Tate St Ives named Art Fund Museum of the Year

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Tate St Ives wins Art Fund’s Museum of the Year award | Tate St Ives has won the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year award for 2018, it was announced at a ceremony at London’s V&A last night. The Tate’s recently renovated Cornwall outpost was chosen from a five-strong shortlist that also included Weybridge’s Brooklands Museum, Hull’s Ferens Art Gallery, the Postal Museum in London and the Glasgow Women’s Library. The prize grants its winner £100,000, with other nominees receiving £10,000 each. ‘Tate St Ives tells the story of the artists who have lived and worked in Cornwall in an international context’, commented Art Fund director and chair of judges Stephen Deuchar. ‘The judges admired an architect and gallery team who devoted some 12 years to this transformational change, consulting with the local community all the way.’

Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts will remain closed for July and August | Following the fire that devastated the Glasgow School of Art and the O2 ABC music venue last month, the city’s Centre for Contemporary Arts has confirmed that it will remain closed until at least the end of August. Housed in Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson’s Grecian Chambers, the venue lies within the cordon area of structures damaged by the fire. It has not yet set a date for reopening. In related news, architect David Chipperfield has added his voice to calls for the rebuilding of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterwork, calling for it to be classed as a ‘monument of exceptional importance.’

National Gallery buys Artemisia Gentileschi self-portrait | The National Gallery has acquired a rare and recently identified self-portrait by Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the most important artists of the Italian Baroque. The painting, in which Gentileschi depicts herself as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, is one of only three known easel paintings by the artist in the UK. The £3.6m acquisition was made possible through the support of benefactors including the American Friends of the National Gallery, the National Gallery Trust and the Art Fund. It will undergo conservation treatment before going on display early next year.

Met announces record visitor figures | The Metropolitan Museum of Art has published record-breaking attendance figures, having attracted more than 7.35m visitors to its three Manhattan locations since the end of June 2017. The figure represents an increase of 4.29 per cent on the previous period, a rise achieved in spite of the museum’s much-publicised management difficulties and the introduction of a mandatory $25 admission fee for non-New Yorkers in March.