National Endowment for the Humanities awards $43.1 million in grants

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

National Endowment for the Humanities awards $43.1 million in grants | The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced its final round of funding for the 2018 fiscal year. More than 200 projects across the US will be awarded a total of $43.1 million in grants. The recipients include visual art projects, academic publications, research centres and cultural hubs. Almost a third of the total amount will constitute the NEH’s new Infrastructure and Capacity-Building Challenge Grants, which support physical and digital arts infrastructure.

Colin Amery (1944–2018) | The architectural critic, historian and conservationist Colin Amery has died at the age of 74. Amery co-wrote The Rape of Britain in 1975 with Dan Cruickshank, and was for 20 years the architecture correspondent of the Financial Times. He later became the director of World Monuments Watch, an international body dedicated to preserving historic cultural monuments.

Iranian artist denied permission to leave country | The Iranian artist Parviz Tanavoli has told The Art Newspaper that he is being prevented from leaving Iran. Tanavoli was detained on attempting to fly to London last month; he was told he had received a travel ban for ‘spreading disinformation’. He is subject to a lawsuit from Maryam Goudarzi, a Tehran gallery owner, who alleges that she lost out in a complex deal with Tanavoli involving six of his copper sculptures. Tanavoli was two years ago similarly denied permission to travel, in that case on charges of ‘spreading public anxiety’.

Stedelijk Museum appoints Truze Lodder to chair supervisory board | The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has appointed Truze Lodder as temporary chairman of its supervisory board. The existing board was appointed last year, after former director Beatrix Ruf resigned amid accusations of conflicts of interest; all four members, however, stepped down last week. In a statement, interim director Jan Willem Sieburgh said that Lodder would bring ‘decisiveness, experience and stability’ to the museum.

Bloomberg Philanthropies announces $43 million in grants | Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced the latest recipients of its grants for small to mid-sized US arts organisations. The 45 new recipients, all in Atlanta, include theatres, community museums and dance companies. The grants are designed to fund operational work and administrative training. Grantees in other US cities will be announced in the coming months.

Recommended reading | Kirk Johnson visits the Seattle Art Fair for the New York Times, and investigates its attempts to foreground ‘strong women’. Meanwhile, in London, Hannah Rozenberg talks to Dezeen about her new digital tool for identifying gender bias in the built environment. And for Le Monde, Philippe Dagen writes about Valérie Jouve’s ‘rigorous’ photography of towers, streets and urban scenery in Northern France (French language article).