Art news daily: 24 April | Apollo Magazine

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Warburg Institute plans £14.5m expansion | The Warburg Institute in central London is planning to spend £14.5m on an expansion that will raise its public profile and tackle new challenges posed by Brexit, its director has said. Bill Sherman has warned that vital funding could be lost from the German government, the European Union, and private donors once Britain leaves the EU. The expansion, which has been designed by Haworth Tompkins architects and includes plans for a larger lecture theatre, an exhibition gallery and digital laboratory, is due to be completed in September 2022.

Henry Wollman Bloch (1922–2019) | Henry Wollman Bloch, the businessman, philanthropist and collector, has died at the age of 96. Bloch, co-founder of H&R Block, a tax preparation company, made generous contributions to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, where he served as chairman on the board of trustees from 2004 to 2007. With his wife Marion, Bloch donated 29 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings to the museum in 2010. These works have been housed in the Bloch Galleries since 2017 after an $11.7m renovation, funded by the Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation.

Gagosian San Francisco appoints Kelly Huang as co-director | Gagosian gallery in San Francisco has announced Kelly Huang as its new co-director. Huang, who will manage the gallery alongside Charlie Spalding, previously worked for Zlot Buell + Associates, a local art advisory firm, and has connections with many collectors in San Francisco and the Bay Area.

Authorities in Ukraine recover Signac work worth €1.5m | An oil painting by the French pointillist Paul Signac has been recovered by Ukrainian police after it was stolen from the Museum of Fine Arts in Nancy, France, last May. Le Port du La Rochelle (1915), which has an estimated value of €1.5 million, was cut from its frame and later taken to a house in Kiev, where it was discovered by officers, along with several other undisclosed works.

Lead image: used under Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA 4.0)