Louvre paper installation destroyed in one day

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Louvre paper art installation destroyed in one day | A paper artwork installed in the courtyard of the Louvre in Paris by French street artist JR has been shredded to pieces in one day by visitors. The 17,000 sq m work, which celebrated 30 years of the I.M. Pei-designed glass pyramid and was dedicated to the late Agnѐs Varda, was a collage intended to create an optical illusion in which the pyramid emerges from a landscape of white rock. JR responded to the news by tweeting that the installation was ‘about presence and absence, about reality and memories, about impermanence’.

Kochi-Muziris Biennale drops investigation into alleged sexual misconduct of cofounder | India’s Kochi-Muziris Biennale has dropped its investigation into the alleged sexual misconduct of co-founder Riyas Komu. The allegations against Komu were published on the Instagram account Scene & Herd last October, and immediately stepped down from his position as secretary after apologising. The biennale has now released a statement claiming that its board of trustees, including Lizzie Jacob, the chair of the International Complaints Committee (ICC), had decided to ‘proactively seek the complaint and authorise an inquiry’ but as ‘no complaint was forthcoming’ the board dropped the inquiry at the ICC’s recommendation. Komu will resume his roles at the Kochi Biennale Foundation.

New report reveals huge disparity in exhibition budgets of art and science museums | The latest version of The Exhibition Finance Report: Market Size Analysis, released by Vastari, has revealed that each year $5.9bn is spent globally on approximately 140,000 temporary exhibitions at approximately 20,000 International Council of Museums accredited institutions. Within this figure, however, the report reveals a disparity between exhibitions held by art museums and those with a focus on science, with $44,750 on average spent on the former compared to $80,000 on the latter. When shipping, insurance and marketing costs are discounted, only 7 per cent of art exhibitions have a budget over $100,000 compared to 23 per cent of science shows.

Frick announces four new trustees | New York’s Frick Collection has announced the election of four new trustees: Tai-Heng Cheng, a member of the Frick’s director’s circle, Kathleen Feldstein, trustee of the MFA in Boston, Christian Keesee, founder of the Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center and Victoria Lea Smith, fellow at the Aspen Institute.