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May 24, 2022 at 3:23pm

Dealer Inigo Philbrick Sentenced to Seven Years Over $86 Million Fraud

Once considered a rising young star in the gallery world, dealer Inigo Philbrick on Monday was sentenced to seven years in jail after pleading guilty to charges of wire fraud totaling $86 million. The sentence is less than the recommended minimum of just over ten years. Philbrick
has been imprisoned since November 2020, when US authorities picked him up on the South Pacific island of Vanuatu, whence he had fled. Judge Sidney H. Stein of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that the two years the dealer has already spent in jail will count as time served toward his sentence. Among the

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May 23, 2022 at 7:41pm

Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation to Return 23 Artifacts to Namibia

Berlin’s Ethnological Museum of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is sending twenty-three ancient objects to Namibia as a joint research project between that institution and the Museums Association of Namibia, reports Monopol. The purpose of the project, undertaken in spring 2019, had been to assess the cultural value of about fourteen hundred artifacts and to uncover their history; some of the objects are believed to have been taken during the genocide committed by German military forces against the Herero and Nama people between 1904 and 1908. The items that will travel to Namibia are

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May 23, 2022 at 1:19pm

Nan Goldin Awarded 2022 Käthe Kollwitz Prize

Nan Goldin has been named the recipient of the 2022 Käthe Kollwitz Prize. The prestigious award, presented by the Berlin Academy of Arts, recognizes contemporary photographers who have made important contributions in their field. The photographer, filmmaker, and activist is being lauded for her intimate, pathbreaking work focused on the LQBTQ+ community. She will receive the prize, which is accompanied by an E12,000 ($12,800) award, in early 2023; an attendant exhibition of her work will run from January to March of that year.
In an oeuvre spanning more than four decades, Goldin has examined

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May 23, 2022 at 12:34pm

Artists Lose Suit to Protect Work in Manhattan Jail Demolition

Two artists on May 18 lost a suit to protect their work from being destroyed along with a jail in New York City’s Chinatown neighborhood. Citing the federal Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, Kit-Yin Snyder and Richard Haas had filed a suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York asking that demolition of the Manhattan Detention Complex, which houses works commissioned by the artists through the city’s Percent for Art program, be halted. The pair were were supported in their effort by local activists Neighbors United Below Canal. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, however, ruled

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May 19, 2022 at 1:51pm

Colette Pierce Burnette Chosen to Lead Indianapolis Museum of Art

Colette Pierce Burnette has been named as the next president and chief executive officer of Newfields, the campus housing the Indianapolis Museum of Art. She will be the first Black woman to helm the museum since its founding in 1883.Burnette replaces Charles Venable, who stepped down in February 2021 after nine years with the institution. His departure followed a job posting by the museum seeking a director capable of helping the institution diversify while maintaining its “traditional, core, white art audience.”
The public outcry sparked by the advertisement led to an open letter by staff

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May 19, 2022 at 9:43am

Greece and UK Agree to Discuss Repatriation of Parthenon Marbles

In a landmark agreement, the UK will hold formal talks with Greece in regard to the repatriation of the Parthenon marbles, which Greece has actively sought since 1983. Also known as the Elgin marbles, the ancient sculptures were stolen from the Acropolis in 1801 by Lord Elgin and have been held in the collection of London’s British Museum for more than two hundred years. No date has yet been set for an initial meeting, which was proposed by the UK on April 29 and accepted by Greece. Unesco announced the agreement on May 17.
Created between 447 BCE and 432 BCE, the contested objects comprise

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May 18, 2022 at 6:33pm

Sandra Benites, MASP’s First Indigenous Curator, Quits amid Censorship Kerfuffle

Sandra Benites, a member of the Guaraní Ñandeva people who in 2019 became the first Indigenous curator hired by the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP), has resigned from the institution after officials there declined to show a half dozen works depicting the left-leaning Landless Workers Movement (MST) in an exhibition she was co-organizing. The six photos showed members of the Marxist-influenced group, which for more than thirty years has supported the redistribution of land as a way of rectifying wealth disparity, and were to have appeared in “Retomadas” (Resumptions), a

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May 18, 2022 at 4:11pm

Warhol Foundation Commits $350,000 to Ukrainian Emergency Relief

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts today announced that it is committing $350,000 to four agencies supplying emergency relief to the visual arts community in Ukraine. The funding comes as Russia continues its unprovoked attack on Ukraine, launched in February and resulting in tremendous devastation across the country, with some twelve million citizens displaced. Among the efforts the money will sustain are those intended to bring artists to safety, protect artworks and institutions, and provide arts and culture workers with food, shelter, and medical care.
“As artists and cultural

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May 17, 2022 at 1:05pm

Independent to Launch Fair Devoted to Diversifying the Canon of Twentieth-Century Art

Elizabeth Dee and Matthew Higgs, respectively the founder and the founding curatorial advisor of the New York–based Independent art fair, have announced the launch of a new fair dedicated to twentieth-century art. Slated to run concurrent with the Armory Show, the inaugural edition of Independent 20th Century will take place September 8–11 at the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan. Participation is by invitation only: Some thirty galleries have been asked to display work this year, with a focus on underrepresented artists of the past century.
Dee, who initiated the original Independent

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May 16, 2022 at 4:24pm

Albers Foundation to Establish New Museum in Senegal

The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in conjunction with its own grant-issuing, Senegal-focused nonprofit Le Korsa has announced plans for a new museum in Senegal that will serve as both a community center and an exhibition space for art. Bët-bi, as the institution will be known (the name means “the eye” in the local Wolof language), will also function as a waystation for repatriated objects from museums around the world as they make their way back to their rightful homes. The museum will occupy 10,700 square feet and is being designed by Atelier Masōmī, the architecture firm founded by Mariam

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May 16, 2022 at 2:40pm

Gilane Tawadros to Lead London’s Whitechapel Gallery

Gilane Tawadros has been appointed director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, where she will take up her new post this October. Tawadros has since 2009 served as chief executive of the London-based Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS), a nonprofit specializing in artists rights management. She succeeds lwona Blazwick, who helmed the Whitechapel for two decades. Blazwick in January announced that she would be stepping down this spring, noting, “As the gallery emerges from the pandemic in a strong financial position and with programs admired and respected around the world, now seems a

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May 13, 2022 at 4:30pm

Stephanie Rosenthal Named Project Director of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

Stephanie Rosenthal has been announced as the new project director of the long-awaited Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a collaboration between Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation that has been in the works for nearly twenty years. Rosenthal will depart Berlin’s Gropius Bau, where she has served since arriving in 2018 as the gallery’s first female director. In her new role with the Guggenheim, she will take charge of the institution’s forecast 2025 opening, working in tandem with Maisa Al Qassimi, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi’s acting project director for the

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