Australia: The director of the National Museum of Australia, Craddock Morton, has called for increased funding for more storage and new galleries. The A$150m museum opened in Canberra in 2001. It received an additional A$12m in 2004 to implement the findings of a review that criticised the museum for lacking a grand narrative including the Queen and national heroes such as Sir Donald Bradman.
Iran: Five regional museums of contemporary art will open in the next six months. Mahmoud Shalouie, director general of visual arts at the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance, who is also in charge of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, said the museums would join those already built in Abadan and Ahvaz.
Kenya: The National Museum in Nairobi is listing artefacts from Kenya in the collections of the British Museum, the Field Museum, in Chicago, and other US and European museums, as well as private collections, with an eye to their repatriation. The inventory includes human remains, weapons, fossils, and a pair of stuffed lions, which are now in the Field Museum.
Norway: The director of the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, in Oslo, Allis Helleland, has resigned just a year into the job. She was followed out of the door by the museum's chairman. Both left after a damning government report. The museum group was created in 2003 following the merger of four museums and the national exhibition touring service.
Switzerland: Complex Shit, a giant inflatable in the shape of a dog turd by US artist Paul McCarthy, has been damaged after slipping its moorings outside the Paul Klee Centre in Berne. It landed 200 metres away near a children's home, damaging a greenhouse on the way. Part of the East of Eden exhibition, the work was intended to "subvert the harmonious" Swiss landscape.
US: One of three remaining US Civil War "witness trees" on the Gettysburg battlefield has been severely damaged in a rainstorm. The giant honey locust tree stood near where Abraham Lincoln delivered his most famous speech. A third of the tree remains standing and the National Park Service is deciding whether to preserve it or to try to propagate seedlings.
US: The American Association of Museums has revised its guidelines for collecting archaeology and ancient art. The new standards require museums to make transparent their collecting policies and the provenance of all such objects in their collections. The move follows in the wake of high-profile cases of US museums acquiring antiquities looted from Italy and Greece.
Compiled by Javier Pes, editor of Museum Practice. Seen in Mathaba, Aftenposten, Australian News, CNN, the Guardian and the Independent
Iran: Five regional museums of contemporary art will open in the next six months. Mahmoud Shalouie, director general of visual arts at the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance, who is also in charge of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, said the museums would join those already built in Abadan and Ahvaz.
Kenya: The National Museum in Nairobi is listing artefacts from Kenya in the collections of the British Museum, the Field Museum, in Chicago, and other US and European museums, as well as private collections, with an eye to their repatriation. The inventory includes human remains, weapons, fossils, and a pair of stuffed lions, which are now in the Field Museum.
Norway: The director of the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, in Oslo, Allis Helleland, has resigned just a year into the job. She was followed out of the door by the museum's chairman. Both left after a damning government report. The museum group was created in 2003 following the merger of four museums and the national exhibition touring service.
Switzerland: Complex Shit, a giant inflatable in the shape of a dog turd by US artist Paul McCarthy, has been damaged after slipping its moorings outside the Paul Klee Centre in Berne. It landed 200 metres away near a children's home, damaging a greenhouse on the way. Part of the East of Eden exhibition, the work was intended to "subvert the harmonious" Swiss landscape.
US: One of three remaining US Civil War "witness trees" on the Gettysburg battlefield has been severely damaged in a rainstorm. The giant honey locust tree stood near where Abraham Lincoln delivered his most famous speech. A third of the tree remains standing and the National Park Service is deciding whether to preserve it or to try to propagate seedlings.
US: The American Association of Museums has revised its guidelines for collecting archaeology and ancient art. The new standards require museums to make transparent their collecting policies and the provenance of all such objects in their collections. The move follows in the wake of high-profile cases of US museums acquiring antiquities looted from Italy and Greece.
Compiled by Javier Pes, editor of Museum Practice. Seen in Mathaba, Aftenposten, Australian News, CNN, the Guardian and the Independent
