Our daily round-up of news from the art world
Nominees withdraw from all-male shortlist for Belgian art prize | All five artists nominated for the Belgian Art Prize 2019 have withdrawn from the prize, in response to an open letter that criticised the jury’s selection of an all-male shortlist. The artists, Sven Augustijnen, Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, and Gabriel Kuri, released a joint statement published on Artnet explaining their reasons for withdrawal, in which they affirm their support for the ‘professional, supportive, ethical and competent’ members of the jury, and lament the ‘all too rapid shift of public attention [surrounding the prize] from artistic discourse or content – let alone merit – towards white male privilege’.
Amanda Levete appointed as architect of £42m Paisley Museum project | Amanda Levete’s architecture firm AL_A has been appointed to oversee the planned transformation of the Paisley Museum in Renfrewshire, Scotland. The £42m project, part of Renfrewshire Council’s £100m investment strategy to bolster Paisley’s bid for UK City of Culture 2021, will see the museum closed from this autumn until 2022, when the building is expected to reopen.
Swedish court blocks plans for Chipperfield-designed Nobel Centre | A Swedish court has blocked the construction of a planned David Chipperfield-designed Nobel Centre in Stockholm. The ruling, issued yesterday by the country’s land and environment court, said that the venue would ‘cause significant damage’ to cultural heritage in the city’s historic Blasieholmen district. The city of Stockholm is intending to appeal the court’s decision, the Architects’ Journal reports.
Herb Alpert award winners announced | The recipients of this year’s Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, awarded annually to ‘five risk-taking mid-career artists’ in the categories of music, film/video, dance, theatre and the visual arts have been announced. In the visual arts field, the unrestricted $75,000 prize went to Michael Rakowitz; Arthur Jafa was the recipient for film and video.
Lead image: used under Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA 4.0; original image cropped)