Politics often play a role, as has been the case with the many recent protests led at museums by climate activists around the world. Personal interests often can become paramount as well, as they have with a variety of young provocateurs who have targeted others’ artworks, sometimes even as part of their own art practices.

In each case, however, the base motive remains the same: to raise a ruckus by disturbing the look or reputation of art people know all too well.

On Monday, two activists were arrested at London’s National Gallery after attacking The Toilet of Venus by Diego Velázquez “with what appeared to be emergency rescue hammers,” the British institution said in a post on X.

Below, a look at 26 instances of art-world vandalism, from religious iconoclasms to the climate protests that are still unfolding.

The Italian Baroque artist was first commissioned by Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, the nephew of Renaissance master, in 1618 to contribute a work to Casa Buonarroti. The portrait of the female nude holding a compass was installed on the ceiling of the palace in Florence, Gentileschi’s first commission in the city. However, in 1684, Michelangelo’s great-nephew, Leonardo da Buonarroto, hired Baldassarre “Il Volterrano” Franceschini to add blue drapery and veils to the Gentileschi’s work “to preserve the modesty of the female inhabitants of the house.”

Gentileschi’s original composition was revealed through the year-long Artemisia UpClose project, which used digital imaging technology and other scientific tools to study the painting and restore it.

“The possibility of ‘unveiling’ this figure virtually, revealing the image originally painted by Artemisia turned an ‘ordinary’ restoration into a quest to discover the woman behind the veils,” Calliope Arts co-founder Wayne McArdle said in a statement. The London and Florence-based nonprofit foundation co-sponsored the Artemisia UpClose project in partnership with English art collector and philanthropist Christian Levett.

The project unveiled the artist’s original vision virtually, not physically, for two reasons.

“First, the removal of the thick layers of oil paint applied by Il Volterrano less than five decades after the original could put Artemisia’s delicate glazes just underneath the over-paint at risk,” head conservator Elizabeth Wicks said in a statement. “Second, the veils were applied by an important late Baroque artist and are now part of the painting’s history.”

As a result of this strategy, restoration scientists reviewed the painting at the nanometer level, using a reflectograph to observe the Gentileschi’s pentimenti, or the points at which the artist changed her mind, as well as an x-ray to peer through the white lead pigment covering the figure’s thighs. Chemical analysis also showed how sparingly Gentileschi used the pigment lapis lazuli.

The restoration work revealed the figure’s navel, which had not been visible before, as well as a fingerprint on the figure’s calf. “The fingerprint was made when the original paint was wet, and it is highly likely that of Artemisia herself,” said Wicks, who made the discovery.

The original composition of the artist’s artwork is the star of Casa Buonarroti’s exhibition “Artemisia in the Museum of Michelangelo,” which opened on September 26. The project is also the subject of a new English-language book published by Florentine Press, a series of publications in Italian entitled “Buonarrotiana” (2023), as well as a series of lectures.

“We want to make Artemisia Gentileschi a household name and to generate interest in her groundbreaking artworks. Artemisia is the ‘gateway drug’ for early women artists,” Calliope Arts cofounder Margie MacKinnon said in a statement. “Her backstory is so dramatic, her paintings so powerful and her accomplishments so impressive, people wonder, ‘Why haven’t I heard of her before, and who are the other women artists I need to learn about?”

Picasso has been feted seemingly everywhere this year, on the 50th anniversary of his death. There will be more of that at Paris’s Centre Pompidou, where hundreds of works on paper will go on view, but many other artists are getting their time in the spotlight. Those artists include Marina Abramović, KAWS, and Marisol. Yet a litany of artists with less global renown, like Kim Kulim and Gavin Jantjes, are also getting sizable shows of their own, potentially making them new entrants to the canon far beyond their home countries.

Below, a look at 25 museum exhibitions to see beyond the US.

The famous statue recently made headlines after parents complained about its inclusion in the curriculum of a conservative charter school in Florida.

The advertisement was for the Barolo restaurant in the city center of Glasgow, part of the DRG Group of hospitality establishments. The poster showed David eating a slice of pizza and sported the tag line, “It doesn’t get more Italian.”

The firm that manages the advertising space for Glasgow’s subway system rejected the initial cropped image of David submitted by Barolo, prompting a second revision after stickers of the Italian flag on the crotch area “weren’t actually big enough”, Nadine Carmichael, head of sales and marketing at the DRG Group, told the BBC.

DRG Group director Mario Gizzi said his company was “bemused” to hear the initial decision. “This is a globally recognized piece of art,” he told The Herald newspaper in Scotland. “It is taught in schools. People from all over the world travel to see it. It’s not the 1500s anymore, it’s 2023. Are we really saying that the people of Glasgow can’t handle seeing a naked statue?”

The final, fully reprinted adverts for Barolo that were approved by Global for display featured the marble sculpture cropped at the waist.

Michelangelo’s striking portrayal of the biblical figure became the center of a high-profile culture war in Florida after Hope Carrasquilla, principal of the Tallahassee Classical School, resigned following complaints from some parents. Carrasquilla came under fire in March after showing sixth graders an image of David. The incident garnered global headlines and also became the subject of a skit on Saturday Night Live. Carrasquilla and her family were later invited to view the statue in person on an all-expenses paid trip to the Galleria dell’Accademia.

Global did not respond to a request for comment from ARTnews.

Carrasquilla’s story made headlines worldwide after parents at the Tallahassee charter school she once led complained about her syllabus containing images of the famed statue, which they deemed “pornographic.” In April, she was invited by the mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, and Cecilie Hollberg, director of the Galleria dell’Accademia, where David is exhibited, to view the statue with her family.

“It is an immense pleasure to have Ms. Carrasquilla as our guest at the Accademia Gallery in Florence,” Hollberg said in a statement. “I am delighted to welcome her and show her the magnificence of our museum, as well as personally introduce her to David, a sculpture that I reiterate has nothing to do with pornography. It is a masterpiece representing a religious symbol of purity and innocence, the triumph of good over evil.”

Carrasquilla’s situation became a flashpoint in debates unfolding in the American South over what constitutes “age-appropriate” education. (It even inspired a Saturday Night Live skit.) The charter school follows the “classical education curriculum model” that stresses a return to “core virtues” and the “centrality of the Western tradition.”

Amid conservative criticism that public education has recently prioritized issues of race and gender identity, Republican lawmakers in Florida have pushed to mandate classical education courses in the secondary school system.

In an interview with Slate, the chair of the school’s board, Barney Bishop III, said the issue was not with David, but rather with the “egregious” failure to warn parents about their children seeing the “potentially controversial” artwork. “Showing the entire statue of David is appropriate at some age,” said Bishop. “We’re going to figure out when that is.”

Carrasquilla, meanwhile, enjoyed her meeting with David. “The thing that impressed me the most and that I didn’t know, is that this whole gallery was built for him,” she said in a statement. “I think it’s beautiful, it looks like a church. And to me, that just represents really the purity of this figure and you see his humanness. And that’s what I’ve always loved about it. There is nothing wrong with the human body in and of itself.”

The Headlines

READY YOUR PADDLE. Next month in New York, Christie’s will offer a juicy Henri Rousseau, Les Flamants (1910), with an estimate of $20 million to $30 million, Melanie Gerlis reports in her weekly Financial Times column. The radiant scene of flamingos and flowers has been guaranteed to sell, and as Gerlis notes, that means that it will reset the renegade modernist’s record on the block, which now stands at $4.4 million, a figure set way back in 1993. The seller is the estate of Payne Whitney Middleton, a member of the storied art-collecting Whitney family. Her mother, Joan Whitney Payson (who owned the New York Mets) collected with her brother John Hay Whitney, who was president of MoMA, the FT reported in 2007. A van Gogh that Payson bought for $84,000 in 1947 went for an astonishing $53.9 million 40 years later, then the most ever paid for art at auction, the New York Times reported at the time. How much will the Rousseau go for? Only time will tell, but Gerlis notes that there are only about 240 pieces attributed to the man, and many of those reside firmly in museum collections.

GET YOUR TICKETS. The hotly anticipated survey of the revered sculptor Daniel Lind-Ramos opens today at MoMA PS1 in New York, and Jacoba Urist has an interview with him in ARTnews. Lind-Ramos, who is based in Loíza, Puerto Rico, “relies on the intimacy of memory and the universality of calamity to assemble his art from everyday materials—a TV, a shovel, found shoes, roofing, and dried tree trunks—to fantastical, contemplative effect,” Urist writes. The artist told her, “I start with an idea based on an experience, and then there are objects that relate to that experience. Maybe I have one object that generates everything, but I don’t have the others. I make a drawing or a sketch. Then something happens. Objects start coming. I start finding them. I start making them.” The end results stun. Head to ARTnews for the full story.

The Digest

A Banksy print that was likely first purchased for about AU$100 (US$67) at a pop-up from the elusive artist, Girl with Balloon (2004), will be offered next month with an estimate of AU$450,000 to AU$650,000 (US$302,000–US$437,000) at the Sydney auction house Deutscher and Hackett. [The Australian Financial Review]

The art historian Adriano Marinazzo has proposed that Michelangelo painted himself as God in the Sistine Chapel, noting that the Old Master made a sketch of himself in a similar pose. Some scholars think he is onto something, though one skeptic quipped, “Everybody’s got theories.” [The Wall Street Journal]

The French auction house Artcurial has taken a stake in a Swiss peer, Beurret Bailly Widmer, which operates out of Zurich, Basel, and St. Gallen. Update your Rolodexes: The Swiss firm will henceforth be known as Artcurial Beurret Bailly Widmer. [The Art Newspaper]

Today in Rome, Princess Rita Jenrette Boncompagni Ludovisi is facing eviction from the Casino dell’Aurora, a 1570 villa with Caravaggio’s only known ceiling mural. A court ruled that she had failed to properly maintain the home, which has been at the center of an inheritance dispute with the children of her late husband. [The Associated Press]

Corinne Erni has been promoted to chief curator of the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York. Erni is currently deputy director of curatorial affairs, a position she will continue to hold, and succeeds Alicia G. Longwell, who retired late last year after four decades in the role. [ArtDaily]

ARTISTS IN PROFILE. Mark Bradford has a new show at Hauser & Wirth in New York and was profiled by Ismail Muhammad in the New York Times Magazine. Gagosian is opening a Richard Avedon exhibition next month in New York, and Ted Loos looked at his vast legacy in the Wall Street Journal.

The Kicker

THE LONG GAME. The Wall Street Journal has a thorough look at how mega-collector Bernard Arnault, the richest person in the world, has been prepping each of his five children to one day possibly take the helm of the luxury giant LVMH, of which he is CEO and chairman. Arnault, who is 74, recently raised the retirement age for his roles to 80, and while there is no clear sign that he will exit anytime soon, he proposed at a recent public meeting that some more time to focus on his tennis could be helpful to him. “The last time I played with Roger Federer, I think I won one point in a single set,” he said. “Maybe I could do a bit better than that.” Maybe. But scoring even one point against the Basel superstar is pretty impressive. [WSJ]

Correction, April 20, 2023: An earlier version of this article and the version that went out as Breakfast with ARTnews misspelled the name of the writer of the Daniel Lind-Ramos profile. The correct spelling is Jacoba Urist.

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Original Version of Censored Artemisia Gentileschi Painting Makes Its Debut

Subway Ad Showing Michelangelo's 'David' Pulled Due to Nudity

The sculpture depicts the biblical David holding the sling with which he will kill Goliath. At issue here was its heroic full frontality, which unapologetically exposes David’s family jewels. (The Florentine museum that houses the statue, one of the most famous and admired artworks in the world, has invited the school’s students and their parents to come view the work in person; Florence’s mayor has extended a similar invite to the former principal.)

Though enraged custodians of public decency might not know this from reproductions, David’s genitalia occupy a loud and proud place in Michelangelo’s composition when seen in real life. The sculpture, measuring a colossal 17 feet high while perched a pedestal measuring nearly half that, features a penis that, while smallish in proportion to the figure, cannot be ignored.

An embodiment of youthful athleticism informed by ancient Greek statuary, David indubitably resides at the summit of sculptural achievement. But how and why did it come to exist? It’s a surprisingly long story, one that begins well before Michelangelo worked on the piece, starting in 1501 and finishing in 1504.

In 1464 the Overseers of the Office of Works of Florence Cathedral commissioned the sculptor Agostino di Duccio to create a statue of David. A gigantic block of marble was wrested from the famous quarry at Carrara and transported to Florence, where Di Duccio began work. But he quit two years later, having only roughed out the legs, feet, torso, and some drapery. The project lay fallow for a decade until another artist Antonio Rossellino took up the chisel, but he was fired shortly thereafter.

For the next 26 years, the block lay exposed to the elements outside the cathedral’s workshop, until a call was put out for artists to complete the job. Among the names considered was Leonardo da Vinci’s, though the gig ultimately went to Michelangelo.

The sculpture was brought to fruition, but there was a problem: The statue was originally intended for the cathedral roof—which accounts for David’s immense scale, as it was meant to be seen from afar. But it weighed six tons, far too heavy for hoisting. Instead, it was installed next to the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio in June of 1504. In 1873, it was moved indoors to the Accademia Gallery, when it was determined that cracks were forming as a result of the site’s uneven ground. A replica took its place in the piazza.

In 1991, a deranged artist named Piero Cannata, attacked the sculpture with a hammer and managed to smash one of David’s toes before being stopped. He later said he was acting on the orders of a painter’s model from 16th-century Venice.

Today’s perpetrators of moral panic would be likely be appalled to learn that Michelangelo was homosexual, and that David arguably represents a proto-expression of queer aesthetics. But no amount of censorship will alter the fact that David lets it all hang out.

The Tallahassee Classical School, which was licensed to use Hillsdale College’s classical education curriculum, is no longer affiliated with the small, Christian college, Hillsdale spokesperson Emily Stack Davis said in a statement to MLive.com.

“This drama around teaching Michelangelo’s David sculpture, one of the most important works of art in existence, has become a distraction from, and a parody of, the actual aims of classical education,” Davis said. “Of course, Hillsdale’s K-12 art curriculum includes Michelangelo’s David and other works of art that depict the human form.”

The charter school license was “revoked and will expire at the end of the school year,” Davis added.

Hope Carrasquilla, the principal of Tallahassee Classical School, resigned earlier this month. The high-profile controversy began after the school children were shown Michelangelo’s David, which one parent called “pornographic,” the Tallahassee Democrat reported. The lesson also included Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam and Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, both of which contain nudity. 

In an interview with Slate, the chair of the school’s board, Barney Bishop III, said that the administration did not take issue with the sculpture, but the teacher’s description of it to the children as “nonpornographic picture” and the lack of advance notice.

Carrasquilla told HuffPost Thursday that the standard protocol is to notify parents ahead of lessons on classical artwork, but due to a “series of miscommunications,” a picture of the marble masterpiece was unveiled without warning.

According to Carrasquilla, one parent felt “point-blank upset” and expressed that “her child should not be viewing” the 16th-century Renaissance sculpture, which depicts the Old Testament figure David preparing for his fight against the giant Goliath. 

The school follows the “classical education curriculum model” popular in Florida primary education. The pedagogical model stresses the “centrality of the Western tradition,” or, as the Tampa Bay Times describes it, “a historical focus on white, Western European and Judeo-Christian foundations.” The model is most used in charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, though conservative legislators in the state have attempted to widen its influence. 

“Showing the entire statue of David is appropriate at some age,” said Bishop.

“We’re going to figure out when that is,” he added. “And you don’t have to show the whole statue! Maybe to kindergartners we only show the head. You can appreciate that. You can show the hands, the arms, the muscles, the beautiful work Michelangelo did in marble, without showing the whole thing.”

In a now-viral interview with Slate, the chair of the school’s board, Barney Bishop III, said that the administration did not take issue with the sculpture, but the teacher’s description of it to the children as “nonpornographic picture” and the lack of advance notice.

“Parents choose this school because they want a certain kind of education. We’re not gonna have courses from the College Board. We’re not gonna teach 1619 or CRT crap. I know they do all that up in Virginia,” Bishop said. “The rights of parents, that trumps the rights of kids. Teachers are the experts? Teachers have all the knowledge? Are you kidding me?”

Hope Carrasquilla, the now-former principal of Tallahassee Classical School, told HuffPost Thursday that the standard protocol is to notify parents ahead of lessons on classical artwork, but due to a “series of miscommunications,” a picture of the marble masterpiece was unveiled without warning in all its sinewy splendor. 

According to Carrasquilla, one parent felt “point-blank upset” and that “her child should not be viewing” the 16th-century Renaissance sculpture, which depicts David, a figure from the Old Testament’s Book of Samuel made famous for his fight against the giant Goliath. 

The Tallahassee Democrat reported that Tallahassee Classical School, a charter school, has now seen three principals resign or be fired since it opened in 2020. Carasquilla was at the helm for for less than a year.

The school follows the “classical education curriculum model” popular in Florida primary education. The pedagogical model stresses the “centrality of the Western tradition,” or, as the Tampa Bay Times describes it, “a historical focus on white, Western European and Judeo-Christian foundations.” The model is most used in Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, though conservative legislators in the state have made moves to widen its influence. 

“Showing the entire statue of David is appropriate at some age,” said Bishop. “We’re going to figure out when that is,” he added. “And you don’t have to show the whole statue! Maybe to kindergartners we only show the head. You can appreciate that. You can show the hands, the arms, the muscles, the beautiful work Michelangelo did in marble, without showing the whole thing.”

This isn’t the first time Michelangelo’s David has sparked controversy. The Italian pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai featured a to-scale 3D-printed replica of the statue. However according to reports, most of the replica was concealed by stone barriers, for modesty’s sake. 

The Headlines

RENAISSANCE REVELATIONS. It may be time to add one more achievement to Leonardo da Vinci’s long list of them. It seems that the artist-architect-scientist-inventor conducted trailblazing, previously unknown experiments on gravity, according to a new paper in the journal Leonardo, the New York Times reports. Morteza Gharib, an aeronautics professor at CalTech who is an author of that paper, found a small sketch in the Codex Arundel (a famed collection of Leonardo’s papers) that shows him calculating what is known as the gravitational constant, which is used to ascertain its effect on objects. He got within 10 percent of value used today. “It’s mind boggling,” Gharib said. Meanwhile, the British Observer reports, art historian Paul Joannides believes he has identified a preparatory drawing that Michelangelo used for a figure in the Sistine Chapel. Showing a nude man from behind, it is held by a European collector and was once attributed to one of the artist’s followers, Rosso Fiorentino .

THE MEXICAN AMERICAN ARTIST JESSE TREVIÑO, who taught himself to paint with his left hand after his right arm was paralyzed in a Vietnam War battle, has died at 76, the Washington Post reports. At the time that Treviño was drafted into the army, he had been finding his way as a young artist in New York. Thrown into an explosion in Vietnam and severely injured, he decided that if he made it back, he would devote himself to painting his family and the community that surrounded them in San Antonio, Texas. He made it, and after a wave of depression, he relearned painting. He would go on to earn renown for vibrant, inventive, and imaginative paintings and murals. In 2013, his work was included in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s exhibition “Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art.” Fellow artist Rudy Herrera told Spectrum News 1, “Whatever kind of storm he had in him, it was big, it was heavy, it was influential.”

The Digest

At the VIP opening of the Art Wynwood fair in Miami on Friday, a woman accidentally knocked over a small Jeff Koons balloon dog multiple. It shattered on the ground. It was reportedly valued at $42,000. [ARTnews]

David Chipperfield Architects said that it lost £1.2 million (about $1.44 million) in business in Russia after halting projects there last year, following the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Its parent company extended debt financing to help cover the revenue loss. [Architects’ Journal]

Are you in the market for an art adviser? Journalist Victoria Woodcock has a rundown of some of the major players in the field, from Allan Schwartzman to Patti Wong. Want to hire Philip Hoffman’s Fine Art Group? You should be spending $1 million or more on art annually, he said. [Financial Times]

In a new film, titled Inside, actor Willem Dafoe plays an art thief who gets trapped inside a collector’s apartment after its security system locks down the exits. It will be released in the United States next month. [Variety]

Theater giant, composer, and former ARTnews Top 200 Collector Andrew Lloyd Webber has written the anthem for the forthcoming coronation of King Charles III. The ceremony is slated to take place on May 6 at Westminster Abbey in London. [The Associated Press]

ARTISTS IN DETAIL. Pittsburgh sculptor Thaddeus Mosley—a master with wood—spoke with critic Will Heinrich in the New York Times, in advance of his March show at the Karma gallery in New York, and the New Yorker ran a 2021 interview between the great New York photographer Stephen Shore and critic Peter Schjeldahl, who died last year.

The Kicker

PET PROJECT. Yes, Joan Brown—now being feted with an SFMOMA survey—was a smart, skilled painter. But it turns out that she was also gifted at filing taxes. Because she painted her cat, Donald, so frequently, she deducted the expenses for caring for him, SFMOMA curator Nancy Lim told All Things Considered. The Internal Revenue Service ended up auditing Brown, but she won, and so the cat got a special nickname. “Her friends called him ‘Donald the Deductible,’” Lim said. [All Things Considered/NPR]