Reopenings, Strikes, and Art’s Political Crossfire

Mexico City has a major reopening: the Museo Dolores Olmedo in Xochimilco is welcoming visitors again after six years of closure and controversy over a planned relocation. The Art Newspaper describes blue-feathered peacocks and lush gardens around the former 16th-century hacienda La Noria, which Dolores Olmedo acquired in the 1960s and turned into a museum in 1994. The museum first closed during the Covid-19 pandemic, and in 2021 the governing trust—run by Olmedo’s descendants—announced plans to move part of the collection, prompting backlash. Now the museum says it reopened after “extensive cataloguing, maintenance and research,” and all the art is back, including 98 Rivera works and 26 Kahlo works.

A new digital resource is reconstructing Leonardo da Vinci manuscripts in a way that hasn’t been possible for more than 400 years. The Art Newspaper reports that Leonardotheka has gone live, digitally merging the Codex Atlanticus at the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan with around 550 sheets from the Royal Collection at Windsor. Museo Galileo in Florence oversaw the ten-year initiative with the Royal Collection Trust, the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, and the Biblioteca Leonardiana in Vinci, Tuscany. The project includes 50 confirmed page reconstructions, returning fragments held at Windsor to Codex Atlanticus pages. One example reunites Codex Atlanticus folio 399r with Windsor folio 912345r, linking a horse drawing with text on the Regisole equestrian monument in Pavia.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is already on its first major addition, just 15 years after opening in Bentonville, Arkansas. ARTnews says founder Alice Walton and architect Moshe Safdie moved up a long-range plan, and the expansion—matching the original’s curving forms and using concrete, cedar, and copper—adds about one hundred fourteen thousand square feet. That includes new galleries, education and programming spaces, and a fourteen thousand-square-foot exhibition space. Safdie also installed skylights designed to funnel sunlight into what he called a balanced white light. The museum didn’t disclose the cost. The new exhibition space is hosting “Keith Haring in 3D,” co-curated by Glenn Adamson, featuring Haring’s sculptural practice across objects like masks, totems, skateboards, clothing, boomboxes, and painted found pieces.

A new report is warning that the art world could be headed for a serious talent drain among mid-career women. Artnet reports on **Hardwiring Change: Buying Back Time**, the second annual collaboration between Artnet and the Association of Women in the Arts (AWITA), drawing on responses from over two thousand survey participants. Nearly half of women aged 25–44 surveyed are considering leaving the arts within the next five years, and the highest rate—50.6 percent—is among women aged 35–44. Around 76 percent of women aged 35–54 reported facing structural barriers linked to gender, race, or class. The report also finds administrative overload is driving burnout, with 48 percent of full-time workers spending at least half their time on admin tasks.

Artist Alma Allen has again accused art publicist David Resnicow of working against Allen’s controversial U.S. Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. ARTnews reports that in an Instagram post published Monday afternoon, Allen wrote that “two of the three galleries that withdrew their support for my pavilion informed me that they did so on the advice of David Resnicow.” Allen added, “I have never met Mr. Resnicow,” but said Resnicow’s name came up from people who told him Resnicow warned them not to support the pavilion, including writers, museum directors, funders, curators, and two galleries. Resnicow, responding to the escalation, told ARTnews the claims were “baffling” and said he has “never told anyone not to work with him.”

Chicago’s Obama Presidential Center is preparing to open to the public later this month, and Hyperallergic offers a first look at the art across the new eight hundred fifty dollars million campus in Jackson Park. The center includes educational, recreational, and civic spaces beneath the stone tower designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, along with a Home Court featuring an NBA regulation-size basketball court and a new branch of the Chicago Public Library. Hyperallergic reports more than 28 commissioned works by artists including Idris Khan, Theaster Gates, Lorna Simpson, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Maya Lin. Inside the museum, Jack Pierson’s “HOPE” (2026) greets visitors, and Mark Bradford’s three-story “City of the Big Shoulders” (2026) fills the atrium with a sweeping view of Chicago.

Plans for the redesign of New York City’s Penn Station are drawing attention for a striking detail: President Trump’s name. Hyperallergic reports that official renderings released June 8 show “Donald J. Trump” carved into a wall next to a presidential seal near the entrance. The nearly eight dollars billion project is overseen by the Trump Administration. Last month, the US Department of Transportation and Amtrak announced Penn Transformation Partners—private companies and designers including Vornado and Halmar—as “master developer.” The winning design, selected through a competitive process that began last October, was helmed by the Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) and founder Vishaan Chakrabarti, who said a presidential seal on a public building is “commonplace.”

Italian arts workers are calling for a nationwide strike on Friday, June 12, expanding a labor-and-politics movement that was already visible at the Venice Biennale. Hyperallergic reports that unions, cultural workers’ associations, and grassroots collectives are joining the strike, citing unstable opportunities, low wages, and public investments into the arms industry, while also describing solidarity with Palestine and “conditions that allow institutions to look away from genocide.” The call follows a May 8 Venice Biennale strike led by the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA) that shut down nearly 30 national pavilions and spurred a march opposing Israel’s pavilion in the Arsenale Complex. The June 12 action extends across arts and culture labor, from editorial workers to educators and museum maintenance staff.

In Los Angeles, a guerrilla projection collective is turning buildings into billboards for satire and protest—and then sending the results straight into the feeds. The Hollywood Reporter profiles VJayBombs, describing how three co-founders—Ken, Bev, and Cat, all pseudonyms—set up laser projectors and equipment on a pedestrian bridge near Echo Park Lake to project a looping, roughly 45-second animation onto the L.A. Downtown Medical Center. The unauthorized projection satirized Trump’s State of the Union, showing him at a lectern and flashing slogans like “Immigrant Bad!” and “Forget the Files.” The group livestreamed to nearly three hundred thousand followers across Instagram and TikTok. The piece ran for more than 30 minutes before the night moved on.

ARTnews reports that Rodney Mims Cook Jr., chairman of the US Commission of Fine Arts, attended St. Petersburg’s St Petersburg International Economic Forum—described as “Russian Davos”—and joined a roundtable with Russian cultural envoy Mikhail Shvydkoy. According to the report, Cook became the first US official to participate in the forum in nearly a decade. The four-day event prepared to open June 3, and Reuters quoted Cook telling Vladimir Putin, “You have a beautiful hometown,” and adding, “I do give a good hello from your friend, President Trump.” The roundtable, titled “Russia-USA: dialogue of cultures,” included Steven Seagal and also involved figures including State Hermitage Museum director Mikhail Piotrovsky and Russian culture minister Olga Lyubimova.

That’s the download for today—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more news, more context, and more art-world intrigue… Chinga la migra

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