Art news daily: 19 December

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Ulster Museum is first in Northern Ireland to acquire works by Rembrandt | Ulster Museum is the first public collection in Northern Ireland to acquire work by Rembrandt, after being allocated six of his etches by the Arts Council England through the government’s Acceptance in Lieu scheme, which allows art works to be used to settle tax bills. The etchings were produced between the 1630s and the 1650s, and will go on display for a special exhibition dedicated to Rembrandt’s influence on printmaking.

Eric Shiner to direct Pioneer Works in Brooklyn | Eric Shiner will be the first executive director of Pioneer Works, a multidisciplinary cultural centre in Brooklyn. Shiner recently spent a year as artistic director of the White Cube’s American operations. Prior roles include director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg and senior vice-president of contemporary art Sotheby’s. Shiner will take up his role at Pioneer Works on 6 January.

Mellon Foundation cancels $1.5m grant to North Carolina university over plans for Confederate monument | The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has decided not to move forward with a $1.5m grant to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after learning that the university had made a settlement with the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) group regarding ‘Silent Sam’, a Confederate monument that was pulled down from its place on the university campus by protestors in 2018. In this agreement, the university would give the SCV custody of the statue, and also provide funds for its relocation and preservation to the estimated cost of some $2.5m. The Mellon grant had been intended to help further the university’s engagement with its ‘historic complicity with slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and the memorialisation of the Confederacy’.