Southbank Centre’s artistic director Jude Kelly to step down

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Jude Kelly to leave Southbank Centre | Jude Kelly, artistic director of London’s Southbank Centre, is to step down after nearly a dozen years in the role, it was announced today. Kelly, a former artistic director of Battersea Arts Centre and the founding director of West Yorkshire Playhouse, will leave in May to concentrate on the Women of the World Festival, an initiative she established in 2010 at the Southbank Centre, which now takes place annually in venues across the world. The centre has yet to announce its plans for finding a successor to Kelly.

Claire and James Hyman gift 125 photographs to Yale Center for British Art | Claire and James Hyman, London-based collectors of British photography, have donated 125 works from their collection to the Yale Center for British Art, it was announced this week. The Hymans described the gift, including modern and contemporary prints by leading photographers including Jo Spence, Martin Parr and Chris Killip, as a demonstration of their ‘commitment to promoting British photography internationally’. In the past the collectors have been prominent critics of museums in the UK and their attitude to collecting British photography, leading the British Journal of Photography to describe this latest decision as as a potentially ‘damning indictment of UK institutions’.

Anish Kapoor donates $1m prize money to refugee charities | Anish Kapoor has donated the $1 million prize money he received as the recipient of last year’s Genesis Prize (an annual award for Jewish individuals who have attained excellence in their field) to five charities working on the refugee crisis worldwide. The NGOs selected include the International Rescue Committee, the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees, and Hillel International. In a statement, Kapoor said that ‘[d]irecting Genesis Prize funds to this cause is a way of helping people who, like my forebears not too long before them, are fleeing persecution.’

Anderson Ranch Arts Center director steps down | Colorado’s Anderson Ranch Arts Center has announced that its executive director Nancy Wilhelms is to step down from the post in late 2018. Wilhelms, who joined the Ranch in 2011 and has served as director since in 2013, has presided over a period of significant growth for the 52-year-old institution, seeing its operating budget increase by 34 per cent.

Jonny Yarker becomes named partner of Lowell Libson gallery | Lowell Libson, a Mayfair-based gallery specialising in works by British old masters, has announced it will now be known as Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd. Jonny Yarker, a director of the gallery, joined the business five years ago.