Chicago Crowds Try and Fail to Move Anish Kapoor’s Bean, Art Lawyer Michael Ward Stout Has Died, Louvre President Says Mona Lisa’s Move Will Be Sad, and More

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• Hundreds in Chicago tried and failed to push the Bean, Anish Kapoor’s iconic Cloud Gate sculpture, seven inches.
• Michael Ward Stout, a lawyer who ran Robert Mapplethorpe’s foundation and represented Salvador Dalí, has died at 83.
• Two oil studies by Peter Paul Rubens, lost for over 80 years, will join three others by the artist to be exhibited at the Ducal Museum in Gotha, Germany.

The Headlines

WHOSE BEAN CALLING? “Push the Bean!” shouted hundreds of people gathered Sunday in Chicago’s Millennium Park. They were there to answer a call to do just that: push Anish Kapoor’s iconic sculpture titled Cloud Gate (popularly referred to as the Bean) seven inches to the left of its location, reports CBS News. Legend and good-excuse-for-gathering-in-person has it that a man is stuck inside the bean and to free him, the sculpture could use a little nudge. The event has gone viral, with videos showing a crowd of outstretched hands reaching toward, trying and failing to push the 110-ton stainless steel sculpture, albeit mostly with just one hand, which arguably reduces their chance of success in half. Their other hands were busy recording with smartphones held high. After all, if a bean moves seven inches, but there is no one there to film and later post it, did it really move? Either way, concerned citizens should know that City Council member Brendan Reilly has long confirmed there is no man trapped inside the Bean. And also, please stop calling him about it.

IN MEMORIAM. Michael Ward Stout, a lawyer who ran Robert Mapplethorpe’s foundation and represented Salvador Dalí, has died at 83, reports The New York Times. Stout handled artist licensing, contracts, exhibitions, and his other clients included the estates of Jean-Michel Basquiat and dealer Barbara Gladstone. We’ve also learned that French video artist Fred Forest died at 93, as reported by Le Monde. In 2017 and 2024, the Centre Pompidou dedicated retrospectives to his video, “sociological art,” and “Net art.” In a message sent by his son, the artist himself announced his own death. “Thanks to the affectionate complicity of my son Adrien, I have the pleasure of announcing my own death,” reads the statement. “Lying in this hole dug in the earth at Anserville [north of Paris], I will now have all the time to reflect calmly on what I will be doing tomorrow, my friends …” signed, Fred Forest.

The Digest

Two oil studies by Peter Paul Rubens, lost for over 80 years, will join three others by the artist to be exhibited at the Ducal Museum in Gotha, Germany, where they had been part of the collection for centuries before their disappearance. [The Art Newspaper]

French investigators have arrested four people in connection with the July thefts of jewelry at the Musée Lalique, and ancient coins at the Archaeology Centre in Montans. [Le Monde]

Following news that The Hole gallery in New York is being sued over back rent and not paying artists and workers, the gallery is facing eviction from its Bowery space and is $102,823 in the hole for owed rent and late charges. [Artnet News]

More than 50 protesters gathered last week in Washington, D.C., to oppose President Trump’s planned triumphal arch. project. [Hyperallergic]

The Grand Rapids Art Museum is staging a powerful survey of art by or about people once incarcerated within the United States, from a 1,000-piece ceramic installation by Julie Green of plates depicting the final-meal choices of people on death row, to quilted appliquéd works by artist Gary Tyler, who was wrongly convicted at seventeen years old. [ARTnews]

The Kicker

LONELY MONA LISA. Will the Mona Lisa’s smile feel lonelier if she’s removed from her current gallery in the Louvre and placed in a new one by herself? To Louvre president Christophe Leribault, at least, the prospect is decidedly triste, despite it being a key part of the museum’s major new, over $1-billion-dollar renovation plan for which he is actively fundraising. As he told the Wall Street Journal, Leribault explained that moving the Mona Lisa to her own room will control crowds, but “is sad,” because it “will separate the Mona Lisa from the other Leonardo da Vinci paintings.” For now, and despite planned protests, the Louvre remains open, and visitors can try to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa in the good company of other Da Vinci paintings and throngs of selfie-wielding tourists.