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The Headlines
GEORGE BOOTH, the New Yorker cartoonist whose beloved work captures humans, cats, and dogs getting up to all sorts of bizarre, glorious trouble, died on Tuesday at 96, the New York Times reports. The magazine’s editor, David Remnick, said that Booth “created an astonishing world, one that was wholly his own: chaotic, strange, beyond hilarious,” according to the Associated Press. Booth began contributing to the New Yorker in 1969, and was responsible for around 20 covers and many, many more cartoons inside its pages. In the first issue after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he contributed its only cartoon. The publication had said it would not run any, but he still sent in a drawing with one of his regular characters, an older woman named Mrs. Ritterhouse. She is sitting quietly, head lowered, as a cat buries its head under its paws.
Related Articles
RESTITUTION WATCH. Croatia is signaling it will make efforts to return art stolen from Jewish people during the Holocaust, the New York Times reports. With the World Jewish Restitution Organization, it has published a report of some looted material held in museums in the country and its culture ministry has established a group to conduct provenance research. Its minister of culture, Nina Obuljen Korzinek, said in a statement quoted by the Times that the government “shares the wish to provide Holocaust survivors and their heirs with a fair measure of justice.” There have not yet been any restitutions.
The Digest
The Solow Art and Architecture Foundation, which holds the late real-estate magnate Sheldon Solow’s art collection, said that it plans to open a museum next year. The nonprofit has faced criticism for not providing public access to that art, which have been housed in the Solow Building on 57th Street in Manhattan. [Artnet News]
No timetable has been announced, but the British Museum will prioritize a refresh of its galleries for Greek and Assyrian art, where the Parthenon Marbles are located, in a renovation plan for which it is currently raising £1 billion ($1.12 billion). [The Art Newspaper]
What’s next for Marc Spiegler, who is stepping down as Art Basel’s global director at the end of this year? “I’m having a lot of conversations, but as Chris Dercon once advised me, ‘Never take the first train.’ ” A veteran museum leader, Dercon was recently named director of the Fondation Cartier. [Financial Times]
Phaidon is putting out a new monograph of the photographer Steven Klein, and he got the profile treatment from Jacob Bernstein. His photos “have edge,” designer Tom Ford said. “They can be slightly shocking, not in an extreme way but in a way that makes you stop and look closely.” [The New York Times]
Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist and art collector Flea has listed his compound in La Crescenta, California, for $8.8 million. It consists of three structures, one of which was designed by Richard Neutra. [Architectural Digest]
The Kicker
A FAMILY AFFAIR. In Architectural Digest, writer and filmmaker Lena Dunham has an article about building a house for herself in Connecticut, right behind the one where her parents, artists Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham , live. Her mother and father advised on the project, and the younger Dunham relays some choice anecdotes about the whole process, including this one: “I was gone when they broke ground, getting occasional updates—like the time my father sent me a text of shirtless construction workers placing shingles in the blazing sun with the words ‘hot guys on your roof.’ Thanks, Pop.” [AD]