The Top Story
London dealer Anthony d’Offay has been accused of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior by multiple women, the Guardian reports, and Tate and and the National Galleries Scotland have issued a statement saying that they will “suspend any further contact” with the retired London dealer until the allegations are resolved. After closing his gallery in 2001, d’Offay gave his collection to the state. [The Guardian]
Documenta Drama
A number of art-world denizens have written an open letter, “expressing concern at Kassel’s plans for the future of Documenta and urging the city to reinstate Annette Kulenkampff, the managing director of the company that runs the quinquennial contemporary art exhibition,” Catherine Hickley reports in the Art Newspaper. The show announced Kulenkampff would be leaving her position ahead of schedule, following revelations that it had run up a deficit. Monica Bonvicini, Chris Dercon, and Wolfgang Tillmans are among the signers. [The Art Newspaper]
Museums!
Wallpaper took a look at the Lianzhou Museum of Photography, the first museum in China dedicated to contemporary photography. Its home, designed by the firm O-office Architects, opened last month with displays of work by Zhuang Hui, Zhang Hai’er, Albert Watson, Amalia Ulman, Baptiste Rabichon, and more. The institution is an outgrowth of the Lianzhou Foto Festival, which was founded by Duan Yuting in 2005. [Wallpaper]
It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, and many museums and cultural museums are free to all. Money magazine has a list of some of those venues. [Money]
Legal Matters
The Basel Art Museum is revisiting a call that it return works from its collection once owned by the Jewish art historian Curt Glaser. Glaser’s heirs allege that he sold the pieces under duress after he was “evicted from his home in the first wave of Nazi anti-Semitic laws,” Reuters reports. The museum denied the claim in 2008. [Reuters]
Protests
Holland Cotter, the co-chief art critic of the New York Times, filed a nuanced column on the report issued by New York’s Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers last week on controversial monuments in the city, which calls for the removal of one piece and minor changes to the framing of others. Cotter finds the response wanting, writing that the group “sets history behind a protective screen of educational outreach and programming, initiatives that all too easily blend into the great, perspectiveless digital wash of the present,” Cotter writes. [The New York Times]
Included in Cotter’s piece is a link to maps and other materials that the art collective REPOhistory produced between 1989 and 2000 about marginalized and lesser-known histories in the city. Have a look! [REPOhistory]
Royalty
Queen Elizabeth II has never granted an interview in her 91 years, but she recently agreed to what is being billed as a “conversation” with Alastair Bruce for a show about her coronation that the BBC and the Smithsonian Channel will air. Describing the logistics of wearing one of her two crowns, which is quite heavy, she explains in a clip of the show presented by the New York Times. “You can’t look down to read the speech. . . . Because if you did, your neck would break.” [The New York Times]