ArtCurious News This Week: January 20, 2023

January 20, 2023 Jennifer Dasal

Hi there, listeners. It’s Friday, which means that it is time for ArtCurious News this Week, our short-form news roundup meant to bring you up to date on some of the latest goings-on in the realm of art history. I’m your host, Jennifer Dasal, and we’ve got some great stories for you today, Friday, January 20th, 2023.

This week’s stories:

New York Times: After Lecturer Sues, Hamline University Walks Back Its ‘Islamophobic’ Comments

Chicago Sun-Times: Ex-Art Institute payroll manager stole more than $2 million from museum: indictment

New York Times: After 220 Years, the Fate of the Parthenon Marbles Rests in Secret Talks

The Guardian via YouTube: French mayor asks Madonna for loan of painting that once hung in city's museum

Le Figaro: Amiens : la maire supplie Madonna de lui prêter un de ses tableaux

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Episode Transcript

For today’s first story, I’m sharing a follow-up from my lead story of last week. In ArtCurious News This Week for January 13, I discussed a New York Times article about the firing of an adjunct professor from Hamline University for displaying a 14th century image of the Prophet Muhammed in a global art history class. This was huge, huge news, and a story that touched on everything from the quality of life and wages provided to adjunct professors, freedom of speech, religious tolerance, academic freedom, and even the state of art history as (still!) a Euro-centric field. This week, the New York Times followed up with a report that Hamline University released a statement apologizing for their previous comment that the display of the image of Muhammed was, quote, “Islamophobic.”

The reasoning for this about-face, the Times added? The lecturer is suing the University for religious discrimination and defamation. The lawsuit argues that the lecturer has experienced not only emotional distress and loss of income from her firing at Hamline, but that such claims of Islamophobia and more could potentially mar her career in perpetuity—especially in this age, where everything on the internet follows us everywhere, forever, a claim that is made doubly huge when stories like this reach national attention.

In their follow-up statement about the Islamophobia comment made previously, Ellen Watters and Fayneese S. Miller, University chair and University president, respectively, noted, quote: “Like all organizations, sometimes we misstep. In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term ‘Islamophobic’ was therefore flawed…. It was never our intent to suggest that academic freedom is of lower concern or value than our students — care does not ‘supersede’ academic freedom, the two coexist.” Unquote. It’s a statement that, as the Times reported, even some Muslim adherents agree with. The Times article quotes Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who concurred, quote, “Although we strongly discourage showing visual depictions of the prophet, professors who analyze ancient paintings for an academic purpose are not the same as Islamophobes who show such images to cause offense.”

A quick moment here for Jen’s point of view. I still feel like this is a very sensitive topic and agree that Hamline should have proceeded more carefully from the start, but overall from an art historical perspective, this is welcome news. To know that we can showcase a wealth of Islamic art that does, in fact, include the occasional image of the Prophet Muhammed is to show a different perspective on art; it can also provide an example of how religion and religious declarations can change over time—that at one point, an image of Muhammed was a permitted form of representation. And again, anything that we can do to expand what we share in art history classes is a good thing. I say this as someone who studied French art history in depth, and who came up in art at a time when I had only two classes outside of the Western Art Canon—an introductory course to Asian Art, and one class on Chinese Landscape painting. That’s it. No middle eastern art, no African art. It’s all stuff I’ve had to learn on the fly. And having professors out there who are actively working on rectifying this lack only puts the next generation of art historians in a better position to continue expanding narratives of art history.

Onward we go to our second story of the week. This week we learned that a former employee from the Art Institute of Chicago allegedly stole over two million dollars in museum funds over the course of a thirteen-year career at the storied institution. The former employee, a man named Michael Maurello, has been named in an indictment via Chicago’s U.S. Attorney Office, which charged him with bank and wire fraud. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Maurello—a payroll manager for the Art Institute--apparently routed money into his own bank account after disguising the payments as ones going to other, and sometimes former, employees. The Institute became suspicious of Maurello’s actions in 2019 and later fired him, reporting the events to local law enforcement.

In the “everyday” world, and I’m using “everyday” in air quotes here, $2 million is huge honking load of money. But let me just say that within a large institution like the Art Institute of Chicago, that’s not as much as it may sound. I don’t want to underestimate the severity of this crime, nor the burden that this put onto the museum, but it does provide a certain amount of perspective. A lot of that is also due to the time span involved here—thirteen years. As a spokesperson for the Art Institute noted to the Sun-Times, quote, “The cumulative loss was significant, but because of the length of time and manner in which it was taken, it did not impact decisions around staffing, payroll, scholarship funding, programming or other financial aspects of the organization,” unquote. So between this and the recent news report about a shyster inspired by the film Office Space to skim off hundreds of thousands of dollars from his company, Zulily, I think I’ve had enough with fraudulent money practices and we’re just in the first few weeks of 2023!

Let’s take a little break before we get back to more ArtCurious News This Week. So please support me and the show by listening to a couple of ads or join me over at Patreon and support this show ad-free for the price of a latte. That’s just $4 a month for ad-free content over at patreon.com/artcurious. Quick thanks and welcome aboard to this week’s newest patrons: Michelle M. and Patrick F. Big ongoing thanks, too for my VIP patrons Flamestress, Gaston, Stephanie, John, JL, Rhonda, Lance, and Robin. We’ll be right back. Thanks for listening!

Welcome back to ArtCurious, and our News this Week. For our last couple of stories today, I’m talking museum lending and artwork ownership. First up, the bigger of the two stories. I’ve mentioned in a couple of episodes here in the past on ArtCurious News This Week about potential repatriation of one of the most controversial collections of all time: the so-called Parthenon marbles, sometimes known as the Elgin Marbles, currently on view at the British Museum in London. This week, the New York Times had a huge and wonderful in-depth article that gives us a little insight into the behind-the-scenes machinations between the British Museum and Greece as they battle to come up with some sort of agreement. Now, I’ve linked the full article in the show notes of your podcast app, as well as on my website—artcuriouspodcast.com—but here are some of the details in brief. The news was first broken by Ta Nea, an Athens-based newspaper, that reported that while highly secret talks between both parties have reached, quote, “advanced stages,” they have reached a brief stalling point. Apparently, the chair of the British Museum, George Osborne, has been meeting with the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and current talks have paused, hopefully briefly, to take the concerns of both sides into consideration. While the Times notes that no deal is imminent, I still see this as a huge sign of progress, and certainly a call for some cautious optimism. Both sides are proposing various options for long-term loans and the phased rollout of returning of these incredible artifacts, which have been held by the British Museum for nearly two hundred years after they were removed from Athens by the Scottish diplomat Lord Elgin. For the British Museum, these marbles—probably alongside the famed Rosetta Stone that allowed for the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs—are the jewels of their collection, and the museum’s decades-long drive to become “the world’s collection”—i.e., a truly global representation—means that they certainly aren’t looking at repatriation without significant “ifs” and requests, but if all things go as planned, Ta Nea notes that at least some of the Parthenon marbles could be returned to Athens by as early as this year. And that would be absolutely huge news—and could have a earth-shattering effect on museum collecting and museum studies, too. Whew. Lots to talk about here—so if you’re interested in learning more about this complicated issue, let me know! If I get enough feedback on this one, I might see if I can do a longer episode just on this topic, maybe even bringing some expert voices in on the matter. Let me know! Email jennifer@artcuriouspodcast.com.

The last story for the day is another one about museums jockeying for art loans. In a truly lovely video, the mayor of the French city of Amiens puts out a small request: would Madonna—yes, that Madonna, the singer, Madonna—be willing to lend a work that is most likely in her collection? Seriously, this video is heartwarming in its sincerity and politeness. The mayor, Brigitte Fouré, notes that Madonna is the probable owner of a work by the painter Jérôme-Martin Langlois titled Diana and Endymion, which was last shown publicly in Amiens prior to the first World War, and because Amiens is garnering to be named the European Capital of Culture in 2028, they are hoping to showcase this painting that was once part of their city’s cultural landscape if they should be lucky enough to win the title. According to French newspaper Le Figaro, this Langlois painting had disappeared from the record books until it, or a copy, or a duplicate, arrived on the auction block at Sotheby’s New York in the late 1980s. And this is where Madonna potentially scooped it up for a steal at $1.3 million. I say “potentially” because art world sources have not yet been able to verify that it truly is part of Madonna’s collection, and the singer has not yet responded, nor have her people. But Madonna is known to be quite the art collector, and if this work was hers and she agreed to lend it to Amiens? That’s just awesome, and I’m all for any opportunity that allows works that are held in a private collection to come out into the public limelight, at least for a little while, so that more people can enjoy it.

That’s all I have for you today, everyone--thanks for listening to ArtCurious News this Week. Just a quick reminder before we go that my awesome trip to the Netherlands with Like Minds Travel in celebration of the largest Vermeer exhibition in history is ALMOST SOLD OUT. We only have a few spots left, so if you want to come with me, be sure to register now. Check out all the details on my website: artcuriouspodcast.com. In the meantime, thank you all for your support and for listening today—until next week, stay curious.