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The Headlines
THE KEY TO THE CITY.  If the lawyer  Frank Gilbert  had picked a different line of work, New York City might look very different today. Many other parts of the United States might, too. Gilbert, who campaigned to prevent Manhattan’s  Grand Central Terminal  from being demolished in the 1960s, and who was involved in crafting many preservation laws, including the one that created the  Landmarks Preservation Commission  in the city,  died on May 14 at the age of 91 ,  Sam Roberts  reports in the  New York Times .  Paul Edmondson , who heads the  National Trust for Historic Preservation , told the  Times  that Gilbert “was responsible for the protection of thousands of historic properties and neighborhoods across the country through his work in helping communities develop historic districts.” In New York, those include areas of SoHo and Chelsea.
REPATRIATION DEVELOPMENTS.  A gold coin from ancient Greece that was stolen from a museum in Rhodes during World War II,  has been repatriated to the country  from a museum in Stockholm, Sweden, the  Associated Press  reports. Dating back three millennia, it was at one point owned by the art-collecting biophysicist  Georg von Békésy  . Greek’s culture minister said that the return of the artifact shows the Swedish officials’ “respect for modern Greece.” Meanwhile, at a  UNESCO  meeting on Friday, a Greek official  rejected a British claim  that many of the  Parthenon  marbles removed by  Lord Elgin  were found amid rubble, the  Guardian  reports. Last week, the two countries said that they would hold  talks on the disputed marbles . A date has not been set.
The Digest
The  World Economic Forum  is running in Davos, Switzerland, and Ukrainian artists have transformed a building that Russia usually uses during the event with signage and images that declare it the “Russian War Crimes House.” Russia has denied claims that it has committed war crimes in the war in Ukraine.  [Reuters]
Miss.Tic , a prominent street artist who became active in the Montmartre section of Paris in the 1980s, died on Sunday of an unspecified illness at the age of 66. France’s culture minister,  Rima Abdul Malak , paid tribute to her “iconic, resolutely feminist” art in a statement.  [AFP/France 24]
Amanda Claridge , a revered archaeologist with a passion for Rome, died at the age of 72 of cancer earlier this month. “Three thousand years of continuous occupation have produced one of the most deeply stratified and complex urban sites in existence,” she once wrote of the Eternal City.  [The New York Times]
One of  Shepard Fairey ’s famed portraits of former  President Barack Obama  accompanied by the word “HOPE” sold for $735,000 at  Heritage Auctions . A mixed-media collage, it is one of three large-scale pieces that Fairey made of the subject.  [Chicago Tribune]
ARTIST UPDATES.  Speaking of museums devoted to a single artist,  a new museum  dedicated to German artist  George Grosz  has just opened in his native Berlin, the  New York Times  reports. Australian painter  Ken Done  is in the  Guardian , declaring,  “I’ll never be as good as a five-year-old.”  And Irish artist  Eva Rothschild  is also in the  Guardian , sharing some of her  favorite cultural offerings of late , like the TV show  The Young Offenders .
The Kicker
IDENTIFYING INSPIRATION.  In the  Wall Street Journal , architect  Francis Kéré , who garnered the  Pritzker Prize   earlier this year , discussed  the important role that traditional African masks have in his practice  , and highlighted as one off his favorites an early 20th-century hawk mask made by a Bwa sculptor that is in the  Metropolitan Museum of Art . (He’s also a fan of the contemporary artist  Romuald Hazoumè , of Benin, who makes unforgettable mask sculptures from plastic jugs and other materials.) For the Burkina Faso–born and Berlin-based Kéré, a traditional African mask is “a piece of wood that pushes you to think.” [WSJ]