Museum Meltdowns and Art’s Arresting Protests

A reminder that even world-famous museums depend on very unglamorous infrastructure: seven Smithsonian buildings in Washington, DC, closed today, 6 August, after a mechanical failure disrupted cooling. The Art Newspaper reports the affected institutions are the National Museum of the American Indian, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, National Museum of Asian Art, National Museum of African Art, the Smithsonian Castle, the Arts and Industries Building, and the S. Dillon Ripley Center. A Smithsonian spokesperson said an outage at the General Service Administration’s Heating Operations and Transmission Division plant disrupted the chilled water supply needed for cooling systems and humidity controls in the South Mall museums. The Smithsonian said it will return to normal operations once GSA resolves the issue, but no timeline was given.

As local museums in the UK face closure pressure, The Art Newspaper looks at what “help” actually means on the ground. It traces the Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft in Sussex, which announced in January it would temporarily close as part of a planned pause to work out its next phase. In April, the trustees extended the closure, released all volunteers, and made all staff redundant; a board spokesperson called the initial closure an emergency measure to stabilise the charity. The museum later secured funding from the Association of Independent Museums, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and local donors to prevent permanent closure and support a period of “review and reimagining” toward a sustainable model. Research cited in the piece includes Mapping Museums Lab’s review of 524 UK museum closures from 2000 to 2025.

Staying in Europe, the Uffizi Galleries in Florence have detailed a wide-ranging renovation package that keeps the complex open while work unfolds. ARTnews reports the museum revealed the extent of ongoing €50 million plans across the Gallery of Statues and Paintings, the Palazzo Pitti, and the Boboli Gardens, with some projects already started and others due to begin in coming months. Director Simone Verde called it “an operation of unprecedented scale and depth.” A museum representative said the renovations “should end—we hope—in two years from now.” Funding includes an award package granted by Italy’s Ministry of Culture plus private contributions, including €5 million from American philanthropist Veronika Atkins. Highlights include upgraded climate control and new visitor services, signage, lighting, and repurposed spaces.

In New York, an architectural choice is colliding with conservation reality at the New York Historical. ARTnews reports that less than two months after opening its one hundred seventy five dollars million Tang Wing for American Democracy, the museum replaced 17 objects in the inaugural exhibition “Democracy Matters” with reproductions, and removed three objects entirely. The issue is natural light: the gallery’s large windows flood the space with sunlight, and some objects were deemed too light-sensitive. Officials first lowered blackout shades, but director Louise Mirrer felt the shades compromised architect Robert A.M. Stern’s vision and ordered them raised. One notable change involved Betye Saar’s Extreme Times Call for Extreme Heroines, replaced with a digital photograph that was later removed because the museum said it didn’t adequately represent the work.

Hyperallergic has published a never-before-published interview with Simone Forti that foregrounds her memories of Yoko Ono and the downtown New York scene around 1960–61. The exchange, conducted by Julia Bryan-Wilson in 2014 and released in honor of Forti’s passing last week at 91, includes Forti recalling, “I remember sitting with Yoko on a ledge on the PS1 roof and talking together comfortably. It was restful.” Forti says she began hearing Ono’s name around 1960 and knew Ono was married to Toshi Ichiyanagi. She describes Ono’s Chambers Street loft—where Forti’s Five Dance Constructions and Some Other Things debuted—as a large raw rectangular space with a rough wood floor and windows at one end. Forti also credits La Monte Young with inviting her into the series and Robert Morris with helping her set up.

ARTnews also spotlights sculptor Isaiah Davis and how his materials carry social charge across time. The piece describes Davis working in a Midtown Manhattan studio that was once Christian Louboutin’s atelier, complete with red carpeting. Leather figures prominently in his work, including White American Flag (2021), shown at Participant Inc, a flag with stars and stripes but no red or blue, onto which a film is projected featuring a Black man in a leather jacket bearing an NYPD patch. Davis lists leather’s associations—motorcycle community, S&M culture, police uniforms, and musicians—while emphasizing his interest in secondhand leather’s “implied legacy.” For his 2025 show at King’s Leap Fine Arts, Davis repurposed disused steel beams from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and a Columbia University building, including Slave (2025) with Prince lyrics scarred into its surface.

On the dealer front, ARTnews reports that Elizabeth Mulholland—director and then partner for the last two decades at New York’s Andrew Kreps Gallery—is moving to Los Angeles to become a senior director at David Zwirner’s LA outpost. Kreps said, “It’s a big life decision, and I’m supportive,” adding that she made “a huge contribution” to the gallery. Zwirner expanded to Los Angeles in 2023, opening a fifteen thousand-square-foot showroom in East Hollywood and a thirty thousand-square-foot Melrose Hill flagship, alongside locations in New York, London, Paris, and Hong Kong. Mulholland said she’s joining Zwirner in September and is looking forward to collaborating with the LA team: Alex Tuttle, Alex Marshall, and Nick Gregory. She also praised Los Angeles as “artist-driven” and name-checked institutions including the Getty, MoCA, the Broad, and the Hammer.

The Art Newspaper reports on a petition effort in India after the April arrests of two artists involved in a workers’ rights protest. According to the report, artists Srishti Gupta and Akriti Choudhary were arrested after protesting with factory workers in Greater Noida, near New Delhi. A Change.org petition—started by a user called Shaleen Wadhwana four weeks ago—calls for their freedom along with six workers arrested on April 11, and had two thousand three hundred forty five signatures at the time described. The reporting says that in April, thousands of factory workers protested for fair wages and improved working conditions; roads were blocked and more than 300 people were arrested. Gupta was arrested with Choudhary at a metro station in the evening in Noida, and she live-streamed the incident on Mazdoor Bigul’s Instagram account.

In Washington, DC, Hyperallergic reports that police arrested 16 protesters in the Hart Senate Office Building yesterday, August 5, after members of Women’s March staged a “die-in” and unfurled banners bearing portraits of people the group says were killed by ICE agents or died in ICE custody. The banners featured hand-drawn illustrations by Italian artist Gianluca Costantini depicting Alex Pretti, Renée Good, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Ruben Ray Martinez, Ryan Carol Kidd, Jonah Neal, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, and two other unidentified individuals, alongside the words “Killed by I.C.E.” Women’s March executive director Rachel O’Leary Carmona said the group is involved because “ICE’s violence doesn’t end with the people it detains or kills.” Hyperallergic notes Capitol Police had not yet responded to inquiries about arrests or charges.

Hyperallergic visits Yerevan for Anna Boghiguian: Weaving Culture at the National Gallery of Armenia, presenting the Armenian-Egyptian artist’s carpet-based natural history of Armenia. The show is described as 37 rugs and three drawings across three acts in contiguous halls. Curator Nairi Khatchadourian characterizes Boghiguian’s approach as inventing the “watercolor carpet,” with suns, stars, flowers, and animals becoming large, stylized presences against pastel expanses, unlike the smaller geometric coding of traditional Armenian rugs. The first act lays out Armenia’s mountains in dense blues, browns, and purples, including a huge red sun with yellow rays. The second act becomes a garden, with trees and blood-red flowers, storks, and a figure in “Man with Pomegranate and Snake” (works dated 2025–26). Boghiguian says, “The gift of being alive is developing a garden in oneself.”

That’s today’s download—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more art world news you can actually use, and until then: Chinga la migra

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