RIBA appoints new president amid controversy

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

RIBA appoints new president amid controversy | The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the appointment of architect and RIBA’s current vice president for education Alan Jones as its next president after winning an electoral vote. Jones, who is a senior lecturer at Queen’s Belfast University, will take over from Ben Derbyshire at the end of Darbyshire’s two-year presidential term in September 2019. The appointment comes amid controversy, after one of the presidential candidates Elsie Owusu received a cease-and-desist letter from the organisation for publicly criticising the salaries of RIBA executives, which also made reference to her past expressions of concern about institutional racism in the organisation.

NADA’s New York fair 2019 cancelled | The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) has cancelled the 2019 edition of its New York fair, which has taken place every year in March since 2012. Executive director Heather Hubbs said in a statement that NADA will now look to ‘produce alternative models’ for engagement with contemporary art and will focus instead on gallery programming in March in New York. The fair’s annual Miami edition, which has run concurrently with Art Basel Miami Beach for the past fifteen years, will continue as before. 

Liverpool Biennial restores work documenting refugee crisis | The Liverpool Biennial 2018 has reinstalled the work The List presented in collaboration with UNITED and Turkish artist Banu Cennetoğlu, after it was torn down last month in ‘mysterious circumstances’. The ongoing project documents the tens of thousands of asylum seekers, migrants and refugees who have died in Europe since 1993. For more on the project and why its destruction is a troubling occurrence, read Samuel Reilly’s article for Apollo here. 

Pussy Riot member barred from leaving Russia | Maria Alyokhina, a member of the protest group Pussy Riot, has been prohibited by Russian authorities from flying to the UK, ahead of her performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) reportedly stopped Aloykhina from boarding a flight to London at Domodedovo airport in Moscow on Wednesday. The activist-artist was due to travel on to Scotland to perform at Edinburgh Fringe Festival; Russian media report that a temporary ban on leaving the country was imposed due to Alyokhina’s failure to carry out court-ordered community service.