Closures, Cuts, and Culture Under Siege

A notable chapter in London’s contemporary gallery ecosystem is closing: Sid Motion Gallery is set to shut this autumn after a decade, with founder Sid Motion saying she’s choosing to wind up the business while the programme and finances are still intact. She founded the gallery in 2016, first transforming a disused betting shop in Kings Cross into a space she ran around a full-time job, then moving in 2019 to the Penarth Centre in South Bermondsey. The final exhibition, That Which Appears, opens September 18 and runs through October 31, marking the gallery’s 85th show. Motion says she won’t compromise on supporting her artists and sees closing as a “positive and conscious decision.”

Staying in London, ARTnews connects Sid Motion’s closure to another: Beers Gallery is also closing, and both point to economic pressures reshaping the city’s dealer landscape. Motion’s eponymous gallery—now in South Bermondsey—will close when That Which Appears ends on October 31. ARTnews notes the gallery represents five artists: Vincent Hawkins, James Lomax, Dafna Talmor, Max Wade, and Morgan Wills, while having shown dozens more, including Magdalena Abakanowicz, Rana Begum, and Robert Mapplethorpe, and participating in events like NADA Miami, Photo London, and Condo Mexico City. Beers Gallery, founded by Kurt Beers in 2012, announced its closure via Instagram, citing “economic pressures, market shifts, and the rise of new digital platforms.”

Still in the United Kingdom, labor policy at the Victoria and Albert Museum is in the spotlight. As Museums Association reports, the V&A has changed its break policy at V&A East Storehouse after Prospect—the union representing collections access officers there—argued workers didn’t have enough time to use the bathroom or drink water during shifts. Prospect had demanded two paid breaks per shift, matching what it said other V&A workers already receive. On August 7, the museum told staff it would grant the requested breaks, though Prospect members said they still planned to strike over pay and other issues. Prospect General Secretary Mike Clancy called it “a great result” but criticized management for acting only after industrial pressure.

Across the Atlantic, the San Diego Museum of Art has cut staff. The museum laid off 11 employees last Wednesday, August 5, citing “rising operational costs” and funding uncertainties. The layoffs affected workers in programs, development, exhibitions, and operations, and came just six months after the institution celebrated its 100th anniversary. The museum framed the decision as a response to financial difficulties, pointing to the strain of higher costs alongside uncertainty around funding. It’s a reminder that even milestone years don’t insulate cultural institutions from budget pressure, and that cuts often land across the departments that shape what the public sees—programming, exhibitions, and the behind-the-scenes work that keeps daily operations functioning.

Also in the United States, higher education in the arts is showing real strain. ARTnews reports that New York’s School of Visual Arts has seen enrollment drop about 34 percent since 2019 and is facing a twenty two dollars million structural budget deficit—described by interim president Christopher J. Cyphers as the largest in the school’s nearly 80-year history. SVA’s annual operating budget is around two hundred dollars million, and it relies heavily on tuition, with full-time tuition set at fifty five thousand two hundred seventy dollars for the coming year. Cyphers linked the crisis to the demographic cliff, federal threats affecting international students, and disruptions tied to FAFSA and changes to student loan programs. SVA has also recently shut down multiple programs.

On the West Coast, a long-running photography venue is ending its run. SF Camerawork announced it will close after 52 years, citing “rising operating costs, declining public funding, and a changing philanthropic landscape.” Its final exhibition, a solo show by Bay Area photographer John Chiara, closes August 16. Founded in 1974 by artists including Hal Fischer, Donna-Lee Phillips, and Lew Thomas, SF Camerawork became known for hosting exhibitions and lectures by artists such as Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Susan Meiselas, and Joel-Peter Witkin, and for mounting first West Coast shows for figures like Binh Danh, Jennifer Karady, and Meghann Riepenhoff. The organization said that despite efforts by staff, board, artists, donors, and supporters, it can no longer continue operations.

Turning to cultural stewardship under war, Russia has damaged or destroyed thousands of Ukrainian cultural sites. According to a statement from Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture, as of July 31 Russian missile attacks had affected one thousand nine hundred ninety cultural heritage sites and two thousand six hundred twenty five cultural infrastructure facilities—more than four thousand five hundred sites total. The impact includes 196 arts education institutions and 141 museums and galleries, with the National Art Museum of Ukraine and the Odesa National Fine Arts Museum among those affected. The ministry said cultural institutions across 24 percent of Ukrainian territories have been damaged, along with nearly half of the country’s community cultural centers. The scale points to years of recovery work ahead—across museums, schools, and public cultural facilities—alongside the broader human toll of the prolonged campaign.

Across the Pacific, the Cultural Center of the Philippines has named a new chief curator ahead of its reopening next year. The CCP appointed Carlos Quijon Jr. as chief curator of its museum for contemporary art, with the reopening scheduled for early next year after renovation began in 2021. Quijon is an art historian, curator, and critic based between Manila and New York, and for the past two years he has been the inaugural C-MAP research fellow for Southeast and East Asia at MoMA. His credits include curating the Philippine Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale. CCP President Kaye C. Tinga said the center is strengthening both facilities and its “lineup of visionaries” as it prepares to reopen.

In Peru, laser surveying is revealing new traces of movement around Machu Picchu. Archaeologists working near the Incan citadel have identified more than 1.5 miles of pre-Hispanic roads, plus features researchers think could be agricultural terraces and platforms, hidden in the Andean cloud forest. The findings follow an August 10 announcement by Peru’s Ministry of Culture and came from preliminary survey work conducted in July using LiDAR, a remote sensing technology that can detect man-made features beneath vegetation. Among the discoveries is a road at least three-quarters of a mile long with a zigzagging route characteristic of Inca construction. The work is a collaboration between the University of Warsaw’s Center for Andean Studies and Cusco’s Decentralized Directorate of Culture.

Back in Philadelphia, Maori Karmael Holmes reflected on 15 years of BlackStar Film Festival and its evolution. Founded in 2012, BlackStar began as a festival centered on the work and storytelling traditions of Black people and the African diaspora, and has grown into BlackStar Projects, a nonprofit supporting Black, Brown, and Indigenous filmmakers through programming beyond the festival. This year’s 15th edition ran August 6 to 9 in Philadelphia and included 91 films, foregrounding stories from Haiti and featuring Haile Gerima’s five-part epic on Ethiopian resistance against Italian colonialism. Holmes served as the festival’s programmer for its first nine years before moving into her current role as chief executive and artistic officer.

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, and until then: Chinga la migra.

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