The week in art news: Jeff Koons copyright lawsuit dismissed, Sadie Coles to open new London gallery, Tilda Swinton turns curator, and more…

Scottish painter Jack Vettriano has died aged 73. The self-taught dropped out of school to become a mining engineer but took up painting after a girlfriend gifted him a box of watercolours for his 21st birthday. Vettriano drew inspiration from other Scottish artists including Samuel Peploe and William McTaggart. He rose to prominence in 1998 when he submitted two paintings to the Royal Scottish Academy’s annual show, where both sold on the first day, inspiring him to become a full-time artist. Vettriano was found dead in his apartment in Nice on Saturday.

Cold cuts: Guggenheim lays off 20 employees. The New York institution has suffered rising costs and lower attendance, forcing it to cut seven percent of its staff, according to the New York Times. The cuts follow those at the Brooklyn Museum, which trimmed 10% of its staff in February. The Guggenheim’s senior leadership and curators have reportedly been spared. Since Mariët Westermann took over as director and chief executive in 2024, ticket prices have increased and exhibition schedules have reduced. In a staff letter, Westermann said the staff cuts were part of a broader “reorganisation” designed to improve efficiency, The Art Newspaper reports.

Tilda Swinton to oversee Marianna Kennedy show at Christie’s Paris. The Oscar-winning actor takes on a new role as exhibition curator of ‘Supersonic Mediaeval’, a retrospective of British artist and designer Marianna Kennedy’s work that will be open in May this year. According to Artnet, Swinton is a long-time admirer and collector of Kennedy’s work. “Marianna’s work has always sprung from and lived in, for me, a particularly sweet spot, one where the ancient and resonant meet the unknown and surprising,” Swinton stated. The show will pay homage to Kennedy’s practice of blending modernity and tradition, and will feature works of carved and gilded mirrors and lamps, as well as resin, Murano glass, bronze and wood works.

Sadie Coles HQ opens new location on Savile Row. The gallery’s new site occupies a historic six-storey townhouse that was once home to the Burlington Fine Arts Club, a members’ club which played a central role in the London art scene of the late 19th and early 20th century, frequented by the likes of John Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It will include three galleries, a bookshop and private floors. 17 Savile Row will replace the gallery’s current Davies Street premises. The new gallery is currently being restored by the architecture firm Dara Khera/Work Ltd and is due to open this autumn.

Manhattan’s New Museum announces reopening after $82M expansion. The Lower East Side institution has been closed since March last year, but is due to reopen to the public on an unspecified date this autumn. The new seven-storey building has been designed by Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas of OMA with Cooper Robertson, and upon completion, will double the institution’s footprint. The rebuilding project is part of a $125M campaign designed to improve visitor flow and add education, artist studios and event spaces to the site. The museum revealed that Sarah Lucas will be the inaugural recipient of a public art commission for the new outdoor plaza.

Copyright lawsuit against Jeff Koons dismissed. Michael A. Hayden filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Koons in 2021 over three works in his Made in Heaven series, in which Koons and his ex-wife Ilona Staller are pictured posing with a sculpture Hayden created for Diva Futura, an adult entertainment company co-owned by Staller. The US District Court ruled that artist Hayden had waited too long to make his claim against Koons. Despite the works dating back to the late ‘80s, Hayden only claimed awareness of them in 2019, after reading an article about the works in La Repubblica. Judge Timothy M. Reif dismissed Hayden’s case, claiming he “should have discovered” Koons’ work “well before” he read the article, The Art Newspaper reports.

Funding cuts force museum to cancel exhibitions of Black and queer artists. Donald Trump’s restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have hit Washington D.C.’s Art Museum of the Americas, which was forced to call off two upcoming shows; ‘Before the Americas’, which featured work by Black artists across the Americas and ‘Nature’s Wild with Andil Gosine’, which featured queer artists from Canada. Cheryl D. Edwards, who curated ‘Before the Americas’, told Hyperallergic the museum received an email from the Trump administration claiming it qualified as a “DEI program and event” and said the government withdrew funding that former President Joe Biden had set aside. Both shows were expected to open on 21st March.

Update on the Bouvier Affair: billionaire collector Dmitry Rybolovlev cleared of criminal charges. Rybolovlev’s ‘MonacoGate’ court case was annulled last week following a seven-year legal saga about his alleged influence-peddling in the art market. The case was rooted in a high-profile feud with Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier, who Rybolovlev accused of overcharging by nearly $1B on a series of blue-chip art purchases, and was later charged with illegally influencing Bouvier’s 2015 arrest. The case was built on messages taken from his lawyer Tetiana Bersheda’s phone – evidence that the European Court of Human Rights ruled to have been obtained unlawfully by Monaco’s investigative authorities. Rybolovlev’s legal troubles seem to be officially over for now, but will Bouvier bite back?

Máret Ánne Sara to create the next Hyundai Commission for the Tate. The artist and author will follow from Mire Lee to create the annual Turbine Hall commission, which will be open to the public from 14th October 2025 – 6th April 2026. Sara is known for her work exploring global ecological issues through the lens of her experience within the Sámi community in the Norwegian part of Sápmi, the traditional territory of the Sámi people which is divided between the nation states of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. The new site-specific work will be the tenth in the series of art commissions supported by Hyundai.