Elliot Bostwick Davis named director of Norton Museum of Art

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Elliot Bostwick Davis named director of Norton Museum of Art | The Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, Florida has announced the appointment of Elliot Bostwick Davis as its director and CEO. Davis joins the Norton from the MFA Boston, where she has headed its Art of the Americas department for the past 18 years, overseeing the opening in 2010 of the Art of the Americas wing. Davis’ appointment also coincides with a major period of transformation at the Norton, which is undergoing an expansion to include a new West Wing and sculpture garden designed by Foster + Partners. She will take up the post in March 2019, succeeding Hope Alswang who announced her retirement in August after running the institution for nine years.

Annette Michelson (1922–2018) | Film critic Annette Michelson has died at the age of 96. In large part responsible for the cinema studies department of New York University, Michelson was also a writer at Artforum ­– where she wrote about film, as well as performance and dance – and, along with Rosalind Krauss, was a co-founder of October. She is known for her theoretical, formalist criticism, and for her influential essays on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyysey (1968), as well as studies of Stan Brakhage and Sergei Eisenstein. In 2015, Michelson donated her archives to the Getty Research Institute, which also stores her film archive.

Artist Jan Fabre accused of sexual harassment | The Belgian artist Jan Fabre has been accused of bullying and sexual misconduct, in an open letter signed by eight named and 12 anonymous former employees of Fabre’s dance company Troubleyn, published by the magazine rekto:verso. The letter alleges that ‘the exchange of sex for advancement [has] become a hidden currency in the company’, and that performers who rejected Fabre’s advances were subject to ‘stalking, verbal humiliation, aggression and manipulation’. The Flemish culture minister has confirmed that an investigation into these allegations, which Fabre denies, is now underway.

White Cube announces representation of first artist estate | White Cube today announced that from January 2019 the gallery will represent the estate of the American painter Al Held. Held, who died in 2005, was a key figure in the second generation of Abstract Expressionists working in New York in the 1950s and ’60s. His estate will be the first artist foundation to join White Cube’s roster.