Boycotts, Closures, and the Museum Loot Legacy

Arthur Jafa is in the spotlight with Artnet News’s piece titled “Arthur Jafa’s Radical Theory of Readymade Art.” The article positions Jafa around a provocative idea of the readymade, tying his thinking to how artists can work with what already exists and transform it through context and use. It lands as less of a studio tour and more of a statement of method: a way of approaching images and objects that treats selection and framing as the engine of meaning. Even from the headline alone, you can feel the stakes Jafa is after—pushing beyond familiar definitions of originality and insisting that the work is in the conceptual move, not just the fabrication. It’s a reminder that for some artists, “making” begins with recognizing what’s already there.

A major market story out of London: Tiwani Contemporary has permanently closed its London gallery, and its Lagos location has paused operations ahead of a planned restructuring. In a statement, the gallery cited “financial challenges,” worsened by rising operation costs and “a difficult market” for contemporary art, calling the decision “extremely painful.” Founded in London by Maria Varnava in 2011, Tiwani is named after a Nigerian Yoruba phrase meaning “it belongs to us,” and it expanded to a two-story Cork Street space in 2023, after opening a two thousand-square-foot outpost in Lagos in 2022. The gallery’s closure will be overseen by BTG Begbies Traynor (Central) LLP, and it pledged to prioritize artists’ needs.

The Art Newspaper reports that French conservation experts across public and private institutions are developing an AI model meant to predict how climate change will affect cultural heritage. Ann Bourgès, a senior conservation scientist at the French Ministry of Culture’s Centre for Research and Restoration of France’s Museums, traces the project’s origins to European Commission discussions four years ago about quantifying climate impacts. In 2022, Bourgès and two other researchers launched two doctoral projects and recruited Adèle Cormier and David Roqui, now in their final PhD year. The team is studying three French heritage sites, starting with Strasbourg Cathedral’s sandstone spire base and the Bibracte archaeological site near Autun. The methodology is intended to become open-source and be shared via the national Espadon website.

A group of French artists is calling for a boycott of the Centre Pompidou’s soon-to-open Seoul satellite museum over a partner foundation’s ties to Israel. The museum, opening June 4, is officially known as the Centre Pompidou Hanhwa, named for the Hanwha Foundation of Culture, an arts-focused subsidiary of the Hanwha Group. The article notes that in 2021 the Hanwha Group struck ties with Elbit Systems and Elta Systems, two Israeli firms; Elbit Systems reportedly is Israel’s largest defense contractor and recently signed a one hundred dollars million contract with Israel’s defense department. First published as an op-ed in Libération, the open letter alleges the museum is an “art-washing” operation and urges mobilization to end the partnership. Signatories include Ali Cherri and Lili Reynaud-Dewar.

A new book is tracing how looted Cambodian antiquities moved into mainstream collecting and museums through the network around British dealer Douglas Latchford. The article centers on Matthew Campbell’s The Man Who Stole the Gods (2026), which portrays Latchford—accused of trafficking looted Cambodian antiquities on a massive scale before his death in 2020—as someone who treated Khmer sculpture as a luxury asset and built a “real business.” Campbell emphasizes not only criminal supply chains, but also the willingness of museums, dealers, collectors, and scholars to accept fragmented or problematic provenance. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is described as “Latchford’s most powerful marketing tool.” Campbell also details how publications with American scholar Emma Bunker helped legitimize objects—until links were made between stolen statues and pedestals still in Cambodia.

The Trump administration’s overhaul of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has grown more controversial, with federal documents showing what officials called an “inflated” profit margin on a no-bid contract—while leak problems persisted. The story, first reported by the New York Times, centers on Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia company with no previous federal contracts that was selected to repair the pool ahead of 250th-anniversary celebrations. President Donald Trump initially claimed the work would cost less than two dollars million, but federal records show the government ultimately agreed to pay about thirteen dollars million. Documents reviewed by the Times show a 20 percent profit margin, above the 6 to 12 percent range Park Service officials considered typical, plus another 20 percent for overhead. Internal records say the company initially failed multiple attempts to seal gaps.

In Spain, controversy has erupted over the appointment of Eva López Tarrío as director of the Galician Center for Contemporary Art in Santiago de Compostela. El Pais reports López Tarrío is a high school art teacher and civil servant, and the article notes she does have a PhD in Fine Arts. More than one thousand four hundred artists, critics, gallery owners, and academics signed an open letter warning that limiting the directorship to civil servants would “impoverish and politicize” the center. Susana Cendán, a PhD curator and University of Vigo lecturer, said the selection process was “not based on professional merit.” Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego, a professor, critic, and curator of the Spanish Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale, pointed to other candidates’ stronger track records. The report also cites apparent CV errors and notes three of five advisory board members resigned.

Florentina Holzinger has brought a nine-hour, one-time performance to Prinzendorf an der Zaya near Vienna, following her talked-about Austria Pavilion work at the Venice Biennale. The article says that in Venice, Holzinger’s “Seaworld Venice” staged a warning about an increasingly underwater dystopia, featuring an underwater amusement-park atmosphere and a reconstructed sewer treatment plant with a performer in a tank sustained by body fluids contributed by the audience. On May 23, Holzinger opened “Pfingstspiel” (Pentecost Play) at Hermann Nitsch’s castle, created in collaboration with the Wiener Festwochen arts festival and the Nitsch Foundation. Nitsch, who died in 2022, is associated with Viennese Actionism, and Holzinger discussed its ethos in relation to her work in a New York Times article after the performance.

SXSW London returns for its second edition next week, and ARTnews reports the festival’s art program is spotlighting Spain’s contemporary art scene through a digital lens. Running June 1–6 across more than 20 venues around the Trueman Brewery in Shoreditch, the visual art program is titled “Spain in Transmission: New Digital Work,” curated by Patrick Moore, former director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Five artists are involved: Enrique Agudo, Filip Custic, Jesús Moratiel, and Marina Núñez from Spain, plus American artist Molly Gochman. The works examine themes including identity, borders, humanity, and memory, with Moore describing Spain’s scene as “underrecognized.” Agudo’s You Are Beautiful, for instance, is a four-channel installation built from personal digital archives and translated into a Jacquard tapestry.

French filmmaker Romain Gavras is turning the one hundred two dollars million Louvre heist into a movie. The film will be adapted from Main Basse sur le Louvre (A Grab at the Louvre), a book released Wednesday in France by Flammarion and written by three journalists from Le Parisien, Le Monde, and Paris Match. According to Le Monde, the publisher frames the story as showing how “the theft of artworks has become a business like any other for many criminals.” The film rights were sold to Iconoclast, which has produced most of Gavras’s films, including The World is Yours (2018) and Athena (2022). Separately, rights for a documentary series about the heist were sold to a British producer who has not yet been named. Netflix is set to release Gavras’s latest film, Sacrifice, later this year.

That’s the download for today—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for another round of art world news you can actually use; Chinga la migra

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