LA Artist Homes and Cultural Landmarks Burned, Warhol Museum Names New Director, and more: Morning Links for January 9, 2025

This post was originally published on artnews.com

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

The Headlines

LA ARTIST HOMES AND CULTURAL LANDMARKS BURNED. The spreading fires in Los Angeles continue to wreak havoc, including ravaging artists and cultural centers. Karen K. Ho has written about museum and gallery closures in the region for ARTnews, including the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, which is reportedly safe. Others have not been so lucky. Many artists told ARTnews they have already lost their homes. The Los Angeles Times reported on the destruction of the Zorthian Ranch in Altadena, an artist colony founded decades ago by the late sculptor and craftsman Jirayr Zorthian. Two handymen told reporters they and about a dozen artists escaped the fire, but animals living on the colony, including 40 sheep, pigs, and a Brahman bull ran into the woods. Many artists, particularly in Altadena, known for its thriving creative community, lost their homes and studios, and the LAT also reported on cultural gems that have either been lost to fires or are in imminent danger. Thankfully, the midcentury Eames House, one of the city’s most important architectural landmarks, was undamaged, despite rumors. On the other hand, the 1920s-built Will Rogers State Historic Park was destroyed in the Palisades fire. The compound became a park and museum after Rogers’ widow, Betty, donated it to the state. Additionally, the historic Pasadena Jewish Temple and center, the Theatre PalisadesPierson Playhouse, and the Palisades Branch Library have been destroyed, reported Hyperallergic. The artist residency Villa Aurora and the Thomas Mann house are reportedly safe, but “the situation in immediate vicinity of Villa Aurora is especially dire and we must expect the worst,” said a statement by the institution.

WARHOL MUSEUM GETS NEW DIRECTOR. Mario R. Rossero has been named the director of Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum and vice president of Carnegie Museums, replacing Patrick Moore, announced Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh yesterday. Rossero will begin his new duties on March 31, and is currently the executive director of the National Art Education Association (NAEA). Before that, he served as senior vice president of education for the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., following a variety of leadership roles with Chicago Public Schools. In fact, he started his career as an artist educator at The Warhol, reports Art Dependence Magazine. “This is really a full-circle moment for Mario and The Warhol, where Mario began his career just three years after the museum opened in 1994,” said Steven Knapp, president and CEO of Carnegie Museums.

The Digest

A Chinese appeals court has upheld a previous ruling requiring Chinese artist Ye Yongqing to pay €650,000 ($670,469) in damages and issue an apology in a major Chinese newspaper for plagiarizing the work of Belgian artist Christian Silvain. The decision marks the conclusion of a five-year legal battle, and the first time ta foreign artist has won a plagiarism case against a Chinese artist in a Chinese court. [ARTnews]

Austrian dealer Thaddaeus Ropac is set to open a new gallery in Milan’s Palazzo Belgioiso this fall, as the city continues to attract high-net-worth individuals (HNWI), particularly from the UK, thanks to low tax-break schemes for expats. This will be Ropac’s seventh international gallery, to be headed by Elena Bonanno di Linguaglossa, who previously worked as senior director at Lévy Gorvy Dayan. [The Art Newspaper]

A masked individual reportedly destroyed a wax sculpture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Museo de Cera in Mexico City, by splattering it with red paint to simulate blood and knocking it over. A Palestinian flag was left beside. Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) in Mexico shared a photo and video of the incident online, in which the unidentified man said, “Long Live Palestine, Long Live Sudan, Long Live Yemen, Long Live Puerto Rico.” [Artnet News]

The German government has approved reforms to its process for returning Nazi-looted art, though some victims’ families and lawyers say it is ineffective, and have called on the government to freeze the reform. The new proposal would see the current advisory commission on restitution replaced with an arbitration court, with the stated aim of allowing victims to make a “unilateral appeal” for restitution. [Barron’s and AFP]

Artist Glenn Ligon talks about his latest project at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, where he was given permission to rearrange its collection and install his own artworks. The result is called “Glenn Ligon: All Over the Place,” on view until March 2. It features Ligon’s illuminated neon type floating between columns at the museum entrance. [The Financial Times]

The Kicker

MET SECURITY GUARD’S BIG BREAK. Sometimes, miracles do happen. The New York Times story about the Metropolitan Museum of Art security guard and artist, Armia Khalil, who struck up a conversation with an incognito museum curator, who went on to include him in a current Met exhibit as a result, is almost too good to believe. When curator Akili Tommasino first encountered Khalil, he had been looking for a painting that shares its title with the blockbuster exhibit he organized, “Flight Into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now,” through February 17. As Khalil showed him the way to the painting he also happened to love, the two got talking and Tommasino learned that Khalil is a talented artist from Egypt, deeply inspired by his country’s ancient past. Khalil’s whole journey from an Egyptian village where he grew up playing along the Nile river, to making it to art school and eventually scoring US citizenship and a security guard job at the Met, is itself heartwarming – even before he was asked to be included in the show. Khalil says he still has the ticket from his very first visit to the museum, not long after he arrived in New York, and was still making ends meet as a construction worker. Now, his wooden bust of a female figure with a scarab beetle sitting on her head — a symbol of hope for ancient Egyptians — has pride of place in the Met’s exhibit, displayed in a section about modern Egyptian perspectives. “It’s a masterful sculpture that belongs in the exhibition,” Tommasino said.