Mexico City has long history in which religious rites and violent crime commingle—which makes the strange, disturbing, cultish, gory works of Hermann Nitsch a good choice for a retrospective at that city’s newest museum devoted to contemporary art, the Museo Jumex. Alas, fearing that the show would drum up protests related to the recent epidemic of drug gang kidnappings, the show has been scrapped at the 11th hour. “This is a different kind of shocking,” said the artist who used to disembowel sheep as performance. It’s the first time in a while that a museum has canceled a show due to controversy, and it’s not clear who exactly was responsible for the decision. [NYT]
A guard at a museum in Madrid folds up art by Oscar Murillo because he doesn’t think it’s part of the show. [El Pais via artnet]
Zoe Gray will be the new senior curator at WEILS, the contemporary art space in Brussels. Just in time for Art Brussels! [artforum]
Red alert, stop the presses, there’s a new Banksy work! And it’s on Instagram! [The Telegraph]
Take a look at the giant, lustrous tapestries inspired by Don Quixote, now up at the Frick. Almost as good as looking at a Banksy on Instagram. [Art Daily]
The Renaissance oddball Piero di Cosimo is now getting his proper due in D.C. “Among the 44 important Pieros assembled for the current show, there is a fine selection of scenes derived from classical mythology and literature—Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” is a frequent source—full of the requisite puzzling figures and animals.” [WSJ]
