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  • Marina Loshak in 2014.
    March 22, 2023 at 5:20pm

    Director Marina Loshak Exits Pushkin Museum

    Director Marina Loshak is leaving Moscow’s Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, which she has led for a decade. Born in Ukraine, Odesa, Loshak arrived in Moscow in 1986. She was appointed director of the Pushkin—home to the city’s largest collection of Western art—in 2013, and since then has organized a number of major exhibitions, frequently collaborating with international institutions. Elizaveta Likhacheva, currently the director of Moscow’s Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, will fill her role.

    Losahak’s departure is thought to be a result of political pressure, which has been intensifying

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  • Jackson Pollock in his studio, 1950. Photo: Hans Namuth.
    March 22, 2023 at 3:08pm

    $54 Million Jackson Pollock Painting Uncovered in Raid

    Authorities in Bulgaria discovered a hitherto-unknown painting by Jackson Pollock in the course of investigating an international art-trafficking ring. According to Bulgarian National Radio, which broke the story, Bulgarian Main Directorate officials were working with a Greek anti-crime unit organized under the Europol umbrella to break up the illegal business, which spanned from  the Sofia region of Bulgaria to Athens and the island of Crete.

    While in the process of arresting three Greek citizens and a Bulgarian national in connection with the operation, Greek officials discovered five works by

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  • Vivian Crockett and Isabella Rjeille. Photos: Ciara Elle Bryant and Vans Bumbeers.
    March 21, 2023 at 1:36pm

    Vivian Crockett and Isabella Rjeille to Curate 2026 New Museum Triennial

    New York’s New Museum has named Vivian Crockett and Isabella Rjeille as the cocurators of its sixth New Museum Triennial, to take place in 2026. Crockett is a curator at the New Museum, to which she arrived in 2022 after serving as assistant curator of contemporary art at the Dallas Museum of Art. Rjeille is a curator at São Paulo’s Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP), which she joined in 2016 as a curatorial assistant. She previously worked at the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and was a curatorial assistant for the Thirty-Second Bienal de São Paulo.

    “These two accomplished

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  • Tower 63 in Seoul. Photo: Jirka Matousek/Flickr.
    March 21, 2023 at 1:16pm

    Centre Pompidou Expands into Seoul

    The Centre Pompidou, Paris, announced today that it is opening a branch in Seoul. The French contemporary art institution will partner with South Korean finance and retail conglomerate Hanwha on the museum, which will occupy Tower 63, the reflective glass skyscraper housing Hanwha’s headquarters. Pompidou Center Hanwha Seoul, as the institution is tentatively named, will be designed by French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte and is scheduled to open in early 2025. According to an agreement signed March 19 by Pompidou president Laurent Le Bon and Hanwha Culture Foundation chair Shin Hyunwoo, the

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  • The $103.4 million sale of Picasso’s Femme assise près d’une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse), 1932, at Christie’s New York in 2021. Photo: Christie’s.
    March 21, 2023 at 10:22am

    Arts Contributed $1 Trillion to US Economy in 2021

    The arts and cultural industry, which made up 4.4 percent of the US economy in 2021, accounted for a record $1 trillion of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) that year. According to a study conducted jointly by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the field rebounded from the global Covid-19 crisis comparatively quickly, expanding by 13.7 percent between 2020 and 2021, while the broader economy gained just 5.9 percent during the same period. Of note, the arts and entertainment sector was among those hardest hit by the pandemic.

    Of the

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  • London’s Whitechapel Gallery. Photo: mira66/Flickr.
    March 16, 2023 at 3:22pm

    Whitechapel Slashes Jobs, Eliminates Curatorial Posts

    London’s Whitechapel Gallery has laid off six staffers, half of whom are high-level curators, The Art Newspaper reports. Among those who are being made redundant are Lydia Yee, who served as the gallery’s chief curator, and Candy Stobbs, an associate curator there for more than two decades. The curatorial team will be led by Gilane Tawadros, who assumed the role of director of the Whitechapel last spring. Tawadros will be assisted by the two remaining curators, a special projects curator, and a head of exhibitions, who has not yet been named, as the position was just created.

    The move comes as

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  • Frieze New York will take place at the Shed in Hudson Yards. Photo: Casey Kelbaugh.
    March 16, 2023 at 1:20pm

    Frieze New York Announces Exhibitors for 2023 Edition

    The organizers of Frieze have revealed the sixty-nine galleries that will be participating in the 2023 iteration of its New York fair. The event is set to take place May 18–21, with a preview on May 17, at the Shed, in the city’s Hudson Yards.

    The lineup, which spans twenty-seven countries, includes global megagalleries Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace Gallery, Perrotin, David Zwirner, Thaddeus Ropac, and White Cube, as well as first-timers Arcadia Missa, Emalin, Silverlens. Among the New York–based galleries exhibiting are Canada, James Cohan, Alexander Gray Associates, Casey Kaplan, and Ortuzar

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  • AlUla, Saudi Arabia. Photo: Royal Commission for AlUla.
    March 15, 2023 at 6:11pm

    Pompidou Will Open New Museum in Saudi Arabia

    Laurent Le Bon, president of Paris’s Centre Pompidou, on March 14 signed an agreement with the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) to establish a massive branch of the contemporary art museum in the fast-growing AlUla region of Saudi Arabia. The outpost will be the fourth for the Pompidou, whose tendrils already reach Metz, France; Malaga, Spain; and Shanghai. The new institution will focus on art from Southwest Asia, North Africa, and South Asia, with an emphasis on twenty-first-century Land art and digital art. As well, the RCU will commission immersive installations and public artworks from Arab

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  • Giardini della Biennale. Photo: Lothar John/Wikimedia Commons.
    March 15, 2023 at 5:29pm

    Inaugural Benin Pavilion to Debut at 2024 Venice Biennale

    The Republic of Benin will stage a national pavilion for the first time at the Sixtieth Venice Biennale, to take place April 20–November 24, 2024. The West African country’s government revealed that the pavilion will be curated by Azu Nwagbogu, founder and director of the Lagos-based nonprofit African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), with the assistance of Yassine Lassissi, artistic director of Lagos’s La Galerie Nationale du Bénin, and architect Franck Houndégla. Playwright José Pliya, the general director of La Galerie Nationale, will commission the pavilion.

    “We are delighted to have Azu Nwagbogu

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  • Phyllida Barlow. Photo: Elon Schoenholz/Hauser & Wirth.
    March 14, 2023 at 4:00pm

    Phyllida Barlow (1944–2023)

    British artist Phyllida Barlow, who placed humble materials in the service of massive works that she described as “nonmonumental,” owing to their rejection of sleek, masculinized form, died March 13 in London at the age of seventy-eight. Her death was confirmed by the gallery Hauser & Wirth, which has represented the artist for over a decade. Barlow served as a mentor to artists including Tacita Dean, Sarah Lucas, and Rachel Whiteread before gaining wide recognition herself in the late aughts. “Image and the pictorial are my enemies. They are what I always want to escape,” she told Artforum’s

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  • A view of the Parthenon marbles at the British Museum in London. Photo: Pjposullivan1/Flickr.
    March 14, 2023 at 3:00pm

    Rishi Sunak Says UK Has “No Plans” to Repatriate Parthenon Marbles

    UK prime minister Rishi Sunak on March 13 told reporters that the British government has “no plans” to return the Parthenon marbles to Greece, despite recent reports to the contrary. “The UK has cared for the Elgin marbles for generations,” said Sunak, as first reported in The Guardian. “Our galleries and museums are funded by taxpayers because they are a huge asset to this country,” Sunak continued. “We share their treasures with the world, and the world comes to the UK to see them. The collection of the British Museum is protected by law, and we have no plans to change it.”

    Sunak’s comments

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  • Carrie Mae Weems. Photo: Hasselblad Foundation © Rolex/Audoin Desforges.
    March 13, 2023 at 7:00pm

    Carrie Mae Weems Wins 2023 Hasselblad Award

    Carrie Mae Weems on March 10 was named the winner of the 2023 Hasselblad Award, becoming the first Black woman in history to win the prize, which includes 2 million Swedish kronor (US $189,000). The honor is considered one of the most prestigious prizes awarded in recognition of a living photographer. Past recipients include Nan Goldin, Miyako Ishiuchi, Graciela Iturbide, Alfredo Jaar, Cindy Sherman, Dayanita Singh, and Wolfgang Tillmans. Weems will receive the award in a ceremony to take place in Gothenburg, Sweden, on October 13; that same day, the Hasselblad center will launch an exhibition

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