To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.
The Headlines
THE SHOW MUST GO ON. Gabrielle Goliath’s banned performance artwork commemorating Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, initially meant to be shown at South Africa’s Venice Biennale pavilion, will now go on display outside the main exhibition, reports the Guardian. The Chiesa di Sant’Antonin church in Venice’s Castello district will host the artwork, which was nixed over its “highly divisive” content, as a video installation for three months, beginning May 4 and staged in partnership with the London arts center Ibraaz. The South African pavilion, meanwhile, will remain empty, for lack of a replacement to the Goliath exhibit. Banning the exhibition had set “a dangerous precedent,” said the artist, whose work grew out of an ongoing series called “Elegy,” which she began in 2015 to mourn the murder of South African student Ipeleng Christine Moholane.
CASE CRACKED. The identities of the artist and young Black subject in an 18th-century portrait acquired by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in 2020 have long mystified experts. But museum researchers now claim they’ve cracked the case, reports the Art Newspaper. The subject of the 1775 painting is apparently an enslaved woman known as Eleonora Susette, who was born in the former Dutch colony of present-day Guyana, while the artist was Berlin-born Jeremias Schultz (1722-1800). Researchers were tipped off to their identities thanks to a lucky email from a family in the Netherlands with ties to the artist. “Toronto is home to a large Caribbean community. It’s gotten a great buzz,” said Adam Harris Levine, associate curator of European art at AGO. “Research is still ongoing. I’ll feel even better when we can share the story in its fullness,” Levine added.
The Digest
The European Commission and the UK have allocated further funds to support culture in Ukraine. [dpa]
Former Louvre president Laurence des Cars admitted to lawmakers yesterday that, since the October theft of France’s crown jewels from the Louvre, “we should no longer display them there anymore.” [Le Figaro]
The Brooklyn Museum has earmarked $13 million to renovate 6,400-square-feet of permanent gallery spaces for its African art collection by 2027. [press release]
A Bernardine monastery in Lviv, part of a Unesco world heritage site, was damaged by a Russian drone strike, with the 17th-century landmark among several historic buildings hit in the city’s center. [The Art Newspaper]
The Kicker
HOPE IN ALEPPO. The old city of Aleppo in Syria is famous for its Unesco-listed skyline, dense with ancient buildings and a fortified medieval palace. But the city became the frontline amid the country’s long civil war and was extensively damaged by all sides. Now, a local, diverse, women-led urban restoration mission is busy rebuilding Aleppo’s heritage, with a focus on lived-in historic urban structures, reports the Financial Times. “The project stands out for linking cultural preservation with livelihoods and community resilience,” said Dr Mathias Winde, executive director of the German-based Gerda Henkel Foundation, which is helping fund restoration in the city. “It emphasizes that the future of reconstruction and cultural preservation can only be shaped by Syrian communities themselves.”
