National Portrait Gallery announces partial closure in London Fashion Week

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

National Portrait Gallery announces partial closure in London Fashion Week | The National Portrait Gallery has announced that it will close the rooms housing its permanent collection on Monday 17 September until 3pm for an as-yet-specified event at London Fashion Week. The current temporary exhibitions, ‘Michael Jackson: On the Wall’ and the BP Portrait Award will still be open to visitors. The announcement comes after the controversial closure of the entire museum in February 2018 after the space had been hired by the fashion house Erdem. In defence of the closure, a spokesperson from the gallery is quoted in the Art Newspaper as saying: ‘The gallery is a charity and has to self-generate over 70% of the funds needed to keep open and accessible to all.’

French Court releases Pyotr Pavlensky from pre-trial detention | Pyotr Pavlensky, the Russian activist-artist who sewed his lips together in a protest-performance in 2012 and nailed his scrotum to Red Square a year later, has been released from pre-trial detention in France. Last year Pavlensky was given asylum in France with his partner Oksana Shalygina and children, but was detained in Fleury-Mérogis prison outside Paris after he and Shalygina set fire to a French central bank in October 2017. The artist, who is still awaiting trial (due to start in January 2019), is accused of declaring that ‘bankers have taken the place of monarchs’. The Art Newspaper reports that at the court hearing on Thursday a representative from the Bank of France said Pavlensky may be sued for ‘defamation’.

Artists in Cuba denounce new law that will increase state censorship | The Art Newspaper reports that the ‘San Isidro Manifesto’, a 10-point declaration condemning Decree 349 was published yesterday. In July, the decree was signed and issued by president Miguel Díaz-Canel who took office in April. It is thought that the law, set to come into effect on 7 December, will clamp down on the ability of artists to make art not approved by state and reinforce government censorship. 

Former brain surgeon Frank Moore to join Gagosian | Gagosian gallery announced on Thursday the appointment of Frank Moore, the New York art collector and former neurosurgeon. Moore will join as a director and will, according to Art News, sell art on the gallery’s behalf. Moore has previously appeared on ARTnews’s ‘Top 200 Collectors’ list and has a collection of conceptual, photographic and design works, including works by Cindy Sherman, Wade Guyton and Jean Prouvé.

Recommended Reading | In his discussion of the fire at the National Museum of Brazil in the New Yorker, Jon Lee Anderson argues that the disaster is both a result of the country’s neglect of its cultural heritage and history at large and also a reflection of the nation’s political and economic turbulence | For Hyperallergic Sarah E. Bond examines the rising visibility of Roman ‘fasces’ as symbols of violence in the insignia of nationalist Alt-Right groups.