Madani Younis announced as new creative director of Southbank Centre

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Madani Younis announced as new creative director of Southbank Centre | Madani Younis was today announced as the new creative director of the Southbank Centre. Younis was previously artistic director and CEO of London’s Bush Theatre, which he joined in 2012 after directing Freedom Studios in Bradford, Yorkshire. He is a member of the Mayor of London’s Cultural Board. Younis will join the Southbank Centre in January 2019.

Frieze Art Fair to introduce new pricing system at Los Angeles debut | Frieze Art Fair will introduce a new tiered pricing system at their first Los Angeles event in February, according to The Art Newspaper. Galleries exhibiting at Frieze London and New York have so far paid a flat fee per square foot for the main galleries section, but booths at Los Angeles will be organised into four tiers based on size. The system will benefit younger galleries, but also those that are more geographically remote or who represent different types of artists. Director of the Frieze fairs, Victoria Siddall, has stated that she was encouraged by the fact that major dealers like David Zwirner and Pace’s Marc Glimcher have been publically ‘open to the idea of essentially paying more to support the smaller galleries’. Frieze plans to adopt the same policy in London and New York.

Kokoschka returned to heirs of Jewish dealer by Sweden’s Moderna Museet | Sweden’s Moderna Museet has returned a 1910 Kokoschka to Michael Hulton, the great-nephew and heir of Jewish dealer Alfred Flechtheim. Fletcheim fled Nazi Germany in 1933, after being attacked in the press, and his private collection was sold off. The painting in question, a portrait of Marquis Joseph de Montesquiou-Fezensac, was sold by former employee Alex Vömel, a member of the Nazi Party. Complying with the 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, the Moderna Museet’s director Daniel Birnbaum stated: ‘We are happy and relieved the Kokoschka painting now returns to its true owner.’

Denise Scott Brown receives Soane Medal 2018 | Sir John Soane’s Museum has announced that American architect Denise Scott Brown will receive this year’s Soane Medal. Scott Brown is principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates as well as a theorist and writer of several books, most notably Learning from Las Vegas (1972). The Soane Medal is an annual award that was started in 2017 to recognise architects who have made important contributions to their field. This year’s panel of judges included David Chipperfield, Farshid Moussavi and Oliver Wainwright.