Russian billionaire art collector Dmitry Rybolovlev detained

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Russian billionaire art collector Dmitry Rybolovlev detained | According to Le Monde, Dmitry Rybolovlev, the Russian oligarch, businessman and art collector who sold Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi earlier this year, and who also sued Sotheby’s for $380 million last month, has been detained by Monaco authorities. Rybolovlev has been in an ongoing legal dispute with Geneva art dealer Yves Bouvier, whom the Russian claims overcharged him by up to £1bn for 38 artworks. Rybolovlev’s detainment and house raid yesterday were reportedly due to allegations of corruption and ‘influence peddling’; Philippe Narmino, the former justice minister in Monaco, resigned in 2017 after it was discovered that he was working for Rybolovlev to influence the art fraud case.

Italian populist government to introduce harsher penalties for cultural heritage crimes | Italy’s new populist coalition government will reportedly clamp down on cultural heritage crime as part of its ‘nationalist agenda’, reports The Telegraph. The Five Star Movement’s (5SM) minister of culture, Alberto Bonisoli said: ‘We want to introduce laws on specific crimes so there are stiffer penalties applied to crimes against cultural heritage, which is a fundamental part of our identity.’ Alongside the new penalties, Italy will ratify the Nicosia Convention, an international agreement to punish criminality involving illegal excavation, importation and acquisition of cultural artefacts.

WMF/Knoll Modernism Prize 2018 awarded to Agence Christiane Schmuckle-Mollard | The World Monuments Fund announced today that the Agence Christiane Schmuckle-Mollard, the French architectural firm responsible for restoring the Karl Marx school (1933) in the suburb of Villejuif, Paris, will be awarded the WMF/Knoll Modernism Prize 2018. Originally designed by French modernist André Lurçat, the school was listed as a national historical monument in 1996 before its restoration, which took several years. The judges praised the new building for its innovative restoration and ‘spatial richness’.

Cannupa Hanska Luger awarded Museum of Arts and Design’s inaugural Burke Prize | On Tuesday, it was announced that the New Mexico-based artist Cannupa Hanska Luger is the recipient of the Burke Prize for contemporary craft, given by the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Established this year, the prize will be awarded annually and is endowed by one of the museum’s trustees, Marian Burke, and her husband, Russell Burke. The prize is intended to celebrate the work of a young artist whose primary medium is glass, fibre, clay, metal or wood. Luger will receive £50,000 and will be on the jury for next year’s prize.