Norton Simon Museum Countersues Jewish Federation Over Cranach Diptych

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The Headlines

CRANACH CONFUSION. The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, countersued the Jewish Federation Los Angeles on Wednesday, following the latter’s suit claiming it owned a Nazi-looted Lucas Cranach diptych, Adam and Eve, made around 1530, in the museum’s collection, reports Courthouse News Service. The museum argues a previous federal lawsuit in its favor should override the Jewish Federation’s new attempt to assert ownership using a new California law allowing residents to revisit failed legal attempts to recuperate Nazi-looted art. The museum’s complaint states that “the finality of the prior von Saherjudgment is beyond dispute … this court found on the merits that the museum was the sole owner of the Cranachs.”

FACING UP. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has selected artist Danh Võ for its 2027 Genesis Façade Commission, reports ArtAsiaPacific. This will be the fourth presentation installed on the museum’s 5th Avenue Beaux-Arts façade, and the Vietnamese-born artist plans to exhibit four sculptures. “A façade is the place where the museum meets the street, and it is also an expression of its values over time,” Võ said in a statement. In addition, the Norwegian Congolese artist Sandra Mujinga was chosen to make a site-specific installation for the Met’s 2027 Great Hall Commission.

The Digest

The Biennale Jogja Foundation in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, has announced it is closing its operations after 16 years of overseeing the Biennale Jogja, due to “a political regime” amid “chaotic economic and political policies, increasing censorship, and violence against activists and protesters.” [ArtAsiaPacific]

Three years after it was removed, plans are in the works to return a restored 1914 Confederate memorial to Arlington National Cemetery, which includes the figure of a Black woman holding the child of a white officer and a slave following his owner to war. [NBC]

The opening of the Centre Pompidou Paraná in southern Brazil has been delayed again amid a local government shift and is now expected to open in 2029. [The Art Newspaper]

Australia has returned a 14,000-year-old carved stone slab to Jordan that was found in Wadi Al Hammah and taken to the National Gallery of Australia in 1985. [Menafn]

Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, the Spanish Baroness whose family’s private collection is exhibited in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, is bringing to auction a 1944 painting of a sailboat at sea by Edward Hopper on November 18 at Sotheby’s in New York, with a high estimate of $30 million. [El Pais]

Rubaiya Qatar, the new quadrennial on vie November 21 to April 30 in Doha, has revealed the full list of participating artists, who number over 120. [ArtReview]

The Kicker

DEALING WITH DISASTER. William Kentridge talks to Ocula as his latest film premieres at London’s Goodman Gallery.Titled A Nicely Built City (Never Resists Destruction), the stop-animation film is accompanied by an exhibition of artworks. It looks at Johannesburg’s industrial transformation, and how wilderness returns to the city as its center collapses. Asked about using humor in his films, alongside the political weight of their subjects, Kentridge responded: “I don’t think there’s a contradiction between the serious and the light, and how the one illuminates the other. I think the category of the absurd is also important. Tragedy isn’t a good way of dealing with social disaster. Comedy may be closer, but the category of the absurd, which can move between the two, is central.” Read on to learn Kentridge’s thoughts on Anselm Kiefer’s “fantastic woodcuts,” the “poetic and politically powerful” art of Alfredo Jaar, his own studio process, and more.