Artist sues Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation for $65 million. Poet Bobby Miller has slapped a lawsuit on the artist’s estate, alleging the foundation has been showing his photographs of Mapplethorpe without permission and passing them off as “self-portraits.” Mr. Miller took the portraits in 1979 but left them with Mapplethorpe to be developed.
Museum director protests anti-gay law in Mississippi. Director of the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College, Dr. Tracy Fitzpatrick, has refused to travel to Mississippi for the opening of her museum’s traveling exhibition in response to a recently signed bill that allows organizations to refuse to work with others if it conflicts with their religious beliefs. Now, Dr. Fitzpatrick has issued a statement about her decision not to travel for the show’s opening. “This exhibition reflects the ways in which our founding patron, Roy R. Neuberger, supported living artists irrespective of their backgrounds and beliefs, and valued open dialogue through a mix of ideas–even those that were controversial and unpopular, an approach that is in opposition to Mississippi’s new, sweeping, discriminatory anti-gay and transgender legislation,” she said.
New York Museum puts 400 years of city history on permanent display. The Museum of the City of New York will open a brand new $10 million exhibition showcasing its collections in November and featuring items such as Tammany Hall politician Boss Tweed’s onyx cuff links and Central Park designer Calvert Veux’s drawing kit.
Remains of Christian saint found beneath monastery destroyed by ISIS. In August 2015, ISIS destroyed the St. Elian church when it overtook the town of al -Qaryatain in Syrian. Now, Syrian forces have recaptured the town and discovered under the rubble the bones of the saint the building was named for.
Leading Cairo gallery’s building collapses. The Townhouse Gallery, one of the city’s oldest and most venerable contemporary art spaces, partially collapsed on Wednesday, but no staffers were injured. The space reopened two months ago after government officials raided and closed the gallery.
Police arrest suspects connected to Oslo Munch heist. Officials in Norway have arrested two men believed to be involved in a 2009 theft of a work by Edvard Munch from Nyborgs Kunst gallery. The work has now been recovered.
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter chair sells for $394,000. The wooden chair the author used while writing the first two Harry Potter books sold in New York Wednesday for over 14 times its 2009 auction price.
L.A. art icons Ed Moses, Ed Bereal and Larry Bell in conversation. The three men, all nearing 90 years old, lived and worked in the same influential circle in Los Angeles during the ’60s and ’70s. In a roundtable discussion at NeueHouse Hollywood, the three discuss their enduring friendship.
