Valerie Hillings to direct North Carolina Museum of Art

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Valerie Hillings to direct North Carolina Museum of Art | Valerie Hillings will join the North Carolina Museum of Art as director this November, it was announced yesterday. She comes to the museum after 14 years as a curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, currently serving as associate director of curatorial affairs for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. Hillings replaces Larry Wheeler, who is retiring after close to 25 years in the role.

Collector to withdraw 700-work loan over Mapplethorpe controversy | The collector Luiz Teixeira de Freitas is reportedly planning to terminate a ten-year loan of 700 drawings to the Serralves Foundation’s Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, Portugal. His daughter, Luiza Teixeira de Freitas, said that this decision was an act of ‘solidarity’ with João Ribas, who resigned as creative director of the museum last week, alleging that his exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition had been censored. The museum and the Mapplethorpe Foundation have both called into question Ribas’ claims. 

Damien Hirst restructures business | A representative for Damien Hirst’s company Science Ltd. has confirmed that Hirst is restructuring his business to ‘focus on his art’, the Art Newspaper reports. Fifty employees, primarily those working in finance and IT, have been made redundant – ‘not driven by a need to reduce costs but by his desire to cut the corporate element of the business to get back to a simpler way of working’. Hirst, who recently purchased a £40m flagship studio on Soho’s Beak Street, is also planning to shut his restaurant in Ilfracombe, Devon.

Phyllis Kind (1933–2018) | The American art dealer Phyllis Kind has died at the age of 85. Kind became involved in the art world while living in Chicago in the late 1960s, where she would visit the Hyde Park Art Center and came into contact with artists that she would eventually herself exhibit, including Jim Nutt, Roger Brown and Gladys Nilsson. She opened a second gallery in New York in 1975.

Rachel Adams joins Bemis Centre for Contemporary Arts as chief curator and director of programs | Rachel Adams is joining the Bemis Centre for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska as its chief curator and director of programmes. Adams comes to the role from the University at Buffalo’s Art Galleries, where she was senior curator.