Museum Shakeups and Culture Wars Ignite

Tracey Emin’s major exhibition Second Life opens this week at Tate Modern, and at a press preview on 25 February she spoke bluntly about racism and national identity. In The Art Newspaper, Emin says “jingoistic, racist, bigoted behaviour… is dividing our country,” and mentions Reform party leader Nigel Farage, noting he has twice tried to win Margate, where she grew up and returned to live permanently in 2020. She also discusses her background—her father Enver was a Turkish Cypriot with a Sudanese great-grandfather who was enslaved during the Ottoman Empire, and her mother had Romanichal roots. Emin says she’s proud to be British, while criticising bigotry. The show isn’t a retrospective; it’s thematic and deeply personal.

The British Museum has agreed to loan the Vrindavani Vastra—an extraordinarily fragile tapestry showing scenes from Krishna’s life—back to Assam for six months. The Art Newspaper says the loan is due to begin in 2027 and was agreed after Assam’s chief minister pledged to construct a new extension to the Assam State Museum in Guwahati to house the textile. The nine-metre work, woven roughly 350 years ago, can only be displayed for six months every ten years because of its condition. Richard Blurton, who curated the British Museum’s 2016 exhibition Krishna in the Garden of Assam, calls it “at the very heart of the cultural life of Assam.” Director Nicholas Cullinan’s approach emphasises “partnership rather than… ownership,” with loans instead of permanent deaccessioning.

Paris is getting a major new Giacometti hub: the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti plans to open the Giacometti Museum and School in 2028. The Art Newspaper reports it will be the first museum dedicated to Alberto Giacometti, and it will draw on a foundation collection of more than ten thousand items. Director Catherine Grenier says that includes “thousands of drawings, over 400 sculptures, 100 paintings,” decorative objects, prints, studio contents, and archives—much of it never exhibited. The new site is the former Invalides train station in the 7th arrondissement, offering six thousand sq. m, with about half dedicated to showing the artist’s work—far larger than the 350 sq. m Institut Giacometti that opened in 2018 as an interim showcase.

ARTnews reports that France’s controversial right-wing culture minister is stepping down to run for mayor of Paris. The article frames her move as a bid for city hall and notes the political controversy surrounding her tenure at the culture ministry. For the arts, the timing matters because the minister’s office influences the climate around cultural funding, heritage priorities, and public debate over what institutions champion. The report focuses on her decision to leave the post in order to campaign, setting up a transition moment for French cultural administration as Paris’s mayoral race heats up. With Paris carrying symbolic weight far beyond municipal governance, this shift isn’t just electoral intrigue—it’s a change in who sets the tone for national cultural policy at a sensitive moment.

Sophie Calle’s first major North American survey, Overshare, is on view at the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art through 24 May. The Art Newspaper describes how the exhibition gathers work from the 1970s to the present and tracks Calle’s long-running interest in the unstable boundary between documentation and invention. Organised by the Walker Art Center and curated by Henriette Huldisch, it premiered at the Walker in October 2024. Courtenay Finn says California appears “like a character” in Calle’s work; Calle made early photographs in the late 1970s in Bolinas and staged her first major exhibition at Fred Hoffman Gallery in Los Angeles in 1989. The show’s four sections include projects like Suite Vénitienne and The Hotel, as well as works from Autobiographies.

In Riyadh, the third edition of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale is running until 2 May. The Art Newspaper reports the biennale—titled In Interludes and Transitions—is led by curators Nora Razian and Sabih Ahmed and includes more than 65 artists from over 35 countries. Spread across huge converted industrial halls in the JAX district, the scenography is by Milan-based design studio Formafantasma, with Razian saying they wanted “colour” and “conversation,” not white walls or floors. The exhibition includes more than 25 new commissions, including Shadia Alem’s series of 22 drawings begun in 1996 and Faisal Samra’s “performance painting” using buckets of paint, hand movements, and airblowers. It also highlights pioneering women artists such as Samia Halaby, Etel Adnan, Pacita Abad, and Kamala Ibrahim Ishag.

ARTnews reports that Ulysses Jenkins, a trailblazing video artist with a sustained interest in mass media, has died at 79. The article positions Jenkins as a key figure in video art who worked with television’s visual language and the mechanics of media distribution, using the medium to interrogate how images circulate and how power operates through broadcast forms. His reputation rests on treating video not as simple documentation but as a tool to pull apart the messages embedded in mass communications. ARTnews frames his death as a significant loss for the field, particularly given how much contemporary art and culture now rely on the same media systems Jenkins spent decades examining. The obituary-style report focuses on his role as a pioneer and underscores how his work’s concerns remain urgent.

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta is confronting an internal financial scandal tied to missing funds. Hyperallergic reports that the museum’s chief operating officer, Brady Lum, has resigned after six hundred thousand dollars disappeared, with an internal investigation tracing “financial irregularities” back to him. Lum had served as COO since 2019, according to the report. Hyperallergic’s coverage centres on the resignation and the museum’s internal findings, highlighting both the specific dollar amount and the seriousness of the language used to describe what investigators uncovered. The story lands as a reminder that museum operations—often invisible to the public—depend on controls and oversight that protect budgets for staff, exhibitions, and public programming. The report does not describe criminal charges, focusing instead on the museum’s internal investigation and leadership fallout.

ARTnews reports that Chicago’s DePaul Art Museum will close after 40 years. The article frames the decision as the end of a long-running university museum and notes the closure in the context of institutional pressures facing arts organizations tied to larger parent entities. With four decades behind it, the museum’s shutdown marks a major change for DePaul University’s cultural footprint and for Chicago’s broader art ecosystem, where university museums often provide exhibition platforms and public programs alongside teaching missions. The ARTnews story focuses on the fact of the closure and the length of the museum’s run, presenting it as a significant institutional development rather than a short-term pause. The report treats the closing as definitive, underscoring the impact of losing a campus-based museum that has operated for decades.

In Los Angeles, Judy Baca is pushing back against allegations connected to a major grant. Hyperallergic reports that Baca has denied misusing a five dollars million Mellon Foundation grant tied to an iconic LA mural. According to Hyperallergic, the Los Angeles Times reported that 10 employees accused the activist and artist of using grant funds for personal benefit. Hyperallergic’s story foregrounds the denial and attributes the employee allegations to the LA Times’ reporting, keeping the focus on what has been alleged versus what Baca says in response. The article situates the controversy within the realities of large-scale, publicly visible cultural projects that depend on philanthropic funding and organizational management. At this stage, the key verified points are the grant amount, the number of employees cited, and Baca’s denial.

That’s the download for today—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more art world news, and until then, I’m Percival Doodleflop signing off.

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