The American Library Association, together with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees–the nation’s largest union of cultural workers– has reached a favorable settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, thwarting the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

According to an April 9 press release from the American Library Association (ALA), the settlement ensures the agency will continue awarding grants, conducting research, and supporting the operation of libraries and museums. The agreement also requires that previously terminated grants be reinstated, staff reductions reversed, and that the administration refrain from further action against IMLS. 

ALA President Sam Helmick said in a statement, “When the administration began shuttering IMLS last year, it set off a chain reaction. Libraries across the country started cutting hours, staff and services people rely on – after school programs, support for jobseekers and connection for older adults. This settlement protects life-changing library services for communities across the country. ALA will continue to defend every American’s freedom to read and learn.” 

Established in 1996, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is the only federal agency that provides resources to museums and libraries across all 50 states and U.S. territories. Despite its nonpartisan status, IMLS became a prime target for defunding through executive action by the Donald Trump administration.

Litigation on its behalf was initiated by two of the nation’s most influential cultural bodies: the American Library Association (ALA), the largest library association in the world, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the nation’s largest union of cultural workers. The lawsuit was filed last year amid sweeping reductions in federal arts and culture agencies, which saw mass layoffs, rescinded grants, and leadership shakeups along ideological lines.

ARTnews Top 200 Collector David Geffen’s short-lived marriage has come to an unceremonious end, with the billionaire entertainment mogul reaching a private settlement with his estranged husband, David Armstrong, capping months of unusually public legal sparring.

According to court filings reported on by TMZ this week, Geffen, 83, and Armstrong, 33, have agreed to resolve their divorce, though the financial terms remain undisclosed. The split follows less than two years of marriage and, crucially, no prenuptial agreement. It’s that detail that helped turn the proceedings into a high-stakes dispute over money, lifestyle, and control that has generated much tabloid coverage. 

The news also comes ahead of the opening of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new building next week, which is named the David Geffen Galleries.

What began as a relatively straightforward separation quickly escalated. Armstrong, a model who has also gone by name Donovan Michaels, argued in court filings that Geffen was attempting to limit spousal support while maintaining a standard of living that, he claimed, once exceeded $3 million a month. Geffen, for his part, countered that he had already provided substantial support, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments and a New York apartment. 

The dispute eventually widened beyond just money. Armstrong accused Geffen of withholding full disclosure of his wealth, comparing their legal battle to “David and Goliath,” citing the vast imbalance in resources between the two. He also filed—and later withdrew—a civil lawsuit accusing Geffen of exploitation and claiming that he was treated as a kind of “trophy,” manipulated psychologically, and even pushed into drug dependency as a form of control. Geffen’s legal team dismissed those claims outright.

When does something become a work of art? A canvas once it’s been painted? A block of marble once it’s been carved? For Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), the answer was much more direct and far more radical: Anything—indeed, everything—could be art if an artist deemed it so. “An ordinary object,” he said, can be “elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.” This notion, which found expression in his iconic Readymades, would prove to be the most revolutionary innovation of 20th-century art.

Duchamp’s Readymades—realized between 1913 and 1923, the year he claimed to have quit making art—were mass-produced goods plucked from the everyday, either alone or in combination. Duchamp’s very first Readymade was an example of the latter: the front fork of a bicycle bolted upright onto a four-legged stool, allowing the attached wheel to spin freely. That object was joined in 1914 by another when Duchamp went to the Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville, the legendary Parisian department store, and brought home a towerlike metal bottle-drying rack festooned with prongs, known as a hérisson (“hedgehog”) due to its spiky appearance.

Still, Duchamp didn’t treat either as art. Initially he viewed the bicycle wheel as an amusing diversion; he “enjoyed looking at it, just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in the fireplace.” By the same token, he left the bottle rack alone. In fact, Duchamp didn’t coin the moniker Readymade until a 1915 sojourn to New York City.

Duchamp’s journey to New York was necessitated by the outbreak of World War I. While deemed unfit for military service due to a rheumatic heart condition, Duchamp was an otherwise healthy-looking young man out of uniform, attracting the ire of fellow citoyens who considered him an unpatriotic shirker. Duchamp was insulted, threatened, and even spat upon, leading him to leave Paris.

Upon arriving in New York, Duchamp was immediately struck by its modernity and absence of class consciousness. Maybe the resultant sense of freedom led Duchamp to believe that there were no boundaries in art, or perhaps it was the cornucopia of stuff spilling out from shops on every block, but for whatever reason, the Readymade notion became crystalized in a letter Duchamp wrote to his sister, Suzanne, back in Paris.

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The Headlines

COLD COMFORT. A proposed bronze statue depicting a seated girl, intended as a symbol of wartime sexual violence, has sparked tensions between Japan and New Zealand, the Guardian reports. The sculpture, donated to the Korean cultural garden at Barry’s Point Reserve in Auckland by the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance, commemorates an estimated 200,000 women forced into sexual slavery in Japanese military brothels between 1932 and 1945, known as “comfort women.” Most were Korean, though victims also included Chinese, Southeast Asian, and a small number of Japanese and European women.cJapan’s ambassador to New Zealand, Makoto Osawa, said the planned memorial was “needlessly stirring up” this chapter of history and warned it could harm diplomatic relations, not only between Japan and New Zealand, but also between Japan and South Korea. The Japanese embassy has more bluntly described the statue as part of an “anti-Japan” movement. Since the first “peace statue” was erected in Seoul in 2011, followed by similar installations around the world, Japan has repeatedly called for their removal. Auckland authorities are expected to decide later this month whether to proceed with the installation.

BARTERING BREAKY. If you’re in Milan on April 20, it’s worth setting an early alarm to join Maurizio Cattelan’s “barter breakfast” in Piazza del Duomo. As reported by Artribune, the provocateur, who recently made headlines for inviting the public to confess their sins to him, is now asking participants to bring an object of their choosing to a sunrise gathering, where it can be exchanged with others. Running from 7am to 9am and timed to kick off Milan Design Week, the event will feature designers including Stefano Seletti, Fabio Novembre, Marcantonio, and Charley Vezza, each bringing items of their own to trade. Participants are encouraged to bring something “curious, iconic, sentimental, eccentric, or unexpected,” entering into a shared exchange shaped by the real, symbolic, or surprising value objects can carry. There’ll also be live music, and, naturally, an Italian-style breakfast served in the shadow of Milan’s Duomo.

The Digest

The entrance to the Colosseum in Rome has been renovated and enhanced with travertine marble by studio Stefano Boeri Interiors. [Artnet News]

Dior has just revealed the location for its Cruise 2027 collection show, and it’s none other than the new, Peter Zumthor-designed wing of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the David Geffen Galleries. [WWD]

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London (V&A) has launched a new collections hub page on provenance and the stories of some looted works in its own collection. [The Art Newspaper]

A performance in front of the Lincoln Memorial yesterday, by blindfolded young girl dancers, titled ResistDance vs Redaction, was made in protest of President Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. [The Washington Post]

What if every major city offered free supplies to artists? That is what the program Materials for the Arts (MFTA) is asking as part of a vision to expand their Long Island City space. [Hyperallergic]

The Kicker

SPEAKING ART TO POWER. Do artists inevitably serve the state, or can they challenge it from within? Those questions underpin a timely The New York Times feature on Nailya Allakhverdiyeva, who, until late 2024, remained at the helm of PERMM, a rare outpost for contemporary art beyond Moscow, in the industrial city of Perm. Following mounting pressure from Russian law enforcement and escalating political intimidation, Allakhverdiyeva ultimately fled to Berlin. There, she has reflected on her controversial decision to stay in Russia for years after its invasion of Ukraine, maintaining what she described as an “island” of artistic expression under the constant strain of an authoritarian regime. “I felt a hyper-responsibility toward the museum as a vehicle for promoting creative freedom, and toward contemporary art more broadly,” she said. “I owed it to the artists.”

It’s Ash Wednesday in Brooklyn and two plainclothes detectives are getting coffee from a street cart. They continue walking down the street past a church. As they approach a museum, a commotion ensues. Someone has been shot, and the shooters are on the second floor of the museum, they are told.

“Beyond Measure,” the 17th episode of Law & Order’s 25th season, was ripped from the many, many headlines related to the recent Louvre Museum heist, a story that dominated international news for several weeks last fall. In that heist, thieves made off with $102 million worth of jewels and escaped via a cherry picker, with a global manhunt ensuing. Though arrests have been made in the case, the jewels have yet to be recovered. (There is also a bit of a restitution/repatriation side-plot—or something for every art crime enthusiast.

In the episode, detectives Vincent Riley (Reid Scott) and Theo Walker (David Ajala) chase the shooters through the Brooklyn Museum, a stand-in for the show’s fictional Atlas Museum of Art. In the museum’s skylit Beaux-Arts Court—immediately recognizable by its glass tile floor and archways—a bejeweled crown is missing from its vitrine, and a security guard is bleeding out on the floor. Riley and Walker chase the thieves through the museum’s Egyptian galleries until one escapes on an e-bike and the other is shot down, collapsing in a pile of snow in the parking lot.

The 16th-century Crown of Popoyan, we learn, is made up of “five pounds of the purest gold and 450 emeralds”; one stone alone is worth $15 million. The crown has apparently been on loan to the Atlas Museum from the Vatican, though it is the subject on ongoing lawsuits from Indigenous Colombian groups who believe the crown belongs to them and not the Catholic Church. (Here is where the repatriation concerns come in.)

A “rabble-rousing” Colombian activist, who is briefly a suspect, tells us that Indigenous artisans spent six years making the crown, only to have it “snatched away” after 400 years because “the Church suddenly decided that Colombians are not sophisticated enough to guard it.”

A restoration of the Roman Colosseum’s southern piazza has been completed after four years of construction, according to Artnet News. The project, led by Stefano Boeri Interiors, has recreated the travertine-paved pedestrian plaza outside the amphitheater’s southern façade, where spectators once waited to enter the arena.

Built between 70 and 80 CE, the Roman Colosseum remains one of the engineering marvels of the world. At four stories high and with 80 arched entrances, the amphitheater could seat 50,000 or more people, equal to a modern stadium. Even more impressive, it was completely freestanding, supported by a complex vault system.

It had a retractable awning system to shade spectators, and a complement of latrines and water fountains. Its most famous use was for gladiator games, in which enslaved people or prisoners of war fought each other or wild animals to the death. It also presented public executions and mock naval battles, for which the amphitheater could reportedly be filled with water.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Colosseum was used as a Christian sanctuary, and later as a fortress. The building was abandoned after being partially destroyed by an earthquake in 1349 and became a quarry for construction projects like St. Peter’s Basilica and the Palazzo Venezia. In the 1800s, Pope Pius VIII led an effort to preserve the building; what visitors see today is largely a restoration.

Part of the arena’s original travertine-covered outer wall, the Colosseum’s southern facade featured a two-story arcade with columns more than 160 feet in height. Rather than rebuild the facade, the architect and his team have indicated the placement of its original columns with plinths of the same stone as used in the the piazza.

The forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago has announced the final round of artist commissions that will decorate its campus in the Windy City’s South Side when it opens in June.

The latest set of commissions will be realized by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Jeffrey Gibson, Rashid Johnson, Hugo McCloud, Martin Puryear, Lorna Simpson, and Norman Teague.

Several of the works will be directly about Barack and Michelle Obama. Crosby will make a portrait of the former president and first lady, that will incorporate “archival imagery, family albums, historical ephemera, and cultural touchstones,” according to a release. It will be on display in the Main Hall. Gibson has created a suite of 17 prints that reference political buttons from the Obama campaigns.

Campos-Pons’s Still Holding the Scent of Flowers is a mixed-media installation that will be placed near the museum’s Oval Office exhibit, and it will re-create the now destroyed White House Rose Garden. McCloud’s Hidden Reflection will go in the private dining room and illustrate different locations that are important to the former president.

“From the very beginning, we imagined the Obama Presidential Center as a place where art would deepen our visitors’ curiosity and inspiration,” Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett said in a statement. “These extraordinary artists bring forward different stories, perspectives, and styles that reflect the richness of our shared values. Their works will invite every visitor to see themselves as part of something bigger than themselves, and inspire them to bring change home.”

The Trump administration released on Friday its design for a 250-foot triumphal arch that would face the Lincoln Memorial, part of a portfolio of projects intended to monumentalize the president’s time in Washington, D.C.

According to The New York Times, which first reported the news, the plan was submitted to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. The federal design panel, composed of members appointed during the Trump administration, will deliberate on the proposal when convened next week.

The arch would rise at one end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River and has been framed by its proponents as a means to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. President Trump introduced the project last October at a dinner held at the White House in honor of donors to another planned addition near Capitol Hill: a $400 million ballroom attached to the White House’s East Wing.

Guests at the dinner were shown models of the proposed arch featuring two eagles and a golden angel with outstretched wings, reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe. Trump said the angel represented Lady Liberty. Its planned location is essentially a gateway into the city for those crossing the Arlington Memorial Bridge from Arlington National Cemetery, and it overlooks Arlington House, the former home of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

 “At the end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge,” Donald Trump reportedly said at the dinner, “you have a circle that was built 150 years ago. You have two columns on one side, two columns on the other, yet in the middle, just a circle. And everyone in the past had said something was supposed to be built there. But a thing called the Civil War interfered. That’s a good reason.”