The week in art news: Rebecca Horn dies, 4,000 petition Labour to fund arts, MoMA director quits after 30 years and more…

Rebecca Horn dies, 80. Horn was born in Michelstadt, Germany in 1944. At the time, her Jewish family was hiding in the Black Forest. She studied in Hamburg and London, before moving to New York and then Paris. Horn worked in installations, performances, poetry and film but is best known for her ‘body sculptures’, weird ritual leather, metal, feather, and rope costumes that modified her body and heightened her senses. Horn’s work is now included in many major national collections. Between 1989–2004 Horn held a professorship at the Berlin University of the Arts. In 2015, she suffered a stroke and withdrew from public. Horn’s death on 6 September 2024 in Bad König, Hesse, Germany was announced by her New York gallery, Sean Kelly.

4,000 artists and professionals call on Labour to fund the arts. Artists including John Akomfrah, Sonia Boyce, Jade Montserrat and Haroon Mirza signed a letter calling on the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to create a “a roadmap to sustain the visual arts for the long term.” The letter follows a manifesto released in June ahead of the general election that saw Labour sweep to power, which put forward recommendations for the incoming government. The new letter, coordinated by DACS and A-N The Artists Information Company and Contemporary Visual Arts Network (CVAN), calls for arts education, support for freelancers, and greater digital copyright protection. Will Starmer listen? We’ll find out when the new budget is announced in October.

MoMA director Glen Lowry quits after 30 years. He’ll leave the New York museum in September 2025. Lowry took over the role in 1995 and is the longest serving director of the museum. At 70, he’s also the eldest director the museum has had. Under his leadership, the museum raised its endowment to over $1B and dramatically increased visitor numbers. Lowry also oversaw the merger with P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art in Queens. “It’s the right moment to think about the future of the museum and I just thought, carpe diem,” he told the New York Times.

London Museum to get £50M cash as costs spiral. The rebrand and the move from the Barbican Centre to two new sites at Smithfield Market was always going to be a big one, but the bills don’t stop. The 2019 budget for the new museum was set at £337M, it’s now estimated to cost £437M. That £100M shortfall is being made up through private donations, sponsors and philanthropists. Recently, The Art Newspaper reported that Greater London Authority and the City of London Corporation each committed £25M to the museum. The museum still needs to raise £20M, which it hopes to do through ‘green loans’. The museum is still on track to open in two stages; 2026 and 2028.

The BBC uncovers shocking scandal at bankrupt Birmingham council: the council has an art collection. The sensational report by the BBC’s Birmingham political reporter Simon Gilbert and West Midlands reporter Richard Price implies that the council could sell-off the £451M collection to fund debt repayments. Only, it gets a few things wrong, namely that the council ‘owns’ the artwork (it holds it in trust for the public). Once you get into the article, it turns out that everybody involved in the council and its financial recovery agrees that the artworks can’t and shouldn’t be sold… great work, excellent reporting.

Pour one out for New York’s Elizabeth Street Garden. The eviction deadline for the SoHo sculpture garden passed yesterday despite a number of protests, a petition with 830,000 subscribers and several celebrity endorsements. For decades, the community garden was a quiet green space filled with sculptures reclaimed from demolished mansion houses. The city sold the one-acre plot to developers who want to use it to house a retirement home. Defenders of the garden include Patti Smith, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. On Saturday, a fashion show for NYFW was held in the gardens, with Thom Browne and Martha Stewart in the front row. The non-profit org that runs the garden said yesterday that despite the deadline passing, they haven’t formally receieved notice of eviction. Here’s hoping.

Whatever happens, New York will always have Luna Luna, which arrives in the city this November. Luna Luna was an avant-garde art fairground originally created in 1987 by Austrian artist André Heller. It featured a Jean-Michel Basquiat Ferris wheel and a Keith Haring merry-go-round, as well as works and rides by Salvador Dalí, David Hockney, Sonia Delaunay, Roy Lichtenstein and Kenny Scharf. After decades in storage and some legal issues, it was revived in 2022 by rapper Drake’s entertainment company, DreamCrew. After its Los Angeles debut, it’s now travelling to The Shed, NYC, where it will open on 20th November.

Colour me shocked! Italian cultural minister resigns after sex scandal. According to the Financial Times, Gennaro Sangiuliano claimed his mistress, Maria Rosaria Boccia, was an unpaid advisor and used public money to cover her travel expenses. The scandal has rocked Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government and forced Sangiuliano to make a tearful TV apology. This story’s bringing back memories of Vittorio Sgarbi, Italy’s former junior culture minister, who resigned after claims that he laundered stolen art, implicated his colleagues, called journalists ‘ignorant as goats’ and threatened to expose himself on TV.

PETA launches confused protest at Courtauld Gallery: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals staged a ‘die in’ protest at London’s Courtauld Gallery on 3rd September. The activists were protesting the sponsorship of the gallery’s main exhibition space by the fashion house LVMH, saying that LVMH use animal skins (leather) in their fashion collections… surely there was a better target than an art gallery? According to The Art Newspaper, no arrests were made.

Meanwhile, in Amsterdam… Extinction Rebellion protestors promise Rijksmuseum they’ll “keep coming back” after shutting down the museum with smoke bombs. The group claims that ING Bank is laundering its fossil fuel business and its reputation through its sponsorship of the museum. Around 60 activists took part in the protest, swarming the main hall, chaining themselves to gates, and unveiling a banner on a cherry picker outside the museum entrance. A statement by XR Netherlands said, “as long as the Rijksmuseum continues to be sponsored by ING… we will keep coming back!”

Ringleader of Canada’s biggest forging gang jailed. David John Voss ran an “assembly-line” of forgeries claimed to be by the First Nations artist Norval Morrisseau. Voss ran the forgery scheme between 1996 and 2019. In that time, he made more than 1,600 fakes, 1,000 of those have now been recovered. He pleaded guilty to forgery and intentionally using forged documents and was sentenced to five years in prison. Last year, eight accomplices were charged in connection with the forgery ring, including Morrisseau’s own nephew. It’s believed to be the biggest forgery case in Canadian history.

2024 Praemium Imperiale laureates announced. The annual Japanese award has been given to artists who have made an impact in painting, sculpture, theatre / film, architecture and music. Former laureates include: El Anatsui, Louise Bourgeois, Antony Gormley, David Hockney, Rebecca Horn, Anish Kapoor, Cy Twombly and Ai Weiwei. This year, the winners are Ang Lee, Maria João Pires, Doris Salcedo, Sophie Calle and Shigeru Ban. Each winner will receive a ¥15M ($105,000) award from the Japan Art Association.

$50,000 for writing about some paintings? 2024 Rabkin Prize winners announced. Every year since 2017, the Rabkin Prize has awarded $50,000 to US arts writers who have a significant intellectual contribution to art history. This year, the winners are: Greg Allen, Holland Cotter, Robin Givhan, Thomas Lawson, Siddhartha Mitter, Cassie Packard, TK Smith and Emily Watlington. Imagine if there were something like this in Britain!