This week in art: Concerns over Kehinde Wiley cancellations, Basquiat × H&M collab, Florida man slashes culture budget, God Save the Team and more…

National Coalition Against Censorship voices concerns of Kehinde Wiley cancellations. The US-based organisation, which represents 50 non-profit cultural, educational and religious and civil liberties organisations, gave a statement against the cancellation of upcoming Wiley exhibitions by the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Minneapolis Museum of Art, and the Joslyn Art Museum, following accusations of sexual assault. The statement says that, “Museums are not equipped or mandated to be enforcers of moral orthodoxy. Their shared role is to identify and contextualize works that have artistic merit and cultural relevance.”

Mitchell-Innis & Nash closes gallery, opens “project-based advisory space”. Co-founders Lucy Mitchell-Innes and David Nash made the shock announcement in an Instagram post on Friday last week. The gallery was founded on the Upper East Side in 1996, before moving to Chelsea, and represented a number of conceptual artists including Pope.L and Martha Rosler,. According to reports, Mitchell-Innes & Nash will continue to represent select artists and estates, but didn’t confirm which.

God Save the Team: Anyone else noticed those St George Crosses going up around the city? They look suspiciously like the work of Sheffield artist Corbin Shaw. Turns out they are by the young artist, and The Art Newspaper has the story behind the works. Shaw told the paper that he wanted to create an image of unity and hope during a time of intense division. You can find them plastered up around London, Sheffield, Bristol, Manchester, Brighton, and Birmingham. And after last night’s ludicrous performance, this team needs all the help they can get.

Choose your fighter: straight off the back of painting a blood-red portrait of King Charles III, artist to the stars Jonathan Yeo has revealed an algae-green portrait of veteran broadcaster David Attenborough. For anyone who can’t read subtext, it’s green because Attenborough makes nature documentaries.

RIP Basquiat you would have loved the Basquiat × H&M × Who Decides War collab. High street fast fashion brand H&M has launched a new clothing line in collaboration with the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat and streetwear brand Who Decides War. Designers Ev Bravado and Téla D’Amore of streetwear brand Who Decides War talked about their excited of working with H&M and the Basquiat estate to British Vogue, saying, “to work with Basquiat’s archive has always been a dream of ours, especially coming from similar backgrounds.” The collection was revealed during Paris Fashion Week and will be in select stores from the 18th July.

Summer sale shocker: Sotheby’s June evening modern & contemporary sale pulls in just £83.6M (£106M) across 52 lots. Last year, the June sale of Gustav Klimt’s Dame mit Fächer (lady with fan) (1917) alone brought in £85.3M of a total £190.3M. The sale was hit by the last-minute withdrawal of Tamara de Lempicka’s Nu adossé (1925), estimated at £6-8M. Paula Rego’s Meadow (1996) which many had expected to break artist records, barely scraped its low estimate of £2M. The story was the same for the evening sale’s highlight, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict (1982), which sold for just above its low estimate of £15M.

Sotheby’s moves Paris HQ. The auction house is leaving its address at 76 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, for… 83 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The new gallery space was previously occupied by Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, one of the oldest in Paris. The reason behind the move is to expand the auction house’s exhibition space and to bring all departments under one roof.

Florida Man slashes culture budget. Hundreds of cultural organisations are now “scrambling” to manage the fallout after governor Ron “DeSanctimonious” DeSantis cut the Sunshine State’s $32M budget, according to Hyperallergic. This is the first time in US history that a state’s entire culture budget has been cut. In an email to Hyperallergic, Ghislain d’Humières, director and CEO of the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, said, “we join cultural organizations across the state in being disappointed at the total lack of state funding for 2024–2025, especially when the arts are such a draw for tourist dollars.”

Former Uffizi director who quit art for politics fails in far right election bid. Eike Schmidt, who formerly headed Florence’s Uffizi and and Naples’ Capodimonte museum, ran as a right wing candidate in Florence’s mayoral elections, backed by the alliance linking Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, the League and Forza Italia. He was beaten by Sara Funaro of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), who won more than 60% of the vote. Funaro is now the city’s first female mayor.

Fake Modigliani seized ahead of sale. The drawing, said to be by the Italian modernist Amedeo Modigliani was listed for sale in 2022 at €300,000 ($320,000). Suspicions were raised when the owners applied for an export licence, listing the name as “ Untitled (1913)” and providing next to no provenance. The drawing was seized by the Venice Cultural Heritage Protection Unit, and confirmed by academics to be a fake. The market for Modiglianis is known to be highly suspect, so check before you buy!

Lawsuit loophole lets Tasmanian Museum hang Picasso in ladies’ loos. You might remember that the Museum of Old and New Art was sued over their women-only art installation by a male visitor who felt he’d missed out on the experience. A court case decided that the work was discriminatory, and had to be de-installed. The museum did so, and while adhering to the letter, if not the spirit of the judgement, rehung the Picasso in the women’s toilets.

2024 Film London Jarman Award shortlist announced: Larry Achiampong, Maeve Brennan, Sin Wai Kin, Melanie Manchot, Rosalind Nashashibi and Maryam Tafakory are all in the running for the award, which celebrates the practices of ground-breaking artist filmmakers working in the UK. This year’s jury includes the Barbican’s Matthew Barrington, Channel 4’s Shaminder Nahal; artist Julianknxx; Nottingham Contemporary’s Ali Roche and Film London’s Eve Gabereau.

The president of University of the Arts London resigns. James Purnell’s departure comes after months of protests against the university’s position on Gaza, and repeated calls for his resignation. Colleges and institutes under the umbrella of UAL include: Central Saint Martins, Goldsmiths, and Camberwell College of Arts, and Chelsea College of Arts, London College of Communication, and the London College of Fashion. Purnell will step down in September, to become chief executive at Flint Global, a consultancy offering policy and regulatory advice. Is this a win for protestors, or just a step up the corporate ladder?