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  • The NMACC at the Jio World Centre in Mumbai. Photo: NMACC.
    October 06, 2022 at 3:45pm

    New Cultural Center Planned for Mumbai

    A massive new cultural center hosting art, performance, and fashion will open next March in Mumbai, courtesy of its founder, philanthropist Nita Ambani. The Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) will comprise roughly 16,000 feet of exhibition space and three theaters—one of which will seat 2,000 and feature a lotus-petal ceiling installation made of 8,400 Swarovski crystals—housed in a three-story building set within the Jio World Centre. The cultural and business hub, which occupies Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex neighborhood, is also funded by Ambani and encompasses two convention centers,

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  • Chris Dercon. Photo: Dazaifu89/Wikipedia Commons.
    October 06, 2022 at 1:34pm

    Grand Palais Director Chris Dercon to Lead Fondation Cartier

    Chris Dercon, who since 2019 has served as the director of the Grand Palais in Paris, is leaving to become director of the contemporary art space Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. Dercon, according to French daily Le Monde, was involved in masterminding the ousting early this year of long-running art fair FIAC from the Grand Palais, which will instead host a new art fair organized by MCH Group, the conglomerate that runs Art Basel. The inaugural edition of that event, Paris+, launches this month at the new temporary exhibition hall Grand Palais Éphémère, as the Grand Palais is undergoing

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  • The Parthenon marbles at the British Museum. Photo: Txllxt TxllxT/Wikipedia Commons.
    October 06, 2022 at 11:29am

    UK Prime Minister Liz Truss Refuses Return of Parthenon Marbles to Greece

    Newly appointed UK prime minister Liz Truss has revealed that she opposes a scheme that would see the UK and Greece share possession of the Parthenon marbles that since 1817 have been held by the British Museum. “I don’t support that,” she told television and radio channel GB News, when asked about the plan, suggested in June by British Museum chair and former UK chancellor George Osborne, that would see the contested antiquities loaned to Greece.

    At issue are fifteen metopes, seventeen figural sculptures, and a portion of a frieze that graced the 2,500-year-old Parthenon temple on the Acropolis

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  • Dimitri Ozerkov in 2012. Photo: Valerij Ledenev/Flickr.
    October 04, 2022 at 3:09pm

    Hermitage Museum’s Contemporary Art Chief Quits over Russia’s War in Ukraine

    Dimitri Ozerkov, who since 2007 has led the contemporary art department at the State Hermitage Museum in Moscow, has stepped down from his role there in protest of Russia’s violent and continued invasion of Ukraine. Ozerkov announced his departure in an October 2 Instagram post, featuring a manipulated image of a glowing airplane emergency exit sign, in which he averred that he was leaving because “I don’t intend to have anything in common with today’s Russia.”

    Ozerkov revealed that he made the decision to leave in March, shortly after Russia began its aggressive foray into Ukraine, and in the

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  • The curatorial team for Sonsbeek 20–24.
    October 03, 2022 at 3:16pm

    Sonsbeek Artistic Director, Curators Resign over “Unbearable” Working Conditions

    Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, artistic director of the Arnhem, Netherlands, outdoor sculpture biennial Sonsbeek 20–24, and the event’s cocurators announced that they would depart their posts en masse November 1, citing working conditions that they described in a letter to the organizing foundation’s board as “precarious and ultimately unbearable.” According to Dutch daily NRC, Ndikung and his team claim they were for three years subjected to sexism and institutional racism, as well as poor treatment by management, and that both Sonsbeek officials and the board ignored their repeatedly stated

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  • London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. Photo: Alinangel/Wikipedia Commons.
    October 03, 2022 at 2:06pm

    Victoria & Albert Museum Finally Removes Sackler Name

    London’s Victoria & Albert Museum last week became the latest major arts institution to strip the Sackler name from its walls, yielding to years of activist pressure. The Guardian reports that the museum had expunged the tainted name from its education center and from a courtyard, and that it will work to remove it from other less prominent spaces within its walls. The V&A early this summer reached a mutual agreement with the descendants of Mortimer D. Sackler to remove the name and sever financial ties with their longtime benefactors owing to that branch of the Sackler family’s connections to

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  • Unionized staff rally in front of the Brooklyn Museum on September 28. Photo: Brooklyn Museum Union.
    October 03, 2022 at 1:40pm

    Unionized Brooklyn Museum Workers Rally in Support of a Fair Contract

    Unionized staff of the Brooklyn Museum on September 28 staged a two-hour rally in front of the institution in an effort to bring awareness to their demands for a fair contract from museum management. The workers, who assembled across the plaza that sits in front of the museum’s main entrance, timed their gathering to coincide with an evening open house celebrating the opening of the institution’s freshly restored Islamic and Asian art galleries. According to The Art Newspaper, many visitors swerved to avoid engaging the demonstrators as they entered the museum.

    “We’re rallying, hoping to bring

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  • View of Li Songsong’s Six Men, 2008, at UCCA Beijing. Photo: Weibo.
    September 30, 2022 at 6:22pm

    UCCA Beijing Forced to Pull Painting of Kamikazes

    The UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing removed a painting by Beijing-based artist Li Songsong depicting a group of youthful Japanese kamikaze pilots under orders from local government, Art Asia Pacific reports. 

    Officials at the museum pulled the 2008 work, Six Men, by Beijing-based artist Li Songsong, from the museum’s wall and from its website after images of the work circulating on Chinese social media site Weibo generated unease. Users of the platform expressed concern that the work, whose subjects are discernible despite the painting’s largely abstract nature, glorified both the

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  • Serhiy Svetoslavsky’s Ice Harvesting, ca. 1900, in the collection of the Kherson Regional Art Museum. Photo: Arthive.com.
    September 29, 2022 at 4:09pm

    Ukrainian Museum Collections to Come Under Russian Control as Annexation Looms

    Several dozen Ukrainian museums will be commandeered by Russia on September 30 after President Vladimir Putin signs a decree annexing the occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. The signing follows a raft of referendums, widely condemned as shams, that saw the citizens of those regions vote by a broad margin to agree to be annexed by the Russian Federation. Russia will thus gain possession of the thousands of artifacts and heritage works in the institutions’ collections.

    The Art Newspaper did a deep dive into the institutions whose treasures will be lost to the

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  • Meg Onli and Chrissie Iles. Photo: The Whitney Museum of American Art.
    September 29, 2022 at 2:24pm

    Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli to Curate 2024 Whitney Biennial

    The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, has revealed that Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli will co-organize the eighty-first iteration of the Whitney Biennial, slated to open in the spring of 2024. Iles is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator at the Whitney and has co-organized two previous editions of the Biennial. Responsible in large part for the building and shaping of the museum’s collection of moving image art, she is the curator most recently of the Whitney’s group show “Mountain/Time,” which investigates concepts surrounding re-mapping, migration, and Black and Indigenous geographies.

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  • Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂), Never Forget, 2021, in the Forge Project collection. Photo: Jason Wyche.
    September 28, 2022 at 4:00pm

    Bard College Receives $50 Million Gift in Support of Indigenous Studies

    Bard College has received a “transformational” $25 million gift from the Gochman Family Foundation and a matching gift of $25 million from George Soros and the Open Society Foundations. The money will be used to fund a Center for Indigenous Studies along with faculty appointments and student scholarships. As well, the college’s American Studies Program will be renamed the American and Indigenous Studies Program to “more fully reflect continental history,” according to a Bard press release, and to center Native American and Indigenous Studies in the school’s curriculum. A chair for a distinguished

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  • Issue seven of The Drift.
    September 28, 2022 at 9:08am

    David Zwirner Announces Partnership with Literary Magazine The Drift

    David Zwirner today announced a partnership with two-year-old literary magazine The Drift that will see the blue-chip gallery become the lead funder of the triannual publication. Zwirner’s involvement will allow the magazine to plan years ahead, undertake more ambitious projects, and establish itself as a platform for new voices and ideas. The Drift will maintain complete editorial independence under the arrangement. Beginning in spring of next year, David Zwirner will host an annual gala for the magazine.

    The Drift was founded in June 2020 by recent Harvard grads Drift Kiara Barrow and Rebecca

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