Thieves Strip Exhibition of Gold, Françoise Gilot Gets Room at Picasso Museum, Met Workers Urge Museum to Call for Gaza Ceasefire, and More: Morning Links for March 12, 2024

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THE HEADLINES

MUSEUM HEIST. “Ultra-specialized” thieves made off with a $1.3 million-stash of jewelry and gold sculptures by Umberto Mastroianni, on display in an exhibition at the northern Italian Museo d’annunzio Segreto at the Vittoriale degli Italiani, reported Garda Post. The Mastroianni exhibition included the largest number of pieces by the 20^th-century gold sculptor ever publicly displayed from the artist’s estate collection. Thieves snatched a total of 48 objects, leaving only one behind, and they didn’t touch the permanent collection, though valuable. To complete the reportedly carefully planned heist, several suspects entered the museum by uprooting a bathroom sink and breaking a hole through a wall around 5:30am on March 6, and outwitting the museums’ alarm systems. By morning, museum staff arrived to find the exhibition empty. Specialized local Carabinieri are on the chase, but the museum fears pieces may have already been melted down.

A ROOM OF HER OWN. Virginia Woolf would have approved. The artist Françoise Gilot will get her own room dedicated to her artworks at the Picasso Museum in Paris. The initiative is an attempt to redress decades of dismissal of Gilot’s artistic practice, overshadowed by her famous relationship to Picasso. “She is not being presented as Picasso’s muse or inspiration. There are none of the pictures he did of her or photographs; instead it concentrates on Françoise Gilot as an artist,” a museum spokesperson told The Guardian. Gilot was the only woman to have walked out on Picasso, but she paid a price, and he reportedly tried to sink her career, leading Gilot to eventually settle in the US, and write all about it. She died in 2023 at age 101, and painted until the end.

THE DIGEST

Over 150 staff, fellows, and volunteers at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art are urging the institution to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and make a statement about Israel’s responsibility in the loss of lives there. The group wrote their demands in an open letter, calling themselves Met Workers For Palestine. [Hyperallergic]

The Houthi rebel attacks on cargo ships are delaying and adding costs to the shipment of art. The conflict in the Red Sea is forcing some companies to resort to air freight, rather than sea, for the safe delivery of artworks. [The Art Newspaper]

Critics complain a planned sculpture of Jane Austen for the Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire will lead to the “Disneyfication” of the area where the author was from. “I don’t think the Inner Close [where the statue is set to be placed in the cathedral] is the place to attract a lot of American tourists to come and have a selfie with Jane Austen,” said Elizabeth Proudman, a leader of The Jane Austen Society. [The Independent and The Guardian]

The Swiss company Art Recognition has used AI to identify a portrait of a peasant as very likely painted by the Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. The artwork is also signed and dated with Dürer’s name, but its authenticity had long been a debate. [The Art Newspaper France]

The Barbier-Mueller collection of tribal, Oceania and African art sold for 73 million euros last week at Christie’s in Paris, marking a record high for the category. [Le Quotidien de l’Art]

Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) workers protested on March 7 at a staff meeting. Unionized workers disagree over their unresolved autumn 2022 contract. Protestors held signs that read, “pay up PMA.” [The Art Newspaper]

THE KICKER

END OF DOCUMENTA? The art historian, curator, and Documenta scholar Harald Kimpel, is stirring up art world milieux with a startling suggestion: to put an end to Documenta, the prestigious contemporary art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany every five years. Kimpel’s solution comes amid ongoing controversy around the event, including massive resignations by Selection Committee members. But with Documenta’s status as a Nobel Prize-like event for contemporary arts, his views may have more shock value than lead to an actual cancellation. “The situation is so screwed up that we could say: ‘after seven decades and 15 events, let’s just let it go,’” Kimpel told Frankfurter Rundschau.