Having been arrested last week as part of a protest outside the headquarters of New York City Governer Andrew Cuomo, Nan Goldin has condemned as ‘cynical’ a settlement proposed by the Sackler family, owners of the pharmaceutical company that the artist holds partly responsible for the opioid crisis in the United States. Amidst reports that the Sacklers, who are significant donors to arts institutions across the world, would give up control of Purdue Pharma and pay out $3bn to plaintiffs who became addicted to medication distributed by the company, Goldin was reported by the Art Newspaper as saying that she would prefer that the Sackler family faced trial and that their ‘personal wealth was clawed back’.
In Hong Kong, the opening of the new K11 Musea founded by businessman and collector Adrian Cheng coincided with continuing protests. Undaunted by the febrile atmosphere, Cheng announced in a press release that he hoped to establish the arts space and retail destination as the ‘Silicon Valley of Culture’. Another foundation seeking to cross art and high-end retail, Paris’s Lafayette Anticipations, announced that Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel would replace François Quintin as managing director in October. Previously a curator at Palais de Tokyo, the 32-year-old is tasked, according to the press release, with providing ‘international designers from the worlds of contemporary art, design and fashion with made-to-measure resources for experimentation, production and exhibition’.
Remaining in Paris, which incidentally looks set to benefit from the uncertainty around the United Kingdom’s supposedly imminent exit from the European Union (with David Zwirner not denying reports that it plans to follow other galleries in opening in the city), the École nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy named Corinne Diserens as its new director. The appointment by the Ministry of Culture comes after a process almost as protracted as Brexit, with the institution having spent months without direction. There was no such hesitation in Melbourne, where Claire Richardson has been confirmed as the new executive director of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. She joins the institution from the TarraWarra Museum of Art, having recently worked on the Australian Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Reports from Russian news agencies that Oleg Sentsov, the Ukrainian filmmaker jailed in Russia on charges of terrorism, had been moved to Moscow ahead of an imminent prisoner swap were played down by government sources in Ukraine. Sentsov was arrested in Simferopol and convicted in a Russian court of planning terrorist offences after Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014. His family, and supporters including Amnesty International, have argued that he was targeted for speaking out against the annexation.
Stay tuned to keep abreast of what’s happening in the artworld, from open calls and appointments to scandals and protests…
