Italian Police Hunt Colosseum Vandal, V&A Children’s Museum Set to Reopen, and More: Morning Links for June 28, 2023

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The Headlines

IN THE ETERNAL CITY. Law-enforcement officials in Italy are seeking a tourist who used a key to carve the words “Ivan+Haley 23” onto the Colosseum in Rome, the Associated Press reports. The nation’s culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, called the vandalism “serious, undignified, and a sign of great incivility.” The graffiti came to light after another tourist videotaped the individual in the midst of the action and uploaded it to YouTube. Italy’s ANSA news agency said that, if convicted and punished to the maximum extent of the law, the culprit could face a fine of up to $15,000 and five years in prison. The person who filmed the video said that he informed a guard and supervisor about the vandalism at the time, but they did not do anything.

FOR THE KIDS. After a three-year, £13 million ($16.6 million) renovation, the V&A Museum of Childhood in London is reopening Saturday as the Young V&A, with some 2,000 objects from the past 2,000-plus years, and lots to play with, BBC News reports. The displays include a Minecraft installation, art by Bridget Riley, and Prada couture, per the Financial Times, which says that the museum “strikes the right balance between gallery and playcenter.” That is not the only positive take. There’s “dazzling new energy and a mischievous sense of fun,” the Guardian’s critic says, and the Evening Standard terms it “a museum that is truly for kids instead of just about them.” Across the pond, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is hosting its annual show of work by children of ages 5 to 18 in conjunction with the nonprofit Studio in a School NYC, the Guardian reports. “To have your artwork in the Met, are you kidding me?” the group’s president, Alison Scott-Williams, said. “It’s the place, it’s a big deal.”

The Digest

Around 20 climate activists staged a demonstration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday, standing around a Degas sculpture with tape covering their mouths. They were protesting the charges filed against two protesters who smeared paint on a case protecting a Degas at the National Gallery of Art last month. [The Art Newspaper]

Officials at the ancient site of Pompeii in Italy said that a recently unearthed fresco that appears to depict pizza . . . does not depict pizza. (That dish was invented in the 1700s; the city was destroyed in 79.) The painting likely shows focaccia bedecked with fruit (maybe figs) and spices or pesto. Still sounds pretty tasty! [The Associated Press]

The next Busan Biennale in South Korea will be organized by Philippe Pirotte, who is the adjunct senior curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in California and Vera Mey, an independent curator and art historian. It is scheduled to open in August 2024. [ArtReview]

Art collector Nicolai Tangen, who helms Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, is opening a space in the coastal city of Kristiansand to show his massive collection of Nordic modernist art. [The Guardian]

Coal excavators in Germany’s Rhineland have been unearthing the remains of ancient Roman settlements. Near Cologne, a grave was discovered of a priestess who was cremated in the second century and buried beneath a wooden temple. [DW]

A home in Sebastopol, California where Charles Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip, lived with his family in the 1960s and ’70s, is on the market for $3.95 million. It comes with sculptures of some of his characters, which were created by artist Glen Sievert as a tribute to Schulz. [Architectural Digest]

The Kicker

THE GREATEST HITS. After more than 30 years leading Artangel, the U.K. nonprofit that stages venturesome public art projects, James Lingwood and Michael Morris are stepping down, and the Guardian had the smart idea of asking various notables (Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker and writer Colm Tóibín among them) to discuss Artangelpieces that have stuck with them. Artist Michael Craig-Martin went with Rachel Whiteread’s House, the plaster cast of a London residence’s interior that she completed in 1993. He explained that “it was so loved and respected that there was a move to make it permanent, which didn’t happen. I liked it that way: I wanted it to remain in my memory as this perfect thing, whereas in reality it wasn’t built to last for ever—it would eventually fall apart, be vandalized.” Vandalizing an artwork meant to be temporary is one thing. (Still not the best idea.) But vandalizing the Colosseum? Come on! [The Guardian]