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The Headlines
DON’T LOSE YOUR HEAD. The final letter written by Mary, Queen of Scots before her execution in 1587 is now on public display in Scotland for the first time in 30 years at Perth Museum, where it will remain on view until April 26, reports the Washington Post. Mary composed the four-page, hand-quilled letter to her brother-in-law, Henry III of France, shortly after being informed of her death sentence, an execution that would take place only hours later. In it, she portrays her fate as the result of anti-Catholic hysteria and frames herself as a martyr. “Tonight, after dinner, I have been advised of my sentence: I am to be executed like a criminal at eight in the morning,” she wrote. The letter is held by the National Library of Scotland and can only be exhibited rarely because of strict conservation limits. Even in its current windowless display room, exposure must be tightly controlled. “We’re basically using its whole light budget,” said Ashleigh Hibbins of Perth Museum. “It won’t be out again for a long time.”
RUB-A-DUB-DUB. To mark International Women’s Day on March 8, the French artist Luz has covered the bronze bust of singer Dalida in Montmartre, Paris, with a reflective new “armor,” reports Le Figaro. The mirror-encrusted white bodice, complete with protruding spikes, was designed to discourage a long-standing habit among passersby: rubbing the sculpture’s breasts for good luck, particularly in matters of love or sex, which has left them with a noticeably lighter patina. In an Instagram post, Luz argued that the gesture humiliates women. Her hand-sewn installation, she added, is meant as “an armor for all women.”
The Digest
Gerhard Richter supports the new plan to charge an entrance fee to the Cologne Cathedral, he told reporters. Richter designed the crowd-drawing stained-glass window in the south transept of the cathedral, unveiled in 2007. [dpa]
The digital artist known as Beeple will exhibit his crowd-pleasing latest tech installation, Regular Animals (2025), at the Neue Nationalgalerie as part of Gallery Weekend Berlin. The not-so-regular, AI-programmed robotic dogs equipped with heads modeled after the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol, debuted at Art Basel Miami Beach in December. [Artnet News]
Acclaimed French artist Philippe Favier, 68, has died following a car accident in southern France. Known for his ball-point-pen drawings, Favier was represented by Yvon Lambert and Farideh Cadot and received the Prix de Rome for painting and printing. [Le Monde]
Ukraine-based artist Nikita Kadan and Natalia Sielewicz, chief curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, will curate the 16th Baltic Triennial. The forthcoming edition will focus on “despair and mourning not as pathologies, but as spaces of careful listening.” [ArtReview]
The Musée d’Orsay in Paris has begun a 30-million-euro renovation project that will last more than two years while it remains open to the public. [Le Quotidien de l’Art]
The Kicker
THE DAN BROWN APPROACH. It’s been hard to miss recent headlines about a mysterious “Spiritual Pietà” that some believe, or hope, was painted by Michelangelo. But a new report in The New York Times pours cold water on what one scholar calls a “Dan Brown approach” to art history: the idea that masterpieces by famous artists lie hidden beneath layers of paint, waiting to be dramatically uncovered. “Art history is not this,” said Renaissance specialist Francesco Caglioti, who joins a growing list of experts arguing that the painting is unlikely to be by Michelangelo. In fact, none of the Michelangelo scholars interviewed by the Times supported the attribution. Skepticism also surrounds another recent claim: a bust in a Roman basilica that a researcher has suggested could be yet another lost work by Michelangelo, as reported by ARTnews.
