Mikel Arteta is still in his first stint as a senior manager, with Arsenal entrusting him to lead their team while he was serving as an assistant coach at Manchester City.

While Arteta was performing admirably as Pep Guardiola’s assistant, Manchester City attempted to retain him at the end of 2019. Despite their efforts, the Spanish coach decided to depart.

Taking a chance, Arteta accepted the job at Arsenal, marking a significant risk for the club as they appointed a relatively inexperienced manager.

The former midfielder has demonstrated his coaching prowess, and he recently reflected on his early days at the club, which were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Arteta disclosed an unlikely source of inspiration for him during the challenging period of the pandemic.

Former Chelsea and France star, Frank Leboeuf, has bestowed the title of “world-class player” upon William Saliba. The defender has been in outstanding form since making his debut for the Gunners after spending several seasons out on loan.

Initially, when Mikel Arteta assumed the role of Arsenal’s manager, he did not seem overly impressed with the Frenchman, leading to Saliba being sent out on loan at least twice. However, this decision has proven to be remarkable, as Saliba returned to London as a vastly improved player.

Having represented France at the World Cup and played a pivotal role in Arsenal’s return to the Champions League, Saliba has established himself as one of the key contributors to the team’s success. His consistent performances have earned him a spot as one of the first names on the team sheet at the Emirates, solidifying his status as a major asset for Arsenal.

Leboeuf said, as quoted by Express Sports:

“I think William Saliba is already one of the world’s best centre-backs, if not the best. When he got injured last season Arsenal lost the title, not much more needs to be said about him than that. He has made some mistakes this season, but who doesn’t?

Ben White is lucky to have worked with Marcelo Bielsa and Mikel Arteta., two great managers who have played an important role in his career.

He worked with Bielsa when he played for Leeds United and has been under Arteta since he moved to Arsenal.

White came to the Emirates as a centre-back, but the outstanding partnership between William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhaes means he has been forced to play as a right-back.

He is doing well in that role at Arsenal and has been one of the finest players in his position in the league, even though he is not as technical as most fullbacks are.

The defender was asked about the most demanding of both managers he has worked with and said to The Guardian:

Frieze Los Angeles opened its fifth edition to VIPs on Thursday at the Santa Monica Airport. While the fair was slightly smaller than usual—going from 120 exhibitors to about 95—it was full of action on VIP day and its first day open to the public on Friday.

There were plenty of major figures in attendance from celebrities to collectors to dealers, and there was strong artwork on display in the booths and healthy sales to boot.

“Today has been our most successful first day at Frieze LA since the first year of the fair,” Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot said in a statement emailed to ARTnews.

We spent some time going around the fair, camera in tow, to get a feel for the scene and the energy at LA’s most important fair.

This year’s edition of the Outsider Art Fair, held at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea, brought back to New York a group of dealers whose artists sometimes find themselves on the margins of the commercial art world.

These artists don’t typically have the MFA degrees that are required for representation at blue-chip galleries. They are more likely to have members of the clergy, or to have been firefighters or houseless. But as this fair shows, these artists who are just worthy of study as the ones that pass through the nation’s top art schools.

Those who show at this fair have spent decades working to bring to light these makers, who historically have not made into museums. Their work is now paying off.

During the fair’s VIP preview day on Thursday, ARTnews spoke with several exhibitors about the artists they brought to the fair this year.

A beloved 60-foot-tall steel sculpture by Mark di Suvero will officially depart Venice Beach, California, after the artist’s Californian gallery failed to raise enough money to keep it there.

The work, titled Declaration, has become an iconic part of the Venice Beach landscape. Weighing in at 25 tons, it is composed of I-beams that are delicately balanced against one another in V-shaped arrangements.

Declaration was initially installed more than 20 years ago, in 2001, as a loan made in tandem with a Venice Family Clinic benefit, so it was never intended to be permanently sited where it is today. But because it has been located for so long near the boardwalk, between a skate park and a police station, it has been integrated into the Venice Beach landscape.

Word that the sculpture may leave Venice Beach was first heard in 2019, when di Suvero and his gallery L.A. Louver failed multiple times to get the City of Los Angeles to acquire the piece. The two were charged with raising the funds needed to keep the work there.

Local outlets in Venice Beach reported this week that Declaration was officially slated for removal, an exact date for which has not yet been determined. The sculpture, now worth $7 million, according to L.A. Louver director Kimberly Davis, is set to be returned to di Suvero himself.

Doreen St. Félix and Nikki Giovanni, two well-regarded writers, said on Friday that they would no longer take part in a talk at the Brooklyn Museum tomorrow, criticizing the institution for its stance on Palestine.

St. Félix, a staff writer at the New Yorker, and Giovanni, an acclaimed poet, were set to appear at the museum following a screening of Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, a recent documentary about that writer that won an award when it debuted last year at the Sundance Film Festival. The event is co-hosted by PEN America, an advocacy organization that aims to support freedom of expression in the US and elsewhere.

In their statement, posted to Instagram on Friday, St. Félix and Giovanni said they had “withdrawn from the program in response to the refusal of both PEN America and Brooklyn Museum to stand in solidarity with people of Palestine and against genocide.”

A spokesperson for the Brooklyn Museum did not respond to requests for comment.

“We very much regret that the event with the Brooklyn Museum was cancelled,” PEN America said in a statement to ARTnews. “As a free expression organization of course we respect every individual’s right to voice their own perspective on the conflict and to respond as their conscience dictates. We mourn the immense loss of Palestinian lives, and the destruction of museums, libraries, and mosques that contribute to a vibrant cultural community.  We have also voiced our shared anguish for the Israelis whose families were killed or taken hostage.”

Just a week after saying that “embryos, to me, are babies,” Nikki Haley is now joining other Republicans in suddenly claiming to support IVF access in the wake of rising abortion restrictions and the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos can now be considered children under state law.

“I think there should be federal protection that we allow for IVF places to be able to function…I think the only thing the federal government should do is make sure IVF places are protected or available,” Haley said in an interview on CNN on Friday after host Dana Bash asked if she thought there should be federal protections for IVF and doctors who perform the procedure.  

“We don’t need government getting involved in an issue where we don’t have a problem,” Haley added. “We don’t have a problem with IVF facilities. If you have a certain case, let that case play out the way it’s supposed to, but don’t create issues, and that’s what I feel like has happened with this IVF.” 

Nikki Haley on IVF: "We don't need government getting involved in an issue where we don't have a problem. We don't have a problem with IVF facilities. If you have a certain case, let that case play out the way it's supposed to, but don't create issues" @nikkihaley @InsidePolitics pic.twitter.com/HKexTJTSWn

— Dana Bash (@DanaBashCNN) March 1, 2024

Fathi Ghaben, a renowned painter and a pillar of Palestine’s artistic community, died on February 25.

Palestine’s Ministry of Culture said this week that Ghaben died after appeals from his family to Israeli authorities that would have allowed Ghaben to leave the Gaza Strip to seek medical aid.

In a statement, the Palestinian Ministry of Culture said that Ghaben was suffering from chronic chest and lung illness, and had been unable to find help in Gaza’s healthcare system, which has collapsed amid repeated Israeli airstrikes in the region.

In a video uploaded to Facebook on February 19 by a relative of Ghaben, the ailing artist makes a desperate appeal for aid, saying, “I am suffocating. I want to breathe, I want to breathe.” He repeats those words until he is overcome by violent coughing.

Gaza’s health ministry reported on Thursday that the number of Palestinians killed since October 7 has exceeded 30,000. Among the dead are artist Heba Zagout and scholar and poet Refaat Alareer. ARTnews has contacted the IDF for comment on the death of Ghaben.

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here.

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis published the novel It Can’t Happen Here, which told the story of fascism triumphing in the United States. The book was a reaction to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and the spread of demagogic populism in the United States by Huey Long, the strongman governor of Louisiana, and Father Charles Coughlin, the wildly popular antisemitic radio preacher. In Lewis’ alternative universe, a politician named Buzz Windrip, who champions “traditional” values and who promises to restore America to greatness, defeats FDR in the presidential election of 1936 and then through a self-coup seizes dictatorial powers. He establishes a paramilitary force to do his bidding, curtails the rights of women and minorities, and locks up dissidents and political foes in concentration camps. Eventually, his reign leads to civil war. It’s a grim tale.

The title of his book was the proper use of irony (the expression of an idea through language that normally means the opposite). While many Americans at the time looked at the failure of democracy in Europe and thought that the United States would be immune to such retrograde forces, Lewis, whose wife, journalist Dorothy Thompson, had reported on developments in Germany (and was the first American journalist to be expelled from the Nazi state), believed otherwise.

America did not succumb to the fascist wave. Long was assassinated. Coughlin was forced off the air. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II led to the end of the America First movement that might have produced a demagogic alternative to Roosevelt. No Buzz Windrip emerged.

Over eight decades later, the ghost of It Can’t Happen Here haunts American politics. Donald Trump has often been compared to Windrip, and various commentators have harkened back to Lewis’ novel to explain the threat Trumpism poses to American democracy.