Julia Gonnella appointed new director of the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Julia Gonnella appointed new director of the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha | Qatar Museums have appointed the curator Julia Gonnella to the new director of the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) in Doha. Gonnella began her career at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, before moving to the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin in 1994 and becoming head curator there in 2009. Gonnella has conducted fieldwork on the German excavations in Raqqa in Syria and her publications include The Citadel of Aleppo (2007). Describing the IM Pei designed Doha institution as ‘one of the world’s great museums’, Gonnella said that she hoped to build on the extraordinary achievements of its first decade.

Deborah de Robertis to be prosecuted for ‘flashing’ Mona Lisa | Deborah de Robertis, a performance artist known for exposing herself in museums, is to be prosecuted for exhibitionism and assault after flashing her genitals in front of the Mona Lisa at the weekend and allegedly biting a security guard’s jacket. According to AFP, De Robertis says that the act was a recreation of a performance by Valie Export, with the aim of questioning women’s place in art history.

The Jewish Museum in New York increases security after ISIS threat | The NYPD has stepped up security at The Jewish Museum in New York after ISIS released audio recordings suggesting that its followers target the institution. According to NBC, there is ‘no known plot’, but sensitivity surrounding an exhibit on Kurdish culture has prompted the authorities to act.

Susanne Pfeffer named director of Frankfurt’s Museum für Moderne Kunst | Curator Susanne Pfeffer has been confirmed as the next director of the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt. Pfeffer, who has headed Kassel’s Fridericianum since 2013, will succeed Susanne Gaensheimer, who is departing to take over at the North Rhine-Westphalia collection.

Sexually explicit sculpture pulled from FIAC | Plans to exhibit a sculptural installation by Dutch design studio Atelier Van Lieshout in the Tuileries gardens have foundered after the Louvre’s management objected to its sexually explicit character (French language article). Entitled Domestikator, the work was due to be shown as part of Paris’s FIAC fair later this month, having previously been displayed at the Ruhrtriennale in 2015.

Recommended reading | In the Observer, Rowan Moore speaks to Frank Gehry about his influential design for the Guggenheim Bilbao, and discusses subsequent – and rather less successful – attempts to replicate the ‘Bilbao effect’ elsewhere. Meanwhile in the USA, museums are developing strategies for acquiring objects from the recent protests that have rocked the country, sometimes within days of the disturbances taking place. Graham Bowley reports on this ‘rapid response collecting’ for the New York Times.