Zeitz MOCAA director quits during suspension

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Director of Cape Town’s Zeitz MOCAA quits during suspension | Mark Coetzee, the chief curator and executive director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) in Cape Town, has stood down from his position. According to the South Africa Times, the museum’s trustees confirmed today that Coetzee was suspended yesterday (16 May), pending ‘an inquiry into [his] professional conduct’. Azu Nwagbogu, the current adjunct curator, has been asked to assume the vacant position in the interim.

Richard Gray (1928–2018) | The American gallerist Richard Gray has died at the age of 89. His eponymous gallery, which opened in Chicago in 1963, was one of the first in the city to display the work of prominent contemporary painters such as Morris Louis and Louise Nevelson, and later Andy Warhol, Agnes Martin and Roy Lichtenstein. The gallery, which currently has spaces in both Chicago and New York, will continue to be operated by Richard Gray’s son, Paul Gray.

Forensic Architecture and Borderland win European Cultural Foundation award | The European Cultural Foundation’s Princess Margriet Award for Culture was awarded last night to Turner-prize nominated multidisciplinary research agency Forensic Architecture and the Polish cultural foundation Borderland. The annual award, inaugurated in 2008, honours organisations that use the arts as a means of effecting positive social change; past laureates include the late cultural theorist Stuart Hall (in 2008), artist John Akomfrah and museum director Charles Esche (both 2012), among others.

Report finds Western Australia state art collection at risk of loss or damage | An auditor’s report released today has found that Western Australia’s state collection of art, managed by the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), is at risk of damage or loss, according to ABC Australia. The report found ‘storage, conservation and monitoring issues’ with the AGWA’s management of the around 18,000 works, worth some $300 million (AUSD), in its care. The AGWA has largely accepted the findings, stating that it intends to implement new stocktaking systems and act quickly to find additional off-site storage space.