City of London gives ‘Tulip’ skyscraper planning permission

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

City of London gives ‘Tulip’ skyscraper planning permission | The City of London Corporation has given planning permission for a 305m skyscraper designed by Foster + Partners, after a committee vote of 18-7. Known as ‘the Tulip’, it will be constructed on Bury Street in the Square Mile, and will house a restaurant and sky bar, a rooftop terrace, a street-level park and a viewing platform with rotating pods. The building will be the second tallest in western Europe after London’s Shard, and is expected to attract 1.2m visitors per year.

Art Gallery of Ontario deaccessions works by A.Y. Jackson | The Art Gallery of Ontario has decided to deaccession several works by A.Y. Jackson in order to increase its acquisition fund and diversify its collection. Jackson was a founding member of the Group of Seven landscape painters and one of Canada’s best-known artists. The works will be sold by Heffel Fine Art Auction House in a series of auctions beginning in May.

Airbnb partners with Paris’s Louvre for night at museum | Airbnb is partnering with the Louvre in Paris to offer two winners the chance to spend a night at the museum on 30 April. The evening will include a personal tour, dinner and drinks with the Mona Lisa, an evening in Napoleon III’s rococo salon and a bedroom in the shape of a pyramid – a replica that honours the I.M. Pei-designed glass pyramid in the Louvre’s courtyard, which turns 30 this month. Applicants must explain in no more than 800 characters what makes them Mona Lisa’s ideal guest.

T. Barton Thurber appointed director of Vassar College’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center | T. Barton Thurber has been appointed the director of Vassar College’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center in Poughkeepsie, New York. Thurber is currently associate director for collections and exhibitions at Princeton University Art Museum, and was previously a curator at the Hood Museum of Art in New Hampshire. He replaces James Mundy, who is retiring after directing the centre for 28 years.