The New Yorker has a piece on the infamous battle between Rudy Giuliani and Chris Ofili over the artist’s The Holy Virgin Mary, which the then-mayor sought to have removed from a show at the New Museum, and which has now been acquired by MoMA. “When we acquired the work and put it in front of our committee, it looked like it had descended from Heaven,” MoMA curator Laura Hoptman says.
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German minister of culture Monika Grütters has announced plans to increase the nation’s arts funding by approximately $353 million. Grütters feels the budget sends “a strong signal that culture is the foundation for our open and democratic society.” 
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A piece in the LA Times this week notes the surging popularity of Nigerian art on the international market, and the institutions springing up to cater to a thriving market. “There’s a generation of young, vibrant artists of Nigerian or African origin who have felt that the gallery infrastructure in West Africa is not sufficiently developed for them to connect with the international art market from their home base,” says Tokini Peterside, founder of the Art X Lagos art fair. “For generations, when it comes to exporting its cultural capital and so many other things, Africa has had to go overseas.”
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