“We weren’t really sure what to expect,” Haus der Musik managing director Simon Posch told ARTnews.

The participating institutions were the Mozarthaus Vienna, House of Music, KunstHausWien and the Jewish Museum Vienna owned by the City of Vienna; MAK Vienna (Museum of Applied Arts) and MAK Geymüllerschlössel; the modern art museum Mumok, the art museum The Albertina, as well as the museum at the House of Strauss. The Museumquartier also offered Taylor Swift ticket holders free guided tours in English and German on August 10 and 11.

The initiative was publicized through the Vienna Tourist Board and statements by the city’s mayor, Michael Ludwig, especially on social media.

Several museum professionals in Vienna told ARTnews the slew of additional visitors were a pleasant surprise to their institutions. The demographics were mostly English-speaking young women, often between the ages of 18 to 25, traveling to the city from countries as far away as China, South Africa, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Many of them were also easily identifiable while wearing the singer’s concert merchandise, colorful outfits intended for the concert, and arms covered in friendship bracelets they intended to trade with other fans.

The Albertina fully embraced the moment, waiving its €19.90 regular entrance fee (€15.90 for visitors under 26 years) for more than 20,000 Swifties between Thursday, August 8 and Sunday, August 11. “On a normal and regular weekend, we would have, I would say 2,000 a day,” spokesperson Nina Eisterer told ARTnews, noting that these types of visitor numbers are usually for blockbuster exhibitions like the one for Claude Monet in 2018.

Eisterer said she and her colleagues in The Albertina’s marketing division were Swifties themselves, with several people planning to go to the concerts and personally devastated by the news of the cancellations. After the idea for waived entry fees was approved, the art museum’s security and ticketing teams were informed on August 6 that additional staff would be needed.

The Albertina’s line for Swifties was so long that some fans stood outside in the sun and 91°F heat for approximately 20 minutes. “But there was no fuss about it,” Eisterer said. “People were super nice.”

The museum also switched the soundtracks playing its in 20 historical staterooms from classical music to Taylor Swift albums, prompting several large singalongs that went viral on TikTok.

“I love classical music, I love Mozart, I love Beethoven, I love all these classical artists, but it was really nice to have a Taylor Swift singalong more or less in the state rooms that normally stand for something else,” Eisterer said, noting she had worked for The Albertina for eight years.

Other institutions also saw an unexpected bump in activity. For the Haus der Musik, 2,746 Swifties came to museum for its free entry between August 8 and August 11 instead of paying €17 for adults and €13 for students under the age of 27. This was almost half of the total number of visitors (5,862). The singer’s fans also increased gift shop sales by €4,500 ($4,918.88) over the weekend.

Mozarthaus Vienna said they had 2,663 Swifties between August 9 and August 11, with additional staff called in on Saturday and Sunday. “Due to the large number of Swifties, guided tours in English were spontaneously added,” spokesperson Jasmine Wolfram told ARTnews.

Mumok’s head of press, Katharina Murschetz said 884 Taylor Swift fans stopped by. Eva Grundschober, the spokesperson for Capuchin’s Crypt said “exactly 500 Swifties” used the option for the free ticket. And Josef Gaschnitz, the chief financial officer of the Jüdisches Museum der Stadt, said visitor numbers were “over 100% more” compared to normal days. “Our gift shop had around 50% more sales, same with our bistro.”

Several institutions also mentioned employees gifting and exchanging bracelets with the singer’s fans visiting the city.

Multiple people told ARTnews that social media played a major role in informing Swifties of the “super last-minute decision” for the city’s offers and attracting them to the various museums. “100%,” said Posch, a self-professed Taylor Swift fan. “I think social media is the only way to reach this target group, because it didn’t help if the Austrian National Broadcasting System showed it in the evening news and they put it on their web page. None of these kids is going to visit the ORF home page. Social media just reaches the audience in the fastest possible way. And then it goes viral.”

While the initiative may have been a temporary hit to museum revenues from entry fees, museum staff told ARTnews there were far more benefits, including merchandise sales, publicity, and greater accessibility to younger visitors.

“We didn’t think about the money or the losing the money at all,” Eisterer said, noting that its entry fees can be very expensive for young people. “It was, for us, important to set like a sign for this concert that had been canceled because of this horrible reason, and to give somehow a bit of hope and say to people, ‘Hey, we know it’s devastating. You can’t go to the concert, but hey, you can enjoy a bit of of art in Vienna, that’s what we can offer you’.”

“It’s helpful for our reputation,” Posch said. “it pays into the reputation of the city of Vienna, being friendly, being generous, being hospitable. And that is worth more, in the end, than not generating these few euros in ticket sales.”

Some museums, like the Haus of Musik and The Albertina, also planned on extending the free entry offer to Swifties for one or two days beyond the weekend. “We will definitely still give them free access if they come with the Taylor Swift ticket,” Posch said. “If they didn’t make it on the weekend and they’re still here, there’ll be no discussion, there’ll be our guests.”

“Vienna is doing everything it can to ensure that the thousands of Swifties who have traveled to our city still have an unforgettable weekend. Vienna would like to thank all the fans for their understanding and solidarity, whose reactions show that nothing and nobody can destroy the cohesion in our society,” Vienna Tourist Board CEO Norbert Kettner said in a press statement.

Ticket holders to the three cancelled Taylor Swift concerts will be granted free entry this weekend to the Mozarthaus Vienna, House of Music, KunstHausWien and the Jewish Museum Vienna; MAK Vienna (Museum of Applied Arts) and MAK Geymüllerschlössel; the modern art museum Mumok, the print specialist museum The Albertina, as well as the museum at the House of Strauss. The Museumquartier is also offering Taylor Swift ticket holders free guided tours in English and German on August 10 and 11.

Brooklyn-based independent film producer and director Waverly Colville told ARTnews she had purchased her concert tickets over a year ago, and found out about the cancellations due to security threats the night before she was scheduled to fly from Stockholm, Sweden. After Colville and her group decided to continue their trip to Vienna, Colville saw posts on social media of other fans gathering to sing songs, as well as the offers from museums and businesses posted on Instagram by the Vienna Tourist Board.

“It felt like everyone was going above and beyond to make sure that all the concertgoers that were there in the city had a good time in Vienna, even though this unfortunate event happened,” she said.

Colville didn’t have set plans in the city aside from attending the concert, and ended up checking out Mozarthaus. “Honestly, if the Mozart museum wasn’t free, and did this big promotion to let the concertgoers come for free, I don’t know if I would have went,” she said, noting she had grown up playing violin. “It was really cool getting to experience something that maybe I normally wouldn’t have done otherwise.”

According to Colville, who used to work at the New Yorker, CNBC and HBO, Mozarthaus was filled with easily identifiable fans of Taylor Swift. “The Mozart Museum was filled with a lot of young women who were her prime demographic, [wearing] friendship bracelets, T-shirts, the whole thing,” she said. “I don’t think that would have been the case had the concert not been canceled and the museum gave us free admission. I did feel like it brought in a lot of people that wouldn’t probably have normally went under normal circumstances.”

“The streets, the museum, every restaurant filled with people with a Taylor Swift t-shirt or friendship bracelets, or accessories, or sparkly outfits that you could see they were planning on wearing to the concert,” Colville said.

In addition to free entry to museums, offers for Taylor Swift fans include complimentary meals at burger restaurants, gifts from the crystal company Swarovski at its retail stores, and free entry to the outdoor pool facility Stadiobad.

Hundreds of fans wearing Taylor Swift merchandise have frequently gathered at Stephansplatz, a public square in the city’s center also near several museums, to sing Taylor Swift songs and exchange friendship bracelets. A couple even proposed there, surrounded by fans.

In addition to seeing Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss at the Belvedere Palace, Colville said there was a strong likelihood she would check out other museums offering free entry in the city before the end of her trip. “It’s like there’s nothing to lose,” she said. “I think it would be a waste not to take advantage of it and see as much as we can.”

The free exhibition is titled Taylor Swift: Songbook Trail. According to the museum the show will focus on both her childhood, recording legacy, and rise to superstardom, with 13 distinct stops on the “trail” that correspond to a point in Swift’s career, beginning with her move to Nashville at 14-years-old.

Among the standout items in the collection are a pair of cowboy boots Swift wore during her country music days and the black ruffled dress she wore in the music video for Fortnight, the single from her recently released album The Tortured  Poet’s Department.

“Taylor Swift’s songs like objects tell stories, often drawing from art, history and literature. We hope this theatrical trail across the museum will inspire curious visitors to discover more about the performer, her creativity and V&A objects,” Kate Bailey, Senior Curator, Theatre & Performance at the V&A said in a press release.

The Songbook Trail comes on the heels of the UK leg of Swift’s monumental Eras tour, which by one account has taken over the British capital city. So much so that London’s mayor Sadiq Khan commissioned and shared a map of the city’s subway system called “Tube Map (Taylor’s Version),” with each line named after one of her albums and each stop after one of her songs, to be displayed at Wembley Park station, with an insert included in last Friday’s Evening Standard.

The tour was expected to bring around £300 million pounds into London, with Barclay’s estimating that the UK economy as a whole would get a £997 million boost thanks to Swifties spending more than 12 times the average UK citizen’s spends on a night out. 

The V&A was ahead of the game. In February of this year the institution began looking for a Taylor Swift consultant who was “versed in handmade memorabilia, such as concert signs and friendship bracelets (which Swift is known for gifting at her shows).”

The Songbook Trail was conceived by the award-winning designer Tom Piper (mastermind of the V&A’s 2021 Alice in Wonderland exhibition). It will be staged in the South Kensington museum’s permanent galleries through September 8, 2024.

Local Liverpool creatives came together to make 11 art installations inspired by her studio albums. Highlights include a playable moss-covered grand piano inspired by Evermore, a “red room” honoring the Red album, and a Fearless mural based around the singer’s lucky number, 13. At College Lane, there will be a mural to celebrate Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department. Additionally, in the city center, in front of St. George’s Hall, there will be “Taylor” banners.

A series of craft workshops dubbed Liverpool Loves Taylor (Craft Version) will also be held throughout the city. Origami pieces made by fans will be added to the main art installations. Fans can also create homemade T-shirts, collages, and cupcakes. A “Tay Day” free symposium for academics, students, and fans will also be held at the University of Liverpool.

“One of the biggest stars on the planet is coming to the birthplace of pop,” reads a notice from the Liverpool City Council. “And to mark this musical moment for the ages, there are plans in place to give Swifties a proper scouse welcome.”

Every city where Swift has performed has seen a boost in business across retail, food and beverage, and hotels. The Eras Tour alone has generated a total economic impact that likely exceeded $10 billion in the United States, according to the US Travel Association.

Though the Eras Tour has been sweeping the globe since March 2023, Liverpool’s homage to Swift is hardly the first of its kind. For the singer’s kickoff show in Glendale, Arizona, for example, the town temporarily changed its name to “Swift City.” In Rio de Janeiro, a Swift-inspired T-shirt was projected onto the Brazilian city’s statue of Christ the Redeemer.

The trail was made possible by Liverpool Council’s culture team and social enterprise Make CIC.

Claire McColgan, Liverpool’s Director of Culture, told the BBC that using “incredible art” as installations was the “right thing to do” to bring back the “Eurovision sparkle.” She added, “Her team will know what we are doing and it’s important when you get an artist of her scale that the city embraces it.”

THE HEADLINES

STRINGS ATTACHED. The Orlando Museum of Art has asked a Florida court to change spending restrictions on a $1.8 million donation it received from the Margaret Young estate, as it wrangles with a financial crisis, including legal fees related to its fake “Basquiat fiasco,” reports The New York Times. The Young bequest was given on the condition it be used for the museum’s “Permanent Collection Fund and to add to their permanent collection,” states the trust, rather than operating expenses. In its filing, the museum denies it would use the funds to shore up depleted finances and is asking to use the money for “general purposes” in service of its permanent collection. The institution also notes it doesn’t have a specifically titled, “Permanent Collection Fund,” making the donor’s original purpose “impossible.” However, other lawyers have said creating a new fund for the donation was simple, and that the museum has other funds for acquiring art that are simply called something else. Meanwhile, other museum donors have expressed concerns their gifts could be used for operating costs, which critics say a modification to the Young bequest could facilitate.

SWIFTIE ART TRAIL. A moss-covered piano sculpture, a mural, tie-dye and other craft workshops, are just some of the featured art installations being set up along the forthcoming “Taylor Town” exhibit that will run through Liverpool to celebrate Taylor Swift’s three sold-out June concerts in the city, reports the BBC. Swift fans (aka Swifties) will be able to wander through 11 installations in venues around town, each representing a Swift album, as part of an initiative organized by Liverpool Council’s culture team and social enterprise Make CIC. Featuring “incredible art” was the “right thing to do,” for the mega-star’s arrival, said Claire McColgan, Liverpool’s Director of Culture. As for the participating artists, some of those who were selected said they’ve all but joined the Swiftie global phenomenon since working on their projects. “I’m definitely a super Swiftie now. I wouldn’t say I was one before,” said featured artist Rachel Smith-Evans.

THE DIGEST

Abstract painter Yvette Achkar passed away on May 12, age 96. Born in Brazil to Lebanese parents in 1928, she was recently included in the traveling exhibit “Taking Shape: abstraction from the Arabe World, 1950-1980,” of works from the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah. [ArtAsiaPacific]

Alex Fortescue, managing partner of the equity firm Epiris, which owns Bonhams auction house, has died at age 55, following a reported “incident while cycling.” [The Art Newspaper]

About 100 workers in Argentina’s film industry are demonstrating at the Cannes Film Festival in France against “chainsaw” budget cuts to the country’s culture sector, under far-right President Javier Milei. “The current government has embarked on a crusade against culture, science and education,” Argentinian film producer Clara Massot told reporters. [France 24]

Pixar animation studios is firing 14 percent of its staff, or 175 people, announced Pixar president Jim Morris in an internal memo seen by The New York Times. The studio will also stop making original shows for Disney+ and will “return to our focus on feature films.” [The New York Times]

A painting by Alfred Sisley and another by Auguste Renoir were restituted to 11 legal heirs of the Jewish galleries Grégoire Schusterman in a ceremony in France last week. Their sale in 1941 was forced by Nazi occupiers in France, and the paintings were among thousands of “orphan,” or ownerless artworks brought back to France from Germany after WWII. [Le Monde]

The Town of Vail in Colorado said they would rescind their Art in Public Places (AIPP) residency offer for Native artist Daniel See Walker due to her art piece, G is for Genocide (2024). “AIPP’s mission is to create a diverse and meaningful public art experience in Vail, but to not use public funds to support any position on a polarizing geopolitical issue,” stated the AIPP. [Hyperallergic]

The Basel Social Club art fair, with some 60 participating galleries, will hold its upcoming edition from June 9 to 16 outdoors, on 72 hectares of farmland about 10km south of the main Art Basel event. “This year we are telling people to come to come to the fields, drink a beer and enjoy art within nature,” said Robbie Fitzpatrick, co-founder of the fair. [Financial Times]

The artists William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton have founded a new Zero Art Fair in Elizaville, upstate New York. They designed the fair for artists who want to clear out storage spaces by giving away artworks under specific, contracted terms, where ownership of the work is transferred after five years if it hasn’t sold, during which time it remains sellable by the artist. Plus, after ownership is transferred, the artist is entitled to 50 percent of sale profits. [Artnet News]

THE KICKER

RESTORING LAS MENINAS. It’s been 40 years since the saga over the controversial cleaning and restoration of Diego Valázquez’s 1656 masterpiece, Las Meninas by a non-Spaniard.Now, El Pais is recalling the tale. Reporter Ana Marcos spoke to another restorer at the Prado Museum, where the painting is housed, who witnessed it all, and had a hand in its final touches. The British specialist, John Brealy, who worked at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, was chosen for the job in 1984, but the fact that he was not Spanish led to a national debate. At one point, at the sounds of screams from an angry professor and his students who demanded the restoration stop, Brealy even fled the Prado in fear for his life. “The expert got scared, he thought they were coming to lynch him, he stopped his work for the day and left,” writes Marcos. “I was condemned in advance. Before they knew what I was going to do,” recalled Brealy in a past interview with El Pais. But his methods ended up setting a precedent for restoration at the museum, and despite the pressures of a nation and the heavy workload itself, Brealy offered his services free of charge.

According to the museum, the ideal consultant is versed in handmade memorabilia, such as concert signs and friendship bracelets (which Swift is known for gifting at her shows). The V&A hopes to make its hire before the 34-year-old, 14-Grammy winner starts the European leg of her Eras tour.

Interested parties can submit their credentials through the museum’s website from Friday.

The Swiftie position is one among several pop culture consultancies the museum has recently launched; people passionate about emojis, Crocs shoes, and drag are also wanted. Advisers on Pokemon cards, Lego, and Gorpcore fashion have already been secured.

The unusual position is part of an initiative to deepen its “vast curatorial knowledge” by employing the knowledge of civilian experts in “specific cultural niches,” the museum said.

Museum director Tristram Hunt added in a statement: “These new advisory roles will help us celebrate and discover more about the enormous, and often surprising, creative diversity on offer at the V&A, as well as helping us to learn more about the design stories that are relevant to our audiences today.”

And while the V&A’s Swift specialist is a first for the museum world, it is not unheard of more broadly. The newspaper chain Gannett, for example, recently hired a reporter whose stated beat is Swift and everything that accompanies her.

THE HEADLINES

MUSEUM WOES. Washington State’s Bellevue Arts Museum (BAM) is in “dire financial crisis,” and faces the prospect of having to shut down if it doesn’t raise $300,000, according to the art center’s newly appointed executive director, Kate Casprowiak Scher, speaking to The Seattle Times. “We’re at the place where the straw breaks the camel’s back,” added Scher, who attributes current troubles to a combo of insufficient long-term funding, the Covid-19 pandemic, changes to visitor habits, philanthropic priorities, and debt. Plus, the center, which doesn’t have a permanent collection and never set up a significant endowment, has to raise money every year to host exhibitions, spurring a “doom loop,” added Scher. Without the structural funding of an endowment, “it’s like having a great big modern home and not planning for its future,” she said.

WANTED: SWIFTIE MUSEUM WORKER. London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is looking to hire a Swiftie – a Taylor Swift fan, for those not keeping up — before the Grammy-winning star begins her European tour later this year. The BBC reports the museum needs expert insights into the star’s fan culture, and specifically, the craft memorabilia that Swift enthusiasts collect, such as the eclectic friendship bracelets exchanged at concerts. The job is one of several niche “super fan advisor” roles the institution has been exploring, to diversify its “cultural knowledge” of design. Time to edit the old resume?

THE DIGEST

A group of parents are accusing a Montreal middle school teacher of printing their children’s homework drawings onto mugs and bags, and hawking them online. In a lawyer’s letter, parents are asking Montreal’s Lester B. Pearson School Board to suspend the teacher, Mario Perron, send an apology letter, and pay about $130,000 to $96,000 per impacted student “in accordance with the copyright act” and incurred damages. [Hyperallergic]

Two French organizations, art-cade and SINGA, are launching a fundraiser to bring 16 artists from Gaza and their families to France. The artists all participated in the 2023 exhibition, “What Palestine brings to the world,” at the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris, and some have died or lost loved ones, said IMA President Jack Lang. [Le Quotidien de l’Art]

The Australian Indigenous artist Tony Albert was named the inaugural First Nations curator fellow at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, filling a new role in the foundation’s two-year-old partnership with the Sidney Biennale. [The Art Newspaper]

The West Bank’s Palestinian Museum in Birzeit has reopened after four months of closure with a show titled “This is Not an Exhibition,” featuring over 280 works by 100 Gazan artists. Held in three galleries, the “artistic demonstration” is meant to “raise our voices loudly against the massacres and systemic destruction of our beloved Gaza,” said a museum statement. [Artnet News]

American abstract artist Joan Snyder joins Thaddaeus Ropac. The gallery will represent the 83-year-old painter in Europe and Asia. [The Art Newspaper]

The Los Angeles City Council voted to spend nearly $4 million to clean and secure an abandoned, unfinished skyscraper development project known as Oceanwide Plaza, which made headlines in recent weeks when dozens of floors were found covered in graffiti. The city hopes to make Oceanwide Holdings, the project’s developer, cover costs, but the Beijing-based company halted construction in 2019 due to a lack of funds. [The Los Angeles Times]

The artists who created the Little Amal puppet, which spread awareness of the migrant crisis, are launching The Herd, a new project comprising a herd of animal puppets who will travers the globe. The aim is to spark a “visceral engagement with the issue” of climate crisis, said Palestinian artist Amir Nizar Zuabi. [The Guardian]

THE KICKER

JAMES TURRELL GETS AN A+. The internationally acclaimed, light-wielding artist James Turrell has gone back to school. More accurately, one of his light and color installations was installed in a 20-foot-by-22-foot room on the sixth floor of the K-12 Friends Seminary private Quaker school in Manhattan. The immersive piece, called Leading, is one of Turrell’s Skyspaces, which number over 85, and it gives the impression of a “slice of sky [that] appears to float inside the installation,” per a description by Hilarie M. Sheets of The New York Times. While the school’s lucky students will get to spend time learning inside the art installation, the artwork is also accessible to the public on select Fridays starting next month, and Friends Seminary wants to share the piece with other schools and institutions. “It’s an opportunity to expose kids to how art functions in space and in real time outside of textbooks and talking heads,” commented the admirative artist Rashid Johnson.

Tom Brady and Kim Kardashian were both interested in George Condo’s Standing Female Figure (2023) and let the room know by engaging in a friendly, albeit heated, bidding war over the work.

Kardashian opened with a $500,000 bid, the organizers told Artnet News. Brady quickly countered, and the two put in leapfrogging bids until Brady offered $2 million for the work, at which point the reality star realized she had been beaten.

When Condo heard the two celebrities were vying for the work, a mixed-media drawing that prominently features a woman’s nude derrière, he agreed to create a matching work for Kardashian if she was willing to put up the same amount Brady did, $2 million.

That may seem like a hefty sum, but Condo’s auction record is more than triple that amount.

A work by Rashid Johnson, Fireflies (2023), also made its way to the auction block and was picked up by NFT advocate and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk for $1.5 million.

Reform Alliance, which advocates for reform in the criminal justice system, made $5.1 million in donations from the three works. A total of $24 million was raised over the course of the evening.

The comedian Kevin Hart emceed the fundraiser, which was attended by such notables as Travis Scott, Matthew McConaughey, Jack Harlow, Tiffany Haddish, Alex Rodriguez, and Jay-Z.

Tendler is the ex-wife of comedian John Mulaney. Before their divorce in 2019, Tendler was known mostly as a make-up artist and millennial beauty guru. Tendler briefly studied photography at Parsons before dropping out to pursue fashion.

In 2021 Tendler began exhibiting photos, gothic and witchy in style, from a series titled “Rooms in the First House” at the Other Art Fair in Santa Monica, California, and has since sold portrait sittings in the same style at other editions of the fair.

In Tendler’s TikTok, a clip from Swift’s tour, in which the musician is setting a table as part of the choreography, flashes by briefly at the beginning. Tendler then shows her photograph from the series, titled Dinner in March (2021), as she says, “this … setup looks strikingly like one of my photographs in tone and in aesthetics. It doesn’t totally feel like parallel thinking to me.”

“I’m a small artist, [an] independent artist who is trying to make money and live off of my artwork,” Tendler continues in the video. Though Tendler is a much smaller artist than Taylor Swift (who isn’t?), Tendler has a significant online following and sells prints of her work there for $5,000–$6,500. Harper’s Bazaar reported last year that some works of hers sold out at an art fair with prices in “the mid-six figures.”

At the end of the video, Tendler asks for help, “I don’t know what to do about this. Maybe somebody can help me.”

It’s this teary sentiment and the fact that there are very few similarities between the concert set and Tendler’s photograph that led some people to believe the video was made as a joke or in an effort to attract controversy. Tendler has since deleted the video.

In a repost of the video published Sunday, Tendler commented, “Hi! This was meant to be a joke. Most of my videos are jokes or satire! When I realized it wasn’t landing as a joke I deleted it. Didn’t mean offense.”

Tendler did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sotheby’s New York branch.

JIM HENDERSON/VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

GOINGS-ON AT SOTHEBY’S

Eighty Sotheby’s employees, or 5 percent of the auction house’s staff, have taken its buyout offer, which was being offered to cut company expenses. [The New York Times]

Meanwhile, ahead of the release of Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens, 600 rare Star Wars toys went for a total of $500,000 in a Sotheby’s online sale. [Rolling Stone]

MUSEUM TRIPS

Chef Ignacio Mattos and restauranteur Thomas Carter will bring their hip downtown joint Estela to the Met Breuer. Thomas P. Campbell, the Met’s director, believes it might spice up the museum’s reputation for being bland. [The New York Times]

Here’s a deep dive into the Westfries Museum’s process of trying to get back 24 stolen paintings, which were found in Ukraine last week. [The New York Times]

After profusely hating on MoMA, Jerry Saltz reconsiders and writes an essay about how much he loved the museum this year. “The greatest collection of modern art on Earth—now and forever, probably,” he writes. [Vulture]

FAIRS

Art Brussels has announced the lineup for its 2016 edition. [Artinfo]

“PICTURES” DEPARTMENT

How’s this for postmodern: the United Kingdom’s Intellectual Property Office released a statement that public-domain images of art can’t “be considered as ‘original,’ ” therefore placing them under fair-use law. [Hyperallergic]

New Orleans–based artist Ally Burguieres claims that Taylor Swift didn’t give credit for her artwork when the pop star posted it on social media. Swift’s PR sees it the other way, calling Bruguieres’s open letter about it “an unfortunate effort to extract more money and more publicity.” [NOLA.com]

A SCHJELDAHL TWOFER

Peter Schjeldahl reviews the Dia Foundation’s Robert Ryman show, which features “a kind of mute art that, generating reverent and brainy chatter, puts uninitiated citizens in mind of the emperor’s new clothes.” [The New Yorker]

And, in another review, punnily titled “The Dripping Point,” Schjeldahl shares some thoughts on MoMA’s Jackson Pollock show, an exhibition of every single work by the Abstract Expressionist in its collection. [The New Yorker]

PUBLIC-ART HAPPENINGS

The British government is doing some intense research to figure out where stolen public art works disappeared to in the years after World War II. [The Independent]

Grand Forks, North Dakota, has launched a $60,000 plan for public art. [Grand Forks Herald]

EXTRAS

Sascha Braunig at Rodolphe Janssen. [Contemporary Art Daily]

London-based art critic Adrian Searle names his favorite shows of 2015. His #1 is, surprisingly, a show staged in America. [The Guardian]