I.M. Pei (1917–2019)

Our daily round-up of news from the art world 

I.M. Pei (1917–2019) | Ieoh Ming Pei, the Chinese-American architect whose buildings include the Louvre Pyramid, the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, and the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, has died at the age of 102. Born in Guanzshou and raised in Hong Kong and Shangai, Pei studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1930s, where he became interested in the architecture of Marcel Breuer and Le Corbusier; he then worked as a research scientist for the US government during the Second World War. After his first major success with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado in 1961, Pei was selected by Jackie Kennedy to design the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Further prestigious commissions in the 1960s and ’70s, including the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., were followed by the award of the Pritzker Prize in 1983. In 1989, Pei completed the Louvre Pyramid – a building that ignited controversy at the time, but is now recognised as a Parisian landmark.

Toledo Museum of Art to return Attic vessel to Italy | The Toledo Museum of Art and the Italian culture ministry have announced that an ancient Greek skyphos vessel, dating to c. 420 BC and attributed to the Kleophon Painter of Athens, will be repatriated to Italy. The vase was purchased by the museum in 1982; in 2017, a forensic archaeologist called its provenance into question. It has been agreed that the vase will remain on view at the museum for four years, after which the TMA may request a renewal of the loan.

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize awarded to Susan Meiselas | The photographer Susan Meisalas has won the 2019 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. Meisalas, who is perhaps still best known for her photographs documenting the Nicaraguan revolution in the late 1970s and her series about carnival strippers in the United States, was the subject of a major retrospective at the Jeu de Paume last year. The award includes a prize of £30,000, and was announced at the Photographers’ Gallery in London, where an exhibition of Meisalas’s work in Kurdistan in the early 1990s is currently on display.