Museums Under Fire, Gulf Art Boom

A major leadership shuffle is coming to the museum world: Manuel Rabaté is leaving the Louvre Abu Dhabi to take a new role at India’s leading private art museum, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in New Delhi, according to The Art Newspaper. KNMA has appointed Rabaté as its first chief executive and director. He’s been the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s inaugural director since 2016, and will officially step down on 7 March, with a successor search underway. Rabaté is joining as KNMA prepares to shift from its current site in a shopping mall to its own one hundred thousand sq. m building near Indira Gandhi International Airport—expected to open “in two to three years,” a spokesperson says. The new David Adjaye Associates-designed complex is described by founder Kiran Nadar as the “largest museum and cultural centre in South Asia.”

Staying in the Gulf, The Art Newspaper reports that Art Basel is departing from convention for its first outing in the region. Art Basel Qatar’s inaugural edition brings together 87 exhibitors and spreads the fair across seven venues in Doha’s Msheireb campus, including M7—an innovation and start-up hub run by Qatar Museums—and the Doha Design District. Galleries were asked to present just one artist, and the fair swaps traditional booths for a more open-plan, museum-like layout, complete with benches. The artist Wael Shawky is the fair’s artistic director, a choice that underscores the curatorial tone. Art Basel’s Vincenzo de Bellis says the goal is a more focused first interaction with the region—one that digs into an artist’s trajectory and aims for “museum quality” in terms of career relevance, not just monumentality.

Also connected to Art Basel Qatar, The Art Newspaper reports on a work that directly confronts the assault on Gaza by Israel. Pakistani artist Rashid Rana is showing Black Square (2025), a large wall-based photomontage grid built from hundreds of stills taken from an open-sourced CCTV camera in Gaza. The imagery documents a night of bombardment by Israeli forces in the spring of 2025—mostly black sky broken by strips of white and red and brief orange flashes as rockets fire and explode. The work is priced at thirty thousand dollars and is being presented by Mumbai gallery Chemould Prescott Road. The gallery’s director, Shireen Gandhy, says all proceeds will go to Gaza relief funds chosen by her in consultation with Palestine community workers.

Across the UK, Artnet News reports that the British Museum drew criticism after sharing a social media post containing A.I.-generated images. According to Artnet, the reaction in the comments was swift, and the museum deleted the post following the outcry. The report focuses on the fact of the A.I.-generated imagery, the backlash it triggered, and the museum’s rapid removal of the content. In a moment when museums are under constant scrutiny for how they communicate and what they present as authoritative, this incident shows how quickly audiences will push back when an institution appears to blur the line between documentary imagery and synthetic visuals. The key detail here is straightforward: A.I. images were posted, commenters objected, and the post came down soon after.

More sobering museum news comes from Scotland. The Art Newspaper reports that Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) is closing, entering liquidation, cancelling all programmes and activities, and making its 39 staff redundant. Programme manager Annie Hazelwood wrote to partners and artists that the closure took effect on 30 January and called it “deeply painful,” describing “a moment of real loss” for Glasgow’s cultural community. The decision follows Creative Scotland—owner of the building at 350 Sauchiehall Street, leased to CCA for £1 per year—confirming it has suspended further funding payments because the organisation “is unable to demonstrate its ongoing viability.” This comes despite CCA being awarded three years of funding worth £3.4m from Creative Scotland in January 2025, after a period marked by multiple setbacks and disputes.

Switching to the United States, The Art Newspaper looks at President Donald Trump’s recent personal involvement in architecture and planning in Washington, DC. The article says Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House last October to make way for a four hundred dollarsm ballroom—prompting a lawsuit filed in December by the National Trust for Historic Preservation against Trump, the National Park Service, and several officials. It also describes Trump adding his name to the façade of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and announcing it would close for two years for major renovations starting this summer. The piece notes he has suggested painting the exterior of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building all white, and that a lawsuit brought by Cultural Heritage Partners sought to block those plans; the motion for a temporary restraining order was withdrawn after assurances no work would be done before 1 March.

Back to questions of museums and accountability, The Art Newspaper reviews a documentary that follows Indigenous efforts to recover ancestors’ remains from institutions. Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild] (2026), directed by Adam Khalil and Zach Khalil, recently screened at the Sundance Film Festival and opens with a dispute between Michigan State University and the Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation and Repatriation Alliance (Macpra). The film ends with the re-burial of ancestors’ remains, a ritual the review suggests few viewers will have seen. It also examines the longer history of Indigenous remains being displaced and collected, including displays shaped by discredited pseudo-sciences like eugenics and phrenology. The documentary features voices like Sydney Martin of the Gun Lake Potawotami Tribe and scholar Sam Redman of the University of Massachusetts, and it situates these battles in the context of Nagpra, passed in 1990 and recently updated.

ARTnews reports that newly surfaced files indicate Jeffrey Epstein advised financier Leon Black in the purchase of a Pablo Picasso for one hundred fifteen dollars million from Gagosian. The report centers on the existence of documentation showing Epstein’s role as an adviser in that transaction. The headline also references that these same files show Epstein’s involvement in Black’s art dealings more broadly, framing the Picasso purchase as part of a paper trail. The story focuses on who was advising whom, and on the transaction’s price and the seller: Gagosian. In the art market, where deals can hinge on private introductions and behind-the-scenes coordination, the significance here is the documented advisory role attributed to Epstein in connection with a nine-figure purchase.

From private deals to public auctions: ARTnews reports that Sotheby’s second sale in Saudi Arabia topped nineteen dollars million. The sale also set a record for a Saudi artist, according to the same report. ARTnews says the record was achieved by Safeya Binzagr, with a painting selling for two dollars million. The story emphasizes the combined headline results: the overall total for the sale and the record price for Binzagr. As Sotheby’s continues staging sales in the kingdom, those totals and record benchmarks become reference points—signals to collectors about what is commanding top prices in that setting. The ARTnews framing is about the numbers and the milestone: a strong total and a record for a Saudi artist during the auction house’s second Saudi sale.

Finally, ARTnews reports that Palestinians are criticizing Israel’s plan to seize a West Bank archaeological site, with the article quoting the phrase “a violation of our history.” The site is in Sebastia, and the story focuses on Palestinian objections to the plan and what it would mean for control over an area framed through archaeology and heritage. ARTnews describes the situation as a dispute over an archaeological project with significant cultural and political stakes, with Palestinians characterizing the move as an infringement on their history. The report’s emphasis is on the reaction—Palestinians decrying the plan—and on the way archaeological sites can become flashpoints where heritage, authority, and access collide.

That’s the download for today. Links to every story are in the show notes—come back tomorrow for more art world news you can actually use.

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