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This blog post was written and researched by Thomas Sturgess

As an undergraduate history student at Oxford Brookes University, I get to explore a wide range of historical topics. My personal interests in political and cultural history were complemented by my placement at MOX as I could explore a unique part of Oxford’s history and further my research skills.

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History

The system of twinned towns in the UK is not one commonly known to the public, despite its long history dating back to the end of World War 2. In an effort to foster peaceful relations, various towns and cities in European countries such as Germany, France, and the Netherlands were formally linked to locations in the UK; the earliest established links included the likes of Dresden and Coventry, who both suffered heavy damage from bombings, and Oxford’s own link to the Dutch town of Leiden. From the 1970s to the 2000s, the town twinning scheme was boosted by the expansion of the European Economic Council (later European Union), and international events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991. By 2006, there were over 2000 formally twinned UK towns and localities. In recent years, due to a lack of resources within local governments, some have come to question the value and necessity of town twinning outside of economic and trade advantages, however the cultural and educational opportunities should not be understated. Oxford is one of the leading cities in the UK for town twinning, with its most recent twin being Padua, Italy in 2019 – home to Italy’s second oldest university, and Europe’s oldest covered market, Padua is home to many students and cyclists just like Oxford!

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Exclusive livestream of two headlining acts at this year's festival

Exclusive livestream of the headlining act at this year's festival

Mitchell-Innes & Nash, a gallery that represents artists such as Pope.L, Martha Rosler, and Jacolby Satterwhite, will close its Chelsea space and transition away from its current business model.

The gallery will now be “a project-based advisory space,” founders Lucy Mitchell-Innes and David Nash wrote in a letter sent on Friday evening that was obtained by ARTnews. “Moving forward we will be working within a new paradigm, consulting with select primary market artists and estates, providing art advisory services to individual collectors and foundations, and representing artworks on the primary and secondary markets,” the dealers wrote.

They founded their gallery 28 years ago, in 1996, on the Upper East Side, and they relocated the business to Chelsea in 2005. The married dealers, who both held high-ranking positions at Sotheby’s prior to launching Mitchell-Innes & Nash, teased a move to a new location in Manhattan, but they did not say where.

A wide range of artists have shown at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, from established giants like Roy Lichtenstein and Joseph Beuys to emerging talents like Satterwhite and Gideon Appah. Conceptual artists like Rosler, Pope.L, Mary Kelly, Monica Bonvicini, and the collective General Idea all found a home at the gallery alongside abstractionists such as Eddie Martinez, Keltie Ferris, and Gerasimos Floratos.

A spokesperson said that Mitchell-Innes & Nash confirmed that the gallery would no longer be open to the public and it would no longer host an exhibition program. Select artists and estates will continue to be represented by Mitchell-Innes & Nash, the spokesperson said, although it was not immediately clear which ones.

The University of the Arts in Philadelphia lacks the funds legally owed to employees, according to union representatives for staff at the abruptly shuttered school.

Representatives from the institution’s staff and faculty unions said an impact negotiating session with the university’s associate vice president of human resources Caroline Tate and attorney Kristine Grady Derewicz was “insulting and insubstantial.”

Union officials told the Philadelphia Inquirer that Derewicz did not give them proposals on health insurance, severance, or other benefits during the meeting. Details on the school’s finances were also not given, with the Inquirer reporting that such information “does not exist.”

The Philadelphia arts institution was founded in 1876 and is commonly known as UArts. Union officials said in a statement that the school “lacks the cash flow to comply with laws requiring 60 days of advance notice and pay before mass layoffs.”

On May 31, the university announced that it had lost accreditation with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and that it would not offer classes in the fall. The statement promised students they would be offered a “pathway” to other local institutions, including Temple University, Drexel University, and Moore College of Art and Design.

Despite major financial concerns, the Centre Pompidou announced the architects for its forthcoming five-year renovation project.

The museum, designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano in 1977, will be in the hands of Moreau Kusunoki, a French office founded by Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki, with Mexico City–based Frida Escobedo Studio as associate designer, the Architect’s Newspaper reported.

The firms won a competition to modernize the building at a cost of $280 million. The museum won’t reopen until 2030.

Additionally, Moreau Kusunoki and Escobedo plan to collaborate with French engineering firm AIA Life Designers, and to consult Piano, who was also on the competition jury.

As part of the renovation, there will be ADA improvements to spaces like the library and rooftop, and asbestos removal, as well as added floor space and increased natural light. According to the museum, the structure has weathered significant damage since it was first built in the ’70s.

After trying to steal a Banksy in Paris, a man received a two-year suspended prison sentence from a French court on Wednesday.

The mysterious British graffiti artist had stenciled a masked rat holding a box cutter on the back of a Paris parking sign, near the Centre Pompidou, in 2018. The 38-year-old musician Mejdi R. admitted to using an angle grinder to remove the painted part of the sign.

The man claimed to be a friend of Banksy and said he’d been called to retrieve the artwork, along with a “team” of people who had already returned to England with the rat.

The defendant went on to say that the artist wanted to stop others from making money from the street art of “no value”, and to “denounce the hypocrisy of a capitalist system that decides which art had value and which does not”, the National News reported Thursday.

According to the prosecutor, a Banksy representative has denied these claims.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis last week vetoed over $32 million in arts and culture grants from next year’s budget, a move that could cripple institutions across Tampa Bay and greater Florida, the Tampa Bay Times reported Thursday.

The vetoes are part of nearly $1 billion in line-item cuts that Desantis made before signing a $116.5 billion spending plan.

At a press conference in Tampa during which he signed the budget, DeSantis did not specifically explain why he slashed the state’s arts and culture grant programs. He did, however, mention a general desire to reduce spending and avoid funding items he deemed “inappropriate for state tax dollars.”

Michael Tomor, director of the Tampa Museum of Art, told the Times that the vetoes were a sign of diminishing faith in Florida’s arts and culture institutions and said it was “a huge disappointment and a quandary.” The museum expected $570,500 (including $500,000 for expansion and $70,500 for education programs). It will now receive nothing.

Margaret Murray, the chief executive of the Tampa-based arts non-profit Creative Pinellas, told the Times that small organizations, such as local music and theater groups, youth programs, and art festivals, will struggle the most to recover.

The Headlines

FLORIDA SLASHES ARTS BUDGET. Governor Ron DeSantis has vetoed over $32 million in arts and culture grants that had already been approved by the state legislature for next year’s budget, according to the Tampa Bay Times. The cuts to two arts grants programs that support nonprofits throughout the state were part of nearly $1 billion in overall cuts for next year; DeSantis formally signed off on those cuts last week. In one case, the Tampa Museum of Art was set to receive $500,000 from state grants to build an expansion project, and another $70,500 for programming. That funding is no more. “It’s a huge disappointment and a quandary,” said the museum’s director, Michael Tomor.

POMPIDOU RENOVATIONS. On Thursday, the Centre Pompidou in Paris presented plans for its much-debated renovation project, which will see the museum progressively close starting in March before entirely shuttering in September. The museum won’t reopen until 2030. One final exhibition will be devoted to photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, the museum announced at a press conference that was attended by ARTnews. Tillmans’s show will be held in the museum’s beloved public library after it has been emptied for renovations. Pompidou president Laurent Le Bon responded emotionally to criticisms of the renovation pproject, explaining that any partial closure would require staff to work in uncomfortable—and even unsafe—conditions. “It’s a terrible moment for the institution,” he said, “but I will not play with the lives of people, to please a few. I have a criminal liability.” The renovation will include the removal of asbestos, upgrading fire safety, disability access, and general repairs. Architects Moreau Kusunoki and Frida Escobedo will lead the project.

The Digest

Climate activists from the group Just Stop Oil sprayed orange paint on what they believed was Taylor Swift’s private jet at the UK’s Stanstead Airport, but it later came to light that her jet wasn’t there. Two people were arrested for vandalizing the other jets present. [Los Angeles Times]

A version of this essay originally appeared in Reframed, the Art in America newsletter about art that surprises us and works that get us worked up. Sign up here to receive it every Thursday.

It had been a while since I last felt attacked in an exhibition, but the serpent made a move and the situation could’ve ended up a lot messier than it did.

It helped that the serpent was animatronic and super stylized—but it took a moment to remember this while my body recoiled. The exhibition was Fernando Palma Rodríguez’s at Canal Projects in New York, which features a cast of robotic contraptions on view through July 27. A lone corn stalk greets visitors at the entryway, its weathered husks suggesting this corn, like other stalks throughout the show, have seen some things. Walk up a few stairs and you stare down at a large pile of dirt on the floor, above which hovers a snake with mechanized wings that flap on occasion. This is the Cincoatl snake, and it’s the star of the show.  

The snake, it turns out, is the corn’s protector. In Mesoamerican traditions, the Cincoatl snake (which is often translated as “snake-friend of maize corn,” per the wall text) defends the crop from forces that might keep it from growing. Surrounding the snake are four Chinantles, barriers made of corn stalks that are said to be an avatar of the Aztec Quetzalcoatl, a feathered-serpent deity “related to wind, Venus, the Sun, arts, knowledge, and learning.” With fangs and disquieting marble eyes, the serpents jut and lurch around the exhibition in the four cardinal directions, marking a sacred space. (One of those was the artwork that tried to attack me, but I had come in peace and survived the ordeal. The corn stayed safe, too.)

This installation—commissioned by Canal Projects, a nonprofit space in Lower Manhattan since 2022—tells of corn’s origins while meditating on Indigenous technologies. The wall text refers to the work of Chilean sociologist Luis Razeto Migliaro, who defines Indigenous technologies as tools with the capacity to cultivate life. Indeed, Rodríguez’s sculptures all come to life: Vasijas de barro con cucharas (Clay Pots with Spoon), from 2024, is an arrangement of motorized wooden utensils that clack together, like castanets. Tezcatlipoca (2017) is a tower rising above a cardboard coyote skull and topped with an old CD/cassette/MP3 boombox; from time to time, it swivels on a wheel that rolls below. Cincoatl snake (2024), the centerpiece, goes up and down, seeming to fly, albeit in a very rudimentary fashion.

With 3.4 million inhabitants, Madrid is the second-largest city in the European Union, and with about 45 museums, it is one of Europe’s most robust cultural centers. Landmarks in Spain’s capital city include Plaza Mayor, the Royal Plalace, the National Library, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the Reina Sofía Museum, and the Prado Museum, one of the most-visited museums in the world. If you want to see the best that Madrid has to offer, consult our list of 20 must-see landmarks and cultural destinations below.