Ai Weiwei sends researchers to document Hong Kong protests

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Ai Weiwei sends researchers to document Hong Kong protests | In a BBC interview this morning, artist Ai Weiwei said that he has sent a team of researchers to record the demonstrations that have swept Hong Kong since June and drawn hundreds of thousands of protestors. Ai said that the recordings could become an artwork or a documentary film. ‘We are really on the front line; we are fighting for human rights, for freedom of speech,’ Ai said.

Monique Barbier-Mueller (1929–2019) | Art collector and philanthropist Monique Barbier-Mueller has died at the age of 89. In 1977, Barbier-Mueller and her husband, Jean Paul, established the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva to house her family’s collection of artworks, including antiquities from Africa and Oceania. The couple also established the Barbier-Mueller Museum of Precolumbian Art in Barcelona, which was closed in 2012.

Mead Art Museum receives anonymous gift of 170 contemporary works | The Mead Art Museum at Amherst College in Massachusetts has received 170 works of contemporary art from an anonymous donor. The gift includes artworks by Mark Bradford, Cindy Sherman, Laura Owens, Carroll Dunham, and Mona Hatoum.