Mary Boone sentenced to 30 months in prison for tax fraud

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Mary Boone sentenced to 30 months in prison for tax fraud | The New York art dealer Mary Boone was sentenced to 30 months in prison for tax fraud in New York’s Southern District Court yesterday. Boone, who pleaded guilty to evading approximately $3m in taxes in September of last year, apologised in court to her family and colleagues and stated that she had resigned from several organisations including the Art Dealers Association of America. Her sentence includes one year of supervised release and when it is completed she will serve 180 hours of community service, to be spent working with the New York Department of Education on education programmes in the visual arts for children.

Radical Matriarchy group protests outside National Gallery of Art in Washington | The art group Radical Matriarchy staged a protest outside the National Gallery of Art in Washington yesterday calling for greater diversity in the museum’s collection. The group claims that 90 per cent of the works at the NGA are by white men, a statistic taken from a study conducted by the Public Library of Science in 2018. Radical Matriarchy held a similar protest last year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

National Endowment of the Arts announce more than $27m in grants | The National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) has announced more than $27m in grants to be shared across the country. Nine hundred and seventy-two grants have been made through the Art Works program, with funds going towards arts education, publications and cultural festivals among other causes. A further 138 grants were made via Challenge America, which supports organisations bringing the arts to marginalised communities. A full list of recipients can be found via the NEA website.

Recommended reading | Annie Leibovitz talks to Lane Florsheim of the Wall Street Journal about returning to her early work for an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in LA. Charlotte Burns speaks to Sir Nicholas Serota about the future of arts and culture in England after Brexit for in other words.  On artnet, Eileen Kinsella summarises the findings from Christine J. Vincent’s recent report The Artist as Philanthropist: Strengthening the Next Generation of Artist-Endowed Foundations.