Museum Power Shifts and Restitution Manhunts

The Tate network has its next leader: Jessica Morgan, the director of the New York-based Dia Art Foundation, has been appointed director of Tate. She replaces Maria Balshaw, who stepped down last year, and Morgan takes up the post in January next year, overseeing Tate Britain and Tate Modern as well as sites in Liverpool and St Ives. In a statement, Morgan called it “an immense privilege,” describing Tate as “the world's foremost institution for international modern and contemporary art and for British art.” Tate notes Morgan joined Dia in early 2015 and has worked across its twelve sites, including Land art projects and site-specific commissions. Her appointment follows a turbulent Tate period marked by industrial action, staff cuts, and declining footfall.

Over in Lisbon, the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian has reopened after an 18-month refurbishment, welcoming visitors back on Saturday, 18 July. The €7.8m project focused on essential systems—security, fire safety, ventilation, and lighting—while aiming to return the display “as much as possible to its original 1969 state,” says the museum’s recently appointed director, Xavier Salomon. Built as a single-storey structure in wood, granite, marble, raw concrete, and expansive glazing, the museum’s original design connected art, architecture, and nature through park views and planted courtyards. The updated presentation restores key features with anti-reflective glass and LED lighting, keeps labels short, and avoids multimedia screens entirely, reflecting that 1969 spirit.

European cultural politics got sharper in Venice: the European Union has formally cut its €2m grant to the Venice Biennale over Russia being allowed to use its pavilion. European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said events funded by European taxpayers’ money should safeguard democratic values—values “not respected in today’s Russia.” Russia’s participation was announced in March by Mikhail Shvydkoy, President Vladimir Putin’s international cultural envoy, who said Russia would present a musical programme of folklore and world music; the pavilion was open only during the preview of the international exhibition. The Commission’s executive vice-president Henna Virkkunen wrote on X on 11 July that ending the grant followed assessment of the Biennale’s replies, and EACEA’s official decision came on 21 July.

A French museum is going old-school with a very modern outreach strategy. The Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans has launched a “Wanted” poster campaign to help track down 424 artworks still missing from its collection, including a painting of Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger by Jean Siméon Chardin that was plundered during World War II. The museum director, Olivia Voisin, said the goal is to make this history known and invite the public to participate—so that no one can say, “we didn’t know.” In June 1940, an annex known as the Musée Paul Fourché was burned during the Nazi attack on Orléans and then ransacked, with about 350 paintings lost amid the chaos. Voisin began new research two years ago, and three paintings have been returned in that period.

Jeff Koons has won the latest round in a copyright dispute tied to his “Made in Heaven” series—because the court said the claim came too late. A U.S. appeals court upheld a ruling in favor of Koons against prop designer Michael Hayden, who sought compensation in 2021 over the appearance of Hayden’s 1988 sculpture in three works from Koons’s series made between 1989 and 1990. A court document released on Tuesday said a “reasonably diligent copyright holder should have discovered the alleged infringement,” noting that Hayden lived in Italy and consumed Italian media when “Made in Heaven” debuted in 1990. That year the series was shown at the Venice Biennale and prompted a media uproar over explicit depictions involving Koons and his then-wife, Ilona Staller, known as La Cicciolina.

In the gallery-to-museum pipeline, a familiar question is becoming a real pressure point: who’s actually paying? ARTnews spotlights dealers increasingly being asked to help find donors to fund museum acquisitions. Dealer Sonia Dutton described a common pitch after a curator expresses interest: “We’d love to have something for the museum’s collection. But I’m not sure we have the funds for it”—which can translate to, “Who can you find to buy it for us?” Dutton’s fall show featured “Night Drawing,” Rose deSmith Greenman’s debut New York exhibition; Greenman began drawing only in her seventies, often after dark with everyday markers and ballpoint pen. A veteran New York dealer said it’s “really, really hard work” to cobble together money, and the piece notes tax implications and donor fatigue as collectors face constant nonprofit requests.

Out in San Francisco, the future of the California College of the Arts’ campus is being reshaped by a major gift and a new institutional owner. Vanderbilt University has announced its San Francisco campus will open next year as the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang College of Art, Architecture and Design, named for a seventy five dollars million donation from Nvidia founder Jen-Hsun “Jensen” Huang and his wife, Lori Huang. CCA had announced in January it would close in 2027 after selling its two campuses to Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt also said it will establish the California College of the Arts Institute to house programming of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, manage archives, organize alumni and community events, and oversee residencies and fellowships. CCA president David Howse cited declining enrollment, an unsustainable tuition model, and demographic shifts; KQED reported 207 undergrads and 117 grads enrolled last fall.

Rutgers’ Zimmerli Art Museum just landed a substantial addition to its holdings. Collectors Anne and Arthur Goldstein have gifted more than 70 works of modern and contemporary art, including self-portraits by Robert Rauschenberg and Laura Aguilar, a painted skateboard, and a photographic series of hairstyles from Mark Bradford. The museum announced the gift on Wednesday, July 15. Among the works is Troy Lamarr Chew II’s oil painting “Corrlinks and Jaypay/Free My Dawgs” (2021), a surreal scene that nods to Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can series (1961–2). Juliana Huxtable appears in the gift with “Untitled in the Rage (Nibiru Cataclysm)” (2015), an inkjet print probing assumptions about gender and sexuality. The works will be shown in Mashup: New Acquisitions from the Zimmerli in February 2027.

In art criticism, a provocative new take argues you can admire David Hockney and still dislike his iPad work. The piece centers on “A Year in Normandie” (2020–21), a 295-foot (~90-meter) composite iPad “painting” shown at Serpentine Galleries in March in the exhibition A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts About Painting. The show’s wall text frames the digitally “stitched” prints as encouraging movement and close looking, and it positions Hockney’s digital practice as fusing new tools with older traditions, citing 14th-century Chinese scroll paintings and the Bayeux Tapestry. The article notes the Bayeux Tapestry—an 11th-century, 230-foot (~70-meter) linen—has returned to England for a forthcoming British Museum exhibition, and that Hockney argued against the tapestry’s loan due to risk to the object.

In Washington, D.C., Refik Anadol turned the Smithsonian’s “Castle” into a temporary canvas of light and sound. During a brief pause in a renovation that began in 2023, Anadol’s immersive project Smithsonian Dreams was projected onto the Castle façade for two hours, starting at 9 PM, on Friday and Saturday evenings last week. A Smithsonian spokesperson estimated around twenty thousand visitors gathered over both nights. The work uses generative AI to transform archival data, drawing from nearly two centuries of digitized manuscripts, photographs, artworks, scientific records, and specimens across the Smithsonian’s museums, libraries, and research centers. Anadol said, “For me, data is a form of memory,” adding that the project asks what might emerge if the Castle could “learn,” “reflect,” and “dream” through its collections.

That’s the download for today. Links to every story are in the show notes—come back tomorrow for the next episode of The Daily Art Download. Chinga la migra

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