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The Headlines
UNIONERS PAY PRICE. In 2023, employees at Snøhetta, the prominent New York–based architecture firm, mounted an unsuccessful effort to unionize. Now the National Labor Relations Board has accused the firm of unlawfully retaliating against workers who supported the campaign, the New York Times reports. In a complaint issued on Friday, a regional NLRB director alleged that Snøhetta illegally dismissed eight employees for backing the union and engaging in protected collective activity, and that managers improperly questioned staff about their union sympathies. Snøhetta has denied the allegations. In a statement, partner Elaine Molinar said the layoffs stemmed from business pressures that predated the union drive and that the firm was largely unaware of individual employees’ views. The case comes amid a broader surge in union organizing across white-collar professions, which former Snøhetta employees said fueled their organizing push, made more fraught by management’s expressed concerns that unionization would alter the firm’s culture. Internal emails cited by the labor board appear to show managers tracking union supporters ahead of layoffs, evidence the agency says points to anti-union animus. The case will now proceed before a labor judge unless settled.
SPOTLIGHT ON FEMALE ARTISTS. This year’s Singapore Art Week arrives with a welcome sense of occasion, placing women artists from Southeast Asia firmly in the spotlight. Among the highlights are the launch of Krystina Lyon’s book You Are Seen: Women’s Contemporary Art Practice in Southeast Asia and “Fear No Power: Women Imagining Otherwise,” a major National Gallery Singapore exhibition bringing together five trailblazers from across the region. “It’s going to be a big women’s moment,” Audrey Yeo, president of the Art Galleries Association Singapore, told the Art Newspaper. These initiatives reflect decades of slow, determined work to secure visibility for women artists navigating hugely different political and social contexts. As Lyon notes, recognition often depends on the friction between an artist’s practice and conservative local norms, with the likes of Filipina performance artist Eisa Jocson or Indonesia’s Sasmita reaching international prominence before local acceptance follows. At NGS, “Fear No Power” (through November 15) situates performance artist Amanda Heng, who will represent Singapore at the 2026 Venice Biennale, alongside peers from Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, revealing shared histories of activism, care, and resistance.
The Digest
Philip Leider, the founding editor in chief of Artforum, has died at the age of 96. [Artforum]
Mexican architecture studio LANZA has been chosen to design this year’s Serpentine Pavilion, the 25th iteration of the prestigious outdoor commission on the museum’s site in London’s Kensington Gardens. [Ocula]
Two nearly identical portraits of George Washington by Charles Peale Polk will hit the auction block at Christie’s and Sotheby’s on back-to-back days this month, as the US marks its 250th anniversary. [Artnet News]
A hiker in Kayseri, Central Anatolia, Turkey, discovered a series of human-shaped rock paintings on exposed surfaces and reported them to local authorities. [Heritage Daily]
The Kicker
PULLED A FAST ONE. Newly released footage from the Louvre’s October heist shows guards huddled helplessly in a corner as robbers smashed display cases and walked away with royal jewels, unchallenged, the Times of London writes. Security cameras inside the Galerie d’Apollon, obtained by France Télévisions, reveal just how swiftly the four thieves carried out the raid, making off with an estimated $102 million in gems in barely four minutes. Several suspects, many of whom are residents of Paris’s northern suburbs, have since been arrested and charged over the audacious Sunday morning assault on the famed museum, though police have yet to recover any of the stolen treasures.
