Museums Under Fire, Galleries on the Brink

A legal aftershock is rippling through Brazil’s museum world. The Art Newspaper reports that Fábio Szwarcwald, former director of the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, has been ordered by the Rio de Janeiro justice court to pay a one hundred thousand reais breach-of-contract fine. The case centers on statements he made after raising safety concerns, including saying the museum lacked fire insurance from 2006 until 2022. The museum argued that, even if true, his comments undermined credibility with donors, artists, and the art market. The ruling said he violated a confidentiality clause and caused “significant reputational damage.” It also found his contract remained in effect until January 2022 and ordered the museum to pay him compensation agreed in his original contract. Szwarcwald plans to appeal, according to Brazilian media.

Across the Atlantic, one of Brussels’s reliably adventurous galleries is calling it quits. Artnet News reports that Dépendance announced in a letter to its mailing list that after 23 years “we feel it’s time to say good-bye,” quoting Charles Baudelaire. Founded in 2003 by Michael Callies, a lapsed artist, and Stephan Jaax, a banker-turned-art collector, the gallery kept a single location in Brussels and supported a little more than 30 artists, including Josef Strau, Ed Atkins, Allison Katz, Oscar Tuazon, and Jana Euler. Early on, its program was tied to Frankfurt’s Städelschule, with figures like Michael Krebber, Haegue Yang, and Thomas Bayrle showing there. In 2024, it opened a project space, VIEW; its final show, by ReschWilleit, closes June 27—same day as Alexandra Metcalf’s final main-space show.

Now, to the trade in looted antiquities—and why it persists. Artnet News recounts a 1997 looting at Koh Ker, a 10th-century temple in northwest Cambodia, where men dug out three stone figures: two divine female figures and a powerfully built male likely representing Shiva. The statues were moved to the Thailand border, then brokers routed them to Bangkok. One eventually went to an American billionaire; one was sold by a London dealer and disappeared into a private collection; and a third passed through a Manhattan dealer and ended up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Two of the three are now back in Cambodia amid investigations tied to the late British dealer Douglas Latchford, who allegedly trafficked stolen Cambodian sculptures to Western buyers. The article says the network has been largely dismantled, but the illicit market remains robust, with consequences including destruction of objects and loss of life.

Staying in the eastern Mediterranean, international cultural bodies and Lebanon’s Ministry of Culture are issuing urgent alerts about damage to heritage sites. The Art Newspaper reports that Icomos Lebanon, Unesco, and the Lebanese Ministry of Culture warned about Israeli strikes that have damaged the entrance area of Tyre, a Unesco World Heritage Site recently granted Enhanced Protection under the Second Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention. Icomos said the entrance precinct, administrative buildings, and archaeological warehouses were damaged, and that the full extent can’t yet be assessed due to security conditions. Unesco said as of 9 June it has stepped up support, with confirmed damage to Tyre, Beaufort Castle, and Chama’ Citadel, all under enhanced protection. Culture minister Ghassan Salameh wrote Unesco director-general Khaled El-Enany on 5 June urging intervention after Israeli forces captured Beaufort Castle on 31 May.

From crisis warnings to carefully choreographed spectacle: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia is leaning into livestream culture. The Art Newspaper reports that on 10 June, Pope Leo XIV will bless the recently finished Tower of Jesus Christ at a mass, timed with the centennial of Antoni Gaudí’s death on 10 June 1926. The event is expected to draw eight thousand guests, including Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sanchez, even as work on the church is expected to continue for another decade. TikTok has partnered with the Sagrada Familia team on a dedicated content series, including TikTok Live sessions and short videos. TikTok España has already hosted livestreams featuring the monument’s engineering and craftsmanship, including a tour with architect Mauricio Cortés and Marlène Diard, a concert by violinist Astrid Torrente, and an interview with architect director Jordi Faulí. The Sagrada Familia TikTok account will livestream the Pope’s blessing at 6pm BST.

In New York, the New Museum is preparing a major spotlight on filmmaker and multimedia artist Arthur Jafa. The New Museum announced that it will present the largest-ever survey of Jafa’s work this September, opening September 24 and running through January 4, 2027. Titled I Am Tony, in honor of late jazz drummer Tony Williams, the exhibition will fill two floors of the museum’s recently expanded Manhattan building and span nearly four decades of work interrogating “Black being.” It will include iconic pieces like Love is the Message, The Message is Death (2016), a video montage set to Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam,” and The White Album (2018), which earned Jafa a Golden Lion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. The show is curated by Massimiliano Gioni with Gary Carrion-Murayari and Calvin Wang, and will premiere new works alongside these films.

Hyperallergic’s latest roundup takes a dizzying spin through art, institutions, and mishaps. It spotlights Matt Stromberg’s dispatch from “LA’s new AI art museum,” Dataland, founded by artist Refik Anadol, which Stromberg compares to Disneyland and says made him feel “a bit like Neo in the Matrix.” He describes descending into a mirrored space of shifting projections—cyber-graphics, mycological networks, saturated flowers and trees—paired with a thunderous soundtrack and even a forest-floor scent dispersed by a device worn around the neck. The roundup also notes that the School of the Art Institute of Chicago placed Savneet Talwar, director of its graduate art therapy program, on leave after she assigned a case study involving a hypothetical client affected by violence against Palestinian civilians. And it reports a child punctured a René Magritte painting at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem with a pinecone from the museum garden.

Speaking of institutions trying new angles, the Guggenheim Museum in New York is mixing football fandom with video art. The museum announced it will livestream a selection of World Cup matches at Frank Pub’s, a pop-up at the Wright, the Guggenheim’s restaurant, creating “a space for people to grab a bite, watch the World Cup, and share in the excitement together.” The Friday-afternoon match list includes Canada vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina on June 12, US vs. Australia on June 19, and Norway vs. France on June 26, plus later Round of 32 and Quarterfinal games on July 3 and July 10. The museum will also screen Zidane, a 21st century portrait (2006) by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno in the Peter B. Lewis Theater from June 11 to July 19, as part of its “Collection in Focus” series, with curator Nat Trotman calling it a key work in its time-based media collection.

On the market beat, Pace is rethinking its London footprint as it continues cutting costs. ARTnews reports that Pace has put its eight thousand six hundred-square-foot Hanover Square space up for rent and plans to move into a smaller, “less corporate” location, CEO Marc Glimcher told the Financial Times. Pace said it intends to maintain its seven physical locations worldwide while “retuning” them. The gallery’s London branch opened the two-level space in fall 2021, renovated by Jamie Fobert Architects, and marked the opening with a performance by Torkwase Dyson. Now, ARTnews notes rumors that Pace is eyeing a smaller space on Grafton Street near David Zwirner and Sprüth Magers. The report also points to uncertainty after Pace announced it was slashing about 50 jobs and dropping around 50 artists, with some still unsure how the cuts affect them.

Finally today, the Southeast Asian art world is mourning Valentine Willie. ARTnews reports that Willie—trained as a lawyer and known as a curator and gallerist advocating for contemporary Southeast Asian art—died on June 9 in Kuala Lumpur at 71, with the news reported by The Star. Born in Sabah in 1954, he studied law at University College London in the 1970s and returned to Malaysia in 1978, practicing for 20 years in corporate and banking law while collecting and organizing exhibitions. In 1996, Willie and Mee-Seen Loong co-founded Valentine Willie Fine Art (VWFA) in Ampang; its first show, “Of Migrants and Rubber Trees,” featured Wong Hoy Cheong, and its last, “Salamat Po!,” featured Iwan Effendi and Ria Papermoon. VWFA later opened spaces in Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines before closing in 2013; Willie later advised collectors and served as founding creative director of Ilham Gallery until 2020.

That’s the download for today—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more art world news, context, and the occasional well-placed side-eye. Chinga la migra

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