The official opening of the Museum of Western African Art (MOWAA) in Benin City, Nigeria, has been postponed after demonstrators broke into the building during a preview event on 10 November. The BBC reports that the protest forced more than 250 guests, including journalists and representatives of international partners, to shelter inside the museum for several hours. Subsequently, the governor of Edo State, Monday Okpebholo, announced that he was revoking the Certificate of Occupancy for the land on which MOWAA is located. One of the protest leaders, Osaru Iyamu, told DW this week that ‘the opening and the commissioning of MOWAA [is] illegal [and] an insult on our revered throne’. Protestors claimed that MOWAA had previously misrepresented itself as the Benin Royal Museum without the authority of the Oba of Benin. In a statement issued on its website on 10 November, however, the museum asserted: ‘we wish to clarify that MOWAA has never claimed nor presented itself as the Benin Royal Museum in order to secure funding. We would suggest that the relevant authorities confirm directly with any and all of our donors that we have never misrepresented our status.’ Although early in the planning process, which began in 2020, the museum had been envisaged by some as a potential home for Benin Bronzes restituted from Western museum collections, the statement also reiterated that ‘MOWAA does not hold, nor have we ever claimed title to any Benin Bronzes. Our focus for the last four years has been firmly on broader West African art, research, education, and conservation.’ In 2023 the federal government granted ownership of restituted Bronzes to the current Oba, Ewuare II, who has announced plans to house them in a new royal museum which has yet to be built. On 11 November, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Nigerian president, approved the constitution of a presidential committee in an effort to resolve the dispute.
Sasha Suda, who was fired last week from her role as director and CEO of the Philadelphia Art Museum, is suing the museum for terminating her employment ‘without a valid basis’, the New York Times reports. In a lawsuit filed in the Pennsylvania State Court, Suda claims that she was unfairly presented as ‘misusing museum funds for personal gain’, in what her lawyer, Luke Nikas, told Art News was a ‘sham investigation to create a pretext for [her] termination’. The suit also claims that her dismissal came after a ‘corrupt and unethical faction’ of the museum’s board took issue with her attempts to modernise the museum with a divisive rebranding. Suda, who was three years into a five-year contract, is seeking two years’ severance pay plus damages and additional relief.
UK authorities have charged Hauser & Wirth with breaching criminal sanctions that bar the export of luxury goods to Russia, the Times reports. Prosecutors claim that the mega-gallery sold a work by George Condo, Escape From Humanity (2021), to the Russian collector Alexander Popov between April and December 2022, after the UK department for international trade imposed a ban on the export of luxury goods to Russia or people connected with the country. A spokesperson for the gallery said that it ‘strongly contest[s]’ the charge and ‘intend[s] to plead not guilty’. The London-based art shipping company Artay Rauchwerger Solomons Limited, which went into liquidation last year, is also accused of breaching the export ban. Both parties will face a pre-trial hearing at Southwark Crown Court on 16 December. This is the first known criminal prosecution related to the UK’s ban on supplying luxury goods to Russia.
More than 150 workers from across the Tate’s four galleries – Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives – will go on strike from 26 November until 2 December over pay. A statement issued by the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), which represents many Tate workers, said that 98 per cent of members voted in favour of the strike on Wednesday, with a turnout of 87.7 per cent. Workers had previously been offered pay rises of 2–3 per cent, but the PCS said that this increase did not address ongoing issues of low pay at the institution: a recent survey found that 72.2 per cent of PCS members at the Tate felt their salary was ‘not enough to meet basic living costs’, while a PCS source told the Art Newspaper that many staff have ‘anxieties about their future at the Tate and lack of disposable income’. PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote described Tate management’s previous offer as ‘insulting’ and said that staff were ‘ready to take strike action that will severely impact gallery operations’. A major exhibition at Tate Britain, ‘Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals’, is set to open one day after the strikes begin.
Guy Cogeval, the former president of the Musée d’Orsay, has died at the age of 70, reports Le Monde. Born in Paris, Covegal began his career as a curator in film at the Musée d’Orsay before joining the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and later the Musée du Louvre. Following a five-year stint at the helm of the Musée national des Monuments Français in Paris, he moved to Montreal – which he described as the ‘most tolerant and friendliest city in North America’ – where he spent a decade as the director of the city’s Museum of Fine Arts, curating landmark shows such as ‘Hitchcock and Art: Fatal Coincidences’ in 2000. In 2008, he was appointed president of the Musée d’Orsay. Cogeval was well-known for his bold, provocative approach: under his leadership, the museum underwent a major renovation and put on several unusual exhibitions, including ‘Crime and Punishment’, a show on the aesthetics of violence curated by former justice minister Robert Badinter and curator Jean Clair. He was replaced in 2017 by Laurence des Cars, who then went on to become director of the Louvre.