Chase F. Robinson named director of Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler galleries

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Chase F. Robinson named director of the Freer and Sackler galleries | Chase F. Robinson is to become the director of the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the two museums of Asian art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the New York Times reports. Currently, Robinson is the president of the Graduate Center at City University of New York, and has been a distinguished professor at the university since 2009, specialising in early Islamic history. He takes up his role as director of the two galleries on 10 December, succeeding Julian Raby, who retired in 2017.

National Heritage List for England reaches 400,000 entries | The National Heritage List for England has reached 400,000 entries for the first time, Historic England has announced. New listings on the record of England’s built heritage include Plymouth Theatre Royal, a ‘squatters cottage’ from c. 1700 in Shropshire, and the former head office of the Raleigh Cycle Company in Nottingham, which brought the record up to the 400,000 mark. (For Apollo’s forum last year on whether the heritage listing system in England is working, see here.)

Tuscaloosa Museum of Art in Alabama to close | The Tuscaloosa Museum of Art in Alabama is set to close on 31 August, reports Tuscaloosa News. The museum, which opened in 2011, houses a collection of American and Asian paintings, furniture and decorative art acquired by the Westervelt Company’s former CEO Jack Warner, who died last year. Some important works will remain in the collection, while others may be dispersed.

The Sculpture Park at Madhavendra Palace appoints new director | The Saat Saath Arts Foundation and the Sculpture Park at Madhavendra Palace have announced that Noelle Kadar has been appointed director at the sculpture park in Nahargarh Fort overlooking Jaipur, which opened in December 2017. Kadar, who has previously been an international director at the Indian Art Fair in New Delhi, will oversee the opening of the park’s second annual edition on 9 December. For more on the project, read Louise Nicholson’s letter from Rajasthan for Apollo here.