Week in Review: NYC Halts Essential Workers Monument; Polish Politicians Target LGBTQ Artist-Activists

Week in Review is a weekly collection of news, developments, and stirrings in the art world. Subscribe to receive these posts as a weekly newsletter.

New York

After Battery Park City residents urged the relocation of an essential workers monument, construction has been halted.

Miguel Luciano designed an “El Met” t-shirt, which wil be sold to help fund acquisitions of work by Latinx artists at the Metropolitan Museum.

Activism

Six local Polish governments sued four artist-activists behind the “Atlas of Hate,” an interactive map charting the country’s anti-gay zones.

Artist-activists from Extinction Rebellion were arrested during protests against media corruption, during which they dropped horse manure outside of the Daily Mail offices.

Auctions

Several looted Ethiopian artifacts were withdrawn from sale at a British auction house, and are in talks to be repatriated.

A painting by David Bowie, unknowingly purchased at a landfill for $5, broke an auction record for the artist.

In Other News

Scholars finally deciphered 3,200-year-old Hittite rock reliefs that depict the cosmos.

Thanks to an artificial intelligence (AI) restoration, Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” can be seen in full for the first time in centuries.

The owner of the “Flintstone’s House” in California won a lawsuit over the dinosaur sculptures on her lawn.

A portrait by Jean-Michel Basquiat, painted on an apartment door in 1985, was recently acquired by the Dallas Museum of Art.

Introduced in Mesopotamia some 2,500 years ago, astrology continues to entice poets, writers, and artists. See a visual history of the cosmological fascination here.

Awards & Accolades

Mahogany L. Browne was named the inaugural poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center.
Tim Mills, Natalie Willatt, Suzanne St Clare, and Tony Mallon were appointed to artist residencies for Picturing England’s High Streets.
Newark Arts awarded grants to 17 community arts groups. | Newark Arts
Kiki Xuebing Wang was awarded the John Moores Painting Prize Visitors’ Choice.
The recipients of the Wexner Center’s 2021–22 Artist Residency Awards have been announced. | Wexner Center
The winners of the 2021 Rabkin Prize for arts journalists have been announced, including Hyperallergic editors John Yau and Jasmine Weber.

Transitions

Latifa Echakhch is now represented by Pace Gallery.
Sabrina Lin was named curatorial assistant and manager of student programs at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
Lauren Snelling was named artistic director of Young Arts, while Rebekah Lanae Lengel was appointed deputy director and Tanya Reid as vice president of finance.