France’s art scene have signed a petition arguing the planned closing of Paris’ Centre Pompidou for renovation is a “serious error.” Former Pompidou president Alain Seban, art critic Nicolas Bourriaud, the artists Daniel Buren and Gérard and Elisabeth Garouste, are among those who signed the letter published in Le Figaro, and arguing for alternatives to a total museum closure, which they say would give private art institutions a competitive advantage. Rather, they insist closing individual floor sections as they are renovated is a doable alternative. [AFP and Le Figaro]

Later this month, at a Sotheby’s modern and contemporary sale in London, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 triptych Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict, will head to auction for the second time in three years, for an estimated value that is half its price two years ago. Christie’s estimated it was worth $30 million in 2022, but withdrew it, and now Sotheby’s estimates it is worth $15 to $20 million. [ARTnews]

The entertainment company Live Nation has cut ties with Barclays, after a number of artists pulled out of their events in protest against the bank’s tie to Israeli defense industries. [The National]

The Center for Italian Modern Art (Cima) in Manhattan, announced it will close permanently June 22. Its current exhibition about the Italian experimental artist and novelist Nanni Balestrini will be the last. [The Art Newspaper]

The Picasso museum in Paris has launched an online archive of artworks, photos, and other memorabilia from the artist, many of which have never been shown, ahead of a dedicated study center set to open near the museum later this year. [RFI]

Performance art has gained popularity in Hong Kong, particularly among younger audiences hungry for lived experiences, and despite the region’s new national security laws reducing freedom of expression. [South China Morning Post]

THE KICKER

LOST IN THE ALGORITHM. Social media algorithms influence what is blasted on our screens, and as Kate Brown examines for Artnet News, it is also shaping how performance artists work—whether consciously or not—along with what versions of their creations we are experiencing online. The costs can be significant. “More and more, their content finds traction if it makes sense to us in under ten seconds. What gets buried and seen is tightly bound up in what fits into the rules of virality,” writes Brown of performance art in particular, which she says has been booming thanks to Instagram’s latest reel-era. As a result, a repeated recipe for viral success increasingly risks dictating creative output, leaving little room for nuance and depth, which, even when initially embedded in the work, are edited out of online clips, argues Brown. “Social media has, at the same time, made a lot of artists a lot of money and brought the art world new levels of attention. But it is worth asking if it is pushing forward the medium,” she writes, “… if performance art follows the push of the algorithms and is formed and made anew under virtual logic, then it can risk, like painting did, to become equalized and rendered average in the face of the flattened feed, to fade into ambient buzz.”

At the end of April, a critical report from France’s court of auditors, who assess the use of public funds, revealed that the Centre Pompidou‘s economic model is unsustainable. The report outlines the financial strain on the museum caused by its forthcoming renovation, as well as its establishment of a new branch in Massy, France.

According to the report, costs have increased since the project began. The court estimated that this undertaking will cost €358 million ($383 million), nearly €100 million more than the French government’s initial estimate of €262 million ($282 million). An additional €207 million ($223,000) has been requested from sponsors by the museum’s chairman Laurent Le Bon to account for the difference.

Per the court, the institution must raise the money itself by the beginning of 2025 at the latest. As of now, it has raised €39 million ($42 million). Of the €39 million, €20 million ($21.5 million) came from Seoul’s Hanwha Culture Foundation. Centre Pompidou leadership has “very little time left” to raise the necessary €168 million, the court has warned.

Le Bon’s fundraising campaign has focused on individual American sponsors, as well as countries including Saudi Arabia. Le Bon has agreed to share program plans this month and finalize it before the start of the new year.

According to the Art Newspaper, Le Bon has admitted that he may have to “adapt his plans according to the funds collected.”

Mehretu’s collaboration with BMW marks the first time the artist’s characteristic abstractions, which are made from digitally altered photographs superimposed onto several layers of dot grids, have been applied to a three-dimensional surface. The aesthetic for the M Hybrid’s design closely following Mehretu’s monumental painting Everywhen (2021-2023).

“In the studio, where I had the model of the BMW M Hybrid V8, I was just sitting in front of the painting and I thought: What would happen, if this car seemed to go through that painting and becomes affected by it,” Julie Mehretu said in a statement. “The idea was to make a remix, a mash-up of the painting. I kept seeing that painting kind of dripping into the car. Even the kidneys of the car inhaled the painting.”

In tandem with the race car’s launch, Mehretu and BMW announced a  joint commitment to a “series of Pan-African Translocal Media Workshops” for filmmakers, to be held in various African cities including Dakar, Marrakesh, and the artist’s hometown, Addis Ababa, in 2025 and 2026, culminating in a major exhibition at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town.

The first BMW Art Car was designed by Alexander Calder in 1975. Subsequently, distinguished artists from Frank Stella to Esther Mahlangu to David Hockney have participated in the Art Car program. 

An exhibition of Mehretu’s work opened at the Palazzo Grassi from on 17 March for the Venice Biennale and will be on view through January 6, 2025. Titled “Ensemble” it is the largest exhibition of Mehretu’s work to date in Europe. Last year her 2001 work Untitled sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong $9.32 million (with fees), an auction record for an African-born artist.

THE HEADLINES

PROTEST/ART. Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of the World (1866) and other artworks were tagged with the red-painted words, “MeToo,” and an embroidered art piece by Annette Messager was snatched in plain sight at the Centre Pompidou-Metz yesterday. The provocative Courbet painting of a vulva, on loan from the Musée d’Orsay, was not damaged, due to a protective glass covering. An artist named Deborah de Robertis, confirmed to reporters she organized what she describes as a group performance, titled “On ne sépare pas la femme de l’artiste,” [You don’t separate the woman from the artist]. A video shows two women painted the words “MeToo” on the Courbet artwork and another by the feminist Valie Export. A total of five pieces were targeted at the exhibit about the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, while participants distracted museum security and chanted “MeToo.” Two women have been detained by police, while Robertis is reportedly suspected of stealing Annette Messager’s red embroidered piece called “Je pense donc je suce” [I think, therefore I suck]. Robertis told the AFP the theft was a “gesture of re-appropriation,” because she recognized the object from the collection of an unnamed co-curator of the exhibit, whom Robertis said she knew personally from past sexual misconduct, according to Le Figaro. In other words, c’est compliqué!

STALEMATE. A judge has ordered a stalemate — for now — in the dispute over the land art installation Greenwood Pond: Double Site, by Mary Miss, located at the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC). “Neither side is entitled to what it wants,” wrote US District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, Stephen Locher, according to The Art Newspaper. Locher nevertheless issued a preliminary injunction blocking the DMAC from demolishing the artwork without the artist’s permission, as they had planned. But the judge also said the center could not be forced to repair the sculpture if the cost was too high. DMAC estimates restoration will require over $2.6 million, a sum which the artist contests. “The end result is therefore an unsatisfying status quo: the artwork will remain standing (for now) despite being in a condition that no one likes but that the court cannot order anyone to change,” said the judge. Miss nevertheless welcomed the ruling in response to her claim that the Edmundson Art Foundation, which owns DMAC, violated her original contract, and she hopes the temporary restraining order “opens the door to the consultations about the future of the site that were denied me.”

THE DIGEST

Police blocked pro-Palestinian protestors from getting close to the Met Gala yesterday in New York. Demonstrators were heading toward the Metropolitan Museum of Art when the NYPD intercepted their march at 5^th Avenue and 80^th Street, while barricades blocked alternative routes towards the exclusive fashion event. [Bloomberg]

Demonstrators targeted another black-tie event on Saturday, the Hammer Museum’s annual gala in Los Angeles, and called for the resignation of UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, who is also a member of the museum’s board of directors. Some 50 UCLA faculty members reportedly protested outside the museum and called for amnesty for students and others arrested during campus Gaza demonstrations last week. [Hyperallergic]

Jack Lang, a former Socialist Party French Culture Minister and current head of the Arab World Institute in Paris, told El Pais, “the Arab world has abandoned Palestine. Even some of the countries that had shown signs of enthusiastic support for years.” The Arab World Institute recently held an exhibition featuring Palestinian artists, some of whom Lang said have died in the ongoing war. [El Pais]

A park on the Hudson River in New York known as “Little Island,” is being reconfigured into a four-month annual performance arts festival by its owner, Barry Diller, with a budget of over $100 million for programming over the next two decades. He is joined by Scott Rudin, the producer whom workers accused of bullying in 2021. [The New York Times]

Researchers in France have unearthed an unusually shaped, Neolithic monument in Marliens, south of Dijon, estimated to be thousands of years old. The 15-acre site “seems unprecedented” in its form, containing several, circular enclosures, said a statement by the French national Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP). [Smithsonian Magazine]

THE KICKER

BLOCKBUSTER SCANDAL. The New Yorker’s Rebecca Mead chronicles “the British Museum’s blockbuster scandal,” over thousands of missing and stolen artifacts allegedly lifted and partly sold on eBay by a museum curator. Overlooked, and improperly catalogued, Mead explains the historic, high value ancient Romans attributed to artifacts like the now missing, engraved semiprecious stones and objects cast from glass. They were unique works of art, and reveal important details about their subjects. Mead also asks the underlying question: “Why should the sarcophagi of Egyptian kings or the fragments of ancient Greek architecture be housed in London, and claimed in some sense as British? … At a certain point in a museum’s history, it becomes more than just a repository of the cultural and artistic past, telling a story about the history of a nation, or a people, or the world. It also becomes a museum of itself – of its formation, its collecting history, its priorities, and its failings.”