Plans revived for Centre Pompidou satellite in New Jersey

Plans for an outpost of the Centre Pompidou in New Jersey are not dead after all, reports Artnet News. A new proposal to grant a 30-year tax reduction to the owners of two 50-storey towers in exchange for giving 100,000 sq ft of space to the museum has been agreed by Jersey City Council. Under the previous plan, the Pompidou site was to occupy a former industrial building which required construction work worth $176m. That plan was scrapped after the state of New Jersey withdrew $48m of construction funds after the new centre was projected to run an annual operating deficit of $19m. The mayor of Jersey City, Steve Fulop, a strong supporter of the Pompidou satellite, tried to dispel misconceptions about the project in an interview with the Jersey Journal earlier this week, saying that the result will not be just a museum, ‘which to most people represents a place that hangs art on the wall […] A core part is being entrenched in the community beyond artwork and display.’ The outpost, first announced in 2021, would be the Centre Pompidou’s first site in North America. (For more about the Centre Pompidou’s direction as it prepares to close for five years from September 2025, read Catherine Bennett’s report in the October 2024 issue of Apollo, which includes the insistence of its director Laurent Le Bon that, contrary to reports, the New Jersey project is still live.)

Two Just Stop Oil activists who glued themselves to a painting by Turner in Manchester Art Gallery have been found not guilty of criminal damage. In July 2022, Eddie Whittingham and Paul Bell spray-painted the words ‘No New Oil’ and the Just Stop Oil logo on the floor under Tomson’s Aeolian Harp (1809), before gluing their hands to the frame. They were charged with causing criminal damage of less than £5,000 to the gallery floor and the picture frame, but the judge at Manchester Magistrates’ Court acquitted the pair, saying that their intervention was proportionate in the face of the climate crisis. This acquittal comes a week after Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, two Just Stop Oil activists who threw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888) at the National Gallery in October 2022, were sentenced to two years and 20 months in prison respectively for criminal damage.

Archaeologists have uncovered a painted throne room dating from the seventh century that is thought to have been constructed for an ancient female ruler of the Moche people, who flourished from the 4th and 9th centuries in what is now Peru. The room, which was found in the archaeological site of Pañamarca in the Ancash region, includes lavish wall paintings, a number of which depict a powerful woman, as well as a stone throne, behind which is a wall painting showing the same woman seated on an identical throne. Erosion on the back of the throne and specimens of human hair have also been found, suggesting that it was used regularly. In a statement, the archaeological team at Pañamarca said that ‘a throne room for a queen has never been seen before at Pañamarca, nor anywhere else in ancient Peru’. Lisa Trever, professor of art history and archaeology at Columbia University and a member of the team studying the site, told the Art Newspaper that the discovery confirmed that ‘powerful women in ancient Moche art and life were not only “priestesses” but that they held real social and political authority’.

The Hammer Museum has announced that Zoë Ryan will succeed Ann Philbin as its director. Ryan, who is currently director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Pennsylvania, will take up her post on 1 January 2025, taking over after a period of great transformation under Philbin’s leadership. The museum has recently completed a $90m renovation project, which has created a more prominent entrance, more gallery space and a new restaurant. In the 25 years that Philbin has been director, the Hammer Museum has flourished, with its endowment growing from $35m to more than $125m and its operating budget rising from $6m to $30m. Ryan has been director of the ICA Pennsylvania since 2020. Before that she was chair and curator of architecture and design at the Art Institute of Chicago. Of following in Philbin’s footsteps, Ryan told the New York Times, ‘Annie is a legend in the field. I’m honored to build upon this work.’

A working group including Maasai representatives from Kenya and Tanzania have decided that items acquired by the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford during the colonial era can stay at the museum. The Museums Association Journal reports that the Pitt Rivers, which holds 188 items from Kenya and Tanzania, has been working with a group that includes community representatives since 2017. Under the Living Cultures initiative, five artefacts out of the 188 were identified as particularly sensitive, including relics that were intended to pass from father to son on the deathbed of the former. After several stages of research representatives of five families from whom objects were taken visited the museum last month and decided that the artefacts should stay there. Ruth Sintamei Tuleto, from the Pan African Living Cultures Alliance NGO, told the BBC that the project was about ‘peace and reconciliation’, adding that ‘We do not want to disconnect our relationship with the museum – we want to continue our relationship to make the world a better place.’