Australia: Staff at the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art were forced to rescue works as the Queensland capital of Brisbane succumbed to the worst floods seen in the state since 1974. Objects at the Queensland Art Gallery were moved to top-floor storage areas while a disaster-management team occupied the building.
Egypt: Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s minister of antiquities, said 70 artefacts were vandalised during anti-government protests at the Egyptian National Museum in Cairo, and eight objects, including a gilded wooden statue of Tutankhamun, were missing. The damage was caused by a group of 10 intruders breaking into the building.
France: A court has ordered that building work is halted on a new private art museum nearing completion in the west of Paris. The gallery, designed by Frank Gehry, will house the contemporary art collection of French magnate Bernard Arnault, who owns Louis Vuitton. The judge ruled that the centre had been built too near an asphalt road deemed a public right of way.
Italy: An Italian museum director has written to the German chancellor Angela Merkel, asking for asylum. Antonio Manfredi, director of the Contemporary Art Museum in Casoria, near Naples, said he was fed up with mafia threats and state neglect of cultural heritage. “If she gives me asylum, I’m going to pack my bags and move to Germany with my staff and the museum’s entire collection of 1,000 works,” said Manfredi.
US: A museum housing the world’s second-largest collection of works by Salvador Dali has opened in St Petersburg, Florida. The $36m museum houses the collection built up by Eleanor and Reynolds Morse, which includes 96 paintings. The new facility replaces the city’s original Dali museum, which opened in 1982. All the art is displayed on the third floor of the building to protect it from hurricane-induced flooding.
US: The former director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Michael Rush, has been appointed founding director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. The Michigan museum is set to open in spring 2012 with a gift of $28m from the Broads, the Los Angeles-based philanthropists.
Seen in Agence France Presse, Discovery News, Daily Telegraph, The Art Newspaper and BBC
Egypt: Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s minister of antiquities, said 70 artefacts were vandalised during anti-government protests at the Egyptian National Museum in Cairo, and eight objects, including a gilded wooden statue of Tutankhamun, were missing. The damage was caused by a group of 10 intruders breaking into the building.
France: A court has ordered that building work is halted on a new private art museum nearing completion in the west of Paris. The gallery, designed by Frank Gehry, will house the contemporary art collection of French magnate Bernard Arnault, who owns Louis Vuitton. The judge ruled that the centre had been built too near an asphalt road deemed a public right of way.
Italy: An Italian museum director has written to the German chancellor Angela Merkel, asking for asylum. Antonio Manfredi, director of the Contemporary Art Museum in Casoria, near Naples, said he was fed up with mafia threats and state neglect of cultural heritage. “If she gives me asylum, I’m going to pack my bags and move to Germany with my staff and the museum’s entire collection of 1,000 works,” said Manfredi.
US: A museum housing the world’s second-largest collection of works by Salvador Dali has opened in St Petersburg, Florida. The $36m museum houses the collection built up by Eleanor and Reynolds Morse, which includes 96 paintings. The new facility replaces the city’s original Dali museum, which opened in 1982. All the art is displayed on the third floor of the building to protect it from hurricane-induced flooding.
US: The former director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Michael Rush, has been appointed founding director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. The Michigan museum is set to open in spring 2012 with a gift of $28m from the Broads, the Los Angeles-based philanthropists.
Seen in Agence France Presse, Discovery News, Daily Telegraph, The Art Newspaper and BBC
