Nicholas Grimshaw awarded Royal Gold Medal for architecture

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Nicholas Grimshaw awarded Royal Gold Medal for architecture | Sir Nicholas Grimshaw is the winner of the 2019 Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, awarded by RIBA. The architect opened his own practice in 1980 and is a pioneer of ‘high-tech’; the International Terminal at Waterloo Station and the Eden Project in Cornwall are his most acclaimed buildings. The Royal Gold Medal is awarded every year to a figure or group who have had a significant influence ‘either directly or indirectly on the advancement of architecture’. Previous winners include Neave Brown, Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster.

Deutsche Bank’s Palais Populaire opens in Berlin | The Palais Populaire, Deutsche Bank’s new cultural centre housing its art collection opened yesterday (27 September) in Berlin, the Art Newspaper reports. The first exhibition at the venue, entitled ‘The World on Paper,’ will show 300 works from the Deutsche Bank collection, which at 55,000 is one of the largest corporate collections of art in the world.

Helena Almeida (1934–2018) | The Portuguese artist Helena Almeida has died at the age of 84. Almeida worked in a variety of mediums including painting, photography, sculpture and performance; she rose to international prominence in the 1970s, for her three-dimensional trompe-l’oeil drawings. Almeida twice represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale, in 1982 and 2005; an exhibition of her work from the 1990s is currently at Tate Modern (until 4 November).

Leslie-Lohman Museum to receive $1m bequest | The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York has been promised a bequest of $1m from the philanthropist and photographer Michael Becker, ARTnews reports. The gift is the largest in the history of the museum, and will go towards increasing the institution’s endowment, as well as being used for other general purposes.

Recommended reading | In the Guardian, Tania Bruguera drops hints to Charlotte Higgins about her commission for the Tate’s Turbine Hall (opening 2 October), and talks about the relationship between art and activism. And in the Paris Review, Rosanna Warren explores Elizabeth Bishop’s friendship with the French Surrealist Max Jacob.