July 30, 2014: Pussy Riot Sues Kremlin, Charlie Rose Interviews Jeff Koons, and Henry Moore's Birthday
Notable News
The Louvre has anticipated that its annual visitorship will rise by 30% to 12 million by 2025. The French government is pushing for the museum to be open seven days per week and to extend its hours in hopes of further increasing attendance. The Louvre’s 2013 achievement of 9.3 million visitors trumped both the Met and the British Museum.
Andrea Rich, the former LACMA president and UCLA administrator who spent her retirement in philanthropy championing education and the arts, has died at 71.
Two members of the feminist Russian punk band Pussy Riot are taking the Kremlin to court after being tried and imprisoned in 2012 for staging a “punk prayer” protest at a church in Moscow. The lawsuit, which demands €240,000 total for the 21-month-long imprisonment, will take place in the European Court of Human Rights, where a fair trial for the activists is far more likely than in Russia.
Emily Kernan Rafferty, president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has announced she will retire in the Spring 2015. Rafferty has been at the museum for 39 years, 11 of which were spent as president.
Jeff Koons was on Charlie Rose this week. Watch him talk about art, life, and Led Zeppelin.
Good Reads
Toronto-based artist Andrew Lamb has modified more than 70 neighborhood watch signs and adorned them with pop cultural relics of the ’80s and ’90s, among them Spiderman, Fox Mulder and Conan the Barbarian. A playful experiment in guerilla art. (via VICE)
“The Overlooked Elegance of Japanese Pattern Books” (via Hyperallergic)
“Out of Sight”: a thought-provoking piece on how emerging technologies have revolutionized visual culture for the blind. (via The New Inquiry)
Artist of the Day
Henry Moore, father of modern British sculpture, was born on this day in 1898. Moore’s work subverted the classical art historical ‘reclining figure’ theme; he created monumental pieces that abstracted and distorted the human form into massive elegant objects. Moore lived modestly despite achieving major artistic success during his lifetime and devoted the majority of his resources to the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to promote his work and fund arts education.
