Man Sues Over Women-Only Art Installation, Liverpool Museum Seeks Identity of Black Model, Louvre Gets Bomb Threat, , and More: Morning Links for March 21, 2024

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THE HEADLINES

NO BOYS ALLOWED. A feminist art installation that excludes men at Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art, is at the center of a legal battle that has dramatically evolved into a performative-art sequel to the original piece. A male visitor is suing the museum for refusing him entry into the “Ladies Lounge” by Kirsha Kaechele . The curtained-off installation takes its name from the inferior, and more expensive side-rooms historically offered to women in Australia, because they were not allowed to drink in pubs until 1965. With her appropriation of the term, the artist has spun those patriarchal tables round, and hasn’t stopped. At the trial which opened this week, Kaechele arrived with some 25 women moving in unison, wearing matching blue suits, pearls, and bright red lipstick. During the hearing they flipped through feminist texts. In response to the complaint lodged by Jason Lau, and another one later dropped, Kaechele has commented: “Well, you did get to experience the artwork, because the exclusion of men is the artwork.” She told the New York Times, “I’m not sorry, and you can’t come in.”

MISSING PERSON. The International Slavery Museum in Liverpool is appealing for any information from the public about the mysterious identity of a Black child, believed to possibly have been a stowaway who escaped slavery, who modeled for an 1844 portrait by William Lindsay Windus . New X-ray-led research about the artist and the painting known as “The Black Boy,” has pointed to further clues about the sitter, suggesting he may have run away from slavery in the US. It is the only painting of an individual Black child at the museum, and is all the more rare because most other historic paintings of Black subjects tend to show their subjects as slaves or servants, according to museum researcher Kate Haselden, speaking to The Guardian.

THE DIGEST

The Louvre museum in Paris reportedly received a bomb threat aimed at the Mona Lisa and other masterpieces early on Sunday, March 17. The message written in English was sent via the museum’s website, and threatened to blow up the Mona Lisa and other masterpieces. According to the French daily Le Figaro, it was signed by “Pères fondateurs de la Confederation” [Founding Fathers of the Confederation]. [Le Figaro]

Another elderly ex-con has been charged in the 2005 theft of Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz. Jerry Hal Saliterman, 76, faces one count of theft of a major artwork and one count of witness tampering. [Artnet News]

French art school associations and cultural workers are outraged following comments by France’s minister of culture, Rachida Dati, announcing her wish to shut down “certain” art schools that are in dire financial need. [Le Figaro]

A British woman living in Rome bought a brooch at an antique fair for £20, or $35, about 30 years ago, and after seeing a sketch perfectly resembling it on Antiques Roadshow, discovered it is a rare Victorian design by William Burges. It sold on Tuesday for about $12,000. [The New York Times]

A rescued Banksy painting from the side of a building couldn’t sell at auction on Wednesday, where it was expected to go for between £500,000 and £800,000. [BBC]

Why is Kobe Bryant’s father auctioning his 2000 NBA championship ring that was gifted to him? The Los Angeles Times says the answer is the latest chapter in their choppy relationship. [The Lost Angeles Times]

THE KICKER

HIRST IN QUESTION. The latest news about Damien Hirst backdating his formaldehyde sculptures has much of the art world talking, from meme-satirists like @freeze_magazine, to The Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones, who feels betrayed by the artist, whom he says changed his life. “Now he has not just raised questions about the origins of his back catalogue but also destroyed any belief we might cling to in his creative future,” Jones writes. “His creation of sculptures that are backdated to his younger, better days reveals an artist who’s so comfortably numb he can meditate philosophically on his own creative death. ‘What was so different about me then?’ … But you can never go back. By doing so, the talentless older Hirst has pissed all over his youth.”