Activists Protest Israeli President at Museum Opening, Buzzy Van Gogh Sells at TEFAF, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Controversy Continues, and More: Morning Links for March 11, 2024

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

THE HEADLINES

PROTEST AT DUTCH HOLOCAUST MUSEUM. Activists gathered near the new National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam Sunday, which opens to the public today, to protest against the arrival of Israel’s president Isaac Herzog, and call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Demonstrators reportedly climbed onto and vandalized police vehicles, threw fireworks, stones, and eggs. Some signs read “Jews against genocide,” and “The grandchild of a holocaust survivor says: Stop Gaza Holocaust,” reported De Telegraaf. Thirteen demonstrators were arrested.

THE MUSEUM FAIR. It’s time for the TEFAF art fair in Maastrict, Netherlands, where ARTnews’  Senior Writer Daniel Cassady was on the ground, and got an early look at a buzzy painting by Van Gogh titled Tête de paysanne a la coiffe blanche (1884), which has since reportedly sold for $4.9 million to a yet-to-be-named museum outside the European Union. Cassady caught sight of the painting at the M.S Rau Gallery booth, where he also witnessed how the sudden arrival of the Van Gogh Museum director, andhis subsequent praise for another Van Gogh drawing, magically changed the tune of one tough-bargaining collector, in a very only-at-TEFAF kind of moment. “TEFAF isn’t just about mega-sales. More than any other fair, TEFAF is about art history,” writes Cassady on the event spanning thousands of years of art, including contemporary works, known to attract top art institutions.

THE DIGEST

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) Interim CEO Sara Fenske Bahat has abruptly resigned after artists in the San Francisco institution’s group exhibition alleged the YBCA prevented them from advocating for Palestinians, while several also called for a boycott. In a letter, Bahat said that as a Jewish leader she was subjected to “vitriolic and antisemitic backlash” since the protest action in February by artists who tagged their own exhibited artworks. [Hyperallergic]

In more related news of protests over alleged censorship regarding the Israel-Gaza conflict, Artists Yto Barrada and Cian Dayrit are joining others and removing their work from a textile exhibition at the Barbican Centre in London. [The Art Newspaper]

ARTnews China has launched with a gala celebrating artistic dynamism in Chengdu. [ARTnews]

Conservationists have intervened at the last minute to stop the private sale of stained-glass windows celebrating King Henry VIII’s union to Anne Boleyn, located in a 16^th century Dorset manor in England, known as a “haunted house.” [The Guardian]

Despite some strong opposition, France’s ministry of culture is launching a project to commission six contemporary stained-glass windows for the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. In December, French President Emmanuel Macron said windows made by a contemporary artist would be a “mark of the 21^st century,” and replace others that were not destroyed by the fire that tore through the cathedral nearly five years ago. [Le Figaro]

Archaeologists have found the missing upper part of a limestone statue of King Ramses II near Minya in Egypt, measuring 12.5 feet. The lower half was found in 1930, and together, the complete statue would reach about 23 feet. [Reuters]

Karl Lagerfeld’s former studio and apartment in Paris heads to auction later this month. The 2,800-square-foot-space is in a 17^th century building on the Quai Voltaire, with a view of the Louvre across the Seine River. [Artnet News]

THE KICKER

INACCESSIBLE BRAILLE? The New York Times’ Christopher Kuo speaks to artist Roy Nachum about his Instagrammable, immersive exhibition at a new “museum of art and technology,” he co-founded, called Mercer Labs, in Manhattan. Inspired by his grandmother who lost her sight, Nachum makes artworks incorporating Braille , and his popular installations currently on view also include tactile displays and sound for low-vision visitors. However, some Braille messages in the show appear on screens that are inaccessible to blind people or are projected onto the floor, reports Kuo, leading some to describe this use of Braille as exploitative. The artist did say descriptions of exhibitions in Braille are placed at the entrance of individual galleries, but that did not placate critics. “Although I’m always excited to see authentic representations of blind people and Braille in art, using Braille as a device to produce an experience of illegibility is a cheap trick and no favor to the blind community,” said Chancey Fleet, president of the Assistive Technology Trainers’ Division of the National Federation of the Blind.