Art news daily: 28 January | Apollo Magazine

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Federally funded museums reopen after US government shutdown | Museums and galleries and arts organisations will reopen this week after the 35-day partial government shutdown came to a close on Friday. The National Endowment of the Arts is opening today; the Smithsonian Institution museums (apart from the excluding the Renwick Gallery, which reopens on 2 February) and the National Gallery of Art reopen tomorrow. Federal workers who had been furloughed without pay during the shutdown will now be paid, although not all contractors may be entitled to back pay.

Banksy mural stolen from Bataclan theatre in Paris | A mural painted by the street artist Banksy on the emergency exit door of the Bataclan, the site of a November 2015 terrorist attack in which 90 concertgoers died, has been stolen. The work, which depicts an ambiguous veiled figure, appeared in June last year. The door was taken from the venue on Friday night and the Bataclan confirmed the theft through social media on Saturday morning.

Fine Art Group acquires the Falcon Group’s art lending division | The Fine Art Group, a London company advising art collectors, has acquired Falcon Fine Art, a division of Kamel Alzarka’s Falcon Group that makes art-secured loans. Chief executive of The Fine Art Group, Freya Stewart, calls the acquisition an ‘art-financing business consolidation’ but did not disclose the terms of the deal.

Johns Hopkins to buy Newseum building for $372.5m | Johns Hopkins University is buying the home of the Newseum, the museum dedicated to journalism in Washington, D.C. The sale for $372.5m will allow the university to expand its presence in the US capital. The Newseum will stay at its current venue for the rest of this year as it finds a new site for the collections and what chief executive Jan Neuharth describes as ‘a more financially sustainable way’.