PEXELS
Money
Donald J. Trump has tapped banker Steve Mnuchin, son of New York art dealer Robert Mnuchin, to be Treasury Secretary. No doubt Trump’s anti-establishment supporters will appreciate Mnuchin’s 17 years at Goldman Sachs and that, while chairman of OneWest (formerly the California mortgage lender IndyMac), the company was hit with “allegations that it had foreclosed improperly on some borrowers” and that it did “not meeting its legal obligation to make loans in minority neighborhoods.” [The New York Times]
Real estate macher Jorge M. Pérez is giving $10 million to the Pérez Art Museum Miami, which carries his name, as well as a trove of Cuban art. An intriguing quote: “This is just peanuts compared to what I’ll be giving to the museum.” [The New York Times]
Here’s a profile of the Russian banker Igor Tsukanov, whose art collection focuses on postwar Russian art. [Financial Times]
Appointments and Accolades
João Ribas, the deputy director and chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Serralves in Porto, Portugal, will curate the 2017 Ural Industrial Biennale. [Artforum]
Klaus Ottmann, the deputy director for curatorial and academic affairs at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., will receive the medal of chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from France. [Artforum]
Love and Theft
Anna Somers Cocks explains why she likes Art Abu Dhabi more than Art Basel Miami Beach. But why choose? [The Art Newspaper]
The day after Thanksgiving in 1985 two people made off with a Willem de Kooning painting from the University of Arizona in Tucson by cutting it out of its frame. This is that story. [Tucson News Now]
Bonuses
An interview with Iggy Pop. [The New York Times]
Auste at Greenspon in New York. [Contemporary Art Daily]
“There are hundreds of secret underground WWII bases hidden in British forests.” [Atlas Obscura]
Adrian Searle has five stars of praise for Tate Modern’s Robert Rauschenberg retrospective. It is, he writes, “almost impossibly rich and rewarding.” [The Guardian]