Art news daily: 8 August | Apollo Magazine

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Venice will reroute cruise ships away from city centre | Cruise ships in Venice are to be rerouted away from the city’s historic centre, the Financial Times reports. Over the past decade there have been many protests against the presence of the ships in the lagoon city, recently reignited after a collision in June this year. Italian transport minister Danilo Toninelli said that, beginning next month, ships would dock at terminals away from the city centre, ‘to avoid witnessing more invasions of the Giudecca by these floating palaces, with the scandals and risks that they bring’. The aim is for a third of the vessels to be rerouted by 2020.

Gordon Rintoul will step down as NMS director | The National Museums of Scotland announced today that director Gordon Rintoul will be stepping down after 18 years of service. The NMS is currently searching for a successor; Rintoul will depart in spring of 2020.

Jamaican minister calls for restitution of artefacts in British Museum collection | On Wednesday, the Evening Standard reported a response from the British Museum to calls by Jamaican cultural minister Olivia Grange for the return of two Taíno artefacts – carved figures of a rain god and a bird-man – currently in the museum’s collection. A spokesperson said that the museum had ‘not received any official communication from the ministry of culture in Jamaica’. Last month, Grange stated that the artefacts ‘are significant to the story of Jamaica, and they belong to the people of Jamaica’.