A lot went down this week in the weird and wild world of Art. Some things were more scandalous than others, some were just plain wacky—but all of them are worth knowing about. Without further ado:+ A giant rooster sculpture bearing Donald Trump-esque characteristics went up this week at shopping mall in the Northern Chinese city of Taiyuan. [The New York Times]+ Award-winning novelist and longtime art critic John Berger has passed away at the age of 90. [The Guardian]
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+ Head architect of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, David Adjaye, is on Queen Elizabeth II’s New Year's Honors list and will be knighted for his service to architecture at an investiture in 2017. [ArchDaily]
+ Famed Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara is being sued by a Korean cosmetics company for copyright infringement. [ArtAsiaPacific]+ Turkish authorities removed a public sculpture from in front of a shopping mall in Istanbul this week. The work by by Kurdish artist Ahmet Güneştekin featured the Ottoman-era name for the city, “Kostantiniyye,” in big block letters. According to Rudaw, the piece sparked public protest because it reminded locals of the Byzantine Empire. [Rudaw]+ South Korean authorities have launched an investigation into allegations of an artist blacklist enforced by now-impeached President Park Geun-hye. [The Washington Post]+ Nepal will host the first ever Kathmandu triennale in March of 2017. The exhibition will be dedicated to the more than 8,000 people who lost their lives in the 2015 earthquakes and will explore the relationship between art and the city. [Artforum]+ Artist Shepard Fairey and musician Debbie Harry announced a collaborative female clothing line for Obey. [Women’s Wear Daily]
+ Embroidery artist and designer Hannah Hill, otherwise known as Hanecdote, is claiming Topshop copied one of her designs for a Halloween-themed patch. [Metro]
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+ After Iranian officials failed to secure travel permits, the city of Berlin was forced to cancel what was to be a highly anticipated exhibition of artworks from Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art, a collection amassed by the widow of the last shah of Iran, Farah Pahlavi. [Le Figaro]+ A new study by researchers at the University of Liverpool has shown that paintings can reveal whether or not an artist is suffering from Parkinson’s or Alzheimer's before they are diagnosed. [The Telegraph]+ The Polish deputy prime minister and minister of culture signed an agreement to buy an art collection owned by the Princes Czartoryski Foundation. According to Bloomberg, Poland paid only $105 million for the $2 billion art collection, which includes a rare painting by Leonardo da Vinci as well as works by Rembrandt and Renoir. [Bloomberg]
+ Activists in the southern South Korean port town of Busan are staging sit-in protests around a public statue of a teenage girl, a memorial to ‘comfort women’—essentially sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II. [Art Daily]+ The city of Florence is making an effort to ensure the security of their national treasures in the face of a series of catastrophic earthquakes that shook Italy last year. [The Art Newspaper]+ Inventor of the "red Solo cup," Robert L. Hulseman, died at 84. [The Chicago Tribune]+ The frontman for Sacramento based experimental hip-hop group Death Grips, MC Ride, is having his own solo exhibition of acrylic paintings at L.A based gallery Slow Culture. [The Fader]
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