The artist Robert Ryman has died. Famous for his stark palette, Ryman, who became an artist while working as a guard at MoMA, New York, is considered to have bridged the gap between abstract expressionism and minimalism. Nan Goldin, alongside the activist group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), which the photographer founded to protest the opioid crisis, staged a protest at the Guggenheim Museum in New York on Saturday night. Brandishing signs reading ‘Shame on Sackler’ and ‘Greed Kills’ the action highlighted the institution’s patronage by the Sackler family, who own Purdue Pharma, the developer of Oxycontin. On Tuesday Fatoş Üstek was announced as the new director of the Liverpool Biennial. Currently director and chief curator of the David Roberts Art Foundation in London, she curated Art Night 2017 festival and, in 2015, fig-2, a series of 50 one-week projects presented at the ICA. She will take up her position in May 2019.
On Tuesday Kunsthalle Lissabon announced it would celebrate its tenth anniversary by… disappearing. Vacating their premises for a year, four similarly non-profit international institutions will take over the space in the Portuguese capital as well the ‘production and communication infrastructure, our resources and even our online presence.’ Tate won its high court battle with neighbours in a next-door apartment block who complained a viewing platform on the top floor of the gallery’s new extension was an invasion of privacy and allowed ‘hundreds of thousands of visitors’ looking into their home. Neo Bankside, a four-storey glass-fronted block of flats, was built shortly before the Tate’s Switch House opened, but after the extension plans were made public.
Wednesday saw Van Gogh museum director Axel Rüger appointed the Royal Academy‘s new secretary, while the New York gallerist Mary Boone was handed a hefty 30-month prison sentence for tax evasion.
As the week closes five French galleries – Air de Paris (est. 1990), Galerie Imane Farès (est. 2010), Galerie Sator (est. 2011), Galerie Jocelyn Wolff (est. 2003) and In Situ Fabienne Leclerc (est. 2001) – announced they will move to a new 11,000 square-metre cultural complex in in the borough of Romainville. Komunuma, taking its name from the word for ‘community’ or ‘commune’ in Esperanto, is situated in a former manufacturing plant and will also host an artists residency and exhibition programme coordinated by Fondation Fiminco, while Jeune Création will organise exhibitions with emerging artists. Non-profit Frac Île de France / Les Réserves will open at the complex in 2020.
