[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Maurizio-Cattelan-portrait.webp?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
To receive\u00a0Morning Links\u00a0in your inbox every weekday,\u00a0sign\u00a0up\u00a0for our\u00a0<\/em>Breakfast with ARTnews\u00a0newsletter<\/em>.<\/p>\n The Headlines<\/strong><\/p>\n THE LAST DANCE<\/strong>. Yesterday, Judge Richard Leon<\/strong> halted construction of President Trump<\/strong>\u2019s contentious White House ballroom, ruling that Congress must approve the major building project first, reports the New York Times<\/em>. It is the first time a federal judge has put the brakes on the president\u2019s renovation plans at the White House, but it is too late to save the monument\u2019s East Wing, which Trump already demolished in October to start building the ballroom. \u201cUnless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!\u201d wrote Judge Leon. He also raised concerns about the $350 million in private donations used to fund the project, two-thirds of which the organization\u00a0Public Citizen<\/strong> says are corporate donors who received government contracts to the collective tune of over $275 billion. If Congress does eventually give the go-ahead for the ballroom, \u201cthe American people will benefit from the branches of government exercising their constitutionally prescribed roles,\u201d wrote the judge in his opinion. \u201cNot a bad outcome, that!\u201d<\/p>\n FOR I HAVE SINNED.<\/strong>\u00a0The Guardian\u2019s<\/em> story about the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan<\/strong>\u2019s latest work could be mistaken for an April Fools\u2019 Day prank, though beware, the creator of the viral duct-taped banana oeuvre, Comedian<\/em> (2019), says he\u2019s being entirely serious. He is inviting people from around the world to confess their sins via a free, special hotline to mark the 21st\u00a0anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II<\/strong> this month. Cattelan famously shocked observers with his lifelike wax sculpture, La Nona Ora <\/em>(1999), depicting the very same pope struck by a meteor. Selected callers can then participate in a livestream event on April 23, where the artist will \u201cabsolve\u201d the callers himself. \u201cI don\u2019t see it as absolution. It\u2019s not religious authority, it\u2019s a shared gesture. Confession exists in different forms everywhere \u201a even outside religion,\u201d he said. Or, could the whole thing just be an April Fools\u2019 prank? Asked what his own confession would be, Cattelan revealed, \u201cThat I trust doubt more than certainty,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that irony is sometimes just a way to get closer to things without pretending to own them.\u201d<\/p>\n The Digest<\/strong><\/p>\n Glen Baxter<\/strong>, a British artist and illustrator whose work appeared in the New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0and was also exhibited at the Met\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Pompidou Center<\/strong>\u00a0has died at the age of 82. [The Telegraph]<\/p>\n \n\tThe director of the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations (Mucem)<\/strong> in Marseille, France, Pierre-Oliver Costa<\/strong>, is under investigation for sexual and psychological harassment, following an official complaint from a co-worker. [AFP and Le Figaro]<\/p>\n \n\tThe extended loan of treasured Frida Kahlo<\/strong> artworks in the Gelman Santander Collection<\/strong> for display outside of Mexico has worried the country\u2019s art community, which is demanding greater transparency and adherence to heritage laws. [The Art Newspaper]<\/p>\n \n\tThousands of people in Bratislava<\/strong>, Slovakia, have protested against major government cuts to cultural funding. [dpa]<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cLouvre Museum to Install Locks on Doors After Heist,\u201d reads the headline on Hyperallergic<\/em>\u2019s website, awash with some pretty entertaining satirical pieces in time for April Fools\u2019 Day<\/strong>. [Hyperallergic]<\/p>\n The Kicker<\/strong><\/p>\n MONET MADNESS<\/strong>. December will mark the centenary of Claude Monet<\/strong>\u2019s death, with special exhibitions planned throughout the Impressionist visionary\u2019s favorite haunts captured in his paintings. But expected record crowds are also threatening some of those places, as curators try to do justice to the artist\u2019s legacy, and Monet\u2019s former home and famous garden in Giverny<\/strong> is at the top of that list, reports the Times<\/em>. Today, Monet\u2019s home in Giverny reopens after its annual winter break, and nearly a million visitors are expected to squeeze through its narrow garden paths. \u201cA tremendous amount has been done \u2026 with the house and the garden [but] there is still a tremendous amount to do to address overtourism,\u201d Alain-Charles Perrot<\/strong>, director of the Maison et Jardins de Claude Monet<\/strong>, told French media. \u201cThe delicate problem is restoring a sense of historical truth to the place to better convey a deeper understanding of who Monet really was. I don\u2019t want it to become Disneyland.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/judge-halts-construction-of-trump-ballroom-maurizio-cattelan-wants-you-to-confess-to-him-morning-links-for-april-1-2026-1234779586\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Maurizio-Cattelan-portrait.webp?w=1024″] To receive\u00a0Morning Links\u00a0in your inbox every weekday,\u00a0sign\u00a0up\u00a0for our\u00a0Breakfast with ARTnews\u00a0newsletter. The Headlines THE LAST DANCE. Yesterday, Judge Richard Leon halted construction of President Trump\u2019s contentious White House ballroom, ruling that Congress must approve the major building project first, reports the New York Times. It is the first time a federal judge has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1860013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1860013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1860013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1860013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1860013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}