On Wednesday the board of trustees of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) agreed not to censure or penalise museums that use restricted funds, trusts or donations for operating expenses, for a period until April 2022. It also agreed on a policy that allows members to deaccession works from their collections only for the purpose of looking after the rest of the collection. ‘This is a crisis without precedent in our lifetime, with global implications and with a timeline that unfolds as we live it,’ said the organisation’s president Brent Benjamin, who is the director of the St Louis Art Museum.
I visited Laila Muraywid’s studio in Paris, it is the kind of place that rearranges your inner geography. A Syrian artist working between painting and sculpture, she creates objects that feel at once intimate yet cosmic, like relics from ancient times that pulse with contemporary pain and splendour.