MoMA union plans protest over employee contracts

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

MoMA union to stage demonstration over healthcare and overtime | MoMA Local 2110, a workers’ union representing around 260 employees at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, has planned a protest drawing attention to certain contract changes they are demanding from the institution, ArtNews reports. The union is claiming that MoMA is hiring temporary, non-unionised workers, forcing employees to work unpaid overtime, and failing to cover an adequate share of healthcare costs. The protest – dubbed ‘Pavement Party’ – will take place this evening (31 May) on the street outside the museum’s annual ‘Party in the Garden’ fundraising gala.

Federal investigators close probe on Yves Bouvier | A long running federal investigation into the activities of art dealer and ‘freeport king’ Yves Bouvier appears to have been closed late last year, reports Bloomberg. Bouvier had been accused of fraud, having allegedly made improper mark-ups for his own profit when arranging the sale of artworks to Russian businessman and collector Dimitri Rybolovlev. The closure of the investigation was reportedly prompted by the sale of Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi, which Rybolovlev had bought for $128m in a deal negotiated by Bouvier, for $450m at auction – a result which undermined Rybolovlev’s claim to be a victim of fraud.

Plans to relocate Escher Museum in doubt | The city of the Hague has announced that it intends to sell the Marcel Breuer-designed building which formerly housed the US embassy to a private buyer, scuppering plans to transform the location into a museum. According to Volkskrant (Dutch language article), there were hopes that the Escher Museum could be relocated, while a number of other cultural initiatives also had their eye on the currently empty site. ‘We realise that this is a blow to the cultural sector, but running this building as a museum will be loss-making and that would mean making cuts elsewhere in the budget,’ culture alderman Robert Van Asten said in a statement.

Thomas Dane to represent Anthea Hamilton | Thomas Dane is now representing Turner Prize nominated artist Anthea Hamilton. Hamilton, whose performance exhibition ‘The Squash’ is currently at Tate Britain’s Duveen Gallery, will have a solo exhibition of her work at the gallery in early 2019. Click here to read Imelda Barnard’s interview with Hamilton for Apollo.