News

  • April 16, 2018 at 6:21am

    Thomas Bompard Appointed Chairman of Sotheby’s West Coast

    Sotheby’s has announced that Thomas Bompard, one of the company’s leading specialists in Impressionist and modern art, will relocate from London to Los Angeles to begin his new role as chairman of Sotheby’s West Coast and senior specialist in the fine art division, effective immediately.

    “The collecting community in Los Angeles has reached a level of power and sophistication that demands senior expertise on the ground to work with clients every day,” said Amy Cappellazzo, chairman of the Sotheby’s fine art division. “Having worked in the international centers of Paris and London, Thomas will

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  • April 13, 2018 at 5:36pm

    Stolen Marc Chagall Painting Found Thirty Years After Its Theft

    A Marc Chagall painting, Othello and Desdemona, 1911, has been recovered by the FBI almost thirty years after it was reported missing. The artwork was one of the items stolen from a Manhattan apartment while retired jeweler Ernest “Pick” Heller and his wife, Rose “Red” Heller, were away on their yearly trip to Aspen in 1988.

    Last year, an unidentified man in Maryland contacted the FBI after he unsuccessfully tried to consign the work to a gallery in Washington, DC, in 2011 and 2017. The gallery owner was suspicious over the lack of paperwork and refused to sell the painting. The dealer then

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  • April 13, 2018 at 1:23pm

    Robert T. Buck Jr. (1939–2018)

    Robert T. Buck Jr., the art historian and longtime museum professional known for his campaign to bring the Brooklyn Museum to the forefront of New York’s cultural scene, died of lung cancer on March 30, Sam Roberts of the New York Times reports. The celebrated arts administrator was seventy-nine years old.

    Born in Fall River, Massachusetts, on February 16, 1939, Buck attended Williams College, where he met his wife, Nicole Challamel, and earned a bachelor’s degree in French in 1961. He intended to pursue a career in banking and even enrolled in an executive training program at the Chemical Bank

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  • April 13, 2018 at 12:46pm

    American Academy in Rome Announces 2018–19 Fellows

    The American Academy in Rome has announced that twenty-nine artists and scholars will receive 2018–19 Rome Prize and Italian Fellowships in support of advanced independent work and research in the arts and humanities. The fellows will be given a stipend, workspace, and room and board for a period of five months to two years at the Academy’s eleven-acre campus in Rome.

    The full list of recipients is as follows:

    Ancient Studies

    Liana Brent 

    Allison L. C. Emmerson

    Eric J. Kondratieff

    Mark Letteney

    Victoria C. Moses

    Sean Tandy

    Architecture

    Erin Besler

    Marcel Sanchez Prieto

    Design

    Dylan Fracareta

    Amy Franceschini

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  • April 13, 2018 at 8:46am

    Chris Dercon, Director of Berlin’s Storied Volksbühne Theater, Resigns

    Chris Dercon has abruptly stepped down from his position as director of the Volksbühne Theater in Berlin after a tumultuous tenure. According to a statement issued by the City of Berlin today, Dercon and the senator for culture, Klaus Lederer, “have mutually agreed” to the resignation, which is effective immediately.

    Dercon took over the helm of the prestigious theater from Frank Castorf, who was known for staging experimental programming during his twenty-five years as director of the Volksbühne. His appointment was met with widespread protests when it was announced in 2015.

    In an open letter

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  • April 13, 2018 at 8:31am

    Carol B. Cadou to Lead Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library

    Carol B. Cadou, currently the senior vice president of historic preservation and collections at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, was named director and CEO of Delaware’s Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library. She will succeed David P. Roselle, who announced that he will step down from the helm of the institution on June 1, after ten years as executive director.

    “Henry Francis du Pont had a remarkable vision for the role of his collections in telling the American story,” said Cadou of the American horticulturist and collector of early American furniture and decorative arts, who founded the

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  • April 13, 2018 at 8:00am

    Florida’s Norton Museum of Art Gifted More Than One Hundred Works

    The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, announced that collectors Howard and Judie Ganek have pledged to donate more than one hundred works of modern and contemporary art to the institution. Among the artworks are paintings by Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, Ed Ruscha, and Kara Walker; sculptures by Theaster Gates, Donald Judd, Anish Kapoor, Mario Merz, Juan Muñoz, and Kiki Smith; and photo-based works by Matthew Barney, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, and Pipilotti Rist.

    The gift was made in advance of the institution’s reopening on February 19, 2019, and

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  • April 12, 2018 at 6:34pm

    Ellen Salpeter Steps Down as Director of Institute of Contemporary Art Miami

    Miami’s Institute of Contemporary Art announced today that director Ellen Salpeter will resign on June 1. Salpeter joined ICA Miami in late 2015 to oversee the completion and inauguration of the museum’s new permanent home in the Miami Design District.

    “It has been a great privilege working alongside ICA Miami’s visionary board and staff during this pivotal moment in the life of the museum,” Salpeter said in a statement. “I’m extremely proud of all that we have achieved together. With the new building launched, the museum’s program for the coming seasons set, and the institution on stable financial

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  • April 12, 2018 at 3:55pm

    Gillian Ayres (1930–2018)

    Gillian Ayres, the British painter and printmaker whose vibrant abstractions earned her a Turner Prize nomination in 1989, has died at age eighty-eight. Since the 1960s, Ayres has been considered a leading contemporary artist in the United Kingdom; she received a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2011. Born in 1930 to affluent parents, Ayres studied abstract art at the Camberwell School of Art at sixteen years old. In 1957 she had her debut solo exhibition in London, eventually rising to international fame in the late 1950s despite the chillier response to her

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  • April 12, 2018 at 1:13pm

    Berlin’s Academy of the Arts Reopens Its Exhibition Space

    An installation by Israeli artist Micha Ullman inaugurates Berlin’s Academy of the Arts’ exhibition space. The venue reopened on April 9, following a three-year renovation project, which fixed problems with its air-circulation system.

    According to Monopol, deficiencies with the system were first acknowledged in 2005, shortly after the building opened its doors. The institution’s reading room and archive, located in its basement, lacked a sufficient fresh-air supply. The academy’s construction committee had originally estimated that the project would cost $38.5 million, but in 2017, the group said

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  • April 12, 2018 at 12:35pm

    After Harassment Accusations, ICA to Close Nicholas Nixon Show at Artist's Behest

    The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston is ending an exhibition of Nicholas Nixon’s photographs ten days before the scheduled closing date after the artist, who was recently accused of sexual harassment by former students at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, asked the museum to shut it down. In a statement provided to Artnet, the ICA quoted Nixon as saying that he felt his works could no longer “be viewed on their own merits.” The museum originally intended to create new signage for the show following the allegations, a controversial move that would have kept the show up until

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  • April 12, 2018 at 11:30am

    MassArt Embroiled in Controversy over Resignation of Filmmaker Saul Levine

    The Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston is facing backlash over the resignation of longtime professor Saul Levine. The experimental filmmaker claims that he was forced into early retirement after he was “ambushed” by school administrators at a February 8 meeting and accused of “harming students” by showing his 1989 film Notes After Long Silence to his senior thesis class.

    The work—which includes a montage of footage from events such as the Vietnam War, of people such as Gerald Ford and B. B. King, and of abstract images—features Levine and his partner naked and having sex.

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