Our daily round-up of news from the art world
Major collection of contemporary art donated to the Albertina | The Albertina museum, Vienna, has received a donation of 1,323 works from the Essl Collection. The donation is worth around €90m, and includes artworks by leading Austrian artists such as Maria Lassnig and Hermann Nitsch, as well as by international names such as Cindy Sherman, Georg Baselitz and Alex Katz. This follows the division of the collection, which has allowed the Essl family to donate its 40 per cent stake while the majority share, owned by Hans Peter Haselsteiner, is loaned to the museum for 27 years. The works will go on display at the Albertina’s new second location at the Künstlerhaus in central Vienna from next year.
Jac Leirner wins the Wolfgang Hahn Prize | The Brazilian artist Jac Leirner has won the 2019 Wolfgang Hahn Prize, awarded by the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. The prize, awarded for the 25th time, comes with maximum prize money of €100,000 and is intended to recognise contemporary artists with a strong reputation internationally, but who are less well known in Germany. Leirner, an artist associated with the conceptual art movement and with institutional critique, exhibited work at IMMA in Dublin last year and had a major retrospective at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo in 2011.
Harold Gregor (1929–2018) | The American painter Harold Gregor has died at the age of 89. The artist was heavily influenced by the Abstract Expressionists early in his career, but became best known for his photorealist depictions of rural landscapes in the central United States.