The architect Ricardo Scofidio, co-founder of the influential New York firm Diller Scofidio and Renfro, has died at the age of 89. As Diller Scofidio (Renfro became a partner in 2004) the firm became known for conceptual art installations and temporary structures – the most striking being the Blur Building in Switzerland in 2002. By then it was also winning notable commissions for permanent projects in New York that combine an interest in urban space, technology and culture. It was Scofidio who oversaw the creation of the widely acclaimed High Line in Manhattan over 12 years, working with James Corner Field Operations and Piet Oudolf. The firm’s biggest cultural projects include the $1bn reimagining of Lincoln Center’s outdoor spaces from 2003–10 and the $450m renovation of the Museum of Modern Art, completed in 2019. Commissions outside New York included the ICA Boston, The Broad in Los Angeles, Zaryadye Park in Moscow and the V&A Storehouse in east London. Richard Scofidio studied architecture at the Cooper Union and Columbia University and began teaching at the Cooper Union in 1955. In 1981, he founded the firm with Elizabeth Diller – whom he married ten years later – and, in 1999, they were the first architects to receive a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant. Their work was the subject of an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2003.
Bernd Ebert will be the next general director of the Dresden State Art Collections (SKD), Saxony’s ministry of culture announced on Tuesday. Ebert, who is currently chief curator of Dutch and German baroque paintings at the Bavarian State Painting Collections and responsible for the state galleries in Bayreuth and Bamberg, takes over from Marion Ackermann, who has been appointed president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Ebert has worked at the Bavarian state painting collections since 2013, curating exhibitions including ‘Jacobus Vrel: Looking for Clues of an Enigmatic Painter’ and, most recently, ‘Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art’ at the Alte Pinakothek last year. He had various roles at Berlin’s state museums from 2005–13. After beginning his career as a clerk at Deutsche Bank, Ebert studied art history, law and business administration and completed a doctorate in Dutch baroque painting. The search committee included Neil MacGregor, formerly director of the British Museum, who said that the decision was unanimous. Ebert takes up his post on 1 May.
George Lucas is to take over the ‘content direction’ of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art after announcing the departure of CEO and director Sandra Jackson-Dumont on 1 April, reports ARTnews. In a statement issued on 28 February, Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson said that Jackson-Dumont resigned after a decision to split her position in two, with Lucas to take on the new role. Jackson-Dumont has led the Los Angeles museum since October 2019, during which it has hired several senior staff and made high-profile acquisitions at auction, including Robert Colescutt’s satirical depiction of George Washington crossing the Delaware. Before that she was chair of the Met’s education department for nearly nine years. Jim Gianopulos, a former chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures, will act as interim CEO while a permanent replacement is chosen. The museum, which has been many years in the making and has postponed three openings already, is devoted to all forms of visual storytelling, drawing on Lucas’s personal art collection and the Separate Cinema Archive devoted to African American film history. It is now scheduled to open in October 2026.
A painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger that was stolen from a Polish museum 50 years ago has been found in the Netherlands, reports Artnet. Press clippings from Polish archives suggest that the theft of a small tondo, Women Carrying the Embers (1626), together with a sketch by Van Dyck from the National Museum of Gdańsk, may have taken place in April 1974. After a series of events Dutch art detective Arthur Brand describes as ‘completely nuts’, the case was closed and reopened only in 2008. The painting’s whereabouts remained unknown until John Brozius, a reporter from Dutch magazine Vind, spotted it in an exhibition at the Museum Gouda last year. He called on the expertise of Brand, who, along with Dutch police, established that it was ‘100 per cent the same painting’. On 3 March, Polskie Radio reported that Polish authorities had begun legal proceedings to secure the return of the painting to Gdańsk.