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The Headlines




JIM HARITHAS,  the freewheeling curator who cofounded two key Houston art institutions,  died last week  at the age of 90, the  Houston Chronicle  reports. With his wife,  Ann Harithas , who died in 2021, Harithas established the  Station Museum of Contemporary Art  and the  Art Car Museum . The Station Museum, which opened in 2001 and shuttered indefinitely late last year, presented a wide array of venturesome art, from the local to the international. The  Art Car Museum  focuses on Houston’s annual  Art Car Parade . Harithas came to the city to serve as director of its  Contemporary Arts Museum , a position he held from 1974 to 1978. Prior to that, he had led the  Everson Museum of Art  (where  Yoko Ono ’s first museum show  generated a rumor  of a  Beatles  reunion) in Syracuse, New York, and the  Corcoran Gallery of Art  in Washington, D.C.




ALL PUBLICITY IS GOOD PUBLICITY.  Following news that a Florida principal  was pressured to resign  after sixth-grade students were shown an image of  Michelangelo ’s  David  (1501–04), the museum where it resides, the  Galleria dell’Accademia  in Florence, Italy, invited parents and the students from the school  to come and have a look , the  Associated Press  reports. “To think that David could be pornographic means truly not understanding the contents of the Bible, not understanding Western culture and not understanding Renaissance art,” its director,  Cecilie Hollberg , said. Florence’s mayor also invited the ousted principal,  Hope Carrasquilla , to come through. Carrasquilla said that she may accept, explaining to the  AP  that, while she has visited the piece before, “I would love to go and be a guest of the mayor.”




The Digest




The artist  Koo Jeong A  will represent South Korea at the 2024  Venice Biennale . Organizing the pavilion will be  Jacob Fabricius , the director of the  Kunsthal Aarhus  in Denmark, and  Lee Sun-hee , its director. The exhibition will involve “invisible elements such as scents and temperatures,”  Kim Da-sol  reports.  [The Korea Herald]




Sotheby’s  hit pause on an online auction, “Natively Digital: Glitch-ism,” after one of the artists in the sale,  Patrick Amadon , raised concern its lack of female-identifying artists. The auction house said it will hold the event later with “a more equitable and diverse group of artists.”  [Decrypt]




Archaeologists studying the burial of a man in the second century at a Roman necropolis on the edge of  Sagalassos  in Turkey found more than three dozen bent or twisted nails. A new paper argues that they were part of an occult practice aimed at ensuring the dead did not return.  [The New York Times]




The art historian  James Hall  has proposed that  Vincent van Gogh ’s 1889  The Starry Night  was inspired by the then-new  Eiffel Tower  and the fireworks surrounding its inauguration, which are channeled in the “pyrotechnical music of the stars, sky, and clouds” in the artist’s legendary piece, Hall writes.  [The Guardian]




Meet  Markus Dochantschi , the architect behind a bevy of major New York art spaces in recent years, from the new-ish  Phillips  auction house in Midtown to the forthcoming Tribeca locations of  Marian Goodman  and  Alexander Gray Associates . His thoughts on the white cube? “I’m a bit tired of it,” he said.  [The New York Times]




At an event on Friday, Greece marked the donation of three fragments of the  Parthenon  from the  Vatican Museums  to the  Greek Orthodox Church . “This act by  Pope Francis  is of historical significance and has a positive impact on all levels,”  Archbishop Ieronymos II  said.  [The Associated Press]




The Kicker




GAMECHANGER.  In the  New York Times ,  Matt Flegenheimer  and  Kate Kelly  have  a robust profile  of  Steve Cohen , the billionaire art collector and hedge-funder who is now the big-spending owner of the  Mets . He has gone from “a reclusive avatar of scofflaw capitalism to an avuncular Twitterer who could probably be elected Queens borough president by acclamation,” they write. Once known for running a highly intense workplace, Cohen said, “I’ve mellowed.” Because of the huge player contracts he is paying,  Major League Baseball  has instituted a so-called Cohen Tax aimed at penalizing such deals. Outfielder  Brandon Nimmo  told the  Times  that Cohen said of that rule change: “It’s an honor. Wouldn’t you want a tax named after you?”  [NYT]