Kevin Roche (1922–2019)

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Kevin Roche (1922–2019) | The Pritzker Prize-winning architect Kevin Roche has died at the age of 96. Born in Dublin, Roche moved to the United States in 1948 to study under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and went on to design more than 200 buildings, including the former United Nations Plaza Hotel and the Ford Foundation in New York, and the United States Post Office in Washington, D.C. With his firm Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, Roche also collaborated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on a number of major extensions and renovations, including the galleries in the Sackler Wing, which house the Egyptian Temple of Dendur.

National Army Museum to return lock of Tewodros II’s hair to Ethiopia | The National Army Museum in London has agreed to return to Ethiopia several locks of hair cut from the head of the emperor Tewodros after the battle of Maqdala in 1868, the Art Newspaper reports. The Ethiopian government intends for the hair to be buried with the emperor’s remains, which are interred at Mahabere Selassie Monastery in Qwara, northern Ethiopia.

MOCA Cleveland to abolish admission fees | The Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, Ohio, has announced that it will stop charging admission fees from 16 March. The move is part of the museum’s ‘Open House’ initiative, which will also see the creation of a new curatorial fellowship, an apprenticeship programme, and enhanced exhibition programming for families and young people.

Hank Willis Thomas to design MLK memorial in Boston | The American artist Hank Willis Thomas has been named the winner of a competition to design a new public memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King on Boston Common. The work, which will be unveiled in 2020, is called The Embrace, and will depict interlocking pairs of arms and hands.

Recommended reading | In the New York Times, Jillian Steinhauer reviews the pick of 75 artists for the 79th Whitney Biennial – and explores the decision of Michael Rakowitz to pull out of the show in protest. In the New Statesman, Michael Prodger reviews a show of landscapes by the Norwegian modernist Harald Sohlberg, finding them ‘full of colour, mystery and an indefinable intensity’.