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The Headlines
THE LAST DANCE. Yesterday, Judge Richard Leon halted construction of President Trump’s contentious White House ballroom, ruling that Congress must approve the major building project first, reports the New York Times. It is the first time a federal judge has put the brakes on the president’s renovation plans at the White House, but it is too late to save the monument’s East Wing, which Trump already demolished in October to start building the ballroom. “Unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!” wrote Judge Leon. He also raised concerns about the $350 million in private donations used to fund the project, two-thirds of which the organization Public Citizen says are corporate donors who received government contracts to the collective tune of over $275 billion. If Congress does eventually give the go-ahead for the ballroom, “the American people will benefit from the branches of government exercising their constitutionally prescribed roles,” wrote the judge in his opinion. “Not a bad outcome, that!”
FOR I HAVE SINNED. The Guardian’s story about the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s latest work could be mistaken for an April Fools’ Day prank, though beware, the creator of the viral duct-taped banana oeuvre, Comedian (2019), says he’s being entirely serious. He is inviting people from around the world to confess their sins via a free, special hotline to mark the 21st anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II this month. Cattelan famously shocked observers with his lifelike wax sculpture, La Nona Ora (1999), depicting the very same pope struck by a meteor. Selected callers can then participate in a livestream event on April 23, where the artist will “absolve” the callers himself. “I don’t see it as absolution. It’s not religious authority, it’s a shared gesture. Confession exists in different forms everywhere ‚ even outside religion,” he said. Or, could the whole thing just be an April Fools’ prank? Asked what his own confession would be, Cattelan revealed, “That I trust doubt more than certainty,” he said. “And that irony is sometimes just a way to get closer to things without pretending to own them.”
The Digest
Glen Baxter, a British artist and illustrator whose work appeared in the New Yorker and was also exhibited at the Met and Pompidou Center has died at the age of 82. [The Telegraph]
The director of the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations (Mucem) in Marseille, France, Pierre-Oliver Costa, is under investigation for sexual and psychological harassment, following an official complaint from a co-worker. [AFP and Le Figaro]
The extended loan of treasured Frida Kahlo artworks in the Gelman Santander Collection for display outside of Mexico has worried the country’s art community, which is demanding greater transparency and adherence to heritage laws. [The Art Newspaper]
Thousands of people in Bratislava, Slovakia, have protested against major government cuts to cultural funding. [dpa]
“Louvre Museum to Install Locks on Doors After Heist,” reads the headline on Hyperallergic’s website, awash with some pretty entertaining satirical pieces in time for April Fools’ Day. [Hyperallergic]
The Kicker
MONET MADNESS. December will mark the centenary of Claude Monet’s death, with special exhibitions planned throughout the Impressionist visionary’s favorite haunts captured in his paintings. But expected record crowds are also threatening some of those places, as curators try to do justice to the artist’s legacy, and Monet’s former home and famous garden in Giverny is at the top of that list, reports the Times. Today, Monet’s home in Giverny reopens after its annual winter break, and nearly a million visitors are expected to squeeze through its narrow garden paths. “A tremendous amount has been done … with the house and the garden [but] there is still a tremendous amount to do to address overtourism,” Alain-Charles Perrot, director of the Maison et Jardins de Claude Monet, told French media. “The delicate problem is restoring a sense of historical truth to the place to better convey a deeper understanding of who Monet really was. I don’t want it to become Disneyland.”
