[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/makeda.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
BRINGING OUT THE BEST<\/strong>. The\u00a0Museum of Modern Art<\/strong>\u00a0in New York finally has a new chief curator of photography:\u00a0Makeda Best<\/strong>, who has served as deputy director at the\u00a0Oakland Museum of California\u00a0<\/strong>since 2023,\u00a0reports\u00a0the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>. The plum position \u201chas influenced, implicitly or explicitly, so much of how we understand the medium,\u201d said Best, who starts in September. It has also been vacant for almost four years. \u201cI\u2019m someone who\u2019s very much committed to big stories from the collection,\u201d added Best, offering by way of example the legacy of historic MoMA photo curator\u00a0Edward Steichen<\/strong>, who spearheaded deep acquisitions from the\u00a0Farm Security Administration<\/strong>\u00a0during the Great Depression. Best is also a photographer who studied at CalArts and earned a doctorate in art history at Harvard. She served as photography curator at\u00a0Harvard Art Museums<\/strong>. Best told the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0she wants to \u201cexpand the kinds of photography that we see,\u201d and that it\u2019s a medium \u201cthat\u2019s always been in crisis, that\u2019s always questioning itself.\u201d With audiences increasingly looking for different experiences and connections, \u201cit doesn\u2019t work anymore just to hang things on the wall,\u201d said Best.<\/p>\n BELGIAN-FRENCH CONNECTION<\/strong>. A new lead has emerged in the hunt for the French crown jewels\u00a0stolen\u00a0from the\u00a0Louvre<\/strong>\u00a0on October 19, 2025, according to French\u00a0reports. Belgian police found photographs of the Louvre \u2014 including the\u00a0Galerie d\u2019Apollon<\/strong>, where the jewels were displayed \u2014 on the cellphones of several Eastern European individuals arrested in Belgium on unrelated cargo-theft charges. France and Belgium have since launched a joint investigation, as authorities attempt to determine whether there is any connection between the cargo-theft suspects in Belgium and four other suspects French authorities have charged with their alleged roles in the\u00a0brazen\u00a0Louvre heist. The eight stolen crown jewels, estimated at over $102 million, are still nowhere to be found, as hope wanes that they remain intact.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tColorado has passed a law that gives artists legal tools to create an \u201cArtist Company,\u201d or a new limited liability company that will help monetize their labor and retain intellectual property rights. [The Art Newspaper<\/strong>]<\/p>\n \n\tStrong winds have damaged an inflatable giant cave installation on the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, created by French artist\u00a0JR<\/strong>\u00a0as a tribute to artists\u00a0Christo and Jeanne-Claude<\/strong>, delaying its public opening. [Le Figaro<\/strong>]<\/p>\n \n\tStudents in Rome discovered a 2nd-century BCE Roman villa, complete with floral frescoes and mosaics, behind a locked iron door in their high school basement, confirming old suspicions. [Times of London<\/strong>]<\/p>\n Matthias Lilienthal<\/strong>, the new artistic director of Berlin\u2019s experimental\u00a0Volksb\u00fchne theater<\/strong>, plans to install a swimming pool open to all and free of charge, right in front of the building, from August to October. [dpa<\/strong>]<\/p>\n \n\tExperienced television executive\u00a0Dawn Airey<\/strong>\u00a0has been appointed chair of\u00a0Arts Council England<\/strong>. [ArtReview<\/strong>]<\/p>\n NOT THAT VENICE<\/strong>. The May opening of the\u00a0often-billed\u00a0\u201cOlympics of the art world\u201d drew international crowds to its packed program of exhibitions in Venice, Italy. But across the world in another Venice, the bustling Los Angeles neighborhood, artist\u00a0Ali Eyal<\/strong>\u00a0and curator\u00a0David Horvitz<\/strong>\u00a0recently staged their own, very collateral and totally unofficial \u201cIraqi Pavilion,\u201d\u00a0reports\u00a0Hyperallergic<\/em>. In their one-day, May 29th installation titled \u201cWelcome to Iraq,\u201d at a Chevron gas station, they posed as petrol salesmen on the black market. Beside them sat an old TV painted with the Arabic words \u201cWe have oil here\u201d and four painted plastic jugs. On each jug, the amount of gas was shown to diminish progressively, eventually resembling a painted sunset. Iraq hasn\u2019t had an official pavilion at the Biennale since 2019. \u201cIf Venice doesn\u2019t officially recognize a pavilion, can we fill that gap?\u201d asked Horvitz. Meanwhile, Eyal sold pocket-sized oil pastel drawings of candles, which represented his family\u2019s source of light when power failed while he was a child growing up in Baghdad during the US-led invasion of Iraq. \u201cOil changed my life as an Iraqi forever,\u201d said the artist. \u201cThis is my own Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/makeda-best-to-lead-moma-photography-department-new-lead-in-louvre-heist-and-more-morning-links-for-june-3-2026-1234788239\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/makeda.jpg?w=1024″] The Headlines BRINGING OUT THE BEST. The\u00a0Museum of Modern Art\u00a0in New York finally has a new chief curator of photography:\u00a0Makeda Best, who has served as deputy director at the\u00a0Oakland Museum of California\u00a0since 2023,\u00a0reports\u00a0the\u00a0New York Times. The plum position \u201chas influenced, implicitly or explicitly, so much of how we understand the medium,\u201d said […]<\/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-1973211","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\/1973211","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=1973211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1973211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1973211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1973211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\t\tThe Digest\t<\/h2>\n
\n\t\tThe Kicker\t<\/h2>\n