Governor of São Paulo defends deep cuts to Brazil’s budget for culture

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Governor of São Paulo defends deep cuts to culture ministry’s budget | João Doria, the millionaire businessman who became governor of São Paulo in January of this year, has defended the Brazilian government’s proposed cuts of 23 per cent to the culture ministry’s budget in a video released by his press office yesterday. Doria stated that ‘nothing will be closed and nothing will be stopped’ and that the budget cuts would be enacted ‘with good planning’. The video responds to the concerns of several cultural institutions that have spoken out against the proposal, including the Pinacoteca, the Afro-Brazilian Museum, the Brazilian Network of University Collections and Museums, the Brazilian Forum for Cultural Rights.

Carlos Urroz named director of Thyssen–Bornemisza Art Contemporary | Carlos Urroz has been named the director of Thyssen–Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21), it has been announced today. He has been director of ARCOmadrid and on the ARCO Foundation’s board since 2011, before which he was visual arts advisor to the Region of Madrid’s Department of Education and Culture. TBA21 is a foundation set up by Francesca von Habsburg in 2002 that commissions work by emerging and established contemporary artists. It has signed an agreement with Madrid’s Thyssen–Bornemisza Museum to present a four–year contemporary art exhibition programme in its Moneo Temporary Exhibition Hall.

Malevich portrait found to be the work of his student | A portrait of the stage designer Elizaveta Yakovleva, previously believed to be by Kazimir Malevich, has been revealed to be the work of one of his students, according to the research of a retired psychiatrist, Andrey Vasiliev. A document from the Soviet archives lists the works of art once held by the state, including those by Malevich’s former student Maria Dzhagubova. Her Position 1 – Portrait of Yakovleva was listed with the inventory number 434 208, which is still inscribed on the back of the portrait. Other documents found suggest that the work was attributed to Malevich when it was sold with a false signature during the 1990s.

Lead image: used under Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA 4.0; original image cropped)