The week in art news: Artist shuts Israeli pavilion, Anish Kapoor’s biennale backlash, MSCHF steals bathroom sink and more…

Israeli artist refuses to open Venice pavilion. The New York Times reports that artist Ruth Patir and curators Tamar Margalit and Mira Lapidot agreed to close the Israeli pavilion until a ceasefire in Gaza and hostage agreement was reached. In a statement, Lapidot and Margalit said “there is no end in sight, only the promise of more pain, loss and devastation… The art can wait but the women, children and people living through hell cannot.”

Anish Kapoor slams ‘neo fascist’ Venice Biennale slogan. The British artists and Venetian resident told The Art Newspaper that the title ‘Foreigners Everywhere,’ chosen by curator Adriano Pedrosa, demonstrated the “utter naivety of the real effects these words still bear on people’s lives.” Kapoor said that despite the “no-doubt, good intentions of Adriano Pedrosa to subvert the language of racist fear and hate,” the curator should, “withdraw this offensive title and see it in the context of world events.”

Anti-war Venice exhibition includes new poem by Margaret Atwood. The Disasters of War: A Sequel will be displayed at the Chiesa di San Samuele in ‘Beati pacifici’, an exhibition of “anti-heroic western war art” from the collection of Canadian Bruce Bailey. The exhibition includes prints by Francisco Goya, Otto Dix and Jake and Dinos Chapman.

If you’re visiting Venice this summer for the Biennale, you might be whacked by the city’s new tourist tax. But don’t worry, it’s not too much; a maximum of €5 per person, per night (or a flat €5 if you’re just travelling for the day), and there’s plenty of exemptions. The Art Newspaper has an extensive guide to the new rules. It’s supposed to fund the upkeep of the crumbling city, and to deter tourists, but some locals think its a step in the wrong direction.

German gallery technician fired for installing his own artwork: the unnamed man hung his own painting in the Munich Pinakothek der Moderne’s exhibition ‘Glitch: On the Art of Interference’ ahead of the opening. He reportedly hoped that this act would launch his career; now, he’s banned from the museum property. Some saw it as an “artistic intervention”, but the museum rejected this, stating, “Employees must comply with security concepts and not jeopardise valuable cultural heritage.” – no sense of humour, clearly.

Meanwhile… art collective MSCHF took a sink from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The performance piece, Met’s Sink of Theseus (2024), was documented on their Instagram. Over several trips to the museum, the artists replaced original sink parts with identical copies. By the end of the process, they’d ‘stolen’ an entire sink. It’s now on display in their exhibition ‘ART 2’ at Perrotin, Los Angeles.

Gavin Brown donates his gallery archive to US university. The British art dealer and founder of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise has decided to donate the entire 26-year archive of files, catalogues, and exhibition documents to Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies. The archive includes documents relating to shows by Arthur Jafa, Joan Jonas, Mark Leckey and Alex Katz.

Celine acquires Cezary Poniatowski sculpture for its new Amsterdam flagship store. The untitled, slate-grey, carved styrofoam sunk relief was meant to evoke “nature, darkness, abundance, and viciousness” according to the artist. If you can’t visit Celine on Amsterdam’s Hoofstraat, perhaps you could drop by Wschód in New York, where more works by Poniatowski are on show.

Patti Astor, East Village scene queen, dies at 74. Astor’s life tracked the eventful art and politics scene of 1970s New York: she was a member of the communist revolutionary group Students for a Democratic Society, starred in over a dozen experimental films, and helped bring hip hop to popularity. In 1981, Astor And Her Partner Bill Stelling founded Fun Gallery, which specialised in street art and hosted shows by Kenny Scharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.

Faith Ringgold, painter, performance artist and arts educator, dies at 93. Ringgold was born in Harlem in 1930, in the ‘60s and 70s she practised political paintings and performance and was a prominent member of the Black Arts Movement. In the ‘80s, along with her mother, she developed her painted ‘story quilts’ which drew on the folk art of enslaved Americans. Some of these works were later adapted into children’s picture books.

Aussie court rules museum must admit men. As reported last month, the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania was taken to court by an angry visitor after he was barred entry to Kirsha Kaechele’s Ladies Lounge. The artist argued that men being barred was the artwork, and cited the barring of women in gentlemens’ clubs, however the court ruled the visitor had been discriminated against. MONA must allow men into Ladies Lounge by the 7th May.

Remember NFTs? No? Well, Phaidon does. The publishing house has just launched a ‘catalogue raisonné’ of Cryptopunks; the small pixelated portraits that could be claimed for free, and at their height were selling for up to $23.7M per picture. The digital tokens were supposed to revolutionise the art world, but flopped as soon as people figured out how to right click > save as. At least, in book form, it’ll be harder to hack this collection.

In other shocking news, NFT shillers Digital Basel shuts down. The site promised, “a new platform for curated digital art distribution with the opportunity to showcase artists and their work in a digital dimension.” However, it didn’t get much love from mega fair Art Basel, who accused the company of trademark infringement, nor the galleries whose paintings it tried to sell as NFTs. Scammers or fools? Either way, good riddance.