Plans are moving ahead for the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park Museum, designed to tell the story of Miami’s segregated era and the triumphs of the Black community in the location of Miami's only public beach for Black residents at one time, with a contract being established with Lord Cultural Resources.

Meet us in Denver at AAM 2023, May 19-22, 2023. We look forward to connecting with you at the conference. Keep reading to see where to meet with us. Learn more about our presence at AAM 2023.

If you visit the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto these days, you’ll discover a dramatic curtain of sisal in the lobby, a hanging of tangled blond fibre. It’s tempting to reach out to feel it, but visitors who try to will be politely directed to a “touch table” where a sample is available. (Turns out it’s surprisingly soft.) The art of Kapwani Kiwanga, creator of the sisal installation, often feels remote, as though the artist were wary of the viewer’s embrace. Kiwanga has been chosen to represent Canada at the 2024 Venice Biennale but her work is not often seen in these parts. She grew up in Brantford, Ont., lives in France and often looks to her father’s native Tanzania for inspiration. This is her first major exhibition in Canada.

Vancouver’s Chinese Canadian Museum will open its doors on July 1 on the 100th anniversary of racist legislation known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, after the province pledged an additional $10 million in funding. The investment not only recognizes the contributions of the Chinese Canadian community but will also help revitalize Chinatown, a beloved part of Vancouver.

A former payroll manager at the Art Institute of Chicago pleaded guilty in federal court after he was indicted in January on several fraud charges for stealing more than $2 million from the museum over 13 years.

After a year of staff turmoil and public criticism — including from its former Indigenous art curator — National Gallery of Canada leaders say the art institution is making strides in decolonizing its collection and attracting first-time visitors.

Six national museums, including the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, are sharing an influx of $53 million over the next two fiscal years, thanks to this week's federal budget. The funding will also go to the Canadian Museum of History, the Canadian Museum of Nature, the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology, and the Canadian Museum of Immigration in Halifax.

New York is the latest state to prohibit public schools from using or displaying Indigenous team names, logos, or mascots to represent the school. The Board of Regents has voted unanimously to ban schools from using Indigenous caricatures and derogatory names unless schools get approval from a recognized Native American tribe to keep them.

Heirs of the dealers who sold the collection of medieval artefacts to the Prussian government claim their case can be heard in US court because the dealers were not German citizens at the time of the sale.

A line of around 200 people including museum members, donors, and trustees snaked around the perimeter of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York for the VIP opening of new exhibitions by installation artist Sarah Sze and Gego, the late Venezuelan Modernist. While they waited, patrons were treated to a different exhibit: around 30 members of the Guggenheim workers’ union brandishing signs and handing out leaflets to raise awareness of their ongoing contract negotiations with museum leadership.

 “We’re going to continue to make ourselves heard until we get a fair contract.”

This year’s TrendsWatch, the Center for the Future of Museums’ annual forecasting report, explores how museums can use the profound disruptions of the past three years as opportunities to create a better, more equitable, and resilient future.

Premier David Eby announced today Science World will receive $20 million in funding from the Government of British Columbia towards upgrading the iconic geodesic dome that bookends the easternmost end of False Creek.

The Frick Collection will vacate its Brutalist temporary home on New York’s Madison Avenue and return to Henry Clay Frick’s historic Fifth Avenue mansion in 2024, currently undergoing a $160m renovation and expansion designed by Annabelle Selldorf.

The Toronto Holocaust Museum has officially revealed that it will launch ticket sales next month and open to visitors on June 9, 2023. Created by the UJA Federation's Neuberger Holocaust Centre with assistance from a $12 million donation by the Azrieli Foundation, the interactive museum explores the atrocities of the Holocaust, in addition to broader antisemitism, bigotry, and hatred in all forms.

In a rare move, the Whitney Museum of American Art will deaccession seven works from its collection, including an Edward Hopper, at Sotheby’s next month — the first time since 2018. A Whitney spokesperson said in a statement that the decision to sell the artworks came after an “in-depth multi-year study of [the museum’s] collection.” Proceeds from the sale will be used to support future acquisitions. 

The Smithsonian Institution will be reviewing allegations against Nancy Yao as the inaugural director of the American Women’s History Museum, made by former employees during her leadership at Manhattan’s Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) and outlined in two settled lawsuits.

South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has accepted the resignation of the director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Youn Bum-mo. While no official reason for Youn’s departure has been issued, it is likely to be connected to 16 allegations of illegal or inappropriate actions, including mishandled acquisitions at auctions, identified during an audit by the ministry conducted late last year.

When the Museum of Shakespeare opens within the archaeological remains of the Curtain Playhouse in spring 2024, visitors will be able to stand three metres below the present street level of Shoreditch in East London and look down on a stage William Shakespeare knew intimately.

The Northern Trust Purchase Prize was awarded to the Seattle Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in St Petersburg, Florida and the St Louis Art Museum, allowing them to acquire new artwork by underrepresented artists for their collections free of charge at Expo Chicago.

Occupying some 44,000 square feet, the much-anticipated Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) is set to be India’s first major art museum dedicated to the full range of the subcontinent’s contemporary visual culture, with a promise to redefine the country’s museum landscape in the process.

In recent months, headlines around the world have blared the news of a startling new trend of activism where protesters physically attack famous artworks with paint, food, and glue. The activists are trying to draw attention to global issues of climate change and museum ethics, and agree or disagree, you can’t argue that their tactics are making waves, and fines or jail time aren’t stopping them.

The National Endowment for the Humanities announced on Tuesday the 258 beneficiaries of its newest round of grants, the first of three rounds to be awarded this year. Among the projects will be a documentary exploring the legacy of the fictional sleuth Nancy Drew, whose books have been in print for nearly 100 years, and a book that traces the development of modern Egypt through the historical importance of the tomato.

Last month it was announced that visitors wishing to enter Rome’s Pantheon — that remarkable and iconic survivor of the ancient city — will now have to pay an admission fee of €5 (~$5.5). What is the excuse for charging people for something that was free for 1,900 years?

Milan city council has admitted it is unable to clean a 19th-century statue that was recently defaced by climate activists and will now require a complex restoration to return it to its former condition. Experts have blamed the city council for apparently fixing the spray-on pigment on the monument while trying to clean it off; meanwhile, the mayor of Milan has accused the climate activists of covering the statue with permanent paint.

The global art market totalled $67.8 billion in 2022, growing by 3% year-over-year and reaching its second-highest level to date, according to The Art Market 2023. This put the market slightly above its 2019 pre-pandemic level, but growth was not as high as expected, hampered as it was by political and economic instability, intensifying war in Ukraine, rising inflation and interest rates, supply chain problems, and the increasing possibility of recession in major markets. Strict lockdowns in China throughout 2022 further impacted the market’s recovery in the region.

Shipping containers dot the landscape of many northern communities, but in a downtown art gallery, it was an unexpected touch in a new exhibition space. When Qaumajuq at the Winnipeg Art Gallery unveiled INUA, its inaugural show for Inuit artists in early 2021, a full-size, red shipping container, doors open, was placed in the centre of the room. “That container really is a container for so many of my thoughts and wishes about Labrador, about culture and about my place within it,” says Glenn Gear, a multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker of mixed Inuit-Settler ancestry. “It’s very much a space of reflection, but also it’s a love letter to Labrador.”

Vandals attacking monuments and other cultural sites in Italy may soon face five-figure fines, thanks to a new piece of legislation. In a meeting Tuesday, the country's Council of Ministers approved a bill that would impose fines between €10,000 and €60,000 ($11,000 and $66,000) on defacers of cultural heritage.

New York governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed $227 billion state budget for fiscal year 2024 includes deep cuts to arts funding. Under her budget proposal, funding for the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) would be slashed by more than half, from $109.7m to $48m.

The British Museum has dug its heels in regarding its decision not to repatriate the Parthenon Marbles, adding insult to injury through a recent proposal of gifting Greece an “exclusive NFT” of the sculptures to “settle unreasonable and unnecessary questions over the true ownership of history.”

A multimillion-dollar Italian funded UNESCO project in Bamiyan has resumed after it was abruptly placed on hold when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021. The new UNESCO initiative will provide much-needed local employment in the vulnerable heritage site.

Our rapidly aging Ontario Science Centre will be reincarnated and relocated to the long-dead Ontario Place, writes Martin Regg Cohn. “Gail Lord ― who heads a Toronto-based consulting firm that advises on museums and cultural centres around the world ― has twice researched the issue of revitalizing Ontario Place. Both times she landed on a relocated Science Centre as a natural fit.”