President Trump has nominated Mary Anne Carter to chair the NEA

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President Trump has nominated Mary Anne Carter to chair the NEA | Mary Anne Carter was yesterday nominated by President Trump to become chairman of the National Endowment for Arts. She has been the NEA’s acting chairman since June, and was previously a policy adviser for the Florida Governor Rick Scott. Carter, who has replaced Jane Chu, comes to the leadership role with less experience in arts organisations than her predecessors, according to ARTnews.

Sotheby’s reports losses of $27.8m for third quarter of 2018 | Sotheby’s has reported net losses of $27.8m for the third quarter of 2018, although sales have gone up by 12 per cent in the Asian market. Though the auction schedule means that losses in the third-quarter are to be expected, this year they are 19 per cent greater than the figure for the same period last year and the trend has led Sotheby’s president Tad Smith to forecast a ‘more subdued’ market in 2019.

Finnish dealers fined and jailed for five-year forgery scam | A pair of married Finnish art dealers were jailed yesterday for selling hundreds of forgeries over a five-year period. Kati Marjatta Karkkiainen, who has been sentenced to four years, and husband Reijo Pollari, sentenced to five, were found guilty by the Helsinki district court of 30 charges of aggravated fraud. They must also pay a fine of 13m euros. The forged works, which bore the fake signatures of artists including Leger, Manet, and Monet, were mostly produced by Veli Seppa, who received a suspended sentence in 2017 over a separate case.

World’s tallest statue unveiled in India | The world’s tallest statue was unveiled in India on Wednesday by president Narendra Modi. The bronze ‘Statue of Unity’, which portrays India’s first deputy prime minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, stands at 597 feet, approximately double the height of the Statue of Liberty in New York City. Created by the 93-year-old sculptor Ram V. Sutar, it cost 29.9 billion rupees to produce.

Recommended reading | Jerry Saltz responds to new documentary The Price of Everything by exploring the relationship between art and money. Emma Brockes speaks to Alex Katz about figurative art and how we perceive our surroundings for the Guardian. As Warhol’s sales decline, Katya Kazakina considers for Bloomberg if a new retrospective at the Whitney Museum can affect his standing.